‘Lift me up!’: The New Major Discourses of Care and Ageing in Doris Lessing’s<i> The Diaries of Jane Somers</i>

Zuzanna Zarebska

doi:doi:10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.13

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‘Lift me up!’: The New Major Discourses of Care and Ageing in Doris Lessing’s The Diaries of Jane Somers

Zuzanna Zarebska^*

Published in English Language, Literature & Culture (Volume 9, Issue 4)

Received: 12 March 2024 Accepted: 13 May 2024 Published: 23 September 2024

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Abstract

The genre of Reifungsroman considers different temporal aspects of individuation. It aids and assesses the capacity of an older person to re-story their life, enter meaningful relationships, make amends with the past and productively evolve as an individual. Instead of focusing solely on the present, time is seen as a continuum in Reifungsroman with a special emphasis on the past events and narratives. This article will trace the late life transformation that Jane and Maudie undergo as all life is mutable and finite, awareness of which can make us more compassionate. In The Diaries of Jane Sommers, written by Doris Lessing and published in 1984 the narrator tells the story of the relationship she constructs with an elderly friend, Maudie, whom she meets in the streets of London and who triggers her identarian metamorphoses. Maudie embodies all the stereotypes of an old woman, she has crone-like features and an unforgiving temper. From the physical maladies to emotional suffering, Jane Sommers is herself a source of discomfort and displeasure to those around her. As the narrative unravels and cleanses Jane from rampant egoism, as she bathes after each visit to Maudie’s home, she deconstructs her old narratives and transitions into an empathetic self. As Maudie shades her trauma in words and being bathed by Jane, both undergo a process of healing. Maudie dies with dignity and out of this sacrificial moment of catharses, the meeting of the now and then, new Jane is born. She erases the old wry Jane, an ambitious and vain journalist in a women’s magazine, only concerned with success and everlasting youth, who spends time and her financial gains on material goods. This article will look into the discourses on ageing and the genre of Reifungsroman in The Diaries of Jane Sommers, Lessing’s fifth novel, published under a pseudonym and separately as two separate books: The Diaries of a Good Neighbour and If the Old Could against criticism from various editorial boards. I will analyse the processes of resignification of the minor discourses and their relationship towards the major discourses on growing older. I will consider Jana and Maudie as a two-faced Janus and a dyad of the old and the new, the ich and the poor, the successful and the unsuccessful: a crone, a witch and young woman whose polyphony of voices can re-story the narratives of women and ageing.

Published in	English Language, Literature & Culture (Volume 9, Issue 4) This article belongs to the Special Issue Memory and Counter-memory in Postmodern British Fiction
DOI	10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.13
Page(s)	118-124
Creative Commons	This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright	Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Reifungsroman, Doris Lessing, Minor Discourses, Women’s Voices, Relationality, Ageing

