Rereading Doris Lessing’s Short Story “Wine” Through the Lenses of Space, History and Traumatic Memories

Abstract

Doris Lessing has been called a writer “ahead of her time” (Drabble 2008; Maslen 1994)
due to the kind of issues she explored in her narrative. The topic of war and its everlasting
effects stand as an invisible thread that runs through her entire oeuvre to present the reader
with the devastation brought about by the world wars not only in the physicality of cities and
towns but also in the bodies and minds of the survivors. The historical events that marked
the twentieth century broke people’s morale and the memories of the horrors witnessed
flooded back poisoning their lives. The present article draws on the interconnection between
space, history, and trauma in Doris Lessing’s short story “Wine” (1957). By exploring
the enduring relationship between these three variables she creates her Poetics of Space in
which she not only crosses spatiotemporal boundaries but also public and private spheres.