Doris Lessing’s Attitude to Marriage as Seen through the Albanian Binoculars

Abstract

Being considered a novelist of ideas, we believe Lessing’s strength lies in her concept of the individual and his or her relation to the society. Because she deals with abstract ideas about women, men and society, and because she cannot place all her ideas in narrative context, her own voice comes through even more distinctly. She moves from realistic fiction to science fiction with a clearly didactic purpose: to make the individual alert of the risk that the unjust society poses to life itself. Therein lies her interest in marriage. This is going to be one of the main issues to be analyzed and compared to the Albanian environment. Martha Quest in “Children of Violence” series forces herself into marriage in an act of rebellion towards the tensions and the expectations of her traditional parents and community. Unlike Martha Quest the Albanian female is considered a curse from the very first moment she comes to light, due to the fact that she will provide no support to the family in the future (she is supposed to get married and join her husband’s family), as compared to the male who is expected to provide all the commodities to the parents and the relatives. Therefore, the aim of this presentation is to show Lessing’s attitude towards marriage as compared to the Albanian reality of the female identity defined by her relation to any man in her life.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n10p520