AN EXAMINATION OF THE THEME OF ENCLOSURE, WITH EMPHASIS ON MARRIAGE, IN SELECTED WORKS BY DORIS LESSING

In Doris Lessing's work the struggle between individual freedom and physical, psychological, and societal restraints, particularly in marriage, is metaphorically transformed into the image of enclosure. In the attempt to escape from such constraints, her protagonists find themselves ironically bound again in self-limiting enclosures.;Chapter Two introduces the metaphor of the veld as a constant measure and symbol of limitless inner and outer space, as well as an enclosure for societal codes of behavior in African Stories, Children of Violence, and The Golden Notebook. The author's and the main characters' inability to escape from boundaries illustrates Lessing's deterministic belief in environmental influences and the connections between the illusion of possibilities (expanses) and limitations (enclosures).;Lessing's London novels and stories examined in Chapter Three contain the vision of the city as a symbol of a divided consciousness and "waste land" while the house with many rooms symbolizes the fragmented feminine personality. The narrative voice explains unfamiliar territories of landscape and experiences to exemplify Lessing's immersion in Jungian and Laingian psychology.;Chapter four elucidates the model of "sheltered space," an enclosure endured by Lessing's women in their roles as wives and mothers. Framed by an ironic narrative voice explaining society's expectations and the ensuing failures, Children of Violence reveals related linguistic and structural patterns of escape from the cycle of proper marriage, such as the journey into inner space where time and outer space are suspended during experiences of fragmentation and synthesis.;In Chapter One an examination of "To Room Nineteen," The Grass Is Singing, and The Summer Before the Dark demonstrates the correspondence between her characters' conflicts with reason and emotion in marriage and Lessing's use of the restrictive narrative voice as an enclosing, balancing force and moral intermediary between the world of fiction and the world of the reader to reflect the author's belief in the necessity for psychic balance and "connection" which illuminates the interrelationship of society and the individual.;Chapter Five concerns Lessing's experiments with form which illustrate her characteristic way of perceiving and understanding. Her preoccupation with spatial, structural, and literary boundaries exemplifies the theme of integration of complex, disparate, and unrelated parts of experience. In representative selections, including Re: Colonised Planet 5 Shikasta, the narrator so shapes perspective as to limit the reader's choices by offering open and complex structural and linguistic forms based on Sufism and ambiguity.;The structure and theme of The Golden Notebook epitomize fragmentation and integration of conflicts, as well as synthesis in the creative process. In this novel, the ironic and ambiguous term "Free Women" refers to characters in an ongoing traditional novel within the confines of the envelope-shaped work and also relates to women characters in short stories who appear to be self-reliant but actually are emotionally bound by their relationships with men. Redefinition of their roles and behavior within the framework of their respective societies corresponds to the author's endeavors to redesign the novel within an expanded literary framework. Utilizing aesthetic and structural enclosures as symbols of the limitations of consciousness and identity, Lessing integrates experience and art in a structural and thematic statement of her belief.;A didactic moralist like George Eliot, Lessing offers a realistic image of the world as she perceives it, but, at the same time, writes out of a moral conviction that the enclosure of marriage serves as a paradigm for societal restrictions and the individual's complex relationship with society.