She no-longer weeps(Tsitsi Dangarembga) novel analysis-2

However, feminism’s vision is to achieve social change. Martha is now educated and have money and a good life, “ i have money and i have my child…i don’t need you anymore”(SNLW, 52. According to Martha, having financial stamina affirms a radical stance or ideology of eliminating men. Martha leaves her abusive husband and the father of her only daughter Freddie whom his ego has been threatened by her status.She now lives her own life however with Lovemore. Dangarembga credits Martha for such an achievement. To the writer it is a sight to independence and an evidence that education opens up one’s mind and to be critic. Martha tells her parents that she will not sacrifice herself to a man’seye just because society says she ought to, (SNLW, 35).

The previous chapter outlined the effects of colonial education coupled with patriarchal domination and condemned it for its inability to create well and full baked recipients. Its contents were too European and irrelevant to addressing African needs such that in the process students lost the profound spirituality, community relationship and indigenous values to love. Martha became so adamant to help other women whom she shares the same fate with.
Mrs Matsika: But aren’t you concerned for these poor homeless, abandoned girls. If you, who have suffered in the way that they are suffering will also abandon them, then who is going to help them? Martha: They will have to help themselves like we all do…I’m sorry, i can’t help you.(pg 50)

However on a more critical view, Martha’s denial to assist is somehow justified. Learning from her conversation with Mrs Matsika and Mrs Chiwara, Martha is viewed as a baggage of complete failure. She does not earn any respect now. She has no title to be addressed with.(SNLW,44). She is now regarded as hard hearted and ‘worse than the community say she was’, (SNLW, 57). She is now like a stone (Mrs Chiwara,50). Even her parents confirm the same. On page 57, Martha has grown so hard and feels no pain or sympathy. Infact “she no longer weeps”. She has suffered a withdrawal and shut down of feelings and emotions. Dangarembga encourages women to independent and adult but she recognises the aweful responsibility, vulnerability and loneliness that being in of one’s self can bring . Feminism affirms with doubt especially on its possibilities of promoting lasting social changes. In the play Dangarembga also affirms that gender inequalities need to be understood within the context of other social and political inequalities, Shaw(2007). However she learns that women can be separated from the sacrifice and endurance of wife and mother to celebrate their existence. Martha’s responseto her father on page 35, “you had a daughter, but i am becoming a womanand things are changing” is an affirmation.

However, making such decisions and being critical and unable to see that there is more to it than just being educated need to be dealt with. Otherwise because of the nature of educationreceived women will continue to suffer. Dangarembga seems to suggest that one would have to suffer the consequences. Martha the main protagonists in the play suffers mental lapse as a result of feministic inability to initially understand the phenomena of gender inequalities within the context of other social and political inequalities. . She lives on the borderland of the society no matter how accomplished she is.
This education which is considered a road to liberation and a wheel for emancipation however cannot be used to revolutionalise according to this study because it is the same weapon used to oppress.Freire (1972)calls it ‘banking education’ and it inhibits creativity and thinking. It resistsdialogue (anti-dialogue) and is repressive. Martha an advocate and learned person cannot be expected to doing such an unlawful mannerisms and behaviour. She denied her only child Sarah to be in contact with her biological father. As if it is not enough, such an act of castration of Freddie is more of taking law into one’s own hands. Martha fails to negotiate her feelings and concern over others.

As if it is not enough, Martha as a feminist unwittingly acted and perpetuated the exploitation of women by patriarchy. As a guru in law she is expected of claiming maintenance from Freddie but “were too soft to make me pay maintenance.”(SNLW , 54). Such behaviour of celebrating on women’s soft hearts; such is the system of patriarchy.Martha claims not to wanting men at all but uses the same men to extinguish the other when she castrates Freddie (SNLW, 58). She goes further tooto satirically instruct her father to call the police.
It seems that according to this research, Martha is not only affected by education but also by patriarchal inequalities. The education she received did not help equip her to solve own issues vis vi Freddie, Getrude, Lovemore, her child (Sarah). As an educated person and she should have realised for real that Freddie is no longer the husband. She is bound by the past events. Instead of her to scrutinise and find out that it is only Freddie who has failed to be a man enough, she blamed all men. That is why she failed to realise that Lovemore is a bit but opposite of Freddie and really the right husband to be or in making. She is caught up in a greenhouse and fails to take into cognisance that to deprive children of their historical roots may depersonalize.

Adeyinka (1993) defines education as the processof transmitting the culture of a society form one generation to the other, the process by which adult members of society brought up younger ones. The above definition supports Mrs Matsika and Mrs Chiwara’s sentiments that Martha should come and help the unfortunate and hopeless girls so that they learn from their elders (SNLW,49).
The purpose of education is to enable an individual to fix himself inthe society, to explore the world and find his own place in it; to cultivate good habits and develop acceptable attitude to life and work, good citizen and enable his potentialities to the full so that he acquire knowledge and training in a position that earn them a good living,Adeyinka (2000). Martha got almost all good life and money but lost her dignity, failed to cultivate good habits and develop morality. “She no longer weeps (SNLW,50) ,She is like a stone(SNLW,57), I hate knitting, I hate Freddie(SNLW ,9).
Walker’s description of Womanism fit however into Martha’s behaviour. Ablack woman is a knowing subject who is always in pursuit of knowledge,she endures intellectual life in general and feminist scholarship in particular. On page 54 of the play, Martha irrationally forces Freddieto take the child away; an emotional lapse that deepens her plea for revenge. Her revenge comes as a shock and an act of misconduct to the one who belong to the legalese family. Martha castrates Freddie through the help of the heartless thugs, Samson and Aggrey .Such an act is an affirmation to what many black women view feminism as a movement dedicated to attacking or eliminating men. And that is why on page 54 Mrs Matsika and colleague wanted her to conscientise the other women so that they do not fall in the same pit she find herself in.
In fact Patricia of the same idea as that of the two ladies when she states that one should not limit the quest or pursuit for freedom without considering the other person. However this is a thing of the past with Dangarembga, she does not mind all that as long as she gets what she want to achieve. In her interview with Rooney (2007) the aspect of unhu/ubuntu is something else. She epitomises this through her main protagonist. Martha does not care what effect is her behaviour to her parents, child, other women and the community at large, “she no longer weeps”(SNLW, 50).
Moreover she rebels against societal expectations and behave in a more radical manner which seeks to make a complete revolution. Martha seeks to expose men weaknesses and incapabilities by calling a stoppage to women coverage and intervention in cases where men are desperate, and hopeless, though however she will be also unwittingly exposing women frailty. According to hermother, society expects men to remain like children. However,Martha does not have any desire to keep any child whom she has not produced (SNLW,49)