Abstract:
African writers have utilized fiction as a mirror to reflect prevalent cultures in our society that enforce the indignities meted out to women, denying them agency of their body and how women resist such oppression. This study focuses on Tsitsi Dangarembga’s illustration of gender relations, gender violence and the awakening of women in Nervous Conditions. In particular, the study considers how literary representation of gender violence reveals a connection to the gendered ordering of our society regardless of the female character’s position on the socio-economic ladder. This paper uses feminist theory to enrich the literary analysis of the selected texts, drawing on the tenets of ending undue discrimination and victimization of women in cultures underpinned by patriarchal ideologies. Consequently, the study suggests that the brutal instances of gender violence and the reaction of women to them are merely extreme manifestations of discursive and structural gender oppression that shapes every aspect of the female characters’ lives.
