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Selcuk Senturk
KINSHIP REIMAGINED:
FAMILY IN DORIS LESSING’S FICTION
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Cover illustration by Mario Breda / Shutterstock.com.
ISBN 978-3-631-82674-4 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-83104-5 (E-PDF)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-83105-2 (EPUB)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-83106-9 (MOBI)
DOI 10.3726/b17409
© Peter Lang GmbH
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Berlin 2020
All rights reserved.
Peter Lang – Berlin ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙ Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien
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About the author
Selcuk Senturk holds a PhD in English from University of Leicester, UK. He teaches and researches in the areas of ecofeminist criticism, Sufi mysticism, Marxist theory, non-normative families in contemporary British fiction.
About the book
This book focuses on Doris Lessing’s social and political reappraisal of the family. It looks at how her fiction both critiques traditional patriarchal family structures and explores alternative and non-normative configurations of family. The continuation of traditional ideas about family suggests that Lessing’s fiction remains meaningful and relevant today.
Kinship Reimagined: Family in Doris Lessing’s Fiction is a thoroughly researched, original and interesting contribution to both the study of Doris Lessing’s work and the study of the family, as it is represented in twentieth-century fiction. Senturk’s argument – that Lessing’s work develops from a critique of the family towards a resignification of it – is clearly argued, well structured, and engaging to read.
Susan Watkins, Professor in Cultural Studies and Humanities,
Leeds Beckett University, UK
Selcuk Senturk’s monograph is a valuable contribution to the study of one of the twentieth century’s most important authors. Senturk analyzes with great insight the ways that Doris Lessing first resisted, then reconsidered, and finally reimagined family roles and kinship structures, as well as gender norms, during her prolific career. In Senturk’s work, the family emerges as not just a theme in Lessing’s writings but a key critical concept for understanding their import. Drawing expertly on such current critical discourses as feminism and eco-criticism, Senturk makes clear the enduring relevance of Lessing’s novels, showing how they continue to speak to the urgent problems of our time.
Dr Cornelius Collins, Co-editor in Chief in Doris Lessing Studies,
Fordham University, USA
Selcuk Senturk provides informed, systematic interpretation of the Western family across the corpus of Lessing’s novels. This insightful, sustained analysis reaches original and revealing conclusions, especially concerning lesser studied works, such as Mara and Dann and The Sweetest Dream.
Sandra Singer, Associate Professor in the Department of English and Theatre Studies,
University of Guelph, CA
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Dedicated to the families we choose to live inside…
This book focuses on Doris Lessing’s social and political reappraisal of the family. It explores Lessing’s attempt to overcome the restrictions and limitations of the family as an ideological construct through her engagement with three political movements and one mystical philosophy in her fiction: communism, feminism, Sufism, and postcolonial ecofeminism. In Chapter One, the impact of communism on the family is explored in The Good Terrorist (1985) and The Sweetest Dream (2001). A revolutionary movement that challenges normative family arrangements in theory is shown to be ultimately unable to change women’s traditional roles in practice. Chapter Two looks at female discontent and shows how women reformulate their roles within the family in The Summer Before the Dark (1973) and The Fifth Child (1988). Chapter Three focuses on The Memoirs of a Survivor (1971) and Ben, in the World (2000), and suggests that Lessing employs Sufism to transform family and introduce non-normative kinship. Lastly, environmental exploitation is the subject of Chapter Four, which examines how Lessing’s concern for the environment initiates changes in her representation of the family in The Grass Is Singing (1950) and Mara and Dann: An Adventure (1999). The work highlights Lessing’s broadening vision of family by comparing and contrasting two novels from different periods of her career in each chapter. It also illustrates that Lessing’s representation of family develops in three phases: political, mystical and environmental. Overall, the book demonstrates that Lessing celebrates rather than rejects the family. Her fiction envisages alternative family structures and non-normative kinship without being anti-family.
Dr Selcuk Senturk,
Leicester,
