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Between Convention and Innovation—A Border Crossing in The Summer Before the Dark
GE Jing-ping
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2018.06.001
Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China
Alice Ridout and Susan Watkins offers a best perspective in their book Doris Lessing: Border Crossings, to contemplate Lessing’s writing. In her 57-year publishing career, Lessing always crosses the borders: as a feminist or anti-feminist, as a science fiction writer or a realist who lost her way, as a Marxist or a reactionary, as a British writer or a postcolonial one. Lessing’s border-crossing not only lies in her different genres of writing or in different novels, but even in a single comparatively traditional novel. The Summer Before the Dark is a representative work of Lessing’s women portrayal transition from focusing on their outside world exploration to on their inner world seeking. This essay tries to look at the content and form of the novel, and to illustrate that Lessing’s border-crossing is also fulfilled in one single novel. She successfully crosses the border of convention and innovation: conventional in content, while innovative in form.
Doris Lessing, The Summer Before the Dark, border crossing, convention, innovation
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