Dilemma Of Modern Women As "the Second Sex"

Doris·Lessing (1919-2013) has been hailed as the greatest female writer since Virginia Woolf. Her masterpiece The Golden Notebook, characterized with unique structure and profound theme, has attracted wide attention from the critical circle since its publication in1962. This novel is known for its vivid depiction of female consciousness and free women’s actual living plight in the modern western society, thus being called the "Bible of Feminism".This thesis mainly analyzes the image of free and traditional women in The Golden Notebook with such feminist thoughts embodied in The Second Sex as Women’s Other status, Object identity and the desirable reciprocal recognition between male and female, in the hope of revealing the challenge and plight that modern women face as the second sex in their political, professional, marital and spiritual life and at the same time exploring the social significance and limitation for free women to confront with mental split and reconstruct their selfhood. Thus, we can learn Lessing’s ambivalent attitude towards women as the second sex.It is composed of three chapters. The first chapter mainly revolves around free women’s dilemma as the Other in social life in the middle of20th century with the financially independent free woman Anna as the representative. Some problems like modern women’s professional frustration, political disillusionment and social alienation are respectively approached in order to expose their living plight under the double pressure from the chaotic world and patriarchal society. The second chapter focuses on modern women’s identity as the Object in different aspects of their personal life such as marriage, romantic love and motherhood. It provides a detailed analysis of the status quo of modern women, in what way they lose their subjectivity, and why they are marginalized as the Object. The third chapter analyzes the rebellious tendency shown in modern women’s reconstruction of selfhood. Faced with the perplexity caused by the Other status and Object identity, modern women, on one hand, actively fight against the traditional stereotypes in their quest for selfhood; on the other, come to realize the significance of reciprocal recognition between man and woman. Some of them even choose to return to marriage, adding an end to their pursuit as free women.This paper holds that there is no such a thing as unrestricted freedom in the human world. The Golden Notebook not only emphasizes the necessity for women to actively construct their own subjectivity, but also explores the possible means for people to keep wholeness in the chaotic society as well as the harmonious way for male and female to get along well both in social and personal life.