Doris Lessing Research Articles

Replaceable Women in Patriarchy: A Reason for Susan’s Suicide in Doris Lessing’s To Room Nineteen

As an outstanding short story demonstrating female plights, To Room Nineteen of Doris Lessing discloses the oppression patriarchy exerts on women by describing the tragedy of a middle-aged female Susan restricted by patriarchal norms, owing to which the story is valuable for research. To have a deeper insight into the reasons for Susan’s suicide and more comprehensive understanding of the oppressive mechanism that male-dominant culture exercises on females, based on the focus of previous studies on Susan’s identity crisis, this paper attempts to supplement them by delving into four peripheral female characters who are short of attention yet: Mrs Parkes, Sophie Traub, Myra Jenkins and Phil Hunt, and through the analysis of their words and actions, this paper argues that they replace the patriarchy-constructed identities of Susan (a homemaker, a mother, a mistress and a sexual partner), which is an important contributor to Susan’s identity problems and subsequently her tragic ending. Regarding this phenomenon, this paper proposes a concept called replaceability, which means that the patriarchy-manufactured identities of females are replaceable, and finds that replaceability is an oppressive manoeuvre that patriarchy utilizes to govern women and guarantee the supremacy of males. Finally, this paper draws a conclusion that replaceability is a crucial factor resulting in Susan’s suicide.

Racial Discrimination in Doris Lessing's The Grass Is Singing and Harper Lee's to Kill a Mockingbird: A Comparative Study

Racial Discrimination in Doris Lessing's The Grass Is Singing and Harper Lee's to Kill a Mockingbird: A Comparative Study

THE OTHER: IDENTITY DIMENSIONS OF FEMININE ‘SELF’ IN DORIS LESSING’S SHORT STORIES COLLECTION “A MAN AND TWO WOMEN”

Short fiction by British women writers from the postwar era of the 20th century demonstrates an enduring focus on the essence of female identity. This paper examines short stories by Doris Lessing, a prominent figure in British literature, who has yet to receive proper attention in Ukrainian literary criticism. To address the issue of British female identity in the postwar period, the researcher employed new criticism methods, specifically close reading and feminist criticism, namely gynocritics (E. Showalter), as well as comparative analysis. The examination of selected short stories by D. Lessing revealed certain patterns in the author’s style. Her formal skill is marked by the principle of duplication, which includes: a) repetition of problems, such as marital crises and polygamy (e.g., “A Man and Two Women”, “Each Other”, “To Room Nineteen”); b) duplication of character names (“Each Other”); c) recurrence of plot situations, such as adultery (“A Man and Two Women”, “To Room Nineteen”), and characters’ unhealthy states, including personality disorders (“Dialogue”) and madness (“To Room Nineteen”); d) use of dual narrative perspectives (“To Room Nineteen”, “Dialogue”). The issues related to female identity in D. Lessing’s collection of short stories are presented within two broader contexts: marriage and extramarital relations. Accordingly, two main forms of female individuality emerge: a) the betrayed wife (“A Man and Two Women”, “To Room Nineteen”) and b) the mistress (“Between Men”, “Our Friend Judith”) and her modification, the free woman (“Dialogue”). Despite being mature, intelligent, and experienced, all these characters remain lonely and unhappy.

“Exploring Gender and Identity in 20th-Century Literature: Feminist Perspectives in Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook and Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber”

