The Construction And Oppression Of Female Authority

Doris Lessing is well known for her distinctively long writing career andher impressively huge amount of works. As an outstanding female writer, shemade the début with the publication of The Grass Is Singing, reached theclimax with the appearance of The Golden Notebook, and continues to absorbthe interest of the readers and the critical field at home and abroad since herwining of the 2007 Nobel Prize in literature. Her uneven life experiencesprovide plenty of fresh blood for her various concerns about human, society,nature, but her persistent attention to female existence is admittedlyconsidered as the key theme throughout all her works, which is distinctivelyand experimentally reflected in her first novel The Grass Is Singing.This thesis aims to give a theoretical analysis of Doris Lessing’s firstnovel of The Grass Is Singing from the perspective of feminist narratologyproposed by Susan Lanser, and manifest Doris Lessing’s feminist tendency inthe novel by analyzing the construction and oppression of female authority interms of narrative voice, narrative perspective and narrative mode, based onLessing’s specific arrangement of story plotting and narrative techniques.It is divided into three parts, consisting of introduction, body (fromChapter One to Chapter Five) and conclusion.The introduction aims at making clear the reason why the author choosesthe present subject, including research purpose, research methods and theoutline of the whole thesis.Chapter One introduces Doris Lessing and her first publication The GrassIs Singing. It is devoted to presenting her outstanding status in the literarycircle, the significant influences of her life experiences and enlightened ideason her writing career as well as literary review of the recent domestic andforeign research on The Grass Is Singing.Chapter Two gives an overview of feminist narratology theory imposed bySusan Lanser, including the emergence and development of the subfield, then the main differences from its two origins and its recent applications. Thefeminist narratology theory is a new tool for literary interpretation with thefeatured combination of both the Formalist method of close-reading and theideological analysis of gendered politics based on the text.Chapter Three makes an attempt to discuss the voice of the narrator, thevoice of characters, combined with the compatibility and contraction of bothvoices by means of free indirect speech respectively, according to theconcepts of narrative voice coined by Susan Lanser, which reveals Lessing’sintendancy toward the construction and oppression of female authority.Chapter Four pays attention to the flexible transition between theomniscient zero-focalization and the inner perspective of the figures inreference to Genette’s classification of focalization. In addition to theinnovative application of zero-focalization, the position as either the subjector object of gazing from the inner perspective of the focal characters is thekey factor of reflecting the shift of female authority.Chapter Five puts stress on narrative mode of the fiction in accordance toGreimas’s ideas of binary opposition and actantial modal and Kristeva’sintertextuality. The plotting mode demonstrates Lessing’s profound concernon the future of human civilization by exploring three deep structures ofwomen’s existence in patriarchic domination, the double demonstration ofcolor bar, and wealth gap in the white capitalism. Meanwhile, the figure modedeals with the narrative meanings of several typical characters in the fiction,including Mary standing for the awakening of female consciousness, Dickand Tony as the representatives of weak masculinity, and Moses symbolizingboth the killer and the savior. It reveals that Lessing transcends her attentionbeyond the restraint of female perspective and pursues the ideal of a peaceful,harmonious world in context of humanity.The conclusion makes a summary of Lessing’s attitude toward women,gender relationship and world outlook based on the textual analysis of TheGrass Is Singing. The wandering construction and oppression of femaleauthority demonstrate that Lessing deals with female issues in an objective and dialectical manner: On the one hand, she appreciates their endeavor toarchive the awakening of self-consciousness and to resist the unfair prejudicefrom the andocentric tradition; on the other hand, she is full aware of theflawed side of women’s personality which usually leads to subordinatedependency and spiritual breakdown. In addition, Lessing’s sympathy formen’s suffering and her understanding of their frustration in a chaotic andcorrupted society endue her with a new vision: women and men are able toachieve a harmonious and balanced co-existence instead of absolutestruggling for power and right, and women’s freedom and inner peace can berealized by their own sensation and imagination. What’s more, Lessingbroadens her concern about human civilization by exhibiting her compassionfor minority groups in the white-dominated world and worry for the enlargedwealth gap between the rich and the poor within the white camp, manifestingher ideal pursuit of a harmonious, democratic and equal future in the contextof humanity.