A Study On Marion And Anna As The Other In The Golden Notebook

Doris Lessing,one of the most outstanding writers in Britain in the twentieth century,is honored as the greatest woman writer after Virginia Woolf.As a woman writer,Lessing focuses on the exploration of women's life and fate.Almost all her novels taking the female as the heroine show her strong consciousness for women.Among her works,The Golden Notebook is acknowledged as her most successful one.Thus many researchers at home and abroad have studied the work from the perspectives of themes and artistic techniques etcetera.However,there were fewer studies from the perspective of Beauvoir's Existentialist Feminism.Therefore,the thesis tries to analyze the images of Anna and Marion as the other in The Golden Notebook,based on Beauvoir's Existentialist Feminism,and then to discuss the causes why they become the Other.Meanwhile,the thesis also explores how they fight against otherness and pursue their own freedom.This thesis falls into six chapters.Chapter one briefly introduces Doris Lessing's life,the main content of The Golden Notebook