The Formation Of Doris Lessing's Feminist Thinking And The Status Of The Golden Notebook In Her Wrting Career

Doris Lessing is one of the most important writers of the contemporary time. No other contemporary novelist has explored so deeply or charted so fully the female experience and psychology in a male-defined and dominated culture. She has long been regarded as a feminist writer, a title Lessing has constantly rejected. Lessing is a broad writer, and is determined to contribute to the 19th century's great tradition of realism from the very beginning of her writing career. She does not write to ask political rights for women, but to capture the whole situation of the society from a feminine perspective. Her women are blessed with both masculine reason and feminine feeling in order to cope with the tasks required by their different roles. The most important feature of Lessing's unique feminist thinking is the female's collective feminine identity. Women's freedom lies in their realization of their feminine qualities and women's importance in history would only become noticeable when looked at from a collective perspective.The present thesis generalizes the features of Lessing's feminist thinking and tries to present its formation process by reviewing the female characters in The Grass Is Singing, Children of Violence and The Golden Notebook. The Golden Notebook occupies a turning-point status in Lessing's whole writing career. It's actually Lessing's first successful attempt to establish her feminine collective identity theory and an important step for her to write beyond female experience and become an epic-scale writer addressing the whole humanity.