Towards Harmonious Coexistence

Doris Lessing(1919-2013) is one of the most influential writers in contemporary Britain. Lessing’s masterpiece The Golden Notebook, published in 1962, helps her to become the oldest female winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 2007. This independent-minded English novelist is extolled as the “Grandmother and Evergreen Tree in British Literary World”. She is also called the “Double Star in British Literary World” with Woolf. In The Golden Notebook, which established her as a famous writer in contemporary literature, she questions the social, political and philosophical issues, human survival crisis, the survival situation of women as well as the gender relations. This thesis tries to analyze Lessing’s masterpiece: The Golden Notebook from the perspective of ecofeminism so as to reveal the patriachal control over women and nature and show the modernity and warning thoughts in her works.The Golden Notebook of Lessing has been accepted as a textbook about women’s independence for a long time, however, this kind of idea is not completely correct. In fact, Lessing is not a radical feminist. As an archaeologist of human relationship, Lessing emphasizes ecological harmony. In The Golden Notebook, she examines the relationships between man and nature, male and female. Therefore, The Golden Notebook cannot be narrowly defined as a feminist work. The whole work shows the author’s concern and worry to human beings’ fate. This work sparkles with ecofeminism between the lines.This thesis includes three body chapters, the introduction part mainly introduces Lessing and her masterpiece The Golden Notebook, the research status at home and abroad about this work, research purpose, research questions, research significance and the general overview of the ecofeminism. The first chapter discusses the two sources of Lessing’s ecofeminist consciousness: one is Lessing’s personal life experience, another is the whole social environment in the 20 th century. The second chapter mainly analyses the predicament of both nature and women in The Golden Notebook caused by the patriarchal system. Because of the patriarchal control, nature and women suffer from the pathetic situation. Chapter three mainly focuses on the way out of the predicament. Male and female cooperate to overthrow the patriarchal ideology and they finally achieve equality. Nature and mankind reach the harmonious coexistence. The conclusion part summarizes the whole paper and reemphasizes the ecofeminism contained in Lessing’s The Golden Notebook.