Adaner Usmani
TF: Andrea Bachner
03/06/06
English 167p
On Gender and Self-Definition in Nervous Conditions
Though much of Nervous Conditions serves to undermine the civilizing constructs of
colonialism in general, and colonial education in particular, in this paper I suggest that it would
be wrong to paint the entire book with such a broad brush. In particular, this essay compares
Maiguru and Lucia in order to assess the nature of feminism in the text. Emancipation from
suppression, which we crudely (and temporarily) take as the feminist's mantra, consists in
combating others' construction of your own identity. Thus, we utilize the latent tensions in the
duality of Tambu's narration of the novel in order to explore the contrast between self-definition
and conformity1. We find that, although, as implied above, the novel begs us to question the
emancipatory effect that many of its characters attribute to the process of education (and indeed,
a construct that its intended reader has internalized), it also warns us against exoticising the
conditions of those women who lack formal education. Rather, the novel recommends that its
women seize the terms for their definition on collective ground; crucially, only this collectivity
can ensure emancipation.
The equation of education with emancipation occurs very early on in the text, and
continues to resurface throughout it. Tambu, in reacting to her father's dismissive response to the
question of schooling, “decide[s] it was better to be like Maiguru, who was not poor and had not
been crushed by the weight of womanhood” (16). Here, in her response, two words foreshadow
the concerns of this paper: “decision” and “weight”. Their use is a call for self-definition as
opposed to a passive adherence to societal norms. Put another way, Tambu resists the weight of
her father's patriarchal expectations by deciding that she will fund her own education; the process
of education will allow her to shun her burdens, and find self-definition. Having made this point
clear, let us also note that by associating this learning process with her own emancipation, Tambu
affects the novel's audience. The intended reader, who has been well-educated in English and
1 Obviously, this does not change the fact that we will focus on a comparison of Maiguru and Lucia, but rather
deepens that comparison.
need look no farther than herself for its benefits, affiliates, at the very least, with the liberating
goal of education. Thus, the budding assertiveness that Tambu displays in her decision to “earn
the fees” (17) for her schooling rings true, and the reader hardly questions the association of
education with emancipation that underpins this event. Later, then, Tambu leaves her home for
the mission, anticipating “limitless horizons” and an “emancipating lesson” (58). Because
Maiguru2, who has not been fully introduced at this point but has been directly cited by Tambu as
a source of inspiration, must be living a better, freer life, we – as the novel's readership - wish the
same for Tambu.
However, once Maiguru and the true nature of her relationship to Babamukuru begin to
emerge in the text, the benefits of an education – as it pertains to women and their freedom –
become much less clear-cut. The younger Tambu, at this stage in the narrative, thrives in a life of
order, concreteness, and categories.3 For example, she remarks that “Maiguru...was the
embodiment of courtesy and good breeding” (74). In endorsing the ideal that Maiguru observes
by the use of the word 'embody', we see that Tambu employs the hackneyed language with which
the mission has familiarized her. Here, Maiguru's conformity to a prescribed ideal strongly
contradicts the emancipatory self-definition which both Tambu and Maiguru exemplified earlier
in the text, and which the reader fully endorsed: even the younger Tambu herself takes comfort in
“the neat plan” around which her life is being constructed (76). Thankfully for the reader, the
older Tambu emerges as a distinct and critical commentator of precisely this type of identity
construction. She recalls how the “adventurous”, “explorative” (75), and “inconsistent” (116)
Nyasha undermined the same constructs that she, the younger Tambu, took refuge in. For the
2Maiguru, of course, has received her Masters in England, is married to the educated Babamukuru and lives in what
we may call the locus of education in this novel; she truly serves as the model for the process.
3As the older Tambu later recalls: “...I took refuge in the image of the grateful poor female relative. That made
everything a lot easier. It mapped clearly the ways I could or could not go, and by keeping within those boundaries I
was able to avoid the mazes of self-confrontation” (116).
reader, then, Nyasha's conflicts with her “fussing, cooing and clucking and shaking” (76) mother,
discredit Tambu's construction of Maiguru as a wife who has transcended the burdens of
womanhood. By undermining Maiguru's claim to freedom, it subverts the initial association of
emancipation with education.
This process, however, becomes much more complicated when Tambu first finds out that
Maiguru has a Master's Degree:
Her [Maiguru's] seriousness changed her from a sweet, soft dove to something more like
a wasp. 'That's what they like to think I did,' she continued sourly. (...)'What it is' she
sighed, 'to have to choose between self and security. When I was in England I glimpsed
for a little while the things I could have been, the things I could have done if – if – if
things were – different – But there was Babawa Chido and the children and the
family.'...She collected herself. 'But that's how it goes, Sisi Tambu! And when you have a
good man and lovely children, it makes it all worthwhile.' (101-102)
Let us note that Maiguru's transition from a passive, “sweet, soft dove” to an emphatically active
“wasp” mirrors the binary opposition between passive self-adherence and active self-definition.4
Here, then, I argue that the educated Maiguru's endorsement of the merits of 'self' absolves her
education from our earlier criticism; it encourages us, as readers, to exculpate the education she
received in England, since only England permitted her a 'glimpse' of what she could have been.
Rather, the process of 'collecting herself' and adopting the identity of faithful mother and wife
seems to have its roots elsewhere.5 Thus, this passage indicates that our disassociation of
education and emancipation needs to be investigated further; we have to carefully consider when
(or if) education becomes an enervating force that disables self-definition. In order to make this
point more precise, let us turn to the character of Lucia.