This research investigates the themes of identity and gender in twentieth-century literature, with an emphasis on the role of feminism in Doris Lessing's The Brilliant Notebook )1962) and Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber (1979). The research aims to examine how the two writers question and dismantle conventional gender roles, featuring the impact of women's activist ideas in molding female identity inside the setting of the sociopolitical changes of the 20th 100 years. The objectives are to examine the women's perspectives introduced in every text, research the depiction of female independence, and investigate the crossing point of gender, power, and personality in the account structures. The methodology is a relative scholarly examination, using women's activist and gender theory structures to examine the texts. Essential sources, including the two books, are broken down closely by optional academic deals with women's activist scholarly analysis. Key subjects like female freedom, the disruption of man-centric designs, and the rehash of personality are investigated through character development, narrative techniques, and imagery. The outcomes show that both Lessing and Carter utilize their attempts to challenge regulating gender builds, with Lessing's The Brilliant Notebook focusing on the fracture and remaking of female identity, and Carter's The Bloody Chamber utilizing Gothic and fantasy themes to scrutinize conventional gender roles. The conversation underlines how each creator adds to women's activist artistic talk by offering complex, nuanced depictions of ladies who explore, oppose, and eventually reshape the jobs forced upon them by man-centric culture. This study concluded that Lessing and Carter, through their specific strategies, offer tough women's dissident assessments that continue to reverberate in contemporary discussions on gender and identity. Their novels feature the phenomenal ability of writing to test gender principles and advance feminist ideologies. Keywords: Gender, Identity, Feminism, The Golden Notebook, The Bloody Chamber

‘Lift me up!’: The New Major Discourses of Care and Ageing in Doris Lessing’s<i> The Diaries of Jane Somers</i>

The genre of <i>Reifungsroman</i> considers different temporal aspects of individuation. It aids and assesses the capacity of an older person to re-story their life, enter meaningful relationships, make amends with the past and productively evolve as an individual. Instead of focusing solely on the present, time is seen as a continuum in <i>Reifungsroman </i>with a special emphasis on the past events and narratives. This article will trace the late life transformation that Jane and Maudie undergo as all life is mutable and finite, awareness of which can make us more compassionate. In <i>The Diaries of Jane Sommers</i>, written by Doris Lessing and published in 1984 the narrator tells the story of the relationship she constructs with an elderly friend, Maudie, whom she meets in the streets of London and who triggers her identarian metamorphoses. Maudie embodies all the stereotypes of an old woman, she has crone-like features and an unforgiving temper. From the physical maladies to emotional suffering, Jane Sommers is herself a source of discomfort and displeasure to those around her. As the narrative unravels and cleanses Jane from rampant egoism, as she bathes after each visit to Maudie’s home, she deconstructs her old narratives and transitions into an empathetic self. As Maudie shades her trauma in words and being bathed by Jane, both undergo a process of healing. Maudie dies with dignity and out of this sacrificial moment of catharses, the meeting of the now and then, new Jane is born. She erases the old wry Jane, an ambitious and vain journalist in a women’s magazine, only concerned with success and everlasting youth, who spends time and her financial gains on material goods. This article will look into the discourses on ageing and the genre of <i>Reifungsroman</i> in <i>The Diaries of Jane Sommers</i>, Lessing’s fifth novel, published under a pseudonym and separately as two separate books: <i>The Diaries of a Good Neighbour</i> and <i>If the Old Could</i> against criticism from various editorial boards. I will analyse the processes of resignification of the minor discourses and their relationship towards the major discourses on growing older. I will consider Jana and Maudie as a two-faced Janus and a dyad of the old and the new, the ich and the poor, the successful and the unsuccessful: a crone, a witch and young woman whose polyphony of voices can re-story the narratives of women and ageing.

A Comparative Study of the Female Character as the ‘Other’ in Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child and Belgheis Soleimani’s Khale Bazi

