Anna's Psychological Process In Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook

Doris Lessing (1919---) is a British woman writer who is regarded as one of the most excellent novelists in the world. She has gained her fame for her dedicatedly half century's writing, with her courageous exploration perspectives and changeable writing skills about her times. Up to now, there have been over 21 novels, 11 short story anthologies,10 collected literary works,5 dramas and 1 poetic anthology. She was influenced by her living background in 20th century. She also made deep research about many important philosophical schools of thoughts and applied some in her works, such as Marxism, psychoanalysis and Sufism.Lessing's representative novel The Golden Notebook was published in 1962. This work, which makes Anna awarded the Nobel Prize in literature later, was regarded as a remarkable masterpiece for its intricate structure and exact description about the intellectual and moral climate of the British society of the 1950s. And it solidified Lessing's position in British literature. In the Preface of The Golden Notebook, Lessing points out clearly that the themes of the book are "'fragmentation' and'unity', and the latter is more important than the first" (7). Therefore, this dissertation will analyze, with Freud's structural model and defense mechanism, Anna's spiritual process from fragmentation to unity, namely, her self-saving from the self-splitting state through pursuit of healthy self. It aims to explore the process and the significance of the self-discovery and reveal the loss of self in spiritual world and the essence of self-discovery.The thesis is made up of five parts as follows:The introduction contains the general information of the novelist Doris Lessing, the fiction The Golden Notebook, the methodology of the research and the critical responses to the novel.Chapter one, the thesis analyses the elements which lead the protagonist Anna to self-splitting state from three aspects. Anna lives in the changeable times of 20th century:the Women's Movement; the empty of people's spiritual state after the wars; the conflict of their political beliefs and the like. In order to create an orderly life, and keep herself whole, she keeps four dairies with different aspects of her life. With the failures of her life in all the aspects, her frustration and confusion lead Anna to self-splitting.Chapter two, the thesis discusses the process of Anna's self-struggling. Just like Freud says, when a person falls into self-splitting, the unbalanced id, ego and superego will not become balancing without strong fight. Here Anna struggles between the incompatible factors.Chapter three discusses Anna's unity from three parts:a free woman in emotion; a "boulder-pusher" in writing and going to be a laborite in politics. In a word, she comes to accept her role as a common people in the society.Part five is the conclusion. It reaches the conclusion:The Golden Notebook is a novel of self-discovery, which typically unfolds a woman's process from self-splitting to self-saving when facing the men-women war, and other ambivalent aspects. It shows us how to deal with the imperfect life. Through the exploration of the self-discovery process of a typical woman, Lessing guides the direction in the self-quest and psychological maturity for modern women, thus it has profound social and realistic significance.