Doris Lessing- an Essay
DORIS LESSING: THE GREAT NOBEL LAUREATE
"…that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny"- Doris Lessing , as described by the Swedish Academy while awarding her with the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007. Not an exaggeration for a writer whose repertoire is as eclectic as the range of issues and concerns she explored. Her writings cover modernism, post-modernism, politics, socialism, communism, feminism, science fiction and Sufism. She is now regarded as one of the most important writers in English to emerge in the latter half of twentieth century, but her fiery words and the knack of speaking uncomfortable and unpalatable truths through her were a source of consternation in the literary and political circles in the post-war era.
Doris was not blessed with a perfectly happy childhood, a fact that lent a dystopian touch to her writings. Born on Oct. 22, 1919, in Persia(now Iran), to Capt. Alfred Taylor and Emily Maude Taylor, she did not have the comforts of a wealthy family. Her father had lost a leg in the First World War and her childhood was spent absorbing his bitter memories from the war. She was not enamored of the rigid lifestyle governed by rules and hygiene imposed on her by her mother, nor the strict style of the convent school she was enrolled in. She found solace in the natural world which she explored with her brother, and had dropped out of school by the age of fourteen. Self-educated there-after, this was the end of her formal education. By 15, to escape from her disciplinarian mother, she had left her home and started working as a nursemaid. This is also the time she started reading material on politics and sociology. It is around this time only that she started writing too.
Lessing’s transformation into a self-educated intellectual and her strong belief that unhappy childhood seems to produce fiction writers is very much evident in her
"…that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny"- Doris Lessing , as described by the Swedish Academy while awarding her with the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007. Not an exaggeration for a writer whose repertoire is as eclectic as the range of issues and concerns she explored. Her writings cover modernism, post-modernism, politics, socialism, communism, feminism, science fiction and Sufism. She is now regarded as one of the most important writers in English to emerge in the latter half of twentieth century, but her fiery words and the knack of speaking uncomfortable and unpalatable truths through her were a source of consternation in the literary and political circles in the post-war era.
Doris was not blessed with a perfectly happy childhood, a fact that lent a dystopian touch to her writings. Born on Oct. 22, 1919, in Persia(now Iran), to Capt. Alfred Taylor and Emily Maude Taylor, she did not have the comforts of a wealthy family. Her father had lost a leg in the First World War and her childhood was spent absorbing his bitter memories from the war. She was not enamored of the rigid lifestyle governed by rules and hygiene imposed on her by her mother, nor the strict style of the convent school she was enrolled in. She found solace in the natural world which she explored with her brother, and had dropped out of school by the age of fourteen. Self-educated there-after, this was the end of her formal education. By 15, to escape from her disciplinarian mother, she had left her home and started working as a nursemaid. This is also the time she started reading material on politics and sociology. It is around this time only that she started writing too.
Lessing’s transformation into a self-educated intellectual and her strong belief that unhappy childhood seems to produce fiction writers is very much evident in her