Riot of the Confined Darkness: The Return of the Repressed in Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing

• Main Authors: Chia-Sui Lee, 李佳穗
• Other Authors: Su-Lin Yu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/09113846594028304240

碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 外國語文學系碩博士班 === 94 === 　Though it is not read or examined as widely as Lessing’s most famous work, The Golden Notebook, The Grass is Singing, Lessing’s first novel published in 1950, still merits sustained attention for its embodying of various themes that are recurrent in her later novels and its profound relations with some important concepts of modern time. Drawing on theorists like Fanon, Foucault, Derrida and Freud who pose the ideas of insurrection of the excluded or the repressed darkness, this thesis aims to discuss “repression” and the “return of the repressed” in terms of race, class and sexuality in The Grass is Singing. The three main chapters can be seen as a whole organic unity, dealing with the similar topics: repression and the inevitable resistance or reemergence of the repressed. They can also be viewed separately as coping with different issues. Chapter One mainly discusses racial violence in the colony and the subversive potentials of the black. Chapter Two is dedicated to criticize the ruinous effects of white capitalist exploitation upon native laborers and the existed land. It also discusses how the specters of anti-capitalism or communism haunt and disturb the authority of the white. Chapter Three deals with Mary’s psychological process, focusing on her sexual repression and the return of her unconscious desires. It not only analyzes the causes and effects of Mary’s denial of sexuality, but also shows the inevitable re-emergence of her repressed instincts. Through these discussions of repression and the return of the repressed in my thesis, I aim to present that Lessing is not only a critical writer but also a literary prophet. On the one hand, with judgmental insights into several established hegemonic ideologies, she discerns and criticizes different forms of inequalities surrounding her. On the other hand, she shows the possibility of the subversion of the repressed. In other words, she positively foretells the coming of justice.