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Three books will be analyzed in this paper, Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangaremba, A Question Of Power by Bessie Head and The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah. We will discuss the gender roles in each book, and how the power relationships already present in African society are modified by gender and colonialism. Colonization is a driving force behind the problems and themes found within these books, and is an important background consideration for the characters and for the social interactions that take place. Skinner says "The most difficult task for future generations of Africans will be to end that state of psychological and structural dependency that has survived the end of colonialism. This task will be made more difficult by the emergence of a global civilization ....... The result might well be that Africans, Europeans, Asians and other peoples of the world find themselves heirs to a hybrid civilization that has captured them all - psychologically as well as structurally."¹. This psychological and structural dependency that Skinner was talking about could be considered the main underlying problem in all of the societies mentioned by Head, Armah and Dangaremba. This ‘hybrid' civilization forces separation from the soul, it takes away the comfort of traditional secular and social support or attitudes, replacing them with an outsider's view on the world. This separation causes untold stress and mental anguish for the ‘commoners' or everyday person, almost always poor and powerless - and of course native to their country. Yansane in his conclusion notes that "African responses to this colonial and imperialist expansion went through four different steps: 1) Resistance to conquest; 2) A stand against the consequences of conquest (struggle for civil rights, fair prices for peasants' and farmers' crops, better maternity care, schools, hospitals, and so on); 3)Political mobilization within irresistible nationalist movements with a common goal- regaining national sovereignty and independence (these movements had forced colonial powers to admit self-determination for colonized people either through negotiation or armed struggle); 4)Armed struggle to end colonialism in the still colonized territories of Africa."². These four stages correspond well to texts studied in class, for example, the first case corresponds to Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart. The existence of these stages basically ensures that anyone surviving this process will be mentally scarred and forever resentful of the ruling class, as well as plagued with self doubt or recrimination, such as the main character of Head's novel feels. The three books to be discussed are to varying degrees reliant on a gender perspective to give fuller realization to the problems of the society and individuals within the structure of the novel. These books are not feminist texts exclusively, rather they emphasize a range of dimensions that can be utilized by the reader to further emotional contact with the characters.

A Question of Power

Bessie Head was born in 1937 in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Her mother was a white woman who was institutionalized at the time of her pregnancy, the reason given was that she was impregnated by a farm hand who was black. This was clearly a sign of mental incapacity in South Africa at the time. This aspect of Head's early life impacted her throughout her career, and evidence of this hurt and confusion about her racial heritage is found throughout the book. The novel is divided into two parts, Sello and Dan. These two are figments of Elizabeth's amazingly tortured mind, yet they are also real men in the town she lives in. She seems to have invented them in a bid to unravel her own mind, to take a voyage inwards, to discover the source of her mental angst. She does take this journey, although not without some misgivings, "... ‘Journeys into the soul are not for women with children, not all that dark, heaving turmoil... ...The inner life is ugly'."(Head p.50).

Daymond notes in South African Feminisms ".... Her fiction creates a space in which different forces are present, she effaces her own judgment by having the colliding cultures speak for themselves; at the same time she reveals her diagnostic powers (coming from her conscious positionality) by drawing attention to her male characters' assumptions about their power to act, while her women watch and grieve."³. A perfect example of her male characters' approach to power is Dan, a cold and unfeeling opposite to Sello's warmth. Elizabeth thinks "... it had taken her a year of slow, painful thought to say at the end of it: ‘Phew! What a load of rubbish!' Dan understood the mechanics of power. From his gestures, he clearly thought he had a wilting puppet in his hands"(Head p.13).

