Women’s voices from Southern Africa : gender, class and ethnicity

Abstract

The following dissertation has as its objective to provide an analysis of Nervous Conditions, a novel written by the Zimbabwean writer and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga. The literary analysis of this novel will be done from a postcolonial and feminist perspective which will pay attention to the interactions among the characters in the novel and those they maintain with the social and political structures at the time when Zimbabwe was still Rhodesia. My analysis will attempt to shown the way in which Dangarembga elaborates on the consequences of colonialism on women and the double oppression they suffer. I will also discuss the importance of giving a voice to the various types women through the novel. In addition, I will analyse the different methods of colonial oppression exemplified in the novel and their consequences at a social and psychological level. For my analysis, I am indebted to a number of studies which analyse Nervous Conditions from both a postcolonial and a feminist perspective