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Genre

The novel Nervous Conditions is an example of feminist bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story.

Narrator

Tambu is the narrator and protagonist of Nervous Conditions. (Also see Tone.)

Point of View

Tambu speaks in the first person, subjectively interpreting and filtering the events and developments that occur around her through her own thoughts, opinions, and biases.

Tone

The tone, implied by the manner in which Tambu chooses to tell her story and describe the lives of the people who make up her world, is biased. The narrator is not wholly unreliable, as she objectively relays events and simple observations, but her perspectives and interpretations are frequently flawed.

Tense

Nervous Conditions is told in the past tense.

Setting (Time & Place)

The novel takes place in the 1960s and 1970s and is set in Rhodesia (which is now called Zimbabwe.)

Major Conflict

Tambu struggles against the poverty and lack of opportunity that mark her world at the homestead. Once at the mission school, she is impeded by the societal bias against women and the sacrifices she must make in order to please her uncle and fulfill his expectations of her.

Rising Action

After Nhamo dies, Tambu is offered his place at the mission school. Babamukuru exerts more and more influence on the family’s actions and decisions, eventually declaring that Tambu’s parents must be formally married in a Christian ceremony.

Climax

Tambu resists her uncle in refusing to attend her parents’ wedding. Maiguru leaves her husband after realizing she is not taken seriously as a viable economic force in the family.

Falling Action

Tambu is punished and realizes she must take control of her own destiny and make her own way, winning a scholarship to the convent school.

Foreshadowing

Nyasha and Chido returning from England, having lost most or all of their native tongue, Shona, foreshadows the same linguistic dislocation that occurs to Nhoma and then to Tambu. Another example of foreshadowing in the novel is that Nhamo’s growing dislike of returning home for vacations foreshadows the growing gulf that develops for Tambu between life at the mission school and life at the homestead.

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