‘Positionality' as a term was invented by Linda Alcoff, seeking to avoid theories of ‘women' while still seeing gender as a platform from which to act politically, she says "....the concept of positionality includes two points; first... that the concept of woman is a relational term identifiable only within (a constantly moving) context, but, second, that the position that women find themselves in can be actively utilized (rather than transcended) as a location for the construction of meaning, a place from where meaning is constructed, rather than simply the place where meaning can be discovered..."⁴. In Head's novel, Elizabeth's position at first is relatively full of strength and hope, she is confused, but not despondent. She analyses the power structures of the place she lives, Botswana, and explores her mind with Sello; ".... It was the kind of language she understood, that no one was the be-all and end-all of creation, that no one had the power of assertion and dominance to the exclusion of other life."(Head p.35). However, "She was entirely dependent on Sello for direction and equally helpless, like a patient on his doctor for survival..."(Head p.35). This contradictory statement says a lot about her relationship with Sello, and consequently Dan. Elizabeth needs a mentor, a spiritual leader who will presumably help her become fully independent and realize her goal of love and respect throughout the human race, unfortunately, the power relationship is focused too much one way, Elizabeth is ‘entirely dependent' instead of independent.

Sello then introduces a new character, a Medusa-like black woman, who tells Elizabeth "We don't want you here. This is my land. These are my people. You keep no secrets. I can do more for the poor than you could ever do."(Head p.38). These are important lines that illustrate just how different Elizabeth feels within the African culture, being of mixed blood, and not quite black or white. Later, Elizabeth thinks "... The wild-eyed Medusa was expressing the surface reality of African society. It was shut in and exclusive. It had a strong theme of power-worship running through it, and power-people needed small, narrow, shut-in worlds."(Head p.38). This exclusivity is a pervasive atmosphere through almost all times and places, one finds that in a society with a large gulf separating poor and rich, the affluent (powerful) citizens will do almost anything to perpetuate the worship of their money, their lands, and themselves. This in turn leads to more power through the means of influence as well as affluence. A good example of this type of power in a character is when Elizabeth is working in the vegetable garden "All of a sudden, the vegetable garden was the most miserable place on earth. The students had simply become humiliated little boys shoved around by a hysterical white woman who never saw black people as people, but as objects of permanent idiocy."(Head p.76). This woman Camilla is a great example of the average white lady in Africa at the time as portrayed by our authors. She is authoritative, racist, condescending, cruel and utterly unaware of any possible redeeming features of the native Africans around her. It is interesting that Head's ‘real' characters, as opposed to ‘imaginary', are women, whereas the males are almost all figments of her imagination and her sickness.

When Dan enters the scene, Elizabeth has been through a lot with Sello and Medusa, and now it is Dan's turn. He is described as "...He was one of the very few cattle millionaires of the country. He ordered a fantastic array of suits from somewhere, and he was short, black and handsome... ...He was also greatly admired for being an African nationalist in a country where people were only concerned with tribal matters."(Head p.104). His kiss makes Elizabeth feel like "an ancient and knowledgeable Queen of love"(Head p.106). Soon, the image is shattered, Dan is an insatiable sexual predator, always with a girl, or talking about being with a girl. He uses his phallus to intimidate and threaten Elizabeth. However, this act is not unredeemed torture, as Elizabeth knows "Dan went as far as the hawk's eye. He saw in her a violent pride that could not endure humiliation of any kind. He saw the year behind of continuous unprovoked assault by Medusa and Sello of the brown suit. He saw the hidden molten lava within, the victim who is unreasonably tortured."(Head p.136). Dan is just another step in the marathon to discover her own position in Botswainian and human life, he must torture her in order to allow the ‘hidden molten lava' inside to escape and create a new paradigm. Later, we hear that Elizabeth is not Dan's only victim, that he was "... applying the hawk's eye to Africa.... It was the power of his projection of his own personality as African. It began to make all things African vile and obscene. The social defects of Africa are, first, the African man's loose, carefree sexuality.... ... the second social defect is a form of cruelty, really spite, that seems to have its origins in witchcraft practices. It is a sustained pressure of mental torture that reducers its victim to a state of permanent terror..."(Head p.137). These statements about Africa are not only Dan's or Elizabeth's thoughts and words, they are very definitely the words of the author as well, sensitising the reader to the evil and darkness that has befallen their society since the onset of colonialism.