دراسة مقارنة للشخصية الأنثوية کما " الغيرية ( او الآخر) " في الروايتين الطفل الخامس لدوريس ليسينغ و لعبة المنزل لبلجيس سليماني الملخص في هذه الدراسة ، الباحث، في ضوء نظريات جوديث بتلر حول المسألة الجنسانية، یتحاول علی استكشاف وفحص شخصيتين أنثويتين من سياقات ثقافية مختلفة من حيث قضية المرأة كمفهوم الذی لا يرتبط أبدًا بالجغرافيا أو الثقافة أو العرق أو جنسية. هذه الدراسة یتحاول علی المقارنة بين الروايتين "لعبة المنزل" لبلجيس سليماني و"الطفل الخامس" لدوريس ليسينغ في ضوء مفهوم بتلر عن " الأدائية ". يميل نحو نظرية " الأدائية "، وقد تم الكشف عن كيفية تكبيل البشر من خلال الثنائيات بين الجنسين، والمعايير الجنسانية ، والهيمنة على الأفراد المغايرين جنسياً. يولد كل فرد في ظل هذه القيود ويتم تربيته بطريقة لإعادة إنتاجها في نمط دوري لضمان الاختلاف الجنسي. وبالمثل ، يُتوقع من الشخصيات النسائية الرئيسية في هاتين الروايتين بناء على تشكيل وإعادة تشكيل الثنائيات بين الجنسين والأعراف بين الجنسين التي تنبثق من مثل هذه السياقات. هناك تناقض بين ما يتوقعه المجتمع من مجرد النساء وما تتوقعه النساء كبشر من أنفسهن عمليًا. يشكل الانقسام بين الذات الحقيقية للفرد والأعراف والتوقعات الاجتماعية ضغطًا كبيرًا على نفسية المرأة. تتجه كلتا الشخصيتين الرئيسيتين نحو فكرة مجردة مثل القداسة بطريقتها الخاصة وتصبحا مقدسة. الكلمات الرئيسية: الأدائية ، النسوية ، الدراسات المقارنة ، " غيرية " ، الأمومة

Abjection and Exclusion in Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child

Doris Lessing’s 1988 novella The Fifth Child tells the story of Ben Lovatt, a so-called “monstrous child” in the eyes of his family. In light of Julia Kristeva’s illustration of abjection, it can be seen that Ben’s otherness has unsettled the conventional assumption about children, and his physical and behavioral differences, viewed as a threat to the idealized family life, accounts for his fate of being excluded and rejected. In consideration of the contextualized descriptions in the book and the political background in which the story is set, it is reasonable to assume that what happens to Ben is indicative of what the non-European immigrants went through in the post-war Britian. The exclusive attitude of the Lovatts towards Ben bears much resemblance to the nationwide rejection of the “dark strangers” who brought with them different customs and values. In this sense, the story of Ben, a heterogenetic other who challenges the fixed perception of what British children should look like, can be taken as a mirror which reflects, in the time of social change, how the British society tackled difference in culture.

Female Identity and Gender Dynamics in Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook: An Analysis of the Female Characters

Female Identity and Gender Dynamics in Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook: An Analysis of the Female Characters

Power Dynamics and Cultural Clashes in Doris Lessing’s The Grass Is Singing: Decolonising the Discourse of Differences

This paper examines the power dynamics and cultural clashes in Doris Lessing’s The Grass Is Singing, focusing on the interactions between the white protagonist, Mary Turner, and her black servants Samson and Moses, as well as a white servant Tony. Set in colonial Southern Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe), the novel portrays the pervasive racism and superiority complex of the white colonialists. Mary’s negative perceptions of black culture highlight the colonialists’ failure to appreciate indigenous traditions, reinforcing unequal power structures. Drawing attention to theoretical frameworks such as Franz Fanon’s concept of anti-racism and Ngugi wa Thiang’o’s theory of decolonisation, this paper examines Moses’s resistance to oppression and his quest for decolonisation as manifestations of individual agency within imperialism. Moses’ journey toward decolonisation symbolises a broader struggle for psychological, cultural, and economic liberation from colonial oppression. This analysis underscores the complexities of authority and resistance, illustrating how Mary’s attitudes inadvertently trigger Moses’s decolonisation process. This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of Lessing’s exploration of colonial authority, cultural differences, and the necessity of decolonisation.

