The novel, The Summer before the Dark is an optimistic novel of Doris Lessing as it traces the protagonist’s (Kate Brown) journey from darkness to light. Kate Brown is an extremely talented, intelligent woman who rebels against the stereotypical standards set by the suppressive society on women. Every journey that she undertakes is shown as a stepping stone to find her real ‘self’. She attempts to search her identity through dreams and languages. Her family has always enjoyed her services as mother and wife for the last twenty five summers. This summer, while her family shall be visiting different parts of the world to spend their summer holidays, she is left alone and finally takes a job as a translator as is mentioned in the text that, “She
…show more content…
Kate in The Summer before the Dark, analyses herself through exile and introspection. During this phase, she suffers from an intense spiritual crisis and dementia which disturb her appearance as well. Her dress sense, hair colour, and make up, everything changes, as now she hardly cares about it. She finally accepts her real appearance and also confronts the fear of ageing. She realizes that the physical appearance is only a façade and doesn’t reveal the true identity of a real ‘self’. She goes through a number of troublesome phases in search of her real, hidden identity as a woman besides being a mother and wife; she realizes her actual role in the society as an individual complete in itself. She becomes aware of the fact that it is not the visible physical appearance that defines the woman; it is the inner growth and experiences that justify her. In the beginning of the novel, Kate is seen ‘waiting’ passively but at the end of it, she is actually acting. From passive she becomes an active participant in the course of her life and catches hold of her lost life, …show more content…
When the novel begins Kate is seen as a passive being waiting passively but as novel commences forward, she realizes that her passivity is not something she actually relies on and finally takes back actively, the charge of her life back, independent of any social or familial support. She realizes that the external gaze, the other people’s suggestions and points of view had become part of her life and she was dependent on others for her definition even about her ‘self’, but now , the time has come for the renewal of her lost ‘self’ and coming to the terms with her own forgotten and fragmented ‘self’.
Therefore, in order to retrieve her autonomous ‘self’, she deconstructs her earlier identity and finally reconstructs it by narrating her past to Maureen and remembering some of the parts of it into new identity, as:
Kate began telling things out of her past. She could not remember how they had begun on this, but soon it was how they were spending their days. Her memories were not the kind of thing that had struck her before as important or even interesting: now she was assessing them before Maureen’s reactions. It almost seemed as if the things she remembered were because of Maureen’s interest- Maureen’s need? It was Maureen who was doing the choosing? (Lessing 1973:
Kate in The Summer before the Dark, analyses herself through exile and introspection. During this phase, she suffers from an intense spiritual crisis and dementia which disturb her appearance as well. Her dress sense, hair colour, and make up, everything changes, as now she hardly cares about it. She finally accepts her real appearance and also confronts the fear of ageing. She realizes that the physical appearance is only a façade and doesn’t reveal the true identity of a real ‘self’. She goes through a number of troublesome phases in search of her real, hidden identity as a woman besides being a mother and wife; she realizes her actual role in the society as an individual complete in itself. She becomes aware of the fact that it is not the visible physical appearance that defines the woman; it is the inner growth and experiences that justify her. In the beginning of the novel, Kate is seen ‘waiting’ passively but at the end of it, she is actually acting. From passive she becomes an active participant in the course of her life and catches hold of her lost life, …show more content…
When the novel begins Kate is seen as a passive being waiting passively but as novel commences forward, she realizes that her passivity is not something she actually relies on and finally takes back actively, the charge of her life back, independent of any social or familial support. She realizes that the external gaze, the other people’s suggestions and points of view had become part of her life and she was dependent on others for her definition even about her ‘self’, but now , the time has come for the renewal of her lost ‘self’ and coming to the terms with her own forgotten and fragmented ‘self’.
Therefore, in order to retrieve her autonomous ‘self’, she deconstructs her earlier identity and finally reconstructs it by narrating her past to Maureen and remembering some of the parts of it into new identity, as:
Kate began telling things out of her past. She could not remember how they had begun on this, but soon it was how they were spending their days. Her memories were not the kind of thing that had struck her before as important or even interesting: now she was assessing them before Maureen’s reactions. It almost seemed as if the things she remembered were because of Maureen’s interest- Maureen’s need? It was Maureen who was doing the choosing? (Lessing 1973: