Female Development In Doris Lessing's Two Major Novels

Doris May Taylor Lessing (1919.10.22—) is a prominent and prolific contemporary British woman writer. During her long writing career she has produced a large number of works covering a great variety of topics in various forms and styles. Her works which include novels, short stories, poetry, drama and autobiography have explored such themes as racism, Marxism, colonialism, feminism and mysticism and demonstrated such forms and narrative techniques as realism, tragedy, parable and science fiction. Her works have inspired and influenced numerous writers and readers alike and received wide and consistent acclaim from the critical community. From the very beginning of her career, Lessing's works have been concerned with women's issues. As she has always been interested in spiritual growth women's search for self identity and seeking self-fulfillment is the crucial theme in her work. The present thesis aims to study her two major novels—The Grass Is Singing and The Diary of a Good Neighbour from the perspective of female development.This paper is divided into four parts. The first part is an introduction which, after a brief survey of Doris Lessing and her work, mainly states the purpose, task and significance of the present study. The first chapter elaborates upon Mary's foiled development by examining her twisted growth in childhood, her thwarted escape from marriage and her withdrawal into madness and final death. The second chapter probes into Jane's deferred development by analyzing the progress of her transformation from emotional disengagement to self-discovery and self-deliverance and finally to spiritual consummation. The narrative techniques and other forms of artistic presentation adopted in The Grass Is Singing and The Diary of a Good Neighbour are also respectively expounded in the second and third chapter. The last part is a conclusion which ends the paper with a summary of all the analyses and arguments of the previous two chapters.