Producer And Prey Of Power

Doris Lessing is a prolific writer, whose literature contains numerous themes, with the Golden Notebook laureate her as the Nobel Prize winner, a sea of critics both at home and abroad have been engaged in researches on this masterpiece. These comments are mainly conducted from two perspectives, i.e. exploration on its multiples themes as well as its split forms. As for the former, parts of scholars claimed that it is a feminist novel in which Lessing wrote as the speaker of free women. Lessing, however, has been so strongly against this surficial understanding that she made clear her intention in writing this novel in the preface, it expressed a disorder and split nature of that time via recording the protagonist Anna’s experiences in various five notebooks. Women achieved their freedom not because of their triumphs over men, but because of their successful maintenance of power relations between their male counterparts and themselves.In order to give further elaboration on the above thematic understanding, this thesis is going to analyze the protagonist Anna via applying Foucault’s power theory from three aspects, i.e. her collapse and rebuild of political faith, her desperation and relief on marriage and true love, as well as her split and integration of inner mind.Its’ purpose is to point out the traditional male/female dichotomy could not provide the reason why numerous so-called free women are unable to harbor free at all. However, in turning to Foucault’s power theory, we could put women’s oppression into larger social realm, what deprived women’s freedom is their subjection to disciplinary power in society, which works not simply from top-down order, but exerts its influence on each individual through a surveillance mechanism called "panopticon". More significantly, Foucault’s power theory also tells us women become the producer and carrier of power, who restrict men’s life by resistance towards power; this could be well projected in the appearance of Anna’s second husband. At the same time, the fact that women are the power carrier is demonstrated in their self-adaption to psychological instability, Anna remained mentally ill even though she turned to psychologist for several times. It is only when she discovered and accepted the truth that there existing two Anna in her body that she achieved unity in body and soul.In a nutshell, applying Foucault’s power theory to analyze the protagonist Anna’s self-redemption process, on the one hand, can trace the root cause of Anna’s turbulent life as a female, and explain how she remolded herself by resisting as well as wielding power on others. On the other hand,it can unveil several typical problems facing feminism, such as the traditional patriarchy system, women’s self-consciousness, and feminists’ view towards psychology, thus leading feminism into a more reasonable path.