Doris Lessing and the Crisis of Identity

The Fifth Child is the story of human anomaly in terms of genetic aberration. Its sequel, Ben in the World, explores the relationship between the individual and the society. In these works, Doris Lessing is mainly concerned with the issue of subjectivity and seems to investigate the crisis of identity in the modern era. Lessing’s attempt is a poststructuralist reading of man: one’s identity is not a fixed and self-dependent entity; rather, it is a social phenomenon whose nature is a construct of the system of differences which defines the system of interactions between the individuals, in which all seem to compete in an endless struggle guided by power relations.