Book Review: Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga

Introduction

“I was not sorry when my brother died.” Few opening lines in our literature are as startling as this one. With it, Nervous Conditions announces itself as a novel unafraid to confront uncomfortable truths.

This book, Nervous Conditions, is one to reckon with. Set in the 1980s in the country of Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe), it tells the story of four women as the main characters who must navigate their lives under the weight of blackness, femaleness, poverty, marriage, male superiority, Anglicanisation, and the shadows of colonialism.

Analysis

I should like to write this analysis in no particular order, for my mind is overwhelmed by the knowledge that swells within it. This knowledge is not alien to me, for I have seen subjects like these in many places my body has dared to occupy. And yet, reading this story gives me a fresh perspective and ignites my mind toward a faraway imagination.

No matter the distance, the story feels close to home. Therefore, dear gentle readers, I shall rummage through my compacted brain in no given order to deliver a meaningful review of the novel Nervous Conditions—one that is complete without revealing any spoilers.

The narrator is Tambudzai (Tambu), a rural village girl. She quickly learns from her brother and father that her femaleness means she is different from her male counterparts, especially in what she can or cannot do. Tambu learns from her mother that there are burdens assigned to women which, like her mother, she must be ready to carry.

But Tambu wants one thing for herself—an education. Perhaps the very thing that might lighten her burdens. Yet this one thing does not seem easily attainable. Not because of her own limits, but because of the limits society has stacked against her. No wonder the reader is not surprised when she finds no sorrow in the passing of her only brother at the time.

Early in the book, Tambu has a complicated relationship with her brother Nhamo. Being the only boy, Nhamo enjoys the privileges his maleness affords him, often in disregard for his sisters. He reminds Tambu that she cannot study because she is a girl. When Tambu plants maize so that she can send herself to school, Nhamo begins stealing it. When confronted about the matter, he mockingly asks whether she truly thought she could send herself to school.

His arrogance and entitlement become even more evident when he joins the mission school. Apparently ashamed of his village homestead, he makes excuses not to spend holidays there. When he finally returns, he forces his sisters to carry his luggage from the bus stop. Tambu is clearly aware of these injustices but can do nothing about them except push herself harder at school, help her mother in the fields, and continue her work at home.

It is therefore no surprise that when Nhamo does not return home that fateful holiday, Tambu feels relieved—if only because she does not have to slaughter the chicken he was too lazy to slaughter for himself.

Reading this part of the book made me think about the effects of poverty and social structure on individuals, including young children. Because of scarcity, children end up scrambling for the little resources available, which creates conflict. The reader may wonder whether, if the circumstances were different, Tambu would have felt differently about her brother—and perhaps he about her.

But is it only a question of poverty and social structure? We are the society, after all; we are not removed from it, nor can we remove ourselves from the problem entirely. Or perhaps it is also a question of individual importance, authority, the desire to feel good, and the urge to feel superior to others.

Nyasha is a distinguished character in this novel who seems to believe that many of society’s problems arise from precisely these impulses. She suggests that when people are in positions of power and influence, they often help those beneath them partly so that they may feel good about themselves. This point is illustrated through the dominating male character Babamukuru, who must meet society’s expectations by lifting the poorer branch of his family—even to the extent of arranging a wedding for his brother.

His daughter Nyasha believes he does all this to feel good about himself and therefore that gratitude toward him should not be elevated into some kind of worship.

Tambu describes her first encounter with whiteness as “papery skin.” At the mission, she learns that young white people have “better” skin and therefore can be loved more easily.

Tambu questions many things around her, especially those things called burdens. But she is disappointed by the realisation that burdens are not always chosen; sometimes they simply fall upon you.

She observes the women around her closely. Her mother is fatalistic and self-giving, having succumbed to the throes of marriage at the age of fifteen. Her aunt Maiguru is educated but wastes her life being a wife, and her money is used by her domineering husband to cater for his relatives. Her aunt Lucia struggles between her desires for her lover and Jeremiah.

Determined to change her fate, Tambu—both inspired by and wary of the suffering of the women around her—seizes a momentous opportunity that death places before her: the death of her brother and her consequent stay at the mission with her uncle.

