Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Lessing, Doris (Vol. 94) - Lisa Tyler (essay date Spring 1994)

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Lisa Tyler (essay date Spring 1994)

SOURCE: "Our Mothers' Gardens: Doris Lessing's 'Among the Roses,'" in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring, 1994, pp. 163-73.

[In the following essay, Tyler examines Lessing's short story "Among the Roses" from a feminist perspective, elucidating its mother-daughter theme in relation to the ancient Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone.]

Doris Lessing has long demonstrated in her work a love-hate relationship with women's magazines, which she seems to regard as contemporary equivalents of conduct books: repressive, didactic works that stress conformity to tired gender roles and celebrate frivolity at the expense of thought. Ella, the fictional figure that Anna creates in The Golden Notebook, works for Home and Hearth; its parodically conventional name perhaps suggests a certain disdain on Anna's part, and quite possibly Lessing's. Lessing is more openly scornful in Play with...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Katherine Fishburn (essay date Summer 1988)
   2. Virginia Tiger (essay date Autumn 1990)
   3. John Bemrose (review date 24 August 1992)
   4. K. Anthony Appiah (review date 28 June 1993)
   5. Harriet Ritvo (review date 13 January 1994)
   6. Lisa Tyler (essay date Spring 1994)
   7. Richard Eder (review date 20 October 1994)
   8. Basil Davidson (review date 22 October 1994)
   9. Michiko Kakutani (review date 1 November 1994)
   10. Caroline Moorehead (review date 4 November 1994)
   11. J. M. Coetzee (review date 22 December 1994)
   12. William H. Pritchard (review date Summer 1995)
   13. Carol Franko (essay date Summer 1995)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright