Preface

Doris Lessing is acclaimed as one of the best British women writers of her age.Her novels have drawn continuous critical attention,and brought a wide range of scholarly comments of critics from home and abroad.But for a long time,the space issue in her works has not been sufficiently discussed.This book is meant to make a systematic study of space in relation with self in Lessing’s three major novels:The Grass Is Singing,The Golden Notebook and The Four-Gated City.It attempts to examine the nature and quality of the space,subcategorized into the social space incarnated into various particular spaces and the recurring house in all the three novels embedded with the potentiality for a real personal space,in relation with the state and growth of the individual’s self.It is intended to find the consistence and variation in Lessing’s observation of space in its relation with self.The other intention is to discover the change in the relation between space and self,the social space and the house,the social self and the true self revealed in her three novels.Finally,the book tentatively suggests a correspondence between the features of Lessing’s concern about space and self and the development in her thought and philosophy.

The discussion is conducted mainly with recourse to the spatial theories of Henry Lefebvre,Michel Foucault,Edward Soja and Wesley Kort.The book adopts Lefebvre’s definition of space:space is a product.This definition,with the emphasis on the social character of space,is the most approximate to the implications of the space in the fiction of Lessing,an intensely socially committed writer.Michel Foucault foregrounds the power aspect of space.Society of surveillance is a result of ensuring the operation of power through the control of space.Both Lefebvre’s social character and Foucault’s power aspect of space suggest a dominant social space with inclination to possess and control,unfavorable to the development of the individual’s particular self.Therefore both of their theories are embedded with a call for a space of difference,Lefebvre’s lived space and Foucault’s heterotopias.This call for a differential space is extended and systematized by Soja into his thirdspace,an invisible space which accentuates a radical openness.The significance of the thirdspace lies particularly in its emphasis on the ongoing process,the implication of the incessant breakthrough and an embrace of endless possibilities.The house in the three major novels of Lessing conceives a potentiality for Soja’s thirdspace in the form of the real personal space.This book uses it to mean a space of self-discovery with reference to Kort’s explanation of it as a space where one can be free from the determinations of social categories and identity constructions.

The first chapter explores the space of surveillance and the repressed self in The Grass Is Singing with recourse to Foucault’s theory of the panoptic mechanism in the society of surveillance.The omnipresent surveillant gaze of patriarchy and colonial racism produces and constantly strengthens the social space of confinement.By examining the store in the dorps,the town with its surveillance in the form of gossip,and the farm in the veld,with the analysis of the characters’action and response in these spaces,this chapter demonstrates the confining quality of the social space and the various distortion of self.It finds the space of confinement so fortified that the house is pervaded with the internalized faceless gaze which dispossesses the house of its privacy and independence,its right as an exception and thus the potential for a real personal space.Such a strong social space with its unswerving demand for conformity decides the subjugation of the individual’s social self over his unique true self as well as his lack of consciousness which deprives his ability to take positive action to transform the house into a real personal place for his self-integration.Thus,the house remains a space of subordinate other exposed to the surveillance of society,witnessing the increasingly approaching destruction of its dweller’s self.The ubiquitous presence of the surveillance both in the social space and the house divests the individual of his possibility to discover a real personal space for the rebalance of his distorted self in either,and leaves a monolithic space of surveillance inhabited by a population with their repressed self.

The second chapter is focused on the analysis of the space of alienation of everyday life in its relation with the divided self in The Golden Notebook.By analyzing the main elements of the social space of modern everyday life,the workplace,the political site and the gender space,this chapter reveals the displacing property of the social space with people suffering from the fragmentation of self.All the efforts to reintegrate the divided self in these particular spaces only bring a more severe division.In a space of rampant alienation,there is faint possibility to discover a real personal place in the social space.The flat as a potential for self-integration in this novel bears complex quality.The intended personal space is consciously made into a space of compartmentalization,symbolically expressed by Anna’s compartmentalization of her self into four notebooks,which is the very prevalent mode in the social space that results in the fragmentary self.Consequently,it is acted not as an initiation into the reaffirmation of self but as a rite-of-passage into the disintegration of self.Thus,the flat is built into the reproduction of the social space of displacement,where even the more private dream space and the intimate sexuality are divested the possibility for a real personal space in which the dweller can transcend alienation and reintegrate division.However,despite the general negative nature,the flat takes on positive quality in that it is tinted with the spirit of freedom,independence and self-assertion of its dwellers.And more importantly,its positive property lies,paradoxically,in its participation in driving the dweller into the disintegration of self,through which the dweller obtains a glimpse of the truth of the self with the collapse of various dichotomies.

The third chapter deals with Lessing’s thirdspace in its relation with the dissolved and revived self in The Four-Gated City.As for the social space in its relation with the individual’s self,the dominant quality remains uncongenial as is shown by the examination of the deteriorated physical condition of the city,the hierarchical permeation in the caféand restaurant,and the homogenizing actualization in the consulting room and the mental hospital,all of which conspire to cancel the individual’s particularity and dissolve his insistence on his true self and hence the final general abnegation of self.Much of this chapter is devoted to the exploration of the house as the space of difference which contributes to the rejuvenation of the self.The major three houses in this novel manifests distinct nature of the thirdspace as the space of difference,namely,to accommodate difference and strongly insist on their difference;to highlight the collapse between reason and unreason among other false dichotomies and divisions and they also take on the quality of a“site of resistance”.And what they have in common is that they provide a real personal space where the dwellers approach their true self.This chapter also observes the relation between space and self,the social space and the dwelling,the social self and the true self.It finds Lessing in this novel begins to emphasize the interaction and the interdependence between these apparent oppositions and implies the idea that dissolving one’s self in serving the others is part of the journey to approach one’s true self.

The conclusion reviews the major arguments in each chapter.A holistic examination of Lessing’s presentation of space in its relation with self scattered in each of the three novels reveals the consistence and variation in her observation of space.The overall space in Lessing’s major fiction is a space of self,saturated with her humanistic concern for the individual’s self under the pressure of the strong society.Lessing is consistent in her criticism of the social space in its negative relation with the self and the house is endowed with the dynamic variation in its quality as its relation with the self manifests a gradual shift from negative to positive.The conclusion also includes the observation of the change in the relation between space and self,the social space and the house,the social self and the true self.Finally,the conclusion summarizes the trajectory of Lessing’s thought and belief and suggests a correspondence between her evolving observation of space and self and the ongoing development of her philosophy and worldview.