MULTICULTURALISM IN 20TH CENTURY AZERBAIJANI AND ENGLISH PROSE (BASED ON AZIZA JAFARZADEH'S “ELDAN ELA” AND DORIS LESSING'S “THE GRASS IS SINGING”)

In order to establish cooperation in the modern world, it is first necessary to achieve tolerance and multiculturalism in interpersonal relations. Multiculturalism primarily means ethnic, racial, religious, cultural diversity and values, and mutually tolerant relations with those values determine civilized moral and ethical criteria and values. It is an indisputable historical fact that the people who settled in Azerbaijan, regardless of their religion or language, lived in conditions of mutual understanding and tolerance in all periods of history. Even in the oldest examples of Azerbaijani literature, multicultural values have very deep roots. These values constitute the main line of the creativity of not only Azerbaijan, but also the wordsmiths and writers of the whole world. The highest criterion of personality is humanity, human relations, more precisely, tolerance. That is why representatives of other nations occupy a special place in the works of many writers who do not accept racial, national and religious discrimination. The fact that such improvement takes place through a multicultural environment once again strengthens the idea that multiculturalism has an important role in the real progress and development of humanity. The comparative study and evaluation of these issues in the work of Aziza Jafarzadeh, a bright figure of Azerbaijani literary prose, and a talented representative of English literature, Doris Lessing, is of great importance.

A Freudian Approach to the Spatial Alienation in Doris Lessing's "To Room Nineteen"

A Freudian Approach to the Spatial Alienation in Doris Lessing's "To Room Nineteen"

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

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.

Memoirs of African farms: Land, settlement, and belonging in white life writing from Southern Africa

ABSTRACT Building on previous discussions of the plaasroman, or farm novel, this article establishes the autobiographical subgenre of the white, southern African farm memoir, drawing on texts and writers from the former Rhodesia and modern Zimbabwe (Daphne Anderson, Alexandra Fuller, Doris Lessing, and Muriel Spark). Anderson’s The Toe-Rags and Fuller’s Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight are read here as indicative of the differences and continuities between successive cohorts of white life writers in southern Africa. While Anderson’s autobiography is markedly anti-imperial, later memoirists like Fuller offer a more ambivalent response to white belonging and land ownership in postcolonial Zimbabwe. When Fuller’s generation inherit the white farm from their predecessors, they return to this location to elide the controversial histories of colonial settlement. Ultimately however, these farms become microcosms of the doomed settler state, offering neither a permanent home, nor a secure future after the end of colonial rule.

"Delving İnto The Dichotomy Of Mother Earth and Fatherland in 'The Wanderground' and 'The Cleft”

This study examines the relationship between women and nature in Doris Lessing's The Cleft and Sally Miller Gearhart's The Wanderground through using gender and ecofeminist lenses. Women's oppression is analogous to nature's oppression. Therefore, this article shows how a patriarchal (or male-dominated) society treats both nature and women and how society's standards unfairly dominate both. Both writers Sally Miller Gearhart and Doris Lessing argue that women and the environment, including (animals) are crucial to ecofeminism studies and practice; women may solve gender issues only by utilizing natural materials. The present piece portrays the female characters in both works acquiring an understanding of the underlying reasons behind every instance of misery they encounter in their lives. As a result, women attempt to escape the machismo society and create a nature-filled utopia (devoid of males). Although some women continue to live with men, they always opt for separation. Finally, this work shows how Gearhart's utopia is the outcome and redemption of The Cleft’s dystopia.

Unnatural World—the Study of Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five from the Perspective of Unnatural Narrative

As one of the most outstanding contemporary novelists, Doris Lessing, a famous British female writer, won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. Doris Lessing’s new work Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five has been studied at home and abroad mainly in the aspects of feminism and Sufism in the work. Based on the unnatural narrative theory of post-classical narratologists Jan Albert and Brian Richardson, this paper analyzes the unnatural narrative factors in the stories from three aspects: unnatural space, unnatural role and unnatural behavior. The unnatural of the novel is to prove the unnatural nature of the world in the novel from three aspects: impossible story space, story role and characters’ behavior, and analyze the author's intention behind these unnatural factors -- the world is an interconnected whole, and the progress of human civilization requires people of all countries to be open-minded, inclusive, communicate with each other and learn from each other, in order to jointly promote the overall progress and prosperity of world civilization.

