OF WOMAN BORN: FEMINIST DECONSTRUCTION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CREATION MYTH IN DORIS LESSING’S THE CLEFT

Abstract

This paper offers an engaging account of Doris Lessing’s imaginative foray into The Cleft, her novel published in 2007, herein Lessing, an acclaimed writer of contemporary times while revisiting the creation myth deconstructs and puts a radical challenge to Christianity by offering a reconstruction of the myth in an engaging, ironical and humorous manner. Despite Harold Bloom’s accusation on Lessing of “a crusade against male human beings,” she always resisted being straightjacketed as feminist and herein she bears testimony to this because she is fully unsentimental about women as well as men and does not bother about being politically correct. The novel, devoid of a political allegiance surfaces before the reader as a speculative fiction and feminist utopia per excellence and offers an alternative story for the origin of the human race.