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Turning Her Life Into Fiction Autobiography, Narrative

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Turning Her Life Into Fiction Autobiography, Narrative Turning Her Life Into Fiction Autobiography, narrative perspectives and memory in Doris Lessing’s The Memoirs of a Survivor . Ann-Christin Arntsen Master’s Thesis in English Literature Department of Culture and Literature Faculty of Humanities University of Tromsø Autumn 2008 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my fiancé for supporting me during my years as a student, and I would especially and most sincerely like to thank MA thesis supervisor Førsteamanuensis Stephen F. Wolfe at the University of Tromsø for all the help and support which made it possible for me to write this thesis. 2 Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 4 Chapter 1 ................................................................................................................................... 11 Doris Lessing: Life, Work and Beliefs ................................................................................ 11 The Memoirs of a Survivor ................................................................................................... 17 Criticism ............................................................................................................................... 19 Autobiography or fiction? .................................................................................................... 20 “It” ........................................................................................................................................ 28 Chapter 2 – The “Real” World .................................................................................................. 33 The Focalizer ........................................................................................................................ 34 Mother and Daughter or Two of the Same? ......................................................................... 37 The Animal, the Boyfriend and June .................................................................................... 43 Failing Communities ............................................................................................................ 49 Space ..................................................................................................................................... 59 Chapter Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 66 Chapter 3 – Behind the Wall ..................................................................................................... 68 The Impersonal Visits ........................................................................................................... 69 The “Personal” Scenes .......................................................................................................... 76 The “Other” scenes ............................................................................................................... 89 The Connection ..................................................................................................................... 93 The Ending ........................................................................................................................... 95 Chapter Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 100 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 102 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................ 107 3 Introduction Doris Lessing’s The Memoirs of a Survivor (henceforth Memoirs ) has puzzled many critics since it was first published in 1974, and I am no exception. I did not come across the novel by accident or by sheer interest of Lessing, although she was not unknown to me as an author, but it was my thesis advisor who pushed me gently in the direction of Lessing as he suggested that I read The Fifth Child and Ben in the World .1 Her style of writing interested me, and after I continued to read some of her work, including Memoirs , there was something there that triggered my curiosity about the novel and its intriguing development in a collapsing world. Initially my thesis were to include the novel The Children of Men 2 by P. D. James, but as I realised how comprehensive Memoirs really was, I made the decision to concentrate solely on Lessing’s novel in order to try and grasp its levels of ambiguity, and thus dedicate my whole thesis to Memoirs. The first time I read Memoirs I overlooked, or rather forgot, the subtitle “An Attempt at an Autobiography,” and happily read along interpreting the novel as speculative fiction, as a description of a collapsing world, a dystopia. I then found the novel rather uncomplicated in terms of how to interpret the plot; simply straightforward and without much difficulty, looking at the breakdown of society, the relationship between the characters and so on, understanding the narrators journeys through the wall of her living room as a way to mentally escape the collapse of the outside world, and also as a way to learn more about Emily. Although the ending of the novel rather puzzled me, and I was left with the question of how the narrator in fact survives the collapse of the city in order to tell the story, I did not find the novel to be problematic. Then, when I read Memoirs for the second time I realised some of the ambiguity of the novel, still interpreting it as speculative fiction, but at the same time as autobiographical in the sense that the “personal” scenes behind the wall in fact reflect Doris Lessing herself as a 1 Novels published by Lessing respectively in 1988 and 2000 2 Published in 1992: “P.D. James imagines a future England in which no children has been born for twenty-five years. Under the despotic rule of Xan Lyppiatt, the warden of England, the old are despairing and the young violent and cruel” (Cover of The Children of Men) . 4 child, a matter that was confirmed during my reading of Lessing’s Under My Skin . Thus I realised that the autobiographical aspect of the novel in fact is important. It also became clear to me that the novel deals with the matter of memory, and that especially the scenes behind the wall explore how memory works. However, at this point in the process I still found the form of the novel to be some sort of speculative fiction, because it takes place in the future, describing how the breakdown of society affects the different characters, the communities and their ways of living. However, after I had read more of the secondary material that deals with Lessing’s novel, and also read the novel for the third time, I realised that there is a third interpretation of the world in Memoirs , an interpretation that is related to Lessing’s beliefs and exploration of Sufism. This interpretation enhances the notions of ambiguity in the novel; now the city does not exist in reality, but functions as a symbol of the human mind; the narrator is on a spiritual journey and what goes on behind the wall also represents the collective and individual self of the narrator. Also, during this reading, the term speculative fiction is no longer accurate when labelling the form of Lessing’s novel, as she throughout the novel seems to play with different genres. On top of all there I also found a psychological interpretation of Memoir , where all of the different characters in the novel represent different aspects of the narrator’s psyche. I found the lack of unified interpretations by the different critics frustrating, as it made it so much more difficult for me to work out which direction I should move towards, before it occurred to me that altogether I believe that Memoirs can be interpreted more or less in all of these ways. Instead of focusing on trying to find the one ultimately correct interpretation of the novel for this thesis, I will include the different ways in which Lessing’s novel can be interpreted; as fictional, as autobiographical, as spiritual and also as psychological. Thus I do not dismiss any interpretation of Memoirs , but rather include them all in the thesis in order to emphasise the ambiguity of the novel. However, I also found an interpretation of the world behind the wall of my own, and this will be the main focus in chapter 3 of my thesis. 5 Critics tend to focus on the elements of Sufism in Memoirs , and it is difficult to argue against the argument that the narrator is undergoing a spiritual journey, which is very much in line with Lessing’s exploration of such themes in some of her other work. On one hand, because I cannot say that I am very familiar with the way of the Sufi, I do not consider it plausible that I could argue against these critics on their interpretation of the novel, but on the other hand, I also believe that Memoirs can be interpreted in different ways, which is why I want to take on the task of exploring the novel according to my own interpretation as well as the ones made by the critics. Because the focus in the novel has often and generally been on the spiritual and psychological level, critics tend to forget that the novel is also partly autobiographical according to Lessing’s own words. Furthermore the critics who recognise the autobiographical aspect of the novel tend to leave out an explanation for why Lessing chose to combine autobiography with fiction in such an intricate manner, and
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