Cleft, not Cliff: Doris Lessing (novels, diaries, children, fantasy)

[ontheroad]

tigerlily mentioned she had read this book, and I wondered if any other Lessing fans have read it.

I got it at a small library in VT, and as they had no Lessing, they generously ordered it for me.

At the end of her career, Lessing seems to be tying up loose socio-political concepts and ideas that may have come up in her earlier work. However, no need to have read any other Lessing to appreciate this somewhat science fiction/fantasy short novel.

In some ways Cleft reminded me of Charlotte Gilman's Herland which courtesy of the internet can be read online.

Written just short of 100 years apart, it is fascinating how both female writers view gender issues.

Would like to hear what others thought of it!

[tigerlily]

I had a friend in Texas who loved Doris Lessing books. Aware of the fact that she just won the Nobel in Literature, I decided to give it a try. I just started book, but am intrigued so far. One of the reviews I read criticized the book because it has no defined characters.

[ontheroad]

I believe I only read the New York Times review, but having read all or nearly all of Lessings's work, I knew I'd read this as well with or without good reviews.

I'll be interested to hear what you think once you've finished it.

[tigerlily]

It was the NYT review. Actually read the review after I bought the book. LOL

[ontheroad]

Yes, we can laugh together: I probably didn't take them too seriously. Even with a hot Nobel Prize, Lessing hasn't that many friends in the critical literature world.

Originally Posted by tigerlily

It was the NYT review. Actually read the review after I bought the book. LOL

[tigerlily]

I found the premise of The Cleft provocative - a different take on the creation myth with women being the first inhabitants and men being unnecessary for procreation. Not so strange today as I would have never thought human cloning possible. The use of reverse stereotypes in the first part of the book was interesting. Lessing has been described as a feminist writer, but I don't think the book was particularly sexist or against men. Some critics thought the characters were too few and undefined. However, I read on one of the sites that writers during Nero's rule used "representative characters, abstractness and large amounts of speculation" in their If that is true, Lessing realistically portrayed how a Roman would have told this story and the critics are wrong. Also, I think she meant to show that in the beginning people were group thinkers mentality and later evolved into thinking as individuals.

All in all, The Cleft was well worth the read. I would to explor some of Lessing's earlier novels so I have a basis for comparison. I skimmed through Herland but have not had a chance to read in entirety for comparison of gender issues. Gilman appears to construct sentences in the same concise manner as Lessing.

[ontheroad]

Thanks for your insights, tigerlily.

It's been more than six months since I read "Cleft" and it may take some time for me to reawaken the memory channel.

What comes to mind, first, however, is not the plot but the theme, and your mention of Herland. Gilman struggled with feminine principles in some way, I suspect, that Lessing hasn't. It could simply be a generational disparity or one of temperament, but there exists a sharpness in Gilman's work (Yellow Wallpaper (broken link)) that is not evident in Doris Lessing's (feminist) writing.

Gilman and Lessing both I believe suffered bad marriages (ruminating, not factual) and came from dissimilar socio-economic backgrounds. Gilman was a member of the Beecher Stowe family, while if I recall correctly Lessing came from a more middle class family in Africa--perhaps farmers--and emigrated to Britain as a young woman. One of several things they shared in common was their running away rather than running towards, and unlike Virginia Woolf, chose to live, a not insignificant difference.

The struggles each of these women faced, parallel but divergent, are evident in the two books, Herland and the Cleft.

Lessing's life is revealed in her Martha Quest series, The Children of Violence, a slow, sensitive, insightful exploration into one woman's coming of age, and then growing old and growing apart.

There is something apocalyptic about Lessing's life work, and while Cleft is not the culmination of her oeuvre, it appears to be a fractal, something akin to a piece torn from her science fiction explorations in Canopus in Argos (a series that begins with Shikasta, and follows the steps of the final Children of Violence novel, "Four Gated City."

The Cleft, and the other books, stories, plays, Lessing has written since those two landmark series appear to be important to the writer, but as a reader, I found them less substantial, more interior, and lacking the provocative implications of her earlier work.

Herland was a breakthrough book for Gilman, Cleft appears to be a silent, and somewhat lonely quest for Lessing as she explores her own conflict of gender relationships.

Strong, and often defiant women like Gilman, Lessing and others, are capable of envisioning the world through a lens few others permit themselves to view. Neither provokes animosity in their readership, but neither are writing for an antagonistic audience. To some extent, I suspect they both wrote for themselves, diaries that we read as novels.

Separating men from women, and portraying the woman as the superior gender is as fertile a subject as Gaia, and the Alphabet and the Goddess, Shlain's non-fiction work exploring image and word, but most importantly the subjugation through word of the feminine, should be required reading at universities.

In some ways I wanted more from The Cleft then it offered, but as a huge Lessing fan, it goes without saying that I had to read it, just as I read all of Gilman's work.

The subject of the feminine and masculine has always fascinated me, and the roles each play in modern and ancient times both perplex and excite my interest.