The Marginal Space In Lessing’s Works

Doris Lessing is one of the most important English female writers in modern literature. At the age of88, she won the Nobel literature Prize in2007. She has written many books in diverse styles. Focusing on her three works, The Golden Notebook and love,again and The Grass is Singing, this thesis is to analyze detailedly the contents of space, exploring the marginal space affects the marginal people in the marginal position.The first chapter provides an introduction to Lessing and the main content of this three novels, as well as the methodology and structure of this thesis.The second chapter is the literature review of Lessing and her three novels.The third chapter introduces the development of space theory. Space theory is put forward by French philosopher Henri Lefebvre and his book The Production of Space set the base for the theory. In his book, the space is not only the so-called geographical space, but also includes much wider space. After Lefebvre, Edward Soja and Homi Bhaha extend the scale of space theory and advance the "third space theory" which is a great stride in theory. In their opinion, the space here has already exceeded the limit of time and space and truly liberated the parochialism of the previous space in people’s mind. It spreads to every where in human daily living.The fourth chapter analyzes the space problem by applying the space theory from The Grass is Singing. Analyzing their marginal spaces, studying their psychological and lives state, it reveals that the racial discrimination destructs mental and physical health.The fifth chapter is an analysis of the female role and the colored women space in love, again. This chapter reveals that women are in the marginal status as the weak groups, analyzing women how to find their own spaces through their efforts.The sixth chapter analyzes the homosexual and the middle-age space from The Golden Notebook. This chapter indicates how these margin groups survive on the margin of the society.Research shows that the marginal space reflects that the black people are in the oppressed position in the racial discrimination society, while at the same time, even the poor white people are also in a weak position in the materialistic society. The old people are also facing the emotional and existence problems in the aging society. Through the analysis of these spaces, exploring unique psychology and emotion experience of marginal people, it is helpful for us to deeply understand the fate of these marginal people, which is also helpful to arouse more concern about the people in marginal spaces.