The Inactivity of the Heroine in Doris Lessing’s Martha Quest

Abstract

The paper studies the inactivity of the central character of Doris Lessing’s novel Martha Quest (1952) which is Vol.1 in a five-volume series entitled Children of Violence (1952-69). The text is set in one of the British colonies in Southern Africa called Rhodesia. The paper attempts to analyse the character of Martha Quest who is an adolescent at fifteen at the beginning of the novel, and it deals with her rebellion against her mother and the inferior role Mrs. Quest stands for as a wife and a mother. It is significant to mention that the heroine rejected this end for women believing that they can achieve greater than this inferior role. Moreover, the paper tackles the experience of Martha in the Sports Club which prevents marriage, but allows public sexual practices, and which appears to be only a miniature to the very social and political systems she rebels against like colonisation and racial discrimination.   It shows how Martha does not compromise her intelligence and beauty, and how she fails to make all her dreams come true. The heroine’s rebellion against her mother’s conventionality and protection ended in a way that lets down her feminist fans for she copies her mother’s lifestyle, i.e., Martha’s marriage to Douglas Knowell in the civil service is a kind of a bond she has strongly rejected. However, Martha gains a deeper knowledge of herself and her society