In the end, the trials being over, and presumably, having passed the ‘test', Elizabeth is finally allowed to relax peacefully, and the power of her experiences has brought about the realisation of her original dream of fairness, love and equality. She is able to state to herself that "There is only one God and his name was Man"(Head p.206), without any recriminating voice in her head telling her that she is wrong or a fool. She is also able to reconcile herself somewhat with her native land, as seen in the lines "As she fell asleep, she placed one soft hand over her land. It was a gesture of belonging."(Head p.206), the first time in the novel that she feels that she actually belongs, and is satisfied with it.

Nervous Conditions

Tsitsi Dangaremba's book Nervous Conditions was her first novel. She was born and raised in Zimbabwe and studied medicine and psychology. The main character in her book is also the narrator, Tambudzai, or Tambu for short. She tells "...[her] own story , the story of four women whom I loved..."(Dangaremba p.204). In doing this noble act of storytelling, Tambu seems to place herself in the triple jeopardy of the black woman writer: "Triple jeopardy means here that whenever a woman of color takes up the feminist fight, she immediately qualifies for three possible "betrayals": she can be accused of betraying either man (the "man-hater") or her community ("people of color should stay together to fight racism") or the woman herself ("you should fight first on the woman's side")."⁵. Strangely, the story is presented as one of escape rather than entrapment; "...about my escape and Lucia's; about my mother's and Maiguru's entrapment; and about Nyasha's rebellion."(Damgaremba p.1). How could one be trapped in this text? There are three ways: "My mother said being black was a burden because it made you poor... ...My mother said being a woman was a burden because you had to bear children and look after them and the husband."(Dangaremba p.16), and the third level; "the Englishness"(Dangaremba p.202). Tambu's mother is obviously trapped by her ethnic origins and her womanhood, but her life is not at all free of ‘Englishness'. The cultural imperialism offered by these white people was willingly accepted by Babamukuru (Tambu's ‘englished' uncle, the ‘Great Father'), and he used it to keep his family in check. For instance, an exhausted wife that gets no help from her useless husband Jeremiah (Tambu's father) would traditionally ask a healthy sister to enter the family as a second childbearer, worker and wife. Babamukuru, Christianized and westernized, rejects this solution as bigamy. However, he does compromise by having the two parents of Tambu married in the traditional Christian manner, and Babamukuru's patriarchal insensitivity is shown when he makes Tambu's mother appear in a white veil, the mark of a virgin. This ‘Englishness' has also seemed to rob Tambu's mother of her children. Even before his death, Nhamo's selective memory of his native tongue, Shona, effectively ended all communication between him and his mother. Similarly, it is Babamukuru's authorization of Tambu's "privilege of being admitted on an honorary basis into their [white] culture"(Dangaremba p.178) that causes her mother to begin her long descent into sickness. Similarly trapped is Maiguru, Babamukuru's wife; we hear her say that she must conceal her intellectual ability, renounce her right to control her own earnings, aid in the deification of Babamukuru, and was not even consulted about the trip to England with her children, a trip that ultimately caused many problems for her and her family.

A character with strength and resolve is Lucia, the sister brought to the homestead to help Tambu's mother through her pregnancy and illness. She is unmarried, and as such in their society, without a good reputation, however, she manages to turn her position as a semi-outsider to the hierarchy of the family to her favour. Lucia says to Babamukuru at a point in the story "Maybe when you marry a woman, she is obliged to obey you. But some of us aren't married, so we don't know how to do it."(Dangaremba p.171). Whereas in the rest of the text, Nyasha excluded, female obeisance is required at all times to all males, Lucia has refused her adult place into the patriarchal structure; she has retained control of her own sexuality, regarding it as her own property. This self-assuredness and nonconformity is at a peak during the family dare. Lucia disrupts and ridicules the process by entering in a rage and berating the hapless Takesure, who had accused her of impropriety to defend himself against Babamukuru's wrath. "She explodes the myth of male dominance, exposing both Jeremiah and Takesure as weaklings and threatening to destroy Babamukuru's hierarchical structures by leaving without a man, and with her sister."⁶ explains Bosman. This is a novel of violence, however muted by family affairs. Nhamo's tragic death, and Nyasha's near death all provided Tambu with the appropriate positionality to be able to describe the goings on around her. Dangaremba has spoken eloquently through Tambu to enlighten us about both feminism and postcolonialism.

