The Early Effects of Colonialism on Tambu's Gender Roles and Oppression Alexa Romano College

Nervous Conditions, a buildingsroman by Tsitsi Dangarembga, focuses on the life and education of Tambu, a young girl, living in Rhodesia. After the death of her brother, Tambu moves from her homestead into a mission with her uncle and his affluent, educated family. As colonialism spreads through Rhodesia, Tambu’s gender roles constantly change.

This paper will use history, literary criticism, and textual evidence from Nervous Conditions to examine colonialism’s early effect on Tambu’s gender roles and her oppression. The historical account, titled “Patriarchy, Capitalism, and the Colonial State in Zimbabwe”, by Elizabeth Schmidt, published by the University of Chicago, discusses the ways colonialism and patriarchy were used to control women in Zimbabwe. The article focuses on the views held of women and the way capitalism helped shape gender roles. “A Dialectic of Autonomy and Community: Tistsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions” by Lindsay Pentolfe Aegerter, from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, is a literary criticism explaining how Nervous Conditions provides a history for a group that has been “silenced, elided, and ignored in the colonial equation”...