An Ecofeminist Reading Of Doris Lessing’s Three Short Stories

Doris Lessing (1919-2013) is one of the most influential and famous modern English writers. With the wide literary perspective, she has written more than40novels and8collections of short stories (about more than seventy short stories), two plays, one collection of poems and essays. Her works invlove almost the most important aspects of the20th century:racial discrimination, sexual discrimination, species discrimination, ecological crisis, aging problem, and the future of our planet. Lessing has got almost all the awards for literature on the European continent. In2007when she was88years old, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.Lessing is not only famous for her novels, but also is good at writing short stories. Her stories are short but rich in meanings, and fully express Lessing’s literary perspectives. While critics put more emphasis on her several famous novels than on her stories, this thesis aims to analyze her three stories:An Old Woman and Her Cat, A Woman on a Roof and Sparrows from the perspective of ecofeminism. In the three stories, in addition to continuing to focus on female issues, Lessing also pays attention to other aspects in the society, such as the ecological crisis, especially modern people’s spiritual ecocrisis, anthropocentrism and so on. Lessing’s multi-subject features in her works coincide with the theory of ecofeminism, which acknowledges diversity, and respects difference. Ecofeminism is based on the radical defence of women’s rights, and environmental awareness. Ecofeminist literary criticism is a new literary trend, which includes the aspects of feminism and ecological criticism.This thesis attempts to employ the ecofeminist literary criticism to interpret Lessing’s three short stories and criticize the oppression of the western "dualistic hierarchy", such as man/woman, human/nature, culture/nature, mind/body, in which the former are superior to and dominate the latter. This dualistic paradigm is the root of the patriarchy, in which the domination of women parallels the domination of nature. Based on the three stories, this thesis also attemps to elaborate Lessing’s ecofeminist thought, which rejects anthropocentrism and patriarchy, and aims to revalue nature and women and establish a harmonious world, wherein men and women, human and nonhuman beings are co-existent harmoniously.This thesis falls into five chapters. Chapter one is the introduction of Lessing’s life, her main literary works, the research of her works, and the layout of the thesis. Chapter two introduces the theory of ecoleminism, ecofeminist literary criticism theory and Doris Lessing’s ecofeminist awareness, they provide the theoretical framework for the thesis. Chapter three focuses on the analysis of the connections between nature and women from three aspects of experience, status and symbol in stories and exposes modern people’s spiritual ecocrisis in patriarchy. Chapter four is committed to the analysis of the deconstruction of the patriarchy in the stories. Chapter five concludes the thesis by pointing out Doris Lessing’s ecofeniinist thought, which desires to construct an equal and harmonious world, which is an eco-centric system in which both nature and women are no longer considered as "others"...