References

[1]	Alter, Alexandra. 2021. “I was Unprepared’: Louise Glück on Poetry, Aging and a Surprise Nobel prize.” Alexandra Alter. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/books/louise-gluck-nobel-prize-literature.html
[2]	Butler, Judith. 1993. Undoing Gender. 22, 23.
[3]	Beauvoir, Simone de. 1996 [1970]. The coming of age. New York: Norton.
[4]	Berg, M. A. 1996. “Toward Creative Understanding: Bakhtin and the Study of Old Age in Literature.” Journal of Aging Studies. 10(1). 28.
[5]	Deleuze, Gilles. 2005. Expressionism in philosophy: Spinoza. New York: Zone Books. 226.
[6]	Greer, Germaine. 1991. The change: Women, ageing and the menopause. New York: Ballantine Books.
[7]	Greer, Germaine. 2008 [1970]. The female eunuch. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classic.
[8]	Gullette, Margaret Morganroth. 2004. Aged by culture. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.
[9]	Gullette, Margaret Morganroth. 2017. Ending agism or how not to shoot old people. (Global perspectives on ageing). New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
[10]	Held, Virginia. 2005. The Ethics of Care. Personal, Political and Global. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[11]	Jewell, J. Albert. 2014. Tornstam’s notion of gerotranscendence: Re-examining and questioning theory. Journal of Aging Studies 30. 112.
[12]	Lessing, Doris. (1985) 2002. The Diaries of Jane Somers. Flamingo: Harper Collins. 17, 4, 16, v, vi, 8-12, 17, 16, 12-15, 17, 21, 20, 18, 20, 23, 290, 293, 29, 77, 88, 90, 106, 131, 140-141, 242, 245, 248, 261, 254, 261, 249, 242.
[13]	Lively, Penelope. 2013. Ammonites are not the Only Fish. 5.
[14]	Moi, Toril. 2006. Sexual/textual politics: Feminist literary theory. New York: Routledge.
[15]	Moi, Toril. 2009. What can literature do? Simone de Beauvoir as a literary theorist. PMLA 124(1). 190.
[16]	O’Dowd. Ornaith. 2012. “Care and Abstract Principles.” Hypatia. 27(2). 407, 407-422.
[17]	Sontag, Susan. 1972. The double standard of aging. The Saturday Review. 290, 293.
[18]	Tornstam, Lars. 1989. Gero-transcendence: A reformulation of the disengagement theory. Aging Clinical and Experimental Research 1(1). 55–63. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03323876 (accessed 13 December 2022)
[19]	Tornstam, Lars. 2005. Gerotranscendence: A developmental theory of positive ageing. New York: Springer Publishing.
[20]	Waxman, Barbara Frey. 1990. From the hearth to the open road: A feminist study of aging in contemporary literature. New York: Greenwood Press.
[21]	Woodward, Kathleen. 1991. Aging and its discontents: Freud and other fictions. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
[22]	Woodward, Kathleen. 1999. Figuring age: Women, bodies, generations. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
[23]	Woodward, Kathleen. 2009. Statistical panic: Cultural politics and the poetics of the emotions. Durham & London: Durham University Press.

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Zarebska, Z. (2024). ‘Lift me up!’: The New Major Discourses of Care and Ageing in Doris Lessing’s The Diaries of Jane Somers. English Language, Literature & Culture, 9(4), 118-124. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.13

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Zarebska, Z. ‘Lift me up!’: The New Major Discourses of Care and Ageing in Doris Lessing’s The Diaries of Jane Somers. Engl. Lang. Lit. Cult. 2024, 9(4), 118-124. doi: 10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.13

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Zarebska Z. ‘Lift me up!’: The New Major Discourses of Care and Ageing in Doris Lessing’s The Diaries of Jane Somers. Engl Lang Lit Cult. 2024;9(4):118-124. doi: 10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.13

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@article{10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.13,
  author = {Zuzanna Zarebska},
  title = {‘Lift me up!’: The New Major Discourses of Care and Ageing in Doris Lessing’s The Diaries of Jane Somers
},
  journal = {English Language, Literature & Culture},
  volume = {9},
  number = {4},
  pages = {118-124},
  doi = {10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.13},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.13},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ellc.20240904.13},
  abstract = {The genre of Reifungsroman considers different temporal aspects of individuation. It aids and assesses the capacity of an older person to re-story their life, enter meaningful relationships, make amends with the past and productively evolve as an individual. Instead of focusing solely on the present, time is seen as a continuum in Reifungsroman with a special emphasis on the past events and narratives. This article will trace the late life transformation that Jane and Maudie undergo as all life is mutable and finite, awareness of which can make us more compassionate. In The Diaries of Jane Sommers, written by Doris Lessing and published in 1984 the narrator tells the story of the relationship she constructs with an elderly friend, Maudie, whom she meets in the streets of London and who triggers her identarian metamorphoses. Maudie embodies all the stereotypes of an old woman, she has crone-like features and an unforgiving temper. From the physical maladies to emotional suffering, Jane Sommers is herself a source of discomfort and displeasure to those around her. As the narrative unravels and cleanses Jane from rampant egoism, as she bathes after each visit to Maudie’s home, she deconstructs her old narratives and transitions into an empathetic self. As Maudie shades her trauma in words and being bathed by Jane, both undergo a process of healing. Maudie dies with dignity and out of this sacrificial moment of catharses, the meeting of the now and then, new Jane is born. She erases the old wry Jane, an ambitious and vain journalist in a women’s magazine, only concerned with success and everlasting youth, who spends time and her financial gains on material goods. This article will look into the discourses on ageing and the genre of Reifungsroman in The Diaries of Jane Sommers, Lessing’s fifth novel, published under a pseudonym and separately as two separate books: The Diaries of a Good Neighbour and If the Old Could against criticism from various editorial boards. I will analyse the processes of resignification of the minor discourses and their relationship towards the major discourses on growing older. I will consider Jana and Maudie as a two-faced Janus and a dyad of the old and the new, the ich and the poor, the successful and the unsuccessful: a crone, a witch and young woman whose polyphony of voices can re-story the narratives of women and ageing.
},
 year = {2024}
}

