The Repressed Self And Alienated Life

The relationship between the individual and the collective resonates most of Doris Lessing's fiction. The collective in her fiction refers to two things: the first being the society in the common sense and the second humanity. The collective is often at variance with the individual. Still, Lessing believes there should be a resting point between them where the individual can voluntarily submit to the demand of the collective without losing his own personal and private judgments. Such an ideal relationship between the individual and the collective is difficult to realize regarding the fact that only two female protagonists in The Four-Gated City and The Memoirs of a Survivor respectively of all Lessing's fiction finally arrive at such a stage. Reflecting Sufism, it can only be obtained through female protagonist's outward quest and inward quest as well as androgynous mastery of masculine rationality and feminine sensitivity. Most of Lessing's other works dwell on the conflict between the individual and the collective, which invariably makes the self, the essence of individual's selfhood, in confrontation with society which is characteristic of the classification of the Self and the Other, and with the Self or the Other or both the Self and the Other, the collective identities of the person. With colonial Africa as the special social space, Lessing's African fiction vividly represents individual people's alienation as the result of confrontation with his collective identities and the hierarchical society of which colonialism and its twin brother patriarchy constitute the confining force. Having internalized shallow collective identities in terms of race, nation, gender, political beliefs and other things, individual person gets accustomed to seeing people and things in categories that emphasize difference. In doing so, his natural feelings and subjectivity recede gradually to varieties of social forces resulting from strict ideological division of the Self and the Other and he is more the Self or the Other than the self. He is hopeless"self"exile.The self in this dissertation includes the bodily (material) dimension and reflective dimension (subjectivity) and the aspect of relational dimension that connects with an ontological moral demand. Because of the negotiation of subjectivity, the three dimensions make a relatively stable self. The Self or the Other refers to one's collective identity, the aspect of relational dimension that accounts for his relationship with race, nation, gender, political belief, age and other matters. By extension, the Self and the Other also refer to oppositional groups of binary opposition in hierarchical society. The mutual support or positive coexistence of three dimensions of selfhood in interaction makes a wholesome individual person and an ideal relationship between the individual and the collective. In reality, however, the self with subjectivity as the core often consciously or unconsciously submits to or fights against society and collective identities that reflect ideological hierarchical violence, which destroy or distort subjectivity of individual person. The passivity and futile rebellion of the self plunge people into inevitable confusion and alienation. With the self and the Self and the Other as the thread, this dissertation explores the inevitable alienation of individual people as a result of the coercive and damaging force the society and his collective identities exert on the self by distorting subjectivity in Doris Lessing's African fiction that include The Grass Is Singing, African Stories, part of The Golden Notebook and the first four volumes of the Children of Violence sequence, namely, Martha Quest, A Proper Marriage, A Ripple from the Storm, and Landlocked. Suffocating forces of society and collective identities representing ideological violence greatly distort the self and curse people's life with confusion, loss, frustration, fragmentation and uprootedness.Altogether there are seven chapters in the dissertation including introduction and conclusion. There are five chapters that constitute the essentials of the dissertation. Chapter One is mainly on the theoretic framework of the Self (self) and the Other. Chapter Two, Three, and Four analyze the inevitable alienation of people dwelling in the hierarchical society. Chapter Five details how the theme is revealed by narrative methods employed in these works.Introduction makes an overview of Lessing and her African fiction and related criticism, which serves as an indispensable background for the following analysis. More importantly, it points out the importance of exploring Lessing's African fiction and introduces the theme of the study.Chapter One focuses on defining the self, the Self and the Other and the relationship among them. As these terms are frequently used in different theories with different meanings, this chapter intends to provide definite definitions for them by tracing their historical development and differentiating them from other people's usage. Beginning with the significance of these terms in exposing the theme of this study, this chapter introduces"Selfhood", the first important term in the dissertation to the reader. Man's selfhood in this dissertation comprises the self and the Self or the Other or the interaction of both in different situations which connects subjectivity and collective identities, internal world and external world considering bodily dimension, reflective dimension and relational dimension. The positive coexistence and mutual support of the three dimensions make a man wholesome, whereas the opposite makes a man either empty and arrogant or submissive. However, the Self and the Other, which represent hierarchical violence of society, turn relational dimension into a political one and therefore will never really have a harmonious relationship with the self. Backed up by perceptible or imperceptible force and violence, one's collective identities often function as a coercive force on the self."The self"comprises subjectivity or reflective dimension, bodily dimension and the macro aspect of relational dimension, which connects individual man with humanity and the universe. Different from popular usage of the self which means selfhood, this definition specifies the difference between them, the