From Fragmentation To Integration

Doris Lessing, (1919--2013) has been regarded as the oldest winner of The Nobel Prize for Literature so far. As the Swedish Academy praised in the presentation speech, she is "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny". Her masterpiece, The Golden Notebook is universally highlighted as Lessing’s real breakthrough. The form is in accordance with the theme of the metamorphosis from fragmentation to integration. Besides, it is obvious that the protagonist Anna and Doris Lessing herself share mutual roles and similar experience.Since its publication, The Golden Notebook has attracted worldwide attention. The number of papers and books researching on it has been a boom. However, most of the researchers focus on the form, the characters, the narrative features and feminism in the novel. Only few critics have started to explore the writer’s multiple level expression of human experience and consciousness from the perspective of psychology or religion from 1960s.It is Lessing herself who admits that The Golden Notebook is her most Sufi book. The very Sufism is a mystical teaching of the Arab, it is an anti-tradition, anti-rational doctrine, it respects individual intuition, (including dreams, meditation, reminiscence) to get the communication between people and the God. Although Sufism itself is a kind of mysticism, Lessing is not positioning it in this way, she takes it as an irrational factor which can affect people’s thinking, through the use of the active aspect of this irrational factor, we can excavate one’s potential ability and can overcome the plight of one’s own, in the end to get the highest level in our life.In this thesis, it attempts to interpret The Golden Notebook through Sufism, thus stressing the spiritual process of Anna from fragmentation to integration, and in this way come to a summary of the appearance of Sufic transcendence in self-healing, which is the most perfect state of a Sufi.The thesis is composed of five parts which are listed as follows:In the chapter one, it briefly introduces Doris Lessing, and then starts with literature review of The Golden Notebook at home and abroad, thus points out the blank gaps in it, which are researches on Characters through Sufism. In the end it explains the purpose and structure of this thesis.In the chapter two, a detailed interpretation of Sufism theory is elaborated. Firstly, it concentrates on the origins of Sufism in Central-Arab, then it comes to the father of western Sufism-Idries Shah and his compacts on the works of Doris Lessing. Secondly, the comparison between Sufism and Freud’s psychoanalytical theory is explicated so as to make Sufism easier to understand.In the chapter three, the different Sufi connotations on the notebooks of different colors are analyzed, which remind readers of connection between Sufism and literature.In the chapter four, it illustrates a Sufi’s split process. Through analysis of dream, meditation and reminiscence, we can see how Lessing equips Anna’s characters with Sufi thinking to penetrate herself and achieve better understanding of her inner realms.Then the chapter five concerns the final phase for Sufi to reach integration. The protagonist Anna in Lessing’s fiction firstly achieved integration within the self, and then gradually realized the importance of proper sexual relationship, and eventually struck a balance between the inner world and the outer world as well as rationality and irrationality. Thus she was able to break the confines of the convention to possess the ultimate harmony and transform into a true Sufi.In chapter six, the conclusion part is a summary of the appearance of Sufic transcendence in self-healing, which is the most perfect state of a Sufi. It reminded us of Lessing’s consideration of her own value. In the meanwhile, it also displays the retroaction of the novel that leads to Lessing’s ways of Sufism.