On Lessing’s Moral and Harmonious Concept in The Cleft

Abstract

At the age of 88, Doris Lessing won Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007. And in the same year, she published her fable-like novel The Cleft, in which Lessing told us that the first group of human beings emerged as females who had the ability of asexual reproduction. Moreover, she also described the evolution of the relationship between males and females and illustrated the gender similarities and differences. With the focus on Lessing’s neutral interpretation about male and female complementation and mutual dependence from the aspects of physiology and psychology, this paper explores what she would like to transfer to us. Through textual analysis and comparison of advantages and disadvantages of males and females respectively, the paper draws the conclusion that Lessing shows us her concept of harmonious coexistence between males and females, which gives us moral education to cultivate the awareness of a community of shared future for mankind.