Mapping Traumatized Bodies and Territories in Doris Lessing’s Mara and Dann: An Adventure

Abstract

ABSTRACT Doris Lessing’s novel, Mara and Dann: An Adventure reflects a multi-layered exploration of trauma’s enduring impact on both individuals and their environments. In Lessing’s novel, the shattered world left by the apocalypse continues to breed a multitude of traumas: war, violence, discrimination, and the enduring wounds of inequality. This article explores how the novel employs space as a tool to create a powerful metaphor, where both physical landscapes and the body serve as maps representing profound traumas. Drawing on theories of trauma and postcolonial ecocriticism and inspired by the idea that the novel is an “epistemological narrative form” (Tally, 11), that “projects, describes, and figuratively maps the social spaces” (96), this article examines how Lessing utilizes spatial imagination to enable the characters in her novel, particularly the protagonist Mara, to create new maps: physical, mental, and social. These maps enable them to bear witness to the past traumas of land annihilation and cultural loss, as well as the present traumas of bodily violation, ultimately providing a context for trauma resilience. Lessing’s spatial stance ultimately seeks to empower marginalized groups and open pathways for realizing untapped potentials in African narratives.