A Narratological Analysis Of Doris Lessing's The Summer Before The Dark

Doris Lessing, the eminent woman novelist in contemporary English literature, is an innovative writer who is always searching for new solutions to the problems in the contemporary society through the continuous changing themes of her novels. During her lifetime, she created many famous literary works and had many innovations of writing methods which have great influence on the world literature. Because of her prominent contributions, she won the Nobel Prize in 2007.The Summer Before the Dark is one of her famous innovative novels. It is about a middle-aged woman Kate Brown's painful experience of self-discovery and emancipation in a special summer. After the publication, it became the bestseller and received the critics'hot discussion. The novel is an excellent narrative work in which Doris Lessing uses various narrative techniques intentionally to reveal the theme of the novel. This thesis has a detailed analysis of the various narrative techniques from the perspective of Genette's Narrative Discourse.This thesis includes three chapters.The First Chapter analyzes the diversified narrative orders of the novel in detail. In The Summer Before the Dark, Doris Lessing did not write the events in the strict chronological order, but wrote Kate's past experience and her looking in the future interweaving with her whole summer's experience. The analepses, the prolepses and the quick shift of time make the narrative order in the novel seem to be in a chaos, but as a matter of fact, it is the reflection of the protagonist Kate's inner confusion and agony in her painful process of self-discovery and emancipation.The Second Chapter conducts a detailed analysis of the various narrative moods. In The Summer Before the Dark, the narration is carried on through various focalizations which give the narrative work the tension of further and nearer distance between the protagonist and the readers so that it arouses the readers'curiosity. The paralipses and paralepses give the novel rhythm of the sketchy and elaborate effects so that it makes the novel attractive and vivid.The Third Chapter is an analysis of the multiple narrative voices. In The Summer Before the Dark, there are two narrative levels. In the first narrative level, the narrator who is heterodiegetic in nature reveals her opinions about the protagonist Kate and the society with the critical and sympathy voices. In the second narrative level, the protagonist Kate as narrator tells her own story and Mary's story with the critical and irony voices which show her opinion about a good mother and wife and give Maureen a lesson at the same time. The minor character Maureen as a narrator tells her story to Kate with the voice that is full of puzzlement and helps Kate and herself solve their problems respectively. Through the multiple narrative voices, Doris Lessing shows her sympathy with Kate and the gradual old-aging women's miserable fate in the contemporary British society.The diversified narrative orders in surface, the tension created by the variance of distances, the sketchy and elaborate narrative rhythm and the multiple narrative voices make the novel an excellent narrative work. The narrative forms give service to its theme and the theme can be reflected through its narrative form. Through using the various narrative techniques, Doris Lessing vividly shows the protagonist Kate's miserable fate which has great influence on the gradual old-aging women to help them find solutions to their confusion in the contemporary society. Therefore, the study of Doris Lessing's works and writing skills has its profound realistic significance.