She knows that at the mission she will no longer be the girl with black callouses on her knees and scales on her skin from lack of oil. She will transform into another self: clean, well-groomed, genteel—a self that could never have been bred at the homestead.

She climbs into Babamukuru’s car with one definite goal: to acquire knowledge that will emancipate herself, her sisters, her mother, and her homestead.

Dangarembga writes:

“It was up to them to learn the important lesson that circumstances were not immutable, no burden so binding that it could not be dropped. The honour for teaching them this emancipating lesson was mine. I claimed it all, for here I was, living proof of the moral.”

Tambu’s self-discovery is aided by Nyasha, her beloved cousin whose early exposure to England defines much of her existence. While in England, Nyasha experienced firsthand the lessons of oppression and discrimination. She becomes a strong character who wrestles with the uncomfortable idea that maleness is superior to femaleness and challenges it by standing up to her father, who demands that she behave like a “decent” girl from a respectable home.

This resistance leads to a violent confrontation between father and daughter—a moment that exposes the deep victimisation of femaleness.

Thus the author writes:

“I followed her to the servants’ quarters, where we sat, she smoking a cigarette held between shaking fingers and I feeling bad for her and thinking how dreadfully familiar that scene had been, with Babamukuru condemning Nyasha to whoredom, making her a victim of her femaleness, just as I had felt victimised at home in the days when Nhamo went to school and I grew my maize. The victimisation, I saw, was universal. It didn’t depend on poverty, on lack of education or on tradition. It didn’t depend on any of the things I had thought it depended on. Men took it everywhere with them.”

Normally she is expected to be quiet, speak only when spoken to, and be obedient. Nyasha is none of these things. She speaks her mind and beats the boys in her class at mathematics.

Because she spent time in England, she speaks more English than Shona and with an accent. As a result, fellow students shun her, gossip about her, and she struggles to form friendships at the mission school. This identity crisis becomes even more dangerous when her only friend, Tambu, leaves for Sacred Heart to pursue further education.

Nyasha writes letters to Tambu describing her loneliness. In one letter she mentions starting a diet to become thin, chasing a standard of beauty she has seen in the Western world. That pursuit comes with a life-threatening price.

Nyasha eventually tries to make peace with her father by stopping her defiance and becoming quiet. But by then, a creeping condition has already begun to take hold of her body and psyche. Tambu returns to her friend when it may already be too late.

Tambu’s mother diagnoses Nyasha’s illness differently: she calls it “Englishness.” She says Babamukuru’s household is sick with Englishness—and that this sickness is what might have killed her son.

The question of blackness, femaleness, and authority is deeply examined through the stories of the women in this novel. Tambu’s mother believes her opinion does not matter; she has burdens to carry and will continue to carry them. She is clearly unhappy but has surrendered to her circumstances.

Her sister Lucia, however, refuses silence. She challenges male authority—even Babamukuru’s.

Another significant character shaping Tambu’s transformation is Babamukuru himself. Tambu initially sees him as a man who achieved greatness on his own, pushing himself from beneath the weight of colonial oppression. Yet she gradually begins to question what that success has made him.

The novel also shows the stark differences between Tambu’s life at the homestead and her life at the mission—wearing proper bedclothes instead of tattered frocks, using tampons instead of dirty rags, seeing vast libraries filled with books, and eating abundant breakfasts that she would otherwise experience only at Christmas.

These changes become central to her emancipation. She understands one thing clearly: she must read her books and excel.

Yet the novel reminds us that while the rich and the poor live differently, their burdens can be equally heavy. Maiguru and Tambu’s mother represent this contrast. One is educated and married to a wealthy man; the other is desperately poor and works tirelessly in the fields. Yet both women are trapped by expectations of sacrifice.

Both eventually reach the same conclusion: their fate has been shaped by the circumstances of their femaleness.

These are powerful lessons indeed—that regardless of who we are, we often face similar struggles. We long to be heard, seen, appreciated, and above all, free from the expectations that confine us.

The themes of friendship, family, love, and marriage are richly explored throughout the novel.