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Durham E-Theses Durham E-Theses The good parodist: beyond images of escape in the ction of Doris lessing Ridout, Alice Rachel How to cite: Ridout, Alice Rachel (1997) The good parodist: beyond images of escape in the ction of Doris lessing, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/5067/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk THE GOOD PARODIST: BEYOND IMAGES OF ESCAPE IN THE FICTION DORIS LESSING ALICE RACHEL RIDOUT M.A. BY THESIS UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH STUDIES 1997 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the written consent of the author and information derived from it should be acknowledged. - 6 OCT 1397 ALICE RACHEL RIDOUT DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM M.A. BY THESIS, 1997 THE GOOD PARODIST-L BEYOND IMAGES OF ESCAPE IN THE FICTION OF DORIS LESSING ABSTRACT In her earlier fiction, Doris Lessing presents images of escape from what Cohen and Taylor term "everyday life". These images of escape, such as the vision of the "noble city, set four-square" in Martha Quest and Martha's plunge into the muddy veld pothole in A Proper Marriage, are framed by realism. In positing an escape from 'realism' (understood as both literary form and "everyday reality") they suggest the inadequacy of realism. However, the success of these images is limited as they attempt to posit an "outside", a project which postmodernism has taught us, is bound to fail. Lessing increasingly replaces these images of escape with parody. Parody more fundamentally interrogates realism and allows Lessing to negotiate an escape whilst recognizing her implication in contemporary society. My model of parody takes its lead from Linda Hutcheon's consideration of "serious parody", as marking "the intersection of creation and re-creation, of invention and critique" (A Theory of Parody, 1985). This, I argue, is the intersection of Lessing's political and aesthetic projects. Lessing's use of parody also provides her with a useful strategy for negotiating subjectivity. I argue that whilst she questions the liberal humanist self, she does not completely reject it. She is "post-humanist" rather than "anti-humanist". Lessing's "space fiction" seems to signal a return to the project of positing an "outside" implied by her images of escape. However, I illustrate how her space fiction is equally subject to the problematic politics of parody. Just as parody "installs" a pre-existing text to "subvert" it, so space fiction "installs" the Earth in order to critique it. The "dual-codedness" of parody is, I conclude, perfect for Lessing's multiple projects. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 DEAR WRITER', 'DEAR STUDENT', 'DEAR POOH' CHAPTER ONE 'IMAGES OF ESCAPE' (Martha Quest and A Proper Marriage) CHAPTER TWO REHEARSALS FOR A PARODIC PERFORMANCE "If you must blame somebody, then blame Mrs Turner. (The Grass Is Singing) 'Take two': cutting hair and gender (The Summer Before the Dark) CHAPTER THREE '"WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO BE INSTEAD?'": COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES IN THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK CHAPTER FOUR LAING AND "ANTI-HUMANIST BULLYING" CHAPTER FIVE THE POSTMODERNITY OF THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK'S "MOMENT" 1962: "A crisis over representation" "Why not, simply, the truth?" The "battleground" The Four-Gated City: humanism, realism, metafiction and mothering "Parody is a perfect postmodern form" CHAPTER SIX PARODY AS A STRATEGY OF ESCAPE "Her own flat" "'Communist Cloud-Cuckoo Spit'" Saying "something about the conventional novel" 2 CHAPTER SEVEN BEYOND PARODY? 169 "Writing beyond the ending" 170 "Inner logic" 175 The politics of space fiction 189 CHAPTER EIGHT "PARODY REGAINED?" 196 CONCLUSION PARODY AND TOTALITARIANISM 214 BIBLIOGRAPHY 224 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without her prior consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor, Pat Waugh for being so inspiring and helpful throughout my student years at the University of Durham. It was on her 'Post• war Fiction1 course in my second year as an undergraduate that I first read Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, and the rest, as they say, is history! I would also like to thank my parents for, quite simply, everything - from financial support to cups of tea, from proof reading to simply being at the other end of a telephone! Thanks are also due to my sister for reminding me of the subversive nature of laughter when I needed it most. "The gang" at Fonteyn Court certainly helped with this! For supporting me throughout what proved to be pretty tough undergraduate years, I would also like to thank Daniel Hayden whose influence on my work is, indeed, still evident! Thanks, also, to Kevin Capuder for my title - 'The Good Parodist'! Finally thanks are due to the British Academy for the studentship which enabled me to do this Masters, and to Diana Collecott, Palacky University and the British Council for the opportunity to lecture in the Czech Republic. In Memoriam Charles Harry Valentin 1974 - 1993 6 "Like every other writer I get letters all the time from young people who are about to write theses and essays about my books [...] They all say: 'Please give me a list of the articles about your work, the critics who have written about you, the authorities.' [...] These requests I answer as follows: 'Dear Student. You are mad. Why spend months and years writing thousands of words about one book, or even one writer, when there are hundreds of books waiting to be read. You don't see that you are the victim of a pernicious system. And if you have yourself chosen my work as your subject, and if you do have to write a thesis - and believe me I am very grateful that what I've written is being found useful by you - then why don't you read what I have written and make up your own mind about what you think, testing it against your own life, your own experience. Never mind about Professors White and Black.' 'Dear Writer' - they reply. 'But I have to know what the authorities say, because if I don't quote them, my professor won't give me any marks.'" Doris Lessing 'Preface' to The Golden Notebook "Pooh began to feel a little more comfortable, because when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it." A.A. Milne Winnie-the 7 INTRODUCTION: 'DEAR WRITER', 'DEAR STUDENT', 'DEAR POOH' It may seem rather surprising to you (a reader whom I shall presently identify) to open a book on literary theory and be confronted with an account of adultery.1 This comment of Pearce's is one I would like to take as a starting point for a brief explanation of my choice of opening quotations. For, if to start "a book on literary theory" "with an account of adultery" is "rather surprising", to commence a thesis on Doris Lessing with a quotation from Lessing to the effect that I am "mad", must seem absurd. However, it shows me using the strategy Lessing upholds for dealing with the 'postmodern condition'. Lessing's strategy finds its ideal embodiment in Mathlong, the African black leader who Marion wants to write to, in order to comfort him in his political imprisonment: He was the man who performed actions, played roles, that he believed to be necessary for the good of others, even while he preserved an ironic doubt about the results of his actions. I am not suggesting that this thesis is "for the good of others", but I certainly preserve "an ironic doubt about the results"! However, the parallels I would like to identify are, first, between Mathlong's self-conscious role playing and my self-conscious awareness of the position from which I write (the 'student' identified by Lessing). The second parallel is between Mathlong's investment in those roles "even while he preserved an 1. Lynne Pearce, Reading Dialogics (Interrogating Texts Ser. London: Arnold, 1994) p.l. 2. Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (1962. Preface, Doris Lessing. London: Flamingo-Harper, 1993) p.520. 8 ironic doubt", and my use of postmodern theories, whilst retaining "ironic doubt" about "the results" of this borrowing because of the incompatibility of both feminist politics and Lessing's privileging of "experience", with postmodernism*s "strong thesis" of the multiple "Deaths of the Subject, History and Metaphysics".3 In my conclusion I make a gesture towards overcoming these problems of my situatedness, and the incompatibility of politics and "experience" with a "strong thesis" of postmodernism, by recontextualizing Lessing's fiction and the theory of parody. In this conclusion, I attempt Lessing's challenge of "testing it against your own life, your own experience".
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