Divided Selves

Doris Lessing is a prominent and prolific contemporary British writer. In October, 2007, Lessing was announced as the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Swedish Academy described her as"that elicits of the female experiences, whom with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny"(Bloom 23). Her myriad of themes, independent vision and bold experience on fiction won her a great number of readers worldwide.The Grass Is Singing is Lessing's first African novel, at the very beginning of its publication it was mainly received as an extraordinary colonialism work for its thorough presentation of colonial life. However, the novel's purport involves more than that. Through a meticulous description of the protagonist Mary Turner's life and spiritual growth, Lessing unveils the bewildering colonial society and individual's existential anxieties. Relying on R. D. Laing's psychoanalysis theory, this thesis is proposed to carry out psychoanalysis of the protagonist and extend the analysis to social context that aims to disclose the central content of this novel that the self integration and completeness is to be achieved through individual's coping with the outer world in equilibrium without scarifying self consciousness, otherwise it will cause the personality self-division.The paper consists of four parts. The first part is introduction, which, after a brief statement of Doris Lessing and her work, states the purposes, task and significance of this paper. The first chapter exposes Mary's dislocated self identification with the society and her childhood trauma, which brings about her shriveled self consciousness and blocks herself in false self system. The second chapter probes into Mary's depressing psychotic insight through essential analysis of her spiritual crisis in her marriage, indicates that"ontological insecurity"is the inducement for her mental breakdown. The third chapter gives the survey in social context revealing the"dehumanizing"nature of the self-divided society, and elaborates upon Mary's inner self in the schizoid condition in which she experiences series of self division and it is the division leads to her final collapse. The last part is a conclusion which ends the paper with a summary of all the analyses and arguments of the previous two chapters.