THE FEMININE AS A PROCESS: KATE BROWN, FOR THE SUMMER BEFORE THE FALL, AND THE ASSUMPTION OF WOMEN'S IDENTITY

Abstract

This article analyzes the construction process of the female identity from the
character Kate Brown, of the novel The summer before the dark by Doris Lessing. Converging
with the Cultural Studies prospect, take up the notions of identity and gender in a antiessentialist
perspective, considering them constructs build in the midst of the conflict
between the requests imposed by the various cultural practices and forms of agency in
which the person look to achieve. Trying to demonstrate that Kate Brown’s trajectory
confirmed that to be woman is not a fixed essence, this is something gradually build in a
tense negotiation with the values of stereotyped speech. Doris Lessing, to represent this
conflict, used the irony in a large scale, making an omniscient narrator assume the thought
of Kate, who leaves her insignificant position at home, even if with conflict, a desire to
build her own femininity.