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah was born in 1938, he wrote his first novel, The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born in 1968. This book is perhaps the least occupied with gender and power roles in society, it is more a disturbing look at the actual society and infrastructure that Ghanaian society was built upon at that time. The novel is written in a strange style, narrated in the third person and containing copious imagery of refuse, fecal matter and vomit. The main character of the book (referred to as ‘the man') is a stolid and upstanding citizen. He works as a clerk in the railway company, and does his job exactingly. He is also obviously very dispirited about the general climate he lives in, especially despondent when thinking of his wife and children;

" ‘morning'

‘you are there.'

‘Yes.'

‘Say why.'

‘Work.'

‘Say why.'

‘Wife.'

‘Say why.'

‘Be serious.'

‘Goway. Say why.'

‘Children.'"(Armah p.108).

This is the case because he cannot provide adequately for them on his salary, and even when offered a bribe, he will not take it. After a situation where the man was offered a bribe and turned it down, "The man was left alone with thoughts of the easy slide and how everything said there was something miserable, something unspeakably dishonest about a man who refused to take and give what everyone around was busy taking and giving: something unnatural, something very cruel, something that was criminal, for who but a criminal could ever be left with such a feeling of loneliness?"(Armah p.32). The first time we are introduced to the man's family, he comes home to a silent house, and the reproachful eyes of his wife. He mentions to his wife that someone tried to offer him a bribe that day, and she accuses him of being a good Christian soldier in refusing it. This is an interesting juxtaposition of two ways of life that are not even her own to begin with. We would assume she means that it is a white man's way to take bribes, because that is how the world works now that the white man is there, however, as a ‘Good Christian Soldier' (also white) one would presumably not take the bribe. To his question of why he should have taken it, she replies "And why not? When you shook Estella Koomson's hand, was not the perfume that stayed on yours a pleasing thing? Maybe you like this crawling that we do, but I am tired of it. I would like to have someone drive me where I want to go."(Armah p.44). His wife is clearly beguiled by the rich white person's quality of life, she says further "... ‘It is nice. It is clean, the life Estella is getting'"(Armah p.44), to which he replies "... ‘Some of that kind of cleanness has more rottenness in it than all the slime at the bottom of a garbage dump.'"(Armah p.44). He is clearly a more traditionally rooted person, and he is in a power struggle with his wife over how the entire household shall be run and moneyed. When the man goes to seek the wisdom of a man simply called ‘Teacher' he complains about his wife Oyo "flinging [my] uselessness at [me] again last night"(Armah p.56). They discuss the matter of taking responsibility for one's family, whether that means changing one's moral views, by way of a story about drivers and passengers. Teacher tells the man that he is lucky to have such a clear-sighted woman, and that "She was right, but it was not philosophy she was talking about. It was Ghana."(Armah p.59). Therefore, although the man can hardly stand being near his wife, she plays a major role in his life and development, she is the unAfricanizing element in his life.

An altogether different woman in the book is Manaan. She appears in a flashback to his childhood, and supplies them with hope, idealism and marijuana. When the man and Manaan are sitting together, the man looks at her and "The beauty, as always, was there in her face and in the line of the body beside me on the beach. But there was a softness in the face that was entirely new to me. It was not a weak, meaningless softness. Rather, it was as if Manaan's face was all I would ever need to look at to know that this was a woman being pushed toward destruction and there was nothing she or I could do about it. She was smiling at me, but in myself I felt accused by a silence that belonged to millions and ages of women all bearing the face and the form of Manaan, and needing no voice at all to tell me I had failed them, I and all the others who have been content to do nothing and to be nothing at all all our lives and through all the ages of their suffering."(Armah p.72). This beautiful passage illustrates for us a dimension of male suffering that is sometimes overlooked, the failure to help someone when they are in trouble leads to a guilt about non-action. Males in this situation can indeed identify with all the billions of women who have died though male inaction, and felt like failures when social constraints force them to relive their guilty past.

