An Ideal Womanhood Proposed In Doris Lessing’s The Diaries Of Jane Somers

Doris Lessing is an extraordinary writer who wins Nobel Prize for literature in 2007. The Diaries of Jane Somers belongs to her later phase literary work. Compared with Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, critics and scholars fail to pay enough attention to this book. Among the sporadic studies, much emphasis has been put on “mother-daughter” and “ageing” issues of this novel, whereas Lessing’s overall critique of women’s problematic living conditions and their struggles for better lives is not sufficiently addressed. This thesis, in light of feminism, aims to analyze an ideal womanhood proposed in Doris Lessing’s The Diaries of Jane Somers. By diagnosing the existence of the female characters in relation to their families and friends, the thesis concludes that Lessing is in support of a womanhood, which is marked by harmonious man-woman and mother-child relationships and has to be achieved by women’s conscious and willful reconciliation with their feminist ideas of independence, freedom and love.