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TY  - JOUR
T1  - ‘Lift me up!’: The New Major Discourses of Care and Ageing in Doris Lessing’s The Diaries of Jane Somers

AU  - Zuzanna Zarebska
Y1  - 2024/09/23
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N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.13
DO  - 10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.13
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AB  - The genre of Reifungsroman considers different temporal aspects of individuation. It aids and assesses the capacity of an older person to re-story their life, enter meaningful relationships, make amends with the past and productively evolve as an individual. Instead of focusing solely on the present, time is seen as a continuum in Reifungsroman with a special emphasis on the past events and narratives. This article will trace the late life transformation that Jane and Maudie undergo as all life is mutable and finite, awareness of which can make us more compassionate. In The Diaries of Jane Sommers, written by Doris Lessing and published in 1984 the narrator tells the story of the relationship she constructs with an elderly friend, Maudie, whom she meets in the streets of London and who triggers her identarian metamorphoses. Maudie embodies all the stereotypes of an old woman, she has crone-like features and an unforgiving temper. From the physical maladies to emotional suffering, Jane Sommers is herself a source of discomfort and displeasure to those around her. As the narrative unravels and cleanses Jane from rampant egoism, as she bathes after each visit to Maudie’s home, she deconstructs her old narratives and transitions into an empathetic self. As Maudie shades her trauma in words and being bathed by Jane, both undergo a process of healing. Maudie dies with dignity and out of this sacrificial moment of catharses, the meeting of the now and then, new Jane is born. She erases the old wry Jane, an ambitious and vain journalist in a women’s magazine, only concerned with success and everlasting youth, who spends time and her financial gains on material goods. This article will look into the discourses on ageing and the genre of Reifungsroman in The Diaries of Jane Sommers, Lessing’s fifth novel, published under a pseudonym and separately as two separate books: The Diaries of a Good Neighbour and If the Old Could against criticism from various editorial boards. I will analyse the processes of resignification of the minor discourses and their relationship towards the major discourses on growing older. I will consider Jana and Maudie as a two-faced Janus and a dyad of the old and the new, the ich and the poor, the successful and the unsuccessful: a crone, a witch and young woman whose polyphony of voices can re-story the narratives of women and ageing.

VL  - 9
IS  - 4
ER  -

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Zuzanna Zarebska

University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

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http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1217-4345

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APA Style

Zarebska, Z. (2024). ‘Lift me up!’: The New Major Discourses of Care and Ageing in Doris Lessing’s The Diaries of Jane Somers. English Language, Literature & Culture, 9(4), 118-124. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.13

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ACS Style

Zarebska, Z. ‘Lift me up!’: The New Major Discourses of Care and Ageing in Doris Lessing’s The Diaries of Jane Somers. Engl. Lang. Lit. Cult. 2024, 9(4), 118-124. doi: 10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.13

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AMA Style

Zarebska Z. ‘Lift me up!’: The New Major Discourses of Care and Ageing in Doris Lessing’s The Diaries of Jane Somers. Engl Lang Lit Cult. 2024;9(4):118-124. doi: 10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.13

