Deconstruction And Reconstruction:A Feminist Utopia Reading Of Doris Lessing’s The Cleft

Doris Lessing is a prolific writer who has long been regarded as a legend and "the matriarch" of contemporary British literature. She is a great writer depicting almost all the important issues in her times and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007. Margaret Drabble called her "Cassandra in a world under siege" for her close concerns about the social and political issues of her time. The Cleft, published in 2007, tells a tale that goes against all the recorded stories of human evolution. It furthers her concerns about human nature and gender relations.Through a feminist utopia reading of the novel, we can find Lessing’s determination to challenge the orthodoxies and to reconstruct a free kingdom of her own. She demonstrates that women and men are interrelated with each other, neither of them can develop without the merits and shortcomings of each other. Only by abandoning the existing prejudices of the two genders can they go further.This thesis contains 6 parts.Chapter one is the introduction part, the thesis begins with a brief introduction of Doris Lessing’s life and her writing background as well as the plot of The Cleft, then follows a short but comprehensive overview of Doris Lessing studies home and abroad, with the significance of the study coming after.Chapter two deals with the theoretical background, it clarifies the definition of utopia as a concept and as a literary genre, then introduces feminist utopia theory and its representative works and analyzes the possibilities for a feminist utopia reading of the novel.Chapter three and four are the main parts of the thesis, chapter three focuses on the deconstruction of patriarchy in the text, it is analyzed from three aspects: deconstruction of sex, deconstruction of identity and deconstruction of history. If analyzing deeply, we’ll find its androgynous origins, its rebellious identities and a "herstory" evolution. Chapter four aims to discover the reconstruction aspects of the female position, which includes reconstruction of female subjectivity, reconstruction of a feminist utopia and reconstruction of reality and truth. By imaging an utopian land in an irony tone, Lessing shows her criticism to patriarchy and her hope for a better society.Chapter five summarizes Lessing’s harmonious thoughts about human-nature relationship and gender relationship in the novel and explains why she doesn’t want to be labeled as a feminist, her harmonious ideas enlighten us a lot in dealing with nature and gender issues.Chapter six concludes that utopia used by feminists as a literary genre is very powerful in deconstructing patriarchy, but deconstructing patriarchy is not Lessing’s aims, her purpose is to reconstruct a better world of female existence so as to advocate a harmonious state.