self making the essence of an individual man and selfhood the whole individual man. With subjectivity as the core of the self, this part accounts for the interconnection of its three component parts. Subjectivity characteristic of creativity, independence and freedom makes the essence of the self and distinguish people, whereas the Self or the Other refers to a category of people with the same attributes and collective identity of certain category of people. As the Other is of vital importance in the study, the following parts dwell on the concept of the Other in history and contemporary theories. As the Other in this dissertation is invariably related with the Self, next part traces the historical demarcation of the two terms. Developing from the self and the other in western philosophy, the Self and the Other inherit hierarchy between the self and the other: they are oppositional polarities of which the Self is absolutely superior to the Other. Part five with the heading of"Difference and the Other"exposes the cold violence of the seeming justification of difference for the binary opposition of the Self and the Other. To further specify the concept of the Other, part six introduces Lacan's usage of the term and points out that his psychological employment of the Other is different from its ideological connotation in this dissertation, which argues that the Other refers to what is or those who are exterior to or outside of normal values of the western culture. Next two parts elaborate on the concept of the Other in light of Postcolonialism and Feminism which are of great significance for Lessing's African fiction.Chapter Two explores the inevitable alienation of white settlers (British settlers) who regard the native and the land as the Other. Since the native and the land are to some extent inseparable in Lessing's African fiction, this chapter treats the land as an indispensable part of the white and the native conflict. Beginning with introducing the Self and the Other in colonial Africa, this chapter first elaborates on the relationship between the native and the settlers by analyzing three groups of British settlers. The first group demonizes the native and therefore is seized by great or irrational fear for the latter. Mary and stereotyped white women such as Mrs. Quest and Mrs. Carson make the representatives of this category. Surrendering the self to the Self, her racial identity, Mary cannot face Moses'look and her natural emotions despite the fact that Moses remains the last interest in her life. The second group is average white people who treat the native in a friendly manner on the basis of master-slave relationship that reflects the hierarchical nature of the Self and the Other. Such relationship brings to them increasingly haunting fear for the Other's taking back everything one day with regard to international anti-colonization and nationalist movement. The third group is white liberals who hate or hope to eradicate the colour bar because of the guilt gnawing their conscience. Their efforts and noble ideals often turn out to be futile confronting the overwhelming social forces and the ineradicable cultural fabrication of their identities. If the native are merely potential enemy for the white, the African land directly obstructs British settlers'colonization. The following parts revolve around"The colonial land as the Other, the colonizer as the homeless". This dissertation argues that"Ecological colonialism"is an important topic of Lessing's African fiction in which the land is relegated into the position of the Other being conquered and raped with connotations of the mixture of both the native and native women resulting from the intricate collaboration of colonialism and patriarchy. The bush that often symbolizes the native threatens settler women who have to identify themselves with houses into loneliness, fear, fragmentation and nervous breakdown. The land in its limited sense that often refers to earth mother or native woman obstructs male settlers'ambition of raping more and gaining strong sense of manhood from her. It also disillusions those romantic farmers who hope to realize their self on the Other. Chapter Three discusses conflicts among the white and individual person's alienation as a result of varieties of binary oppositions of the Self and the Other in the white society. In Lessing's African fiction the Other also applies to the Afrikaners, the Jews, the Greeks, the Italians and other minority groups, which are external to the normal values of the mainstream of the British society, the Self. Situated in the middle of two polarities, the British and the native, they are often ignored and marginalized and therefore suffer the deepest homelessness and powerlessness. Because of historical antagonism, political factors and difference between them, the British and the Afrikaners are found in constant conflict with each other. Hostility rather than friendship pervades families and personal relationship. Apart from antagonism there are also fear and sympathy on the part of some English people for the Afrikaners. The latter's dire poverty tortures these people who believe the white are entitled to living a decent life and dread to see native life led by the white skin. The widespread anti-Semitism affects both British people and Jews. Martha is a case in point here. The contact with some Jewish people drives Martha constantly into making bitter choices among her noble ideal and her national identity and natural feelings. Failing to harmonize three dimensions of selfhood, Martha falls into violent confusion in her quest for truth. Apart from Afrikaners and Jews, there are two important types of the Other in the white society: the Sports Club crowd and the loosely organized Communist group. They deviate from the normal values of the western culture, making them willing Others. Representing the second or third generation of white settlers in the colony, the Sports Club crowd hopes to establish a new life style that is characteristic of shared emotions, a means that they employ to evade responsibility. Their rebellion, however, cannot help them get rid of their deep sense of alienation and fragmentation regarding the overwhelming pressure left by their parents and Home country on them and their dilemma of receiving British education and growing