Copy | Download

@article{10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.13,
  author = {Zuzanna Zarebska},
  title = {‘Lift me up!’: The New Major Discourses of Care and Ageing in Doris Lessing’s The Diaries of Jane Somers
},
  journal = {English Language, Literature & Culture},
  volume = {9},
  number = {4},
  pages = {118-124},
  doi = {10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.13},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.13},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ellc.20240904.13},
  abstract = {The genre of Reifungsroman considers different temporal aspects of individuation. It aids and assesses the capacity of an older person to re-story their life, enter meaningful relationships, make amends with the past and productively evolve as an individual. Instead of focusing solely on the present, time is seen as a continuum in Reifungsroman with a special emphasis on the past events and narratives. This article will trace the late life transformation that Jane and Maudie undergo as all life is mutable and finite, awareness of which can make us more compassionate. In The Diaries of Jane Sommers, written by Doris Lessing and published in 1984 the narrator tells the story of the relationship she constructs with an elderly friend, Maudie, whom she meets in the streets of London and who triggers her identarian metamorphoses. Maudie embodies all the stereotypes of an old woman, she has crone-like features and an unforgiving temper. From the physical maladies to emotional suffering, Jane Sommers is herself a source of discomfort and displeasure to those around her. As the narrative unravels and cleanses Jane from rampant egoism, as she bathes after each visit to Maudie’s home, she deconstructs her old narratives and transitions into an empathetic self. As Maudie shades her trauma in words and being bathed by Jane, both undergo a process of healing. Maudie dies with dignity and out of this sacrificial moment of catharses, the meeting of the now and then, new Jane is born. She erases the old wry Jane, an ambitious and vain journalist in a women’s magazine, only concerned with success and everlasting youth, who spends time and her financial gains on material goods. This article will look into the discourses on ageing and the genre of Reifungsroman in The Diaries of Jane Sommers, Lessing’s fifth novel, published under a pseudonym and separately as two separate books: The Diaries of a Good Neighbour and If the Old Could against criticism from various editorial boards. I will analyse the processes of resignification of the minor discourses and their relationship towards the major discourses on growing older. I will consider Jana and Maudie as a two-faced Janus and a dyad of the old and the new, the ich and the poor, the successful and the unsuccessful: a crone, a witch and young woman whose polyphony of voices can re-story the narratives of women and ageing.
},
 year = {2024}
}

Copy | Download

TY  - JOUR
T1  - ‘Lift me up!’: The New Major Discourses of Care and Ageing in Doris Lessing’s The Diaries of Jane Somers

AU  - Zuzanna Zarebska
Y1  - 2024/09/23
PY  - 2024
N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.13
DO  - 10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.13
T2  - English Language, Literature & Culture
JF  - English Language, Literature & Culture
JO  - English Language, Literature & Culture
SP  - 118
EP  - 124
PB  - Science Publishing Group
SN  - 2575-2413
UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.13
AB  - The genre of Reifungsroman considers different temporal aspects of individuation. It aids and assesses the capacity of an older person to re-story their life, enter meaningful relationships, make amends with the past and productively evolve as an individual. Instead of focusing solely on the present, time is seen as a continuum in Reifungsroman with a special emphasis on the past events and narratives. This article will trace the late life transformation that Jane and Maudie undergo as all life is mutable and finite, awareness of which can make us more compassionate. In The Diaries of Jane Sommers, written by Doris Lessing and published in 1984 the narrator tells the story of the relationship she constructs with an elderly friend, Maudie, whom she meets in the streets of London and who triggers her identarian metamorphoses. Maudie embodies all the stereotypes of an old woman, she has crone-like features and an unforgiving temper. From the physical maladies to emotional suffering, Jane Sommers is herself a source of discomfort and displeasure to those around her. As the narrative unravels and cleanses Jane from rampant egoism, as she bathes after each visit to Maudie’s home, she deconstructs her old narratives and transitions into an empathetic self. As Maudie shades her trauma in words and being bathed by Jane, both undergo a process of healing. Maudie dies with dignity and out of this sacrificial moment of catharses, the meeting of the now and then, new Jane is born. She erases the old wry Jane, an ambitious and vain journalist in a women’s magazine, only concerned with success and everlasting youth, who spends time and her financial gains on material goods. This article will look into the discourses on ageing and the genre of Reifungsroman in The Diaries of Jane Sommers, Lessing’s fifth novel, published under a pseudonym and separately as two separate books: The Diaries of a Good Neighbour and If the Old Could against criticism from various editorial boards. I will analyse the processes of resignification of the minor discourses and their relationship towards the major discourses on growing older. I will consider Jana and Maudie as a two-faced Janus and a dyad of the old and the new, the ich and the poor, the successful and the unsuccessful: a crone, a witch and young woman whose polyphony of voices can re-story the narratives of women and ageing.

VL  - 9
IS  - 4
ER  -

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