Conclusion

The three books we explored in this essay are linked in more ways than one. Inherent in all the texts is an implicit background of colonialism and its effects, therefore to do a singularly feminist or gender based reading of any of them is to ignore other extremely important sides to the issue. Women in Africa, be they black or white had the same types of setbacks and worries and entrapment that women all over the world felt and feel. However, the writers studied had the added dimension of being colored women as well. A common theme that all shared however, was the emphasis on personal growth as a way to achieve social change. All the writers are concerned with a woman's personal strength, whether that strength be embodied by the long-suffering Elizabeth, the conciliatory Tambu or the clear sight of Oyo. In these books, the victims of inequality and male insensitivity are not only disadvantaged by external circumstances, they often lack strength in other areas, or lack a sense of their own integrity as women. We may say that this lack of integrity is due in part to the degree to which they have internalized male modes of perception. This is a bitter pill of realism to swallow, sentimentality is for the weak, and the weak don't survive in Africa. On one side we see powerful women like Elizabeth who flatly denies the status quo and creates an entirely new existence in her search for truth/love, on the other side, women like Oyo are exposed as having cramped personalities and narrow perspectives of that female individuality which accepts established restrictions. This is not to say that any of these books are a form of institutional protest, they are more a protest from the soul. Their works clearly imply that profound and pervasive changes can only take place when external reforms go hand in hand with fundamental, personal growth. Brown states that "... simply protesting against one's victimization and getting the other to accept responsibility for that victimization are far less important than the business of correcting the effects of inequality and dependency."⁷. This is to say that all the motivation and impetus to act must come from within, as a woman and a second class citizen, she must rise up into self-sufficiency alone. The very nature of female dependency, any dependency, encourages the habit of leaning on others for help, but there is no cheap or easy pathway to female independence or integrity. Altogether, the African writer tends to reflect a deep seated uneasiness about sexual attitudes within her society, and this attitude is comparable to Western feminist protesters and writers. Both groups are engaged in an ongoing critical enquiry into the nature of their lives, suffering and triumphs, while raising useful questions about the shortcomings of entrenched social attitudes. In all, if as Head hints the condition of native is to be considered nervous, then I submit that the condition of native woman in these texts is one of a catalyst to bring about social change through personal growth.

Texts Consulted

Armah, Ayi Kwei The Beautyful One are Not Yet Born

Heinemann, 1968

Brown, Lloyd W. Women Writers in Black Africa

Greenwood Press, 1981

Dangaremba, Tsitsi Nervous Conditions

The Women's Press, Ltd., 1988

Daymond, M.J. South African Feminisms Writing, Theory, and Criticism 1990-1994

Garland Pub. 1996

Head, Bessie A Question Of Power

Heinemann, 1974

Yansane, Aguibou Y. Decolonization and Dependency Problems of Development of African Societies

Greenwood Press, 1980

1 Elliott P. Skinner, Essay: The Persistence of Psychological and Structural Dependence after Colonialism

Decolonisation and Dependency; Problems of Development of African Societies

Edited by Aguibou Y. Yansane. Greenwood Press, Westport Connecticut, 1980

2 Ibid. p.287

3 Daymond, M.J. Essay: Inventing Gendered Traditions, The short stories of Bessie Head and Miriam Tlali

South African Feminisms Writing, Theory and Criticism 1990-1994

Garland Publishing 1996

4 Alcoff, Linda Quote: A Correspondence Without Theory

South African Feminisms; Writing, Theory and Criticism 1990-1994

Garland Publishing 1996

5 Trinh, Minh-ha T. Quote: A Correspondence Without Theory

South African Feminisms; Writing, Theory and Criticism 1990-1994

Garland Publishing 1996

6 Bosman, Brenda Essay: A Correspondence Without Theory

South African Feminisms; Writing, Theory and Criticism 1990-1994

Garland Publishing 1996

7 Brown, Lloyd W. Women Writers in Black Africa

Greenwood Press, 1981