Narrative Authority and Homeostasis in the Novels of Doris Lessing and Carmen Martn Gaite

This study, originally published in 1990, assesses a shift in the presentation of self-consciousness in two pairs of novels by Doris Lessing and Carmen Martn Gaite: 1) Lessings The Summer Before the Dark (1973) and Martn Gaites Retahlas (1974) and 2) Lessings The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) and Martn Gaites The Back Room (1978). Three major structural divisions facilitate examining implications of the novels for 1) feminism 2) literary narrative and 3) the lives of people-at-large.