Women in Post Colonial Society
Historically, women are an oppressed people not by birthright, but by baptism. "Women are kept, maintained and contained through terror, violence and spray of semen. It is profitable for the colonizers to confine our bodies from our own life processes... (Clarke, Cheryl "Lesbianism: an Act of Resistance," pg 128-137)" Societies often create for women a false duplicity, where they are the creators, but also the unclean. Women in mythology appear as deceivers and tricksters; Judeo-Christian tradition's Eve, the first woman, is not only responsible for man's fall from Eden, but also for all mankind's toil. What more powerful statement of the male's supremacy than to create in woman the image of evil, weakness, and temptation? No more is this more painfully expressed than in post-colonial societies, where the nations recovering from an infection of foreign ideas purge themselves, violently, of all things alien - self and other - and thus unwanted. Women's rights are among the first irritants to be regurgitated, and this social sickness appears strongly in the literature of these nations. Women in these novels, trapped by social and religious obligations, as well as the cycle of domestic abuse, are usually the most tragic and m
Schmidt further notes that "The Victorian ideal of virtuous wife, selfless mother, and tidy, industrious housekeeper was the goal for which all African women should be taught to strive" (145) Cleanliness is a of great concern to the characters of Nervous Conditions, and Tambuzi in particular. When returning to the homestead, like her brother Nhamo and like Nyasha from England, Tambu is embarrassed and disgusted. I knew, too, that the fact of menstruation was a shamefully unclean secret that should not be allowed to contaminate immaculate male ears by indiscreet reference to this type of dirt in their presence. I was in danger of becoming an angel, or at the very least a saint, and forgetting how ordinary humans existed - from minute to minute and hand to mouth. In those places where social change comes, women must face an identity crisis. Further complicating social hierarchies are the Shona's "clan" system, where one man is the head of the family and thus the closest to a chief there is, and the rest of the men and their wives are subservient to him. Cleanliness, therefore, also becomes a matter of social change. The confusion of women's role in society was never more chronic than in states undergoing changes in political structure. It didn't depend on any of the things I thought it depended on. The absence of dirty was proof of the otherworldly nature of my new home. Plants grow from the soil, their roots are grounded in it, and even the tillers of the field are pictured with it in their hands and feet (7). You couldn't ignore the fact that she had no respect for Babamukuru when she ought to have lots of it. ' (101-102)" England was a brief glimpse of what life beyond the borders of her nation and of her sex for Maiguru, not because England was a paradise for women, but for the simple reason that it is different than Rhodesia.
Common topics in this essay:
Nervous Conditions,
Act Resistance,
Babamukuru God,
England Tambu,
Conditions Tambuzi,
United Front,
Southern Rhodesia,
English Shona,
Maiguru England,
,
nervous conditions,
indigenous nigerian societies,
financial independence,
african women,
shona tradition,
dirty habits,
didn't depend,
nigerian societies,
women subordinate,
115-116 tambuzi,
indigenous nigerian,
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Acceptance Essays
