BOTH ENDS OF THE CANDLE: FEMINIST NARRATIVE STRUCTURES IN NOVELS BY STAEL, LESSING, AND LE GUIN (URSULA K. LE GUIN, MADAME DE STAEL, FRANCE, DORIS LESSING, ZIMBABWE)

This dissertation explores the narrative structures of feminist persuasion in Corinne ou l'Italie (1807), by Germaine de Stael; The Marriages between Zones Three, Four, and Five (1980), by Doris Lessing; and The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), by Ursula K. Le Guin. Readers are moved toward feminist beliefs by the manner in which the novels use linguistic and narrative techniques and, in the case of the two recent works, by the use of nonrealistic devices. Although none of the novels presents a perfect utopia, all three not only advocate the goals of utopian feminism but also advocate--and cause readers to participate in--the thought process of skeptical feminism. Geographical metaphors suggest that women and men are aliens to each other and speak alien languages. Through sexual and geographical distinctions, the novels create certain feminist patterns of duality and then offer alternative feminist patterns of multiplicity and difference.;Chapter One explains how the dissertation draws on methods from two areas: the textual one of narrative and semiotic theory and the contextual one of feminist theory. The two areas are united by means of reader response theory, as adapted to the analysis of belief. Chapter Two examines how Corinne balances male England against female Italy, which is represented in a way that hovers between a realistic and a utopian mode. As the symmetrical structure breaks down, the novel moves both nearer to and farther from feminism. Marriages, to which Chapter Three is devoted, presents female Zone Three--apparently a utopia--as superior to male Zone Four, but the dualism implied in imbalance later gives way to multiplicity. Left Hand, the subject of Chapter Four, is set on a planet where sexual physiology differs from that on Earth. Beginning with sexual complementarity between countries and between planets, the novel then complicates the balance into multiple differences. Chapter Five compares the persuasive potential of the three novels.