On Feminine Consciousness In Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook

Doris Lessing, the most prolific English writer, enjoys a worldwide reputation in the literary world because of the publication of The Golden Notebook in 1962. Because of its profound and diversified thematic concerns, the novel has attracted increasing critical attention and has been studied under scores of critical approaches, all treating it as a classical literary work that delineates the growth and the liberation of women. This dissertation attempts to analyze the novel from a feminist perspective. The structural, linguistic, thematic and other narrative strategies serve well for the expression of the feminist aims. The fragmented structure adopted in the novel reflects not only the fragmentation of Anna's inner world but also the chaos of the existing Western society and its effect on women. Doris Lessing reveals females' exquisite colorful inner world from woman's own perspectives, which transforms male writers' distortion of women's authentic experiences. Moreover, the novel deals with multitudinous of great themes, including the fate and the future of the whole society and humankind, which is also unprecedented in women's writing history. The "Free Women" in The Golden Notebook are distinguished from the traditional "angel of the house" in the following respects: career pursuit, enthusiasm about politics and the searching for an ideal love. The "Free Women", being the new independent women, spirited up one generation of Western women when the novel was first published in the 60s. Their search for an ideal life, however; are invariably countered by and confronted with existential difficulties and crises in life. Lessing dramatizes these real-life problems in the protagonist Anna. Anna, as a writer, suffers from writer's block and can't write any meaningful things any more. Free women's devotion to the politics brings them not so much the freedom desired as the confusion and disappointment. Although the "Free Women" seem to object to the traditional marriage, they are eager for stable and harmonious marriage deep in their heart. In spite of their economic independence from men, the "Free Women" are completely dependent on men in their emotional life. The series of failures don't frustrate the "Free Women" but encourage them to go on with their search for their final freedom. With the help of the American writer Saul, Anna overcomes her writer's block in the end. She comes to realize at the same time that the world between male and female is one of...