earticle

영어

This paper aims to examine that the protagonist in Doris Lessing’s Love Again(1996) undergoes spiritual growth through her experiences of love and death. In Love, Again, Sarah Derham, a sixty-five-year old writer and founder of a theatre, falls in love with three younger men, leading her to face into her inner erotic desire. Sarah commissions a play of Julie Vairon who is a beautiful and wayward nineteenth-century mulatto woman. The play captivates all who come into contact with it, and dramatically changes the lives of all who take part in it. For instance, Stephen, co-writer of the play, kills himself out of his pain of love to the dead Julie. Also, Sarah finds herself erotically reawakened and uncontrollably attracted to several men, such as, Bill, Henry, and Stephen, virtually all of whom are young enough to be her sons. But Sarah’s couplings with the three men happen only in her imagination, which thus brings her to enlightening rather than delighting. So after these imaginary experiences, Sarah reflects about the pain caused by unrequited love and death, and spends many moments of meditation on her past memories related to her mother and herself. Her psychic journey into the past leads to her spiritual growth, that is, the acquisition of some measure of detachment, in Sarah’s case from her aging body, obsessive romantic emotions and unmet childhood needs. This painfully acquired space allows her to accept the coming to age.