Let The Characters Speak-A Feminist Approach To Doris Lessing's Fictions

Doris Lessing's attitude towards feminism and her writing about it always have a sense of ambiguity. Lessing's characters have not only obvious feminist features but also a very feminist title: free women. Yet Lessing has claimed time after time that she has little delight in being called a feminist writer, and has less when her work is used in the sex war. It has been discovered that Lessing has deliberately distanced herself from the mainstream feminist criticism, but her connection to her feminist processors is tight, especially to Verginia Woolf whom she respects. What's more, in the history of feminist criticism, Lessing is also found important. As a result, Lessing surely has a close relationship with feminism, which she also writes about often.One can find clear feminist features in Lessing's female protagonists from either The Golden Notebook or The Summer Before the Dark. They are all independent, anti-man and longing for freedom. They either get divorced with children (like Molly Jacobs and Anna Wulf) or stay as free as unmarried within marriage (like Kate Brown). Their independence, hostility against men and desire for freedom are the seminal features of feminism. And the self-discovery of these female characters is at the same time Lessing's own exploration into feminism itself. Besides, the male characters in Lessing's fictions have an equal importance in suggesting Lessing's feminist ideas. In Anna's words, women, especially woman writers, create their men in their fictions because it's rather impossible for them to find an ideal one but in the fictional world. Among these male characters there are Paul Tanner, the woman-hater, and Saul Green in whom one can see understanding to feminism instead of hatred. These male characters share equal importance as female ones in revealing Lessing's exploration into the feminist theme. Therefore, the thesis is an attempt to analyze these characters from a feminist perspective so as to understand the value of Lessing's fictions as feminist texts.Through a feminist approach to Lessing's characterization, various feminist features and ideas can be seen, and what's more, complicated feminist problems are revealed. For instance, one can see in Anna and Molly's relationship that feminists who are supposed to be united as comrades still bear many differences. And it's implied in Anna's relationship with Michael (or Ella's relationship with Paul) that free women can hardly win real freedom under traditional definitions and masculine power, which can drive them to madness and divisions and in which feminism is trapped. Still, hope and future can be seen in Anna's relationship with Saul, which also bears such understanding of the author: it is through communication and understanding rather than the so-called"sex war"that women can win independence and freedom.