A Study Of Hegemonic Masculinity In The Grass Is Singing And Martha Quest

As a British writer with great renown,Doris Lessing has both abundant and unique life experiences.Twenty-five years of marginalized life in Africa enabled Lessing to deeply understand the predicament of the poor,the female,the black and the Jews under colonial system,which differentiates her from the writers who grow up in the UK.The Grass Is Singing and Martha Quest are Lessing’s first two novels.As her earliest African novels,both are set in the colonial Southern Rhodesia and mesh closely with Lessing’s life experiences in Africa.The fact that the uniqueness of writer’s life experiences leads to the uniqueness of these two novels has aroused the attention and research of scholars both in and outside China.But influenced by Lessing’s female identity and the female perspective adopted in the narration,the masculinity in the two novels has been largely ignored by researchers.Based on the colonial context of Southern Rhodesia,this thesis applies R.W.Connell’s theory of masculinities to analyse white male colonizers’ hegemonic masculinity in the two novels.Through careful reading,this thesis tends to explore how Lessing criticizes the absurd judgment of “white supremacy” and “civilization” by revealing the deformed construction of white male colonizers’ hegemonic masculinity,how she deconstructs the hegemonic masculinity through a subtle representation,and how she presents the possible reconstruction of masculinity to seek the equality and new possibilities for the harmonious development of gender,class and race relations.This thesis is divided into five parts.Chapter One is an introduction to the literary status of Lessing and her works The Grass Is Singing and Martha Quest.And after a literature review on the two novels as well as a brief introduction to R.W.Connell’s theory of masculinities,it presents its own contribution and overall structure of the thesis.Chapter Two,Chapter Three and Chapter Four constitute the body part of the thesis.First,it reveals white male colonizers’ deformed construction of hegemonic masculinity via synchronization with colonial expansion,marginalization of native black masculinity and restriction of white femininity to present Lessing’s criticism against the white superiority based on the theory of natural selection by depicting the artificiality and constructibility of colonial hegemonic masculinity.Second,it reveals Lessing’s attempt to breed multiple subversive forces through accurate characterization in the two novels so as to deconstruct colonial hegemonic masculinity through distortion of masculinity,decline of masculinity,gender transgression of masculinity and racial transgression of masculinity.Third,it explores Lessing’s expectation for the benign development of gender,race and class relations in the future by analyzing the differential production of masculinity based on moral reflection and self-education of partial younger generation that contributes to the possible reconstruction of healthier and better masculinity.Chapter Five is the summary of the whole thesis,which further shows Lessing’s strong sense of social responsibility and lofty humanitarianism behind the two novels.