The Impact of Emerging Oppressive Social Conditions on Women in the 21st Century in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Trilogy

Abstract

According to Dangarembga’s first trilogy, there is an observed trail of social conditions that oppress women besides the emerging social conditions which need to be addressed and unless this oppression of women is studied in its trend, pertinent issues of concern may be left out. This would mean that women will continue to suffer under their oppressors if they aren’t given a voice to speak with. This paper aimed at analysing the impact of the oppressive social conditions on women in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s first trilogy; Nervous Conditions (1988), The Book of Not (2006) and This Mournable Body (2018). The study employed Postcolonial Feminist Theory on double colonization and the subaltern and New Historicism theories. The study adopted a qualitative research design. The three texts were purposively sampled as they are a trilogy hence better placed to show the influence of the author’s ideology on the choice of the feminist aesthetic strategy used in the trilogy. A textual exegesis was conducted from close reading and content analysis as the method of data collection and analysis. Primary texts were subjected to close reading to provide data for analysis. The paper also referred to secondary sources to collect data that supported the arguments. The paper established that the female characters in the trilogy have been impacted in various ways by the oppressive social conditions that they encounter such as segregation, commodification of the female body and trauma, stigma and alienation. The findings of the study may be appropriated for comparative literary studies that would enable the development of the appropriate approaches and theories to women emancipation and creation of an all-inclusive gender system. Additionally, the literary scholars may use this knowledge in working towards developing appropriate feminist theories, approaches and models in analysis of such works.