The Pre-feminist Vision Of Doris Lessing--A Study Of Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook

Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook is a long and intensely rich book that it has been seized upon for interpretive ventures by various critical movements. Its focus on women characters has made it a classic text in contemporary feminist criticism. However, Lessing never intended this novel as a trumpet for Women's Liberation and more than once she clearly stated her sympathy for men in their relationship with women. In this thesis, I argue that this novel inspires very mixed readings. I believe that, as a writer writing at a time when feminism as a women's liberation movement was largely unknown, Lessing showed an unusually strong awareness of women's issues in The Golden Notebook. Meanwhile, Lessing's feminism, if one might say so, is at best unself-conscious. During her life, she saw herself as a non-feminist, while literary critics labeled her as numerous things ranging from feminist to anti-feminist.The thesis is composed of four parts. Part One introduces the female subculture as background of Lessing's writing, the reception of and the writer's own interpretation of The Golden Notebook. In Part Two, I discuss her treatment of female characters in the novel as women by themselves and as women in relation to men. While I stress her sensibility to female experiences, I focus on Lessing's internalized inhibition in her descriptions. Lessing shows a picture of women subjected to varieties of moral blackmail by men. However, it is important not to see the novel as a typical feminist novel simply because of its depiction of the women's dissatisfaction with men. The female characters feel that what is important to them is not to be liberated from marriage, but to improve the quality of marriage. Part Three explores Lessing's view on novel writing as it gets manifested in this novel. I argue that her attitudes towards the relationship between form and content and her social-political vision of the novel are closely related with her stance as a female writer before the advent of feminism. The Golden Notebook has been well known for its complex structure. The overall construction of the novel is a remarkable evidence of women's preference for the paratactic in style. But Lessing denies that it cameabout as a result of feminist revolt and explains that the varied narrative forms in the novel are to represent the rawer material and experience before they shape themselves into thought and patterns. I suggest that Lessing's novels are never purely formal, and the search for an appropriate aesthetic to embody moral needs is the principle of her writing. Women writers, according to Lessing, can be alienated from their own authentic perceptions of sexual politics when feminism is kept quiescent. As a result, they doubt their perceptions. Finally, Lessing examines in the novel the tension between the female and the universal. For her, the female experience is the best perspective, and a woman's way of looking at life has the same validity as that of a man. In that sense, perhaps Lessing saw herself more of a humanist than of a feminist. The thesis concludes with the argument that as a major female author in English literature, Doris Lessing's feminist vision in The Golden Notebook, if there is such a thing, is unself-conscious. Although refusing to be confined by one particular side of the feminist debate, Lessing has in her life certainly served as a spokeswoman for women's rights, and her work must have started women thinking and moving towards a contemplation on their situation and with the eventual launching of the Women's Liberation.