Real Worlds and Text Worlds in Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing and Martha Quest

This paper aims to analyze Doris Lessing's narrative techniques to explore how she developed the discourse of her stories and depicted her contemporary realities in her story worlds. It seeks to address the question of whether there is a relationship between her real world and her storytelling, and whether her ideology and personal background influenced her narrative approach. To accomplish this goal, we will analyze the novels The Grass is Singing and Martha Quest using Gavin's Text World Theory, a cognitive approach that provides a framework encompassing three levels of analysis: Discourse World, Text World, and Sub-Worlds. Our analysis reveals that the discourse of her stories closely mirrors her real-life discourse, indicating a direct relationship between her real worlds and her storytelling. Lessing’s intricate descriptions of world-building elements, such as time, locations, characters, objects, and actions within the story, serve to advance the narrative forward through both material and existential processes. Moreover, her use of sub-worlds to express her yearning for freedom and justice reflects her critical viewpoints on the oppressive systems prevalent in her time, particularly colonization and racial issues. Furthermore, it becomes apparent that from 1944 to 1956, her storytelling method was influenced by her communist ideology. In essence, the concepts and themes represented in her stories emerge as reflections of her real-world experiences, effectively conveyed through her narrative techniques.