The Loss Of Harriet’s Subjectivity In The Fifth Child From The Perspective Of Spatial Criticism

This thesis mainly attempts to explore the loss of subjectivity of the femaleprotagonist, Harriet, in the novel The Fifth Child written by Doris Lessing from theperspective of spatial criticism. As the Nobel Prize winner in2007, Doris Lessing ishailed as the greatest woman writer since Virginia Woolf. Her deep concern aboutwomen experience threads her prolific creation. As far as Lessing is concerned,women should be independent and construct their subjectivity by interacting with thesociety as well as an equal and cooperative position with men. Subjectivity is anancient concept that is too complicated to define nowadays. But generally speaking,the current understanding of it consists of two aspects. One is one’s autonomy,independence and equality when developing one’s harmonious relationship with thesociety. It requires the recognition of one’s values by the society. The other is one’sself-affirmation about one’s ability and harmonious and balanced mental space.The “space turn” beginning from the last several decades of last century is themost conspicuous topic in the academic field. Spatial criticism explores thesignificant role that space plays in human history. It is not regarded as a container inwhich human activities take place any more, but is seen as part of social relations thatproduces and is produced by human activities, or space practice, as spatial criticismput it. Space, in the eyes of spatial critics, is not confined to the traditional concept ofvisible places, or buildings, but is of social, cultural, identity and many other complexconnotations. Combining cultural study, identity study, feminism, and otherpost-modernist theories, space criticism has become a new approach to reveal howspace practice produces cultural, identity, or gender meaning in social relationsthrough space in the literary texts. The spatial critics have also acutely noticed thatintertwined relationship between subjectivity and space. Both of them can beunderstood as real, imaginary and symbolic, and the two aspects of subjectivityconstruction can also be reflected through and in space.With spatial criticism as its theoretical basis, this thesis provides an account of Harriet’s loss of subjectivity in social and mental space. The first part elucidatesHarriet’s loss of subjectivity in social space that is further divided into family spaceand social space. In family space, the focus is on the production of Harriet’s unequaland dependent relationship with her husband as well as her isolation from herchildren through and in space. Then, the thesis continues to discuss the social spacewhere Harriet is isolated, criticized and her value and ability are denied through space.The second part elaborates on Harriet’s irreconcilable attitude towards her fifth child,Ben, and herself, which thus results in her loss of subjectivity caused by and in herconflicting and unbalanced mental space.Based on the above analysis, this paper again intends to convey Lessing’swarning to women who build their subjectivity only on men and family with such ahorror story, for it may lead to their loss of subjectivity.