Mother-Daughter Representation In The Diaries Of Jane Somers By Doris Lessing: A Feminist Psychoanalytic Reading

Despite her vast narrative output, Doris Lessing is often considered a woman writer who writes about women. She is also among the female writers who profess of a matrilineal tie and practice with a narrative structure that centers on the female-female or mother-daughter relationship. In The Diaries of Jane Somers Lessing once again confronts the unsolved mother-daughter theme. Yet different from her previous depiction, Lessing portrays in it the mother-daughter bonding with an affirmative attitude and explores the positive link between mother-daughter relationship and female identity.The present thesis is a feminist psychoanalytic analysis of Diaries with the focus on the mother-daughter representation and the quest for female identity deeply interwoven in this relationship. It argues that Lessing's counter-traditional representation of mother-daughter relationship in Diaries celebrates the close mother-daughter bonding and articulates female identity in the literary creativity of mother-daughter voices. It confirms the importance of mother -daughter bonds as well as redefines the position of motherhood in the construction of female subject. My interpretation is primarily concerned with two aspects: the mother-daughter relation in Neighbor and the issue of maternal subjectivity in Old. Having interpreted the mother-daughter issues in these two novels, the thesis finally argues for a new mother-daughter representation that helps to redefine and resituate mother's place in women's identity formation.