The overtly uneducated Lucia, in direct contrast to the motherly Maiguru, rarely regresses
4Indeed, it emerges explicitly in the tension between self and surrender.
5On the one hand, we may be tempted to blame African patriarchy, since the passage links the shift from those things
that could have been 'different' to Maiguru's responsibility for Babawa Chido. Or perhaps one could argue that her
lamentation of circumstances in England relates to the racism that the novel occasionally hints at. Nonetheless, it
should be clear that this passage, upon inspection, restores – to some degree – the reader's faith in Maiguru and the
ideal of a Western education.
into strict typologies. Thus, she consistently finds the self-definition that Maiguru consistently
lacks. For example, when Lucia unprecedentedly (and assertively) intervenes in her own trial,
she makes a mockery of the carefully assembled patriarchy. Takesure, who bears the brunt of
Lucia's assault, refers to her as “unnatural” and “uncontrollable” (145). Thus, as a woman who
rebels against what society deems 'natural' (i.e. what everyone expects from her) and who resists
'control', Lucia exhibits a free-spiritedness that is inimical to the kind of confinement that
Maiguru takes refuge in. Although the reader doubts Maiguru's fulfillment within her constructed
identity, it remains an aspect of her life that Lucia's rebelliousness exposes. Thus, when the older
Tambu notes that Maiguru “was a good woman and a good wife and took pride in this identity”
(135), the reader cannot help but admire Lucia at Maiguru's expense.
Let us assess where we are in the argument by cautioning the reader against simplicity.
One could easily assert that Lucia's character finally undermines the construction of education as
emancipation, because her example – the uneducated – shows that education inevitably constructs
identity and therefore restricts self-definition. But I argue that – as Maiguru's occasional moments
of defiance show – such a conclusion would be much too shallow, and thereby unwarranted. I
contend that the reader must guard against this exoticization of Lucia, as we will term it. Even
though the image of the missionary education as a beacon of emancipation has largely dissolved,
we ought not to turn to the mission's polar opposite for guidance. Although Lucia recommends an
ideal to the reader by her willful resistance to categorization, even she, by the end of the novel,
has relocated to the mission and has begun her education. Rather, what we must appropriate is
this idea of resistance, and foster it in each and all of the women in the novel. This suggestion
emerges most clearly in one of the older Tambu's more reflective moments:
What was needed in that kitchen was a combination of Maiguru's detachment and Lucia's
direction. Everybody needed to broaden out a little, to stop and consider the alternatives,
but the matter was too intimate. It stung too saltily, too sharply and agonisingly the
sensitive images that the women had of themselves, images that were really no more than
reflections. But the women had been taught to recognise these reflections as self...So
instead of a broadening from both positions...the fear made it necessary to tighten up.
Each retreated more resolutely into their roles, pretending while they did that actually
they were advancing, had in fact initiated an offensive, when really, for each of them, it
was a last solitary, hopeless defense of the security of their illusions. (138)
Again, we see that this passage laments identity construction, by bemoaning the fact that all these
women have been “taught to recognize...reflections as self”. One immediately notes that the use
of the word “taught” explicitly links this tension between self-definition and construction of the
self to education. However, befitting the development of our larger argument, its criticism applies
to the uneducated Lucia and the educated Maiguru alike. It intimates that even Lucia herself has
been 'taught' and thereby confined. In the same way that Maiguru takes refuge in the identity of a
'good wife', the older Tambu here suggests that Lucia's self-definition occurs on terms that she
retreats to ('Lucia the rebellious'). But it would be wrong to suggest that, as a result, we
misinterpreted the virtues of this rebelliousness. For it is precisely what the older Tambu calls
for, merely in a more inclusive form. She recommends a collective self-determination; one that
does not disregard the plight of the Maigurus for the benefit of the Lucias.6
Let us clarify this last point in order to synthesize the argument of this paper. As stated,
while the older Tambu does seem to temper the reader's admiration for Lucia, her deploring the
woman's retreat into the “security of... illusions” immediately recalls precisely what we found so
commendable in Lucia. Thus, it is not that self-definition is undesirable; but merely that it has
been conducted on the wrong terms. Even though Lucia constructed her own identity in her own
way, she conducted it in opposition to the other women. The nobility of her own fight was
heightened by their repression and retreat. And while we rightly praised her for it, the older
Tambu wants something greater; she wants all the women to seize that spirit in a way that
6One immediately notes that this conflict occurs in the “kitchen”; thus it is intended as a clash between women, on
women's terms and territory.
foments solidarity between them. Note that earlier, the older Tambu writes, “What I didn't like
was the way all the conflicts came back to this question of femaleness. Femaleness as opposed
and inferior to maleness” (116). From this observation, an endorsement of collective selfdetermination
rightly follows.
Let us end by summarizing our argument in a broader context. In detaching the question
of emancipation from that of education, the novel intimates that different kinds of education
differ wildly in their implications. The colonial education of the mission and Sacred Heart clearly
introduce a plethora of constructed identities, such that the room for freedom and selfdetermination
are minimal. And when the very value accorded to any form of education is
imported (Tambu is emulating Maiguru in striving for education), one may be tempted to
conclude that characters like the uneducated Lucia offer us much more. Yet the issues are much
more complicated, and fortunately so. The tension between the uneducated and educated
obscures the more fundamental contrast between active self-definition and passive acceptance.
Education, if appropriately appropriated, discourages constructed identities. Emancipation
requires this different kind of collective instruction (and not the exoticized native state); the
women of this novel need this collective self-determination in order to overcome the multiplicity
of obstacles they face.
Works Citeda
Dangaremba, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. Emeryville: Seal Press, 2004.