Construction Of Female Authority: A Feminist Narratological Analysis Of The Summer Before The Dark

As a Nobel Prize laureate, Doris Lessing has attracted many critics’ attention both at home and abroad. However, her novels are mostly interpreted from feminist point of view. Her innovation with the narrative techniques and the thematic significance of the narrative forms are largely ignored.This thesis aims to re-interpret Lessing’s The Summer before the Dark from the perspective of feminist narratology, which is a study of understanding the interplay between gender and narrative form. Although Lessing herself does not want to be labeled as a feminist, researches on her works have revealed her intention to reverse the current binary opposition and construct the female authority in many of her novels. This thesis analyzes Lessing’s construction of female authority in The Summer before the Dark through narrative voice, point of view and spatial narrative. The author of the present thesis has found that this novel is a perfect union of form and gender. Through careful analysis of narrative strategies adopted by Lessing, the author has also found that Lessing implies that those social conventions imposed upon women are the greatest impediments to the growth of women’s inner self. Women should redefine their social values, find the truth of the inner self and find a way to construct their female authority.In addition, this thesis has pointed out that the construction of female authority would not amount to the abandonment of women’s social responsibilities, and that family would not be regarded as the enemy against women’s liberation. Rather, the construction of female authority would give women courage to confront the social conventions, the process of growing old and the unavoidable death.