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
. . .
(90)” This is also the first time Tambu has ever been to Babamukuru and is, in her own words, remaking in herself a new, “clean” Tambuzi. In nations such as Rhodesia, where foreign invaders are “treated like minor deities (Nervous Conditions 103)” it is difficult to maintain a sense of self worth. Femaleness as opposed and inferior to maleness. It didn’t depend on poverty, on lack of education or on tradition. ’ (123)” Not only are the references to dirt and cleanliness made, but also a link to the submissiveness ingrained into women of Shona tradition; her mother is a woman of firm Shona grounding, and from this Tambuzi seems direly in need of escape. (70-71)”
Women are always hurt most as nations undergo violent transitions, from wars, to economic depression, or de-colonization. You couldn’t ignore the fact that she had no respect for Babamukuru when she ought to have lots of it. The victimization, I saw, was universal. 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). In those places where social change comes, women must face an identity crisis. Not surprisingly, the earliest women's groups in Zimbabwe were linked to missionary activity and the church, much in the way Maiguru gained her passage to England. ‘What it is,’ she sighed, ‘to have to choose between self and security. She shrugged and gave me sound advice: ‘Clean it yourself if you want it clean. Dirt, as the earth, is a common symbol not only of the “old” way, but of one’s source.
Approximate Word count =
1844
Approximate Pages =
7 (250 words per page double spaced)
Simply subscribe to view this paper, and 100,000 others.
| CREDIT CARD |
ONLINE CHECK |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
JOIN BY PHONE
|
|
|