up in Africa. The Communist group represents another type of Other who hopes to put an end to any forms of injustice and oppression. However, the group turns out to be more suffocating than enlightening and finally falls apart because of internal conflicts resulting from dogmatic appropriation of Marxism and internal disagreements and external pressure from the government and media.Chapter Four explores women's tragic life under the oppression of colonialism and patriarchy. As women are the inexhaustible topic for Lessing, this chapter begins with discussion of"Lessing and Feminism"with intent to introduce her attitude towards women and feminism. Lessing is not a feminist in the traditional sense because she does not make women's liberation as the final goal. Women's liberation, for her, forms a small part of the liberation of humanity. But, woman plays a vital part in the great cause. With both female potentiality in its access to the irrationality and masculine rationality, a few women develop prophesying power and therefore are able to save humanity. These women are able to compromise male rationality and female sensitivity and deconstruct binarism between male and female, reason and feeling, the conscious and the unconscious. Feminism provides Lessing with an excellent perspective to understand humanity and the universe. Confined by gender role encoded by society, women in Lessing's African fiction are lost in alienation with distorted self. White female settlers present a striking sight in all of her fiction for their complex social identities of being both the Self in terms of race and the Other in terms of gender. The collaboration of colonialism and patriarchy suffocates these women into permanent exiles on the alien land. Enclosed by the veld and the bush and encoded by patriarchal values, settler women on farms have to confine their activity within the house and the garden around the house. The coercive forces overwhelm the natural development of the self. Poor women such as Mary and Mrs. Carruthers have nervous breakdown, lonely women such as Mrs. Gale and Mrs. Barnes lead a"normal"daily life but an abnormal spiritual life, and Lucy Grange, Mrs. Lacey and Mary represent the excluded Others among settler women on farms because of their unconventionality. Unnamable anxiety of being the Other haunts settler women in town. Average housewives complain about their meaningless life of being mother and housewife, whereas liberal-minded women such as Martha and Mrs. Van are suffering inevitable alienation and fragmentation. More tragic than their white counterparts, native women are relentlessly and indiscriminately relegated into the position of the Other by both the white and the native. In the eyes of white female settlers, they are strange animals or earth mothers with strong sexuality and productivity. They are meaningful to white men only because of their female body in biological sense, which indicates white men do not need to be responsible for these women. In the eyes of native men, they are simply private property that can be transacted as cattle.Chapter Five analyzes how Lessing strives to criticize in her African fiction the devastating influence of overwhelming collective identities and social forces on the self by way of narrative methods. There are five parts in this chapter. The first part with"the theme and narrative methods"as the subheading argues that these methods contribute a lot to exposing the theme and fathoms the factors for employing them in these works. Part two comes to"Omniscient third person narration", analyzing how the theme is revealed through the method in the example of The Grass Is Singing. Part three focuses on"Epigraph", a method that female writers often employ to establish the authoritative voice in their works. This part mainly analyzes how epigraphs in The Grass Is Singing and Martha Quest contribute to the revelation of the theme of this dissertation. Part four explores how in some short stories the gradual awareness of the conflict of the self and the division in the society throws children or adolescents into bitter thoughts of their inevitable frustration and alienation by way of narrating from the point of view of a child or an adolescent. Part five focuses on"Dialectical method", exploring how it functions in Lessing's African fiction in light of the theme."Dialectic"in Sprague's interpretation is not specifically Marxist, instead it"refers to the conflict between opposites, a conflict that can involve interaction as well as polarity". Moreover,"Dialectic"does not mean that the conflict of opposites must result in the creation of the third force by way of the"unity of opposites". Its vital significance in Lessing's African fiction is vividly demonstrated by the examples of Marston's changing roles of the Self and the Other in The Grass Is Singing and of Lessing's elaboration of the white and the native relationship. The seemingly absolute importance of the white is counter-balanced by the force of treating the bush and the land symbolically, which greatly deepens the interaction and conflict of the two polarities.Conclusion summarizes the main topics explicated above and points out the importance, limitations and prospect of the study. According to the study, analyzing Lessing's African fiction greatly highlights the significance of geographical politics in literary works, and therefore provides a valuable perspective to literary criticism. Employing the self, the Self and the Other as the thread to explore her African fiction not only elaborates on what Lessing concerns most in almost all of her novels---the individual and the collective relationship, but also covers different types of groups and African land, exposing important topics such as native women, minority groups within the white, which were often ignored by critics. Such a perspective enriches research methods and broadens the scope of Lessing's criticism. Dwelling on important topics, the study inevitably leaves out some less important aspects such as imagination, repetition and so on. Besides, it only analyzes a small part of Lessing's voluminous product. Lessing's prolific writings need more profound researches, which will definitely reveal the lasting engrossing force in her works to readers who hope to find out what life means in different period.