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Doris LessingA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
One major theme of this and other stories Lessing wrote during this period is the damaging social hierarchy created by colonial policies, such as apartheid. In colonial Africa, authority figures and landholding people were white, and their servants and farm workers were Black. Racist ideology was inextricably woven into structures of social class and power to form a caste system that ensured the minority white population held outsized power. While the African nation in “No Witchcraft for Sale” goes unnamed, Lessing includes Afrikaans words like “kraal” and “baas” to hint at the story’s South African setting. With this, the interactions in the story are colored by apartheid, a system of institutionalized segregation.
Gideon and the Farquars accept their social stratification as preordained by God, best illustrated when Gideon says, “It is God’s will” (68), when talking to Mrs. Farquhar about the different paths their children will take. The narrator describes Gideon as a “mission boy,” lending to an overall message that these beliefs ruined the relationship Gideon could have had with Teddy and the Farquars. Teddy is socialized to believe that Gideon and other Black servants are inferior, even when as a child.
By Doris Lessing
A Woman on a Roof
A Woman on a Roof
Doris Lessing
Briefing for a Descent Into Hell
Briefing for a Descent Into Hell
Doris Lessing
Martha Quest
Martha Quest
Doris Lessing
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside
Doris Lessing
The Fifth Child
The Fifth Child
Doris Lessing
The Golden Notebook
The Golden Notebook
Doris Lessing
The Grass is Singing
The Grass is Singing
Doris Lessing
Through the Tunnel
Through the Tunnel
Doris Lessing
To Room Nineteen
To Room Nineteen
Doris Lessing