The Fiction of Doris Lessing

Re-envisioning Feminism

Ratna Raman

• Publisher: Bloomsbury India
• Year: 2021
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9789390176922
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Women Authors Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

Doris Lessing (1919–2013), a prolific contemporary author, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007 for her life work. Examining five decades of Lessing's unique life, narrative strategies, and the literary traditions that she drew upon and improvised, this book highlights her extraordinary significance as a writer of our times and for our times. Lessing's fiction and non-fiction provide a seminal understanding of the key issues that shaped the twentieth century.

Autodidactic and keenly interested in the world around her, Lessing flagged the problems of racism in Africa; the inequity of class in modern England; the limitations of white, middle-class women's movements that overlooked the rights of women across race and class; the marginalisation of individuals; the horror of nuclear war and the need for disarmament; and the hazardous global expansion in the face of unrelenting technological progress. Further, she raised the concern of the atomisation of modern families, violence and the urgent need for alternate modes of viewing, voicing anxieties decades ahead of other contemporary writers.

Making futuristic projections through innumerable genres of writing, such as realistic narratives, memoirs, diaries and science fiction, Lessing examines myth, psychoanalysis and Marxist perspectives, engaging with a gamut of experiences that have defined modernity, and sets up feminist blueprints that challenge atrophying patriarchal hegemonies.

Index

A

Afghanistan

civil war in, 199, 210

declaration of an Islamic State (1992), 210

mujahidin, 195, 205, 210

political change and tumult in, 196

refugees, 184, 200, 203

Russian invasion of, 197

women rights in, 199

Africa

decolonization movements in, 33–34, 57

discovery of mineral wealth, 90

Matabele Zulus, 36

nationalisms in, 71

political movement, 38

presence of white men, 36

sexual taboos and regulations, 38

See also South Africa

African National Congress (ANC), 74

Afrikaner Party, election victory, 74

ageing, 221–232

absence of a national policy on care, 229

anthropological studies, 224

carefully concealed aspects of human existence, 230

is a central feminist issue, 224

drawing attention to, 224

gerontology and geriatrics, 225–232

negative stereotyping of the elderly, 227

new journeys and discoveries, 232–240

as a problem with universal relevance, 224

processes of, 224–225

represented in fiction as a terrible experience, 232

Alfred and Emily (2008), 14–15

American War of Independence, 29

Amis, Kingsley, 115, 266

anti-colonial movements, women involvement, 186

anti-minority sentiment, 276

anti-psychiatry movements, 150

anti-Vietnam war movements, 148

‘apartheid’, introduction, 74

Armstrong, Nancy, 44

Asia

decolonisation movements in, 33–34, 57

nationalisms in, 71

assertive female role models, dearth of, 261

astrology, 151

Audit Commission of 1986 on community care, 229

Austen, Jane, 44, 113, 261

B

Baines, Rosemary, 145, 166–167

Bantu Authorities Act (1951), 74

Bates, Eliza, 227–228, 242

The Bell Jar (1963), 109, 112

Ben, in the World (2000), 262

Bennet, Elizabeth, 44

Bertelsen, Eve, 70

Bhavnani, Kumkum, 96n68

biblical parallels and parodies, 50

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• I Lessing and Feminism
• II The Interrogation of Liberal White Feminism: Race and Colonialism in The Grass is Singing
• III Tracing Older Histories: Marking Continuities in The Golden Notebook
• IV Science Fiction: Lessing’s Forays into Alternative Space
• V Eschewing Violence: Lessing’s Feminist Formulations of the 1980s
• VI Women and Ageing: The Body in Time
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author