The Image Of Women At The Changing And Splitting Times

The Golden Notebook is the masterpiece by the English woman writer Doris Lessing, a writer with special experiences, strong conscience for the society, and great sense of literary mission. She thinks highly of this kind of writers like Tolstoy who have deeply analyzed the human life and pointed out a way of salvation with moral enthusiasm. Therefore, in The Golden Notebook, she also attempts to be one of them, hoping that her works may reveal the whole 20th century. The novel is incomparable in social depth and extent, successfully conceiving an image of freel women represented by Anna. It is generally regarded by critics as a great literary work describing the growth and liberation of women.The thesis reveals the living conditions of women at the changing and splitting times, by analyzing the image of free women represented by Anna in the novel. The thesis makes an analysis of the free women from five aspects. The first is a brief introduction to the writer Doris Lessing and her works. The second is interpretation of the free women's lives, illustrating the lofty ideals and the crisis in the reality facing the free women's lives from their political lives, emotional experiences and spiritual worlds. The third aspect puts emphasis on the reflection of the free women on their lives and their pursuit of the way to self-salvation, which includes the free women's reflection on the notion of liberty, that is, the free women will re-define and choose their life path in the end with the enlightenment from others. The fourth one is to expound this image of the free women conceived by Lessing from the literary sense of inheriting and surpassing this image, and at the same time it analyzes whether or not the woman writer Lessing belongs to feminism. The last aspect sums up the whole thesis. The thesis attempts to make a more complete understanding of the free women in the times of cultural cross section in The Golden Notebook from these aspects, thus deepening the understanding of Doris Lessing's thoughts and writings.