POLITICIZING THE PERSONAL: DORIS LESSING’S “TO ROOM NINETEEN” AND “HOW I FINALLY LOST MY HEART” AS FICTIONAL VERSIONS OF SECOND WAVE FEMINISM’S SLOGAN

Year 2017, Volume: 15 Issue: 3, 265 - 282, 30.09.2017

Mine Özyurt Kılıç

Abstract

This article aims to show that although Doris Lessing
rejects the relatively narrow categorisation of her writing as “feminist”, the
two short stories she wrote in 1963, “To Room Nineteen” and “How I Finally Lost
My Heart”, make the claims of second wave feminism visible. As they illustrate
a wholistic attitude that sees human beings beyond labels, the stories’
emphasis on the need to bridge the artificial gap between public and private
realms supports the second wave feminism’s slogan: “The personal is political!” The article argues that
as social
constructs that conceptualize different realms of everyday life, public and
private spaces are understood as gendered, therefore a separation between them
is part of a patriarchal political structure that imposes a restriction on
women’s personal lives. As a writer who problematizes artificial divides in
social life, Doris Lessing clearly imbues her works with this consciousness
that goes hand in hand with the central discussions of second wave feminism’s
consciousness raising groups.

Keywords

second wave feminism, gender and space, private versus public space

References

• Bazin, Nancy Topping (1999), “Androgyny or Catastrophe: Doris Lessing’s Vision in the Early 1970s.” Spiritual Exploration in the Works of Doris Lessing. London: Greenwood. Benhabib, Seyla (1998), “Models of Public Space: Hannah Arendt, the Liberal Tradition, and Jürgen Habermas” Feminism: The Public and the Private. Ed. Joan B. Landes. Oxford: Oxford. Fallon, Erin, et al. (2013), A Reader's Companion to the Short Story in English. New York: Routledge. Gardiner, Judith Kegan (1989), “Gendered Choices: History and Empathy in the Short Fiction of Doris Lessing.” Rhys, Stead, Lessing and the Politics of Empathy. Indiana: Indiana UP. Hareven, Tamara K. (1991), “The Home and The Family in Historical Perspective.” Social Research 58 (1), pp. 253-85. Hunter, Melanie and Darby McIntosh (1999), “‘A Question of Wholes’: Spiritual Intersecting, Universal Re-Visioning in the Work of Doris Lessing.” Spiritual Exploration in the Works of Doris Lessing. London: Greenwood. Kaup, Monika (1993), Mad Intertextuality. Madness in Twentieth-Century Women’s Writing. Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.