Conclusion

Abstract

I have been concerned, in this study, with a line of development in Doris Lessing’s novels which expresses her growing recognition of the necessity of the reconstruction of ‘our ways of perceiving reality’ in order to achieve a balance between outer and inner modes of perception. That is the guiding idea in my study and it is in relation to that development that the main features of her novels studied here emerge. I have tried to show that Doris Lesing’s novels represent an honest and unflinching response to a situation which has led the author to see the very structures of the mind as the bases of the individual and collective predicament and limitation. In following the course of Lessing’s fiction it has become obvious to me that the strongest line of continuity in her canon is the development of her recognition of the need for an inward movement to counterbalance the predominant outer mode of perception. Only in the achievement of that perennial balance do the characters take valid action and the novels become developmental.

It is as if the structure of the mind is being battered from inside … Maybe out of destruction there will be born some new creature. I don’t mean physically. What interests me more than anything is how our minds are changing, how our ways of perceiving reality are changing.

(Doris Lessing at Stony Brook in 1969)¹