The European-African Divide: Nyashas Illness - Case Study Example

Nyasha is divided, she is at the same time both African and not, and this quotation distills in a single sentence some of the themes which permeate Dangarembga's entire work. This essay will demonstrate how this sentence illustrates Nashua's representation as Africa lost, as a woman who is both native to the soil and yet unable to assimilate fully to it.As a preliminary matter, this quotation cannot be understood without understanding Nyasha's background. Unlike Tambu, she has been offered a life of comparative privilege.

She has experienced a formal British education. She has also experienced the life of a woman in Britain, where the treatment of the feminine is quite different than in Africa. How she acts and is perceived back in her native Africa, therefore, is central to the novel. How she perceives herself is also central. Outwardly, Nyasha is seen as rebellious and condescending of African traditions. In sum, Nyasha is in many ways everything that Africa is not. Her illness, therefore, is deemed something foreign, by both colonizers and colonized alike, and almost without legitimacy.

Nyasha, despite being a part of both cultures, is alone and without resort to true people or a true heritage. What, therefore, was the nature of Nyasha's illness She was thin and frail. Emotionally, she seemed full of life, confident, and engaged in a vibrant lifestyle; and yet, despite these outward appearances, her body withered. Her illness, well-established enough in the scientific literature, was not capable of being attributed to this particular woman. It was as if, almost, she was deemed unworthy of her illness.

The British, though they recognized the symptoms, and understood the prognosis, found little to gain in attributing civilized diseases to the natives. On the other hand, the Africans, finding such a disease illogical, and incompatible with their own traditions, refused to accept the basis upon which such a disease might arise. How could someone, particularly a woman whose duties revolved around the collection and preparation of food, suffer from something such as Anorexia In many ways, tragically enough, Nyasha was just as incomprehensible to the British as to her African kin.

She was, in this way, both unworthy and incomprehensible.In the final analysis, this quotation is symbolic of an African woman who exists in two contrary worlds without truly belonging in either. She is unworthy of a British illness because she is African, and yet she rejects much of what Africa is without a corresponding acceptance by her educators. The irony is painful. She is, both psychologically and metaphorically, an abandoned woman. This abandonment results from her situation rather than from her heritage.

This is a tragic quotation when viewed against the larger backdrop of the complete novel.