Scan barcode
A review by brisingr
The Cleft by Doris Lessing
1.0
I have like..... ten thousand questions on why exactly have I read this book in its entirety, I hate myself for being a goody two shoes. I can totally see why we'd be discussing it in our gender class, but I have so many personal problems with the way in which this idea was handled, I don't even know where to start. At the end of the novel, I'm left with: WHAT THE FUCK and SO WHAT? I couldn't have cared less about anything here if I wished, and for being a supposedly "alternate reality fiction", it changed... absolutely nothing in the working of the world.
"In Rome now, a sect – the Christians – insist that the first female was brought forth from the body of a male. Very suspect stuff, I think. Some male invented that – the exact opposite of the truth."
‘I don’t want to be like them’ . . . the idea that had made revolutions,
wars, split families, or driven the bearer of the idea mad or into new active life . . . ‘I won’t be like them, I won’t.’ Maire and Astre were shuddering at the horror of what they might become.
"The women standing here, beside Maronna, were all mothers, and every male there had been dandled, fussed over, fed, cleaned, slapped, kissed, taught by a female... and this is such a heavy and persuasive history that I am amazed we don’t remember it more often."
"In Rome now, a sect – the Christians – insist that the first female was brought forth from the body of a male. Very suspect stuff, I think. Some male invented that – the exact opposite of the truth."
‘I don’t want to be like them’ . . . the idea that had made revolutions,
wars, split families, or driven the bearer of the idea mad or into new active life . . . ‘I won’t be like them, I won’t.’ Maire and Astre were shuddering at the horror of what they might become.
"The women standing here, beside Maronna, were all mothers, and every male there had been dandled, fussed over, fed, cleaned, slapped, kissed, taught by a female... and this is such a heavy and persuasive history that I am amazed we don’t remember it more often."