The Homestead in the Zimbabwean countryside is an important location to Nervous Conditions, as it sets up the initial conflict of the story. At the homestead Tambu yearns for an education and even grows her own maize to sell for funds so that she can attend the local school (Dangarembga 33) . Her parents, particularly her father, are against her attending school as she is needed at home, because “while the brother can sometimes escape the time-consuming and labor intensive chores that keep the homestead going, the women in the household are given no such opportunity” (Nair 133). At the homestead Tambu is a valuable worker, and she chastises her brother and cousins for being embarrassed of the condition of the homestead, though this changes once Tambu has the opportunity to replace Nhamo at the mission school. When Tambu returns to the homestead from the mission school, she describes that, “the only affection anyone could have for that compound had to come from loyalty” (Dangarembga 183), depict how the homestead had fallen to disarray in Tambu’s absence, and show how her appreciation for the luxuries at the mission changed her perspective of the modest home she grew up in.
Works Cited
Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. London: Women's Press Limited, 1988.
Nair, Supriya. "Melancholic Women: The Intellectual Hysteric(s) In Nervous Conditions." Research in African Literatures 26.2 (1995): 130-139. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3820276.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3A94d4d63ace722c774ea7a64dc49adff2&ab_segments=&initiator=&acceptTC=1.
