Crisis,Awakening,and Reconstruction

Doris Lessing is a humanitarian writer whose works cover a wide range of themes,and the concern for the fate of the female is an important aspect among them.The Grass is Singing,The Summer Before the Dark and Love,Again are written in Lessing’s early,middle and later years respectively.The protagonists of these three works,Mary,Kate and Sarah,embody Lessing’s exploration of female states of being and spiritual dilemmas at different stages,and together they form the trajectory of Lessing’s portrayal of females.Based on the above three novels as research texts,this thesis explores female subjectivity in Lessing’s novels from the perspective of space.The first chapter of this thesis reveals the dilemma of female existence in different spaces by writing about the crisis of subjectivity encountered by the three female protagonists.The second chapter exposes the social roots of the crisis of female subjectivity and presents the awakening of female subjectivity in the process of describing the three heroines’ confrontation with them.The third chapter analyzes the spatial practices of the three heroines to reconstruct female subjectivity to explain how Lessing’s characters reconstruct female subjectivity in space.The study concludes that the ideologies and power relations that exist in social space are the reasons of the crisis of female subjectivity.Space confines females and keeps them in a passive object position.Only when females actively engage in spatial practices can female subjectivity be reconstructed.The aim and significance of this study is to trace Lessing’s examination on the plight of females,to find experiences of reconstructing female subjectivity,and to inspire contemporary females to get out of their plight and realize themselves.