Alienated "Free Women"

The novel under study here is The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing’s secondnovel, which won the2007Nobel Prize for being “an epicist of the femaleexperience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a dividedcivilization to scrutiny”. Through the records of Anna’s life experience and mentalstate, The Golden Notebook reveals the fragmentation of the whole social groupsespecially women. By especially employing the theory of female alienation ofAlison Jaggar, a famous socialist feminist of America, this thesis explores femalealienation in capitalist patriarchy from the perspective of socialist feminism, basedon a close textual study of The Golden Notebook, and it deeply analyzes the rootsource of female alienation and makes a thorough interpretation of femalealienation from the following aspects: sexuality, motherhood, and intellectuality.The thesis argues that either self–empowerment in public sphere orself-breakthrough in private sphere is unpromising for women under thepatriarchal structure of capitalism, and only a total transformation of capitalistpatriarchy into a new harmonious society between genders can lead to a realfemale liberation.