Multi-Focalized Gender Relations In The Cleft

The Cleft is a fable, written by Doris Lessing in2007. Doris Lessing is a Nobel Prize winner for literature in2007. The Cleft tells a story where an ancient Roman senator talks about the human evolution from prehistoric parthenogenesis in the female community. The Cleft is still in debate. There is a lack of academic review of The Cleft in the west. In the west, most literature reviews of The Cleft are found in the newspapers and magazines and contain more critiques than compliments. Guardian says The Cleft is just a reworking of a tale of Sleeping Beauties waiting for the Prince (le Guin2007). New York Times thinks The Cleft is "not very interesting.’(Kline2007) In China, seven academic papers review The Cleft and consider it as a successful work. For example, according to Xiangbin Tian, The Cleft is about the harmonious relation between men and women. The academic studies of The Cleft in China emphasize symbolism, feminism, and post modernism of the story.This thesis adopts Shen Dan’s four-type focalization theory and method to analyze The Cleft from multiple narrative focalizations to see gender relations in the prehistoric time described by those narrators in the story in different focalizations. This thesis derives a theme of The Cleft that men and women are different but equal. Gender differences come from natural selection and evolution rather than the battles between the two genders. Human nature is fluid, so that gender relations change according to the changes happening in each other’s characteristics and the external environment.