The women in Doris Lessing's major novels attain plateaus of selfhood through their different experiences as surrogate mothers. At each plateau they reach an apex of sociopolitical, psychological and spiritual development. These plateaus are self-reliance, emotional fortitude, sagacious wisdom, spiritual awakening and restorative power, the highest level of selfhood. Reaching one plateau often generates the movement toward another, though each plateau is attained independently with no defined order or sequence of progression. Attaining plateaus of selfhood, however, is contingent upon breaking the pattern of what the novelist calls the "nightmare repetition." This term refers to the attitudes and code of behavior with which one patriarchal generation indoctrinates the next. It is only when a woman does not strive to evade the "nightmare repetition" that she fails to attain any plateau of selfhood. Any attempt by the woman to reproduce the patriarchal structure, according to her own perceptions, results in its distortion. Then, not only does the woman fail to attain plateaus of selfhood, but also the altered re-creation of the social order produces chaos and havoc for her own familial unit and for the culture as a whole. / This study examines six female protagonists who most distinctly illustrate the relationship between surrogate motherhood and the attainment of selfhood. Martha Quest in The Children of Violence series (1952-1969), Kate Brown in The Summer Before the Dark (1973), the unnamed narrator in The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974), and Janna Somers in The Diaries of Jane Somers (1984) attain plateaus of selfhood through their different experiences as surrogate mothers. The major characters in Lessing's latest novels, Alice Mellings in The Good Terrorist (1985) and Harriet Lovatt in The Fifth Child (1988), however, fail to reach plateaus of selfhood, neither initiating a quest nor denouncing the "nightmare repetition." Consequently, they fail to undergo sociopolitical, psychological or spiritual development within the context of the works. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-06, Section: A, page: 1663. / Major Professor: Fred L. Standley. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1989.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_78024 |
| Contributors | Dvorak, Angeline Godwin., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 230 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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