The role of woman in Doris Lessing’s novels - Английский язык - Дипломные работы

Информация о документе

Цена	9000UZS
Размер	131.6KB
Покупки	0
Дата загрузки	26 Сентябрь 2019
Расширение	doc
Раздел	Дипломные работы
Предмет	Английский язык

The role of woman in Doris Lessing’s novels

Купить

O`ZBEKISTON RESPUBLIKASI OLIY VA O`RTA MAXSUS TA`LIM VAZIRLIGI QARSHI DAVLAT UNIVERSITETI INGLIZ TILI VA ADABIYOTI KAFEDRASI Abdiyeva Xurshida Baxtiyorovnaning “5 1 20100 filologiya(ingliz tili)” ta`lim yo`nalishi bo`yicha bakalavr darajasini olish uchun “ The role of woman in Doris Lessing’s novels ” mavzusida yozgan Ilmiy rahbar : o’q. Doniyeva M. “Himoyaga tavsiya etildi” Roman-german filologiyasi fakulteti dekani _______ dots A. Aliqulov “_____”____________ 2014 yil Qarshi shahri, 201 4 yil 1

Contents: Introduction......................... Chapter I Postmodernist period in English literature..... 1.1 Dorris Lessing’s biography ............. 1.2 Dorris Lessing’s life and fiction ................... 1.3 General themes in Lessing’s works.......... Chapter II The importance of female protagonists in Lessing’s novels 2.1 Social stereotype of female characters......... 2.2 Male-female relationships: Mary and Dick..................... 2.3 The issue of isolation and the concept of “suffering female”............. 2

Introduction The forthcoming generation is support of any society and people .The flourishing of the country mostly depends on the intellect, knowledge, aspiration and enthusiasm of its young men and women. Since the early days of Uzbekistan’s independence, care about the harmonic development of the younger generation, its physical moral and spiritual upbringing has become one of the most important priorities of state policy. In 1997, upon the immediate leadership of President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Islom Karimov, The national program for Cadre Training was developed. Thanks to its implementation, the country has been maintain the permanent deepening and renewal of the general educational and professional training through the organic unity combined with historical and spiritual her

secondary schools, professional colleges and academic lyceums were equipped with language laboratories. However, analysis of the current system of organizing language learning shows that learning standards, curricula and textbooks do not fully meet the current requirements, particularly in the use of advanced in formation and media technologies. Education in mainly conducted in traditional methods. Further development of a continuum of foreign languages learning at all levels of education; improving skills of teachers and provision of modern teaching materials are required. According to the decree, starting from 2013/2014 school year foreign languages, mainly English, gradually throughout the country will be taught from the first of schooling in the form of lesson-games and speaking games,

that the ideas are contained. The listening is the first experience. The attept to understand accompanies it. The acquisition of good pronounciation depends to a great extent on the learners ability of listening with care and discrimination. Teaching English pronounciation in schools should be based on methodological principles. In teaching pronounciation there are at least two methodological problems the teacher faces: 1. To determine the cases where consious manipulation of the speech organs is required , and the cases where simple imitation can or must be used. 2. To decide on types of exercises and the techniques of using them. Teaching a foreign language begins with teaching students to hear and to speak it, that is, with the oral introductory course or the oral approach. The teacher’

The aim of the qualification paper . In my thesis I would like to deal with psychological and social aspects of female protagonists in Doris Lessing’s African stories. The thesis will primarily comment on human experience with a particular focus on the quest for one’s “self”. Other significant issues are the position of women in society, including social and political circumstances. The research will also include an analysis of the human psyche--more precisely, thought, behaviour, and personality. The significance of dreams and visions, their symbolism, and their relation to reality will not be left out in the discussion. They are, undoubtedly, an important element within the search for one’s self and they may reveal the subconscious of the protagonists. Additionally, psychological aspects

