Two African Novels - Page: 2
Emecheta's novel pulls us into the world of Lagos, Nigeria, prior to its independence. Nnu Ego, the daughter of a chief whose first marriage ends because she fails to produce children for her husband, moves to Lagos to marry another man whom she has never met. Her one goal is to become pregnant, bear children, and be a mother. Ironically, though she despises her second husband for his "womanly" job as a servant of colonial officers and compares him unfavorably with her first husband who was tall and handsome, she gives birth to nine children during their marriage.
Nnu Ego's life as a mother under colonial rule is a trial from the beginning. The values of her traditional culture consistently clash with the new culture emerging under colonialism. For years, she ekes out a meager existence so that her sons can be educated, that they may find good jobs and care for her when she is old. Nnu Ego's expectation rests on the naive assumption that her boys will uphold and respect traditional, rural values. However, growing up in Lagos and educated in western mission schools, they absorb western values and fail to learn their traditional culture. Her first-born does so well in school that he leaves Nigeria to study in the U.S. and never returns. As she approaches old age, Nnu Ego never receives the honor she expected as a mother; nor do her sons take on her financial well being.
As she approaches death, Nnu Ego realizes that her love for her children and her conscience to care for them had been a "chain of slavery" (186). Her traditional culture had taught her that the only role she could have was that of a mother; she strove all her life to be just that. Because her husband had been unable to shoulder his share of the responsibilities, partly a result of his own character and partly a result of colonialism, she had taken on both roles. Yet in her old age, colonialism had robbed her of the benefits she had also been taught to expect - the "joys" that motherhood would bring.
It is after her death that her children honor her with a tremendous funeral. But Nnu Ego appears to feel that this honor, made after her death, is not enough. Though her children and grandchildren and many others come to her grave to pray, Nnu Ego "still did not answer prayers for children" (224).
Dangarembga's novel, set in colonial Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), portrays a young intelligent African girl, Tambu, who faces the same severing of traditional and modern culture that Nnu Ego faced, but in a completely different setting. As Tambu pursues western education, she finds herself alienated and cut off from her parents and other Africans who maintain the traditional culture and values. The very education that allows her to survive in the new world that colonialism creates also severs her from the family and friends she loves. She watches her cousin develop an eating disorder and observes the unhappiness in her aunt's marriage because, though she is educated, she is unable to pursue the career she would like because of her husband's expectations of a more traditional wife. These, Tambu explains, are symptoms of African women caught in the worlds between tradition and modernity, African culture and western culture, education and a male-dominated world. She terms these symptoms "nervous conditions."
Nervous Conditions ends abruptly, just as Tambu enters another phase of her education. Her cousin's eating disorder has reached a critical stage and her aunt and uncle's marriage appears to be collapsing. But the novel also ends with hope. Tambu's observations of the disorder colonialism brought to her family cause her to resist its growth in her own mind. "Something in my mind began to assert itself, to question things and refuse to be brainwashed, bringing me to this time when I can set down this story," she says in the final paragraph (204). This novel, she says, is only the beginning of the story. Her statement holds within it an inherent promise: the real story, how African women begin to assert themselves, is a story that will also be told.
The two novels tell the same story from different perspectives. The Joys of Motherhood explores the disappointment the older generation faces as their world changes. Nervous Conditions, on the other hand, explores how the younger generation experiences alienation from their families as a result of the changing world.
Both Nervous Conditions and The Joys of Motherhood may be purchased from Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.
Tsitsi Dangarmebga. Nervous Conditions. Seattle, WA: Seal Press, 1989. Buchi Emecheta. The Joys of Motherhood. New York: Braziller, 1979.
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