Unsettling the Ground: Doris Lessing and the Psychological Scars of Colonialism

Unsettling the Ground: Doris Lessing and the Psychological Scars of Colonialism

Gestures of neighbor‐love: Literature, philosophy, and givenness

AbstractThis article explores the literary, philosophical, and phenomenological dimensions of neighbor‐love. Phenomenologically speaking, neighborly love must be given, that is, it must be given voluntarily through attitudes, actions, or gestures. But whom do we actually acknowledge as our neighbor, and why? Adopting a comparative literary approach, this paper argues that literature is not philosophy's adversary but its creative interlocutor: Ilse Aichinger's poem “Foundling” transcends anthropocentric perspectives, presenting the Neighbor as a being beyond denomination by translating it from human to animal. Doris Lessing's novel The Diary of a Good Neighbour depicts the unpredictable and accidental nature of encounters with the Neighbor, leaving no room for personal choice. Ultimately, Amélie Nothomb's Les catilinaires illustrates how the Neighbor can be a persistent annoyance that both irritates and resists systematic thinking. These literary works outline a nuanced poetics of neighbor‐love and givenness that extends beyond any anthropological, theological, or religio‐ethical concept.

DORIS LESSING’İN THE FIFTH CHILD VE BEN, IN THE WORLD ADLI ESERLERİNDE İTAATSİZ BEDEN VE DÜZEN MEKANİZMALARI

Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child (1988) and Ben, in the World (2000) narrate the tragic story of Ben Lovatt who is identified as the anomalous fifth child in the Lovatt family. Set in London in the 1960s, with its focalisation on Ben’s early childhood, from his mother’s pregnancy to his confinement into his cot after his birth, The Fifth Child navigates through the ideological construction of Ben’s self through power and isolation. Ben, in the World, on the other hand, maintains Ben’s story from his eighteenth year and presents his strife for survival in a social world in which he is forced to be a member of society with his social self and social body. While both works can be regarded as the adventures of Ben, who is isolated and alienated from his family and society, they also draw social environs in which Ben’s body is constructed via the discursive mechanisms of otherness and wildness. Ben’s othered self and body are foregrounded by abnormal corporeal relations and unhuman depictions throughout Lessing’s fiction. In this sense, this study focuses on the trajectories of Ben’s body in these narratives to discuss Ben’s unruly body which is forced to be regulated by the familial, social and institutional mechanisms of power.

LESSING AND THE NEW WOMAN

Doris Lessing’s play Each his Own Wilderness presents us with the image of the ‘New Woman’. Myra and Milly are single independent women(Myra a widow and Milly a divorcee) who fight hard to find their place in the world. They have a voice and a career. Having no husbands to cater to, these women can lead a comparatively freer life and are vocal about their needs and wants. However motherhood is a bondage that they cannot free themselves of easily. Hence though husbands are absent, patriarchy is not. Through motherhood, patriarchy continues the structure in which female is kept in the service of male and hence motherhood becomes oppressive.

An Analysis of Feminist Narrative in Doris Lessing's The Story of a Non-Marrying Man

British novelist Doris Lessing was born in 1919 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007. She is also known as the "greatest female writer since Virginia Woolf". Her The Story of a Non-Marrying Man was published in 1972, and this short story was first published in The London Magazine. The story takes place in the second half of the last century and tells the first-person narrative of the life of a white man who adventures in South Africa and his love-hate entanglement with several local women. This short story has very different narrative characteristics from previous feminist literary works. The author criticizes the oppression of females by males and the self-restraint of women in traditional patriarchal marriages through a circular narrative method and a unique narrative voice. By analyzing Lessing's narrative methods in this short story, this paper interprets the feminist ideas she intends to express through her work. Thus, it is concluded that Lessing believed that a significant portion of women's suffering came not only from male oppression, but also from their own constraints and paralysis of themselves.