Doris lessing

DORIS LESSING

Doris Lessing was born in Persia (now Iran) in 1919 to British parents.

When she was 6, her parents obtained a grant from the British government and moved to the then British colony of Rhodesia ( now Zimbadwe ). At he age of seven Doris was sent to a Roman Catholic convent school an later to Salisbury High School for Girls, which she left at the age of fourteen, but continuing her individual education.

Ordering books from England, she studied Lawrence, Sthendhal, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. When she was fifteen, she left her family and worked as a nurse, already beginning to write stories. From the age of 18 she worked in the Rhodesian Parliament for the non-racist left-wing party. At 19 she married and she had 2 children but few years later she divorced and she married a German political activist in the group, Gottfried Lessing.

She never thought that marriage and motherhood could imply an end to her life as a writer, she always believed this activity would give her a freedom that most people could never imagine.

In 1949 she divorced and moved to London and in 1950 she published her fist novel The Grass is Singing a critique of racial politics in Rhodesia.

She worked in all literary genres : novel, short story, science fiction, essay, autobiography. She has always stated that she must write as she feels and she always felt that if she stopped writing she would have wasted her life.

Her best- known work are:

The Grass is Singing (1950) : the setting is the post war Africa, in a small town ans its unbearable snobberies  the harsh life of the veldt farm, the injustice of racial inequality. This story deal about a with farmer whose wife has a relationship with thei African servant who eventually kills her.

The Children of Violence (1952- 1969)

The Golden Notebook (1962) It's a chronicle of the life of the protagonist, Anna Wulf the work is divided into four notebooks. And each book has a different colour.

The RED her experience in the Communist Party; the YELLOW book is a collection of notes for the draft of a new novel; in the BLUE one Anna records her daily life.

The Fifth Child (1988)

The sweetest Dream (2001)

Collected Stories (1978)

The Grandmothers (2003)

Under my Skin Volume one and two of my Autobiography to 1949 or from 1949 to 1962. (1997).

Features and themes

She was a prolific writer and her books cover many themes:

African country : seen from various prospective

Writers duty : to describe the world and individuals as they really are.

The great illusion of Communism and the collapse of her ideals;

Conciousnss of post- war dangers

Conditions of Women

The need of men and women to attain knowledge of themselves

The difficulty of inter- relations

The need to live our life with mature freedom, energy and courage without passively conforming to social conventions we feel unable to accept.