Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions and Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow: Regaining the Lost Hills

Abstract

This paper aims to substantiate the definition of the symbolic hill as the source of one’s self or identity. The hill is, in an African context, similar to the root as a metaphor for something shared such as common history or culture. This is an attempt to examine Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions and Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow in terms of the implied hill. This project is to compare two mirroring doubles ‘Tambu and Nyasha’ and ‘Avey and Aunt Cuney’ in the two novels by following the process in which the two novelists construct the double identities. Each pair in these novels nearly overlaps at some points. Through their mirroring double characters, Tambu and Avey develop their identities. Although Nhamo and Nyasha discarded their hills, Tambu is rooted firmly in background. Avey goes through the process in which she has the conscious mind transcended and the unconscious self emerging. While Tambu recovers her hill, through Nyasha, who represents the unconscious, Avey regains her hill through Aunt Cuney, who symbolizes the unconscious. The main argument in this essay is that each pair of two double characters intertwining consciousness and the unconscious ultimately comes to be one.