Diverse Integration Carried By The Space: The Spatial Interpretation Of The Marriages Between Zones Three,Four And Five

Doris Lessing is one of the most important contemporary British writers in the20~thh century.She is known as“Evergreen Tree”in the British literary world and she is the greatest female writer after Virginia Woolf.In 2007,the Royal Swedish Academy Nobel Prize Committee announced that The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to this greatest British writer.The continuous implication and profound thoughts of Lessing have always been in her literary creation.She is an epic author who clearly dissects a divided culture with her skeptical attitude,passion and vision.As a humanist,Lessing always pays attention to the fate of human beings and to the major social issues,she tries to seek for a way out for human beings in a divided civilization.The Marriages Between Zones Three,Four and Five is one of the crystallizations of her thinking.The Marriages Between Zones Three,Four and Five is a space fiction written by Doris Lessing.It is the second volume of her space fiction series.The novel tells a story about marriages between three zones in outer space.In this paper,the theories of Gabriel Zoran and Henri Lefebvre are mainly adopted to interpret the process from alienation to integration in this novel from three aspects:physical space,social space and textual space and the rich implications of this novel will be further explored through the spatial narrative art.First of all,this paper begins with the physical space of Henri Lefebvre to analyze the reasons for the alienation among zones.The story took place in three completely different zones in outer space.Each zone has its own unique natural environment and cultural environment.Zone Three,Zone Four and Zone Five have orderly descending geographic landscape:Zone Three is located in the central highlands where so many towns are built,it is a quiet and peaceful Utopia.Zone Four is located in a lower place and in a smooth plain,it is a typical patriarchal realm where the entire people,resources and economics here have been invested in militarization.Zone Five is in low-lying areas and the living condition there is harsh,plundering is their greatest pleasure and is their only way of life.The orderly descending physical landscape of three zones highlight the different living environment people lived in,which reflects the cultural diversities and the gaps of social space.These differences form the roots of alienation among three zones.Secondly,starting from the title“Marriages”,this chapter aims to explore the extensive butterfly effects that were caused by the changes of social space after marriages,they contribute to the integration among zones.Marriages between different zones are no longer the dualistic communication but the diverse interflow,they not only mean the hybridization and dislocation of social space but also bear a grander integration phenomenon.In the novel,three kinds of integration can be sensed:the first one is the harmonious relationship between both sexes.Spatially,Lessing ingeniously operated two unprecedented marriages in the novel,the final equality between both sexes is achieved in the ways of setting aside their prejudices and understanding each other with their hearts.The second one is the unity of self and spirit.The interwind marriage space triggers the self-contemplation of the protagonists and strengthens their real self-exploration in the process of transformation.The last one is the co-existence of human and nature.The severe ecological problems are presented at the opening of the novel,the equality and the circulation between zones accelerate the resolution of ecological crises.These kinds of integration embody Lessing’s deep concerns about the development of human society and the exploration of human fate.Finally,the textual content expressed by discourse will work on the space,resulting in a textual space.The employment of various narrative techniques in the novel is the method to construct textual space.Different focalization will produce different spatial effects,the shifts of different narrative perspectives in the storytelling process will construct different textual space.It not only makes the whole textual space show a certain degree of depth,but also greatly enhances the artistic appeal and the charm of the novel.The intertextuality for folk literature plays an irreplaceable role in shaping the character,promoting the development of the plot and enlightening the theme of novel.The narrative voice in this novel is dialectical and it makes history more real.When people look back at history again,they can treat events and problems more roundly.What be buried behind the narrator’s words are more profound and implicit values and ideologies.These narrative techniques really play an important role in expressing and deepening the theme and they further strengthen the process from alienation to integration among zones.