On Anna’s Quest For Self-Identity In The Golden Notebook

The Golden Notebook is the representative work of Doris Lessing, who is one of the most influential and respected woman writers in contemporary English literature. Since its publication, Lessing as well as her work has gained great attention and reputation in English literature. In this novel, Lessing explores and analyzes women’s living state, the plight they face and the effort and struggle they make to reconstruct their identity.This paper mainly analyzes the protagonist Anna Wulf’s identity crisis from the perspective of identity. In this novel, Anna is portrayed as a woman with multiple personalities and plays different roles in life; multiple roles and identities in life drive her confused and painful. She suffers miserably in the conversion of manifold identities. She struggles among her dilemma in political position, disillusionment in emotional life and predicament in professional writing. She feels confused about her self-identity.This thesis mainly includes five parts. The introduction part discusses the account of author and her works, including literary review and theoretical bases. The body part includes three chapters. Chapter one mainly discusses Anna’s confusion of her identity from three aspects. As a communist, she is skeptical about the Communist Party and disappointed with the behaviors of some comrades within the Party. As a female, she is eager for love, but her relationship with men is chaotic. They just take her as a sexual partner; there is no true love between them. As a writer, she suffers from a writer’s block; she makes every effort to search for a method to express reality in a truthful way but fails to find one. All these difficulties in her life make her perplexed and doubtful about life and her identity. Chapter two analyzes Anna’s quest for her identity. During the hard process of questing her identity, she struggles in confusion and makes every effort to solve her plight in political, in emotional, and in professional life. Chapter three analyzes Anna’s reconstruction of her identity. Through her unremitting efforts and the help from others, she finally reconstructs her identity as a communist, a free woman and a writer.From the analysis above, readers can not only know the reason of Anna’s identity confusion and the process of her identity questing and reconstruction, but also understand the identity confusion and identity loss of the women in the 1950s. The reconstruction of Anna’s identity gives women in confusion and women affected by women’s liberation a ray of light. The success of Anna leads a way for the women in confusion and hesitation, and gives them the courage to pursue their freedom.