Fine-Tuning the Feminine Psyche: Jungian Patterns in the Novels of Doris Lessing by Lorelei Cederstrom

Abstract

citations. Scholars who will wish to re-examine the stylistic identity of the B-text can find here the greater part of the data minutely classified, and at all points intelligently compared with the analogous texts in T. MICHAEL CUMMINGS / Glendon College, York University Lorelei Cederstrom, Fine-Tuning the Feminine Psyche: Jungian Patterns in the Novels of Doris Lessing (New York: Peter Lang, 1990). 241. $44.95 (U.S.) cloth. In Fine-Tuning the Feminine Psyche: Jungian Patterns in the Novels of Doris Lessing, Lorelei Cederstrom traces three interrelated shifts in Less­ ing’s career as a novelist: from an interest in Marxist-Realism to Jungian psychoanalysis, from an emphasis on group action to individual change, and from writing “novels” to “mythic narratives.” In short, Lessing’s novels as a whole . . . involve a clear pattern of development. She moves from an awareness of certain transcendent archetypal moments in human experience, which, in the earlier novels, are destroyed by eco­ nomic necessities and the evils of the social system, to the realization that archetypal experiences can be a source of strength, leading one beyond the confining social and economic systems to a transpersonal realm of peace, harmony, and integration. (13) Cederstrom explores Lessing’s use of Jungian motifs in seven of her major novels or novel-series (from The Grass is Singing through Canopus in Argos: Archives), identifying Landlocked (1963), the fourth novel in Lessing’s mon­ umental five-part Children of Violence series, as a major transitional work marking “pivotal moments” in its heroine’s — and in its author’s — “move­ ment from the political to the personal” (75). Lessing’s most recent novels — The Diaries of Jane Somers (1983-84), The Good Terrorist (1985), and The Fifth Child (1987) — are treated only cursorily in Cederstrom’s “Con­ clusion.” Since these novels have been described as representing a “return to realism” (Whittaker 118-30) on Lessing’s part, it seems a shame that they were not given fuller treatment, particularly since the few remarks Ceder­ strom ventures on The Fifth Child, surely Lessing’s most disturbing novel, are enormously suggestive. However, the question of whether the recent nov­ els further the “clear pattern of development” that Cederstrom discerns in Lessing’s work remains unanswered. Furthermore, while within its own terms Cederstrom’s analysis of Jungian patterns in Lessing’s novels — especially those of the 1960s and 1970s — is convincing, her study ultimately suffers from an unexamined methodology, which fails either to locate itself within 239 the history of Jungian and archetypal literary criticism or to take account of more recent feminist critiques of essentialist notions of “the feminine.” The consequences of failing to interrogate what it means to extrapolate from Jungian psychology to literary criticism are especially obvious in Cederstrom ’s treatment of Lessing’s first novel. The Grass is Singing (1950) is usually read as a powerful examination and indictment of the ways in which colonialism and racial apartheid deform and ultimately destroy both natives and colonists. The effects of such a social and political system insinuate themselves into the most intimate recesses of the lives of those involved. Although Cederstrom acknowledges that “this is undeniably a novel about class and the colour bar” (17), she wants to redress what she sees as a critical imbalance by emphasizing instead “Lessing’s portrayal of the psychological destruction of John and Mary Turner through their denial of their archetypal roots” (17). Stressing D.H. Lawrence’s influence on this novel, Cederstrom argues that Mary Turner has denied her feminine spirit, allowing her negative animus (“the masculinity she has denied in her husband” [23]) to achieve an unnatural strength. The black servant Moses, “as a symbol of the instinc­ tual life” (28), is invested by Mary first with the masculine force she has usurped and then with the destructive power that, under the domination of her negative animus, she projects outward. Cederstrom concludes that the symbolic structure and Lawrentian content of this novel indicate that the psychological and archetypal realms are at least as important as the colour bar of the capitalist social system in understanding the causes of the Turners’ destruction. . . . The closing image demonstrates the relationship between the societal and...