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Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, 2022, 5(19); doi: 10.25236/AJHSS.2022.051917.

"The Other" and Cultural Identity in Doris Lessing's Martha Quest

Author(s)

Li Yanrong

Corresponding Author:
Li Yanrong
Affiliation(s)

Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot, 010000, China

Abstract

Doris Lessing is a white colonist from Britain with both Diaspora and marginal identity which gives her a special inspiration for writing the novel Martha Quest. The protagonist, Martha's painful experiences and tangled emotions are the real portrayal of Lessing's childhood. This article presents an in-depth analysis of "the Other" and the identity of culture, which reveals the exile, especially for white women are isolated from both colony and patriarchal society and are considered as "the Other" excluding from the European culture even African culture. It can be seen that the pursuit of cultural identity, freedom and independence in the context of heterogeneous culture is the spirit of this novel, and the writer, Lessing.

Keywords

Doris Lessing, Martha, "The Other", Cultural identity

Cite This Paper

Li Yanrong. "The Other" and Cultural Identity in Doris Lessing's Martha Quest. Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences (2022) Vol. 5, Issue 19: 95-100. https://doi.org/10.25236/AJHSS.2022.051917.

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