Chapter I Postmodernist period in English literature The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain characteristics of post–World War II literature and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature. As with all stylistic eras, no definite dates exist for the rise and fall of postmodernism's popularity. 1941, the year in which Irish novelist James Joyce and English novelist Virginia Woolf both died, is sometimes used as a rough boundary for postmodernism's start. The prefix "post", however, does not necessarily imply a new era. Rather, it could also indicate a reaction against modernism in the wake of the Second World War (with its disrespect for human rights, just confirmed in the Geneva Convention, through the atomic bombings of Hirosh

developed out of modernism, modernism is characterized by an epistemological dominant while postmodernism works are primarily concerned with questions of ontology. Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is hard to define and there is little agreement on the exact characteristics, scope, and importance of postmodern literature. But as is often the case with artistic movements, postmodern literature is commonly defined in relation to its precursor. For example, instead of the modernist quest for meaning in a chaotic world, the postmodern author eschews, often playfully, the possibility of meaning, and the postmodern novel is often a parody of this quest. Postmodern authors also tend to celebrate chance over craft, and further employ metafiction to undermine the writer's au

order, create within themselves an order universe, have given way since the 1960s to a denial of order, to the presentation of highly fragmented universes in the created world of art, and to critical theories that are forms of PHENOMENOLOGY. Myth has given way to the experiencing of aesthetic surfaces. Postmodernism in literature is not an organized movement with leaders or central figures; therefore, it is more difficult to say if it has ended or when it will end (compared to, say, declaring the end of modernism with the death of Joyce or Woolf). Arguably postmodernism peaked in the 60s and 70s with the publication of Catch-22 in 1961, Lost in the Funhouse in 1968, Slaughterhouse-Five in 1969, Gravity's Rainbow in 1973, and many others. Some declared the death of postmodernism in the

my ruins". Modernist literature sees fragmentation and extreme subjectivity as an existential crisis, or Freudian internal conflict, a problem that must be solved, and the artist is often cited as the one to solve it. Postmodernists, however, often demonstrate that this chaos is insurmountable; the artist is impotent, and the only recourse against "ruin" is to play within the chaos. Playfulness is present in many modernist works (Joyce's Finnegans Wake or Virginia Woolf's Orlando, for example) and they may seem very similar to postmodern works, but with postmodernism playfulness becomes central and the actual achievement of order and meaning becomes unlikely. 1965 – Little changed during the 1960s in the national life of England; what had been characteristic in the 1950

Thomas Hardy. Of the newer playwrights, John Osborne, Harold Pinter, and Tom Stoppard showed the most vitality and talent. As England entered the last quarter of the XX th century, it seemed to be groping for position and definition in a diminished world, both of social and political reality and of art. Postmodernism ... can be used at least in two ways – firstly, to give a label to the period after 1968 (which would then encompass all forms of fiction, both innovative and traditional), and secondly, to describe the highly experimental literature produced by writers beginning with Lawrence Durrell and John Fowles in the 1960s. In what follows, the term 'postmodernist' is used for experimental authors while "post- modern" is applied to authors who have been less innovative.

1.1 Dorris Lessing’s biography “Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.” (Doris Lessing) Doris Lessing, a British author of modern fiction, was born on 22 October 1919 in Persia. In 1925, she moved with her parents, who were of British origin, to a farm in Southern Rhodesia, where she spent her childhood. She is, without any doubt, ranked among the most famous post- war English novelists. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, as the oldest person who has ever won this prize (she was 87 years old). In the 1940s Lessing joined the Communist Party, which influenced her political thinking a lot. Nonetheless, her political ideas have changed directions many times in the course of her life. L

Lessing’s writing covers many styles and approaches, ranging from feminism and Marxist theory to communism. In addition to that, she is also particularly concerned with psychology, politics, and sociology and she always comes up with new spiritual themes and perspectives in her writing. One of Lessing’s novels of wide comprehension is the Children of Violence series. It is, in fact, a “study of the individual conscience in its relations with the collective,” as Thrope claims. In other words, the novel depicts “conflict between the self and society . It traces the development of the main protagonist, Martha Quest, in a colonial African society of the 1930s and 1940s and it also reflects some autobiographical aspects that might be paralleled to Lessing’s private life. Martha Quest, as well a

the main character, Martha Quest, who goes through a long and complex process of searching for the integrated self. As an illustration, Martha’s vision of the ideal city is, in fact, “an image of integration,” as Pickering asserts in his essay: On the level of the collective, it represents an ideal state where all ages and races live together in harmony and beauty; on the level of the individual, it implies the wholeness of the self, the goal of individuation. Thus Martha’s vision represents both her political ideal and her unconscious personal goal; well-ordered and integrated into a unified whole, it symbolizes both what the world should be like and what she should be like. The issue of “free woman” is central also to the analysis of Lessing’s novel The Golden Notebook (1962). In this co

1. “Communist phase”--concerning social issues (1944 - 1956) 2. “Psychological phase”--focused on the psychological development of her characters (1956 - 1969) 3. “Sufi phase”--discussed themes related to mysticism (1969) Apart from that, her later fiction includes: This was the Old Chief´s Country (1951), Going Home (1957), Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971), The Summer Before the Dark (1973), Collected African Stories (1973), Memoirs of a Survivor (1975), Collected stories (1978), The Fifth Child (1988), The Good Terrorist (1985), and many essays, dramas and short stories, such as Five: Short Novels (1953)--stories set in Africa, for which Lessing won the Somerset Maugham Award. As far as her recent fiction is concerned, it includes for instance African Laughter (1994), Mara and Dan

Notebook (1962), understandably it is only after this date that her protagonists most fully confront archetypal images and aspects of a Jungian self. Lessing's The Grass is Singing and "To Room Nineteen" are most remarkable for their accurate depiction of her characters' self-annihilation. Such a death, whether literal or psychological, occurs because the characters cannot act independently of the ideologies which impinge upon them. Kate Brown is more fortunate in developing a sense of a more complete self than Martha in these early Children of Violence texts. In a similar way to Anna Wulf in The Golden Notebook , who decides to become a social worker, Kate Brown returns to her family responsibilities with a heightened sense of self-knowledge and identity. Unl

presentation of either her unified self at any given moment or selves, and to Lessing's changing treatment of madness, a frequent motif in her works. 1.2 Doris Lessing’s Life and Fiction In her writing Lessing often touches on racial issues concerning the black community, although these are usually not the main themes of her fiction. As Thrope asserts, “two thirds of the African stories are about the personal lives of the white settlers, with the natives in the background” . Lessing is actually concerned with issues regarding human psyche, racial integration and, last but not least, the integration of women in social groups. As regards the themes explored in her early African stories, these involve mainly race relations and the difficult position of women in a male- dominated world. Mo

alienation and the mindlessness of the collective”. Lessing’s women characters are searching for personal freedom and for the true self but they always find themselves in the middle way. In other words, “in Lessing’s world women are almost human manqué; they do not achieve self- fulfilment in the traditional roles of wife and mother, nor do they succeed as ‘free’ or professional women. The source of their failure is dual: they do not feel the need to assume responsibility for themselves, and they are deeply, but wrongly, committed to romantic love, the two being casually linked”. Lessing’s point of view is apparent in the following quotation: One must have the time and opportunity to explore the sense of the self behind the social façades even if that sense of self is not socially acceptab

In her first novel The Grass is Singing (1950), Lessing sets up the model of the collective experience, then illustrates how Mary attempts to adapt herself to androcentric expectations about women even though she is unsuited to them. Then she undercuts these expectations and these artificial constructions of selfhood with Mary's personal experience of negating self through death. It is significant that Mary "could have become a person on her own account. But this was against her instinct." 1 It is this unwillingness and inability to act on her own account which distinguishes her from other women protagonists of Lessing's transitional or intermediate novels. In later works such as Children of Violence , The Golden Notebook , and The Memoirs of a Survivor , Lessin

home red-eyed and fuddled; when she thought of children she saw her mother's face at her children's funerals anguished, but as dry and as hard as rock. Mary liked other people's children but shuddered at the thought of having any of her own. She felt sentimental at weddings, but she felt a profound distaste for sex; there had been little privacy in her home and there were things she did not care to remember; she had taken good care to forget them years ago. It is partly Mary's refusal to come to terms with the sexual side of marriage that causes the later sterility of her own marriage. Her initial fear of sexuality bars her from entering into a relationship, and when her acceptance of a proposal is rewarded with a kiss, a "violent revulsion overcame her and she ran

Mary's horror of sexuality is inextricably linked with an inescapable past. Although she banishes thoughts of her childhood from her consciousness, her fear of her father becomes manifest in her dream life. Dreams reveal her need to become reconciled with her past in order to live a whole and balanced life in the present. In one unpleasant dream, there was her father, the little man with the plump juicy stomach, beer-smelling and jocular, whom she hated, holding her mother in his arms. ... Her mother was struggling in mock protest, playfully expostulating. Her father bent over her mother, and at the sight, Mary ran away. In another dream in which she plays hide-and-seek, her father caught her head and held it in his lap ... to cover up her eyes. ... She smelled the sickly odor

dislikes accompanying Dick out on to the lands and shrinks from having to observe the unprofitable farm which traps her. Because she holds fast to the racist assumptions about Africans taught to her by her parents, she becomes fearfully insistent that their workers are pilfering her household belongings. Alone day after day in the house, with the sun beating down relentlessly on to the roof directly above, her entrapment forces her into a close contact with Moses, who makes her confront her abhorrence and fear of African people and her lack of knowledge about them. Paradoxically, when he becomes her house servant, Moses gains power over her. This is because she cannot forget the occasion when she once hit him, and she fears that he will retaliate. For Mary then, sex, fear and violence are

mother recurring more and more frequently, like an older, sardonic double of herself walking beside her, followed the course her upbringing made inevitable. Mary chooses the passive course and seems to die from within as she observes Dick's many unprofitable attempts to save the farm from bankruptcy. When Dick, having failed at his schemes to turn his farm to profit with bees, pigs, turkeys and rabbits, opens a "kaffir" store on their property, the similarities between Mary's past and present appear complete: "it seemed to Mary a terrible thing, an omen and a warning, that the store, the ugly menacing store of her childhood, should follow her here, even to her home" . Like Susan Rawlings in "To Room Nineteen," Mary cannot talk to Dick honestly about her fe

1.3 General themes in Lessings works As far as the roles of men and women in Lessing’s novels are concerned, they seem to be clearly defined. All novels actually represent a patriarchal society with a primary authority of men over women. For example, “women are denied the right to create their own images of femaleness, and instead must seek to conform to the patriarchal standards imposed on them” . This quotation represents a point of departure for critical approaches relating to feminism. Similarly, Holmquist describes feminism as “a militant attitude directed towards female oppression in the sense of economic, political and psychological mechanisms which prevent women from realizing their full potential as human beings” . As regards Lessing’s view, oppression of women is manifested in bo

disrupt the hierarchical order, such as Martha’s involvement in politics and Mary’s involvement in the organisation of farm matters--though only temporal--appear to be successful just for a short period of time. Martha and Mary consider their involvement in these matters, which are originally intended to be reserved only for men, highly challenging. By their participation, both Martha and Mary are able to prove their ability to act on an equal level to men, and to take an active part in their social lives. This behaviour, however, poses a question of how, or to what extent, such attempts are effective and how they may possibly be accepted by bourgeois society: Martha tries to form an identity in a society where the division of labour between the sexes is strictly defined according to the n

relationship with Douglas is concerned, she considers it a “possibility of realizing the dream” . She believes that love, as a dream, has the power to bring about changes in her life and to provide her with the sense of belonging, as contrasted to her feeling of alienation. Love is, however, most of the time also associated with marriage, family and child rearing. In other words, “marriage provides Martha with a social identity”. And this statement holds true also for Mary. Unfortunately, Martha believes that her life will follow the girl stories from the novels, in which young girls marry, have a child and are happy in the end. Nevertheless, she does not feel like that at all. Her contemplation about marriage, love, and life is based on the facts that appear in the books she likes to read

emotions. Her dependence on men, however, manifests itself in a rather negative way. After the birth of her daughter Caroline, her dependence is even stronger. Eventually, in order to prevent her daughter from similar tensions and disagreements that she had with her own mother, Martha decides to leave her. By this act she manages to free herself and to provide freedom also for her daughter Caroline. Having left Douglas, Martha feels no more restricted by her marriage bonds and by her motherhood, which seem to represent only negative forces in her quest for the real self. Society forces upon her roles that she refuses to adapt to. In contrast to Mary, she eventually manages to escape from her marriage and thus avoids a similar fate that Mary has to suffer, although the circumstances of thes

cannot be revitalized any more. Her unconcerned approach is mainly caused by her passive attitude towards Dick, society, and, most importantly, towards herself. Slow and unconscious “mental poisoning” affecting Mary is launched together with the arrival of Moses, her black servant, which is also a point of departure for the analysis of her madness. The term “lethargy” or “indifference” is used on several occasions when Lessing refers to Martha’s feelings concerning pregnancy and similar references are used, even to a much greater extent, in comments regarding Mary’s life. Many different points of view regarding child-raising are presented in the novel. Alice, for instance, considers pregnancy as peaceful time: “It’s all very well, dear, but this worrying all the time just gets me down. Som

bodies”.Moreover, she considers this point of view as “the final insult to personal liberty” . Douglas insistently justifies the law, whereas Martha thinks more about women and their personal rights. Besides, people believe that Martha has married him because of that baby and it would not be a good idea to change her mind at this moment: “Stella was now explaining to both Alice and Martha that it was the duty of young married couples to have children while they were young: their duty to the children, who would naturally prefer to have parents who were brothers and sisters to them”. For this reason, Martha has to face both the difficulties of her unexpected motherhood and her troublesome relationship with her mother who is sometimes caring too much for her daughter’s life. Martha’s feelings

Chapter II The importance of female protagonists in Lessing’s novels 2.1 Social Stereotype of Female Protagonists Lessing’s novel, The Grass is Singing, depicts human relations, social structures and racial prejudices in Rhodesian society. Her point of view in this novel is unique. Jeannette King describes her style as “critical realism” . However, it does not concern “a mirror-view of reality” but rather “knowledge of it” In fact, “it makes sense of historical processes by revealing the relationship between the human subject and the objective world, thus embodying knowledge of the structures of reality” . It is always the individuals who make up the society and for this reason it is valuable to explore their minds to get a better picture of the social issues in south Africa. There is an i

stereotype, however, does not correspond with her “self”. Following her decision, a great conflict arises concerning “the gap between what one is and what one aspires to be” .Mary’s lost selfhood is a critical moment for her because “her idea of herself was destroyed” and she cannot “recreate herself” . It is essential to take into account the fact that she “split into two selves, the one who feels totally without power, and the other whose power is ‘borrowed’ from the system which enforces her own oppression”.. And her constant fight between these two selves is also the cause of her nervous breakdown at the end of the novel. Before Mary dies, she reflects on her life through contemplation and eventually feels joy for a short time: “The world was a miracle of colour, and all for her, all f

sofa that smelled of dirt, waiting for the night to come that would finish her. And justly--she knew that. But why? Against what had she sinned? At this point of the novel, she tries to recall all the mistakes she had made. She considers herself not guilty but blames her despair on the outside circumstances, against which she had not fought. She realizes her passivity, the main reason of her dissatisfaction being the fact that she has never tried to penetrate into things and into the minds of people. She has been too impersonal and distant from her life. This fact is referred to in the following passage: Such little beetles to make such an intolerable noise! And she had never seen one before. She realizes, suddenly, standing there, that all those years she had lived in that house, with the

explaining her failure, is revealed only a few moments before she dies: “She would walk out her road alone, she thought. That was the lesson she had to learn. If she had learned it, long ago, she would not be standing here now, having been betrayed for the second time by her weak reliance on a human being who should not be expected to take the responsibility for her” It would have been better if she had stayed in the town as an unmarried woman and had lived her life on her own, independently of others. Eventually, she regrets everything and feels “defenceless”. She regrets the fact that she had depended so much on other people and thus could not free herself. On the other hand, she finds out that it is impossible to be alienated from others. She feels the irrational need to become a part o

She cried out that she wished she had never got married, she knew now that she had never loved Willie at all; she couldn’t understand how she had been so crazy as to tie herself down to being nothing but a piece of livestock to be stuffed three times a week, and then swollen like dropsy, and then a cow streaming with milk, and her breasts were so sore she couldn’t bear it. Immediately after birth, the author depicts Martha’s attitude to her child: “There was this band of tension, felt deeply as a web of tight anxiety, between her and the child. Every moment, every sound Caroline made reverberated through Martha” .Martha still keeps struggling with feelings of “guilt and defiance. She does not assume properly the role of a mother and what is more, she lacks affection towards her daughter: S

followed irritated exhaustion, and both seemed in some subtle way a criticism of him” .However, when Douglas is supposed to get back home and meet Martha again, his feelings suddenly change: “Tenderness for Martha and his small daughter filled him”.Undoubtedly, when Martha and Douglas see each other after a long time, they both feel something has changed: “They embraced. For both there was something false and unpleasant in this embrace” .What is more, Martha begins to feel a kind of revulsion to this soldier--her husband. Her image of him has altered to a great extent: That sudden vision of the soldier who was her husband had been a shock to her which only now began to make itself felt. It was quite impossible that this man should be her husband. She was married to one of the boys; he woul

2.2 Male-female Relationships: Mary and Dick As a matter of fact, the relationship of Mary and Dick Turner is going through different phases. Generally speaking, there is “no real misunderstanding between them”. At first, Dick appears to be a representative of a submissive husband who does not seem to make any attempts to defend himself against his wife. The narrator explains that “it had really been such an easy way to win mastery over him, the sort of trick women use to defeat their men” . He does not seem to be the “boss” in their relationship, in spite of the fact that he is the one who takes care of the farm to make a living. All the troubles are always blamed on the inhospitable weather. They are depressed by making no profits on their farm and by living in poverty. Mary’s initial su

own, to be successful and not just constantly pity himself because of bad luck: When she saw him weak and goalless, and pitiful, she hated him, and the hate turned it on herself. She needed a man stronger than herself, and she was trying to create one out of Dick. If he had genuinely, simply, because of the greater strength of his purpose, taken the ascendancy over her, she would have loved him, and no longer hated herself for becoming tied to a failure. Dick is still unable to fulfil her expectations, which makes her dissatisfied. She tries to change the situation, however unsuccessfully. Not being able to make both of them satisfied, Dick feels aggrieved: “He stubbornly went his own way, feeling as if she had encouraged him to swim in deep waters beyond his strength, and then left him to

and the new tenderness between them, which might have grown into something strong enough to save them both, was not yet strong enough to survive this fresh trouble. At this point Mary still feels she can change their lives and hence takes the responsibility for the farm in the course of Dick’s illness. Dick is worried that his wife, who will be in charge of the whole farm, will not manage: “Every conscious moment he worried about the things that would be going wrong without his supervision” . Having cured himself, Dick eventually comes to “take up the reigns again as if her sovereignty had been nothing, nothing at all” . When Mary proposes to start growing tobacco, he cannot stand it. Her interference into the affairs concerning his farm is unacceptable: “He looked at her almost with horro

farm, racial conflicts arise between her and the natives. Undoubtedly, she would like to master them, however, the natives protest against her supremacy. Mary has always tried to avoid being in contact with the natives in all possible ways and now she is the one to supervise them on her own: “She had to crush down violent repugnance to the idea of facing the farm natives herself” . She even refers to them as “evil-smelling creatures”, “filthy savages” or “animals” and she imposes her authority on them: She hated their half-naked, thick-muscled black bodies stooping in the mindless rhythm of their work. She hated their sullenness, their averted eyes when they spoke to her, their veiled insolence; and she hated more than anything, with a violent physical repulsion, the heavy smell that came

Her supervision of the farm is actually “enforced activity” , which enables her to bring the farm “near to her”, to make it more “real” .This event explains that as soon as she becomes active, she gets closer to the things, and she may understand them better, for they become real to her. And this is also the case with the farm: Before it had been an alien and rather distasteful affair from which she voluntarily excluded herself, and which she made no attempt to understand as a whole, thinking it more complicated than it was. She was now annoyed with herself that she had not tried to appreciate these problems before. Nevertheless, she does not stay active long enough to be able to change something. Consequently, her attempts usually end in a failure. She starts to exclude herself from the o

destroying them. Dick identifies himself with nature and cannot imagine a life outside his farm, however, Mary’s inclination to the independent life in the town is evident. Without any doubt, she finds it difficult to adapt to living on the farm. On the contrary, Dick “off his farm he would wither and die” . As the years go by, Mary does not feel lonely and does not even need to discuss anything with other women of her age--not even with her neighbour Mrs Slatter: “Loneliness, she thought, was craving for other people’s company. But she did not know that loneliness can be an unnoticed cramping of the spirit for lack of companionship” . Moreover, as Schlueter asserts, “throughout her life Mary had been isolated, both in fact and in feeling, and this isolation had created in her a feeling of

becomes extremely complicated for both of them to live together in one place: What happened was that the formal pattern of black-and-white, mistress-and-servant, had been broken by the personal relation; and when a white man in Africa by accident looks into the eyes of a native and sees the human being (which it is his chief preoccupation to avoid), his sense of guilt, which he denies, fumes up in resentment and he brings down the whip. In fact, Mary’s obsession concerning Moses slowly makes her go mad. It is important to consider the fact that she has virtually no one to talk to, not even Dick who would not understand her. As she becomes more and more passive, the inferiority towards her husband becomes evident. Dick talks to her “like a superior to a subordinate” . As a result of this, s

2.3 The issue of isolation and the concept of “suffering female” From the psychological point of view, no personal growth of the main protagonist is to be seen in the novel. Mary’s obsession is caused by her isolation from the outside world: “She behaves simply as if she lives in a world of her own, where other people’s standards don’t count. She has forgotten what her own people are like. But then, what is madness, but a refuge, a retreating from the world”. However, Dick and Mary’s isolation is conscious--they do not even have a telephone on the farm. As a result of this, they are referred to as “ignorant” and the other people do not know much about their lives. The Slatters, however, know that “they live like pigs and never buy anything” .Dick slowly realizes that Mary’s behaviour is ra

As far as the feminist approach is concerned, Mary adopted from her mother the same indifference, the same qualities, and the same voice, which is demonstrated in one of her conflicts with Dick over the natives and their poverty: “It was not the voice of Mary, the individual but the voice of the suffering female, who wanted to show her husband she just would not be treated like that”. The expression “suffering female” is the evidence of the difficult position of women in society of that time. There are more passages referring to similar behaviour of Mary and her mother. She is influenced by her upbringing and despite her efforts to change it she finds out that it is impossible. The narrator claims: “She had inherited from her mother an arid feminism, which had no meaning in her own life at

obsessions and regrets: “It’s a long time since I came here. So long that I can’t quite remember...I should have left long ago. I don’t know why I didn’t. I don’t know why I came. But things are different. Very different. . I don’t know anything. I don’t understand. Why is this happening? I didn’t mean it to happen. But he won’t go away, he won’t go away” .It would be of great interest to pose a question at this point. What does Martha in fact mean by referring to “he”? It is presumably Moses--her constant obsession and nightmare. Tony starts to contemplate about Mary’s relation to the natives: “she had shut out everything that conflicted with her actions that would revive the code she had been brought up to follow” . Because of the fact that she ignores everything connected with her past,

weddings, but she had a profound distaste for sex; there had been little privacy in her home and there were things she did not care to remember; she had taken good care to forget them years ago. Martha Quest’s life and marriage described in the second part of the Children of Violence series called A Proper Marriage presents a complex portrait of Martha’s life in relation to the Rhodesian society, or rather, as Schlueter asserts, “a study of the individual conscience in its relations with the collective” . This part of the series comments on female independence and emancipation and discusses related themes such as relationship, sexuality, marriage, motherhood, and politics. A self-analysis of Martha Quest, the heroine of the series, enables to readers penetrate the mind and thoughts of an e

sealed away from what she was convinced she was” .Stella is, in contrast to Martha, in accordance with these conventional social expectations, which is clear from her comment on Martha’s appearance: “ you look awful, Matty, and it’s your duty to your husband to look nice” . Stella actually seems to be a prototype of an unemancipated woman who respects the traditional laws of society with the role of man as a breadwinner: “You’re mad to work when you’re married,” she explains to Martha .Talking about men and their independence in a marital relationship, Stella claims that it is necessary to manage men “without them knowing it”. They need to have independence and women must find the best strategy to make them tied to themselves. Martha is astonished at the way Stella and Alice speak about me

at each other, acknowledging frankly in this moment that they wished they had never married, wished they were not pregnant, even hated their husbands”. Hence, both women have to go through a phase of disappointment and despair with regard to their marriage and pregnancy. Martha tries to “recreate the coarsened soldier into something masculine and strong and attractive” but it is extremely difficult for her. Douglas always imagines Martha as a submissive housewife who takes care of their children, although he makes attempts to deny it: “Ever since we’ve been married you agreed I wasn’t only to housekeep and mind babies,” she reminds him . As soon as Douglas returns home, it seems to him that Martha “had built up a life of her own, with obligations and responsibilities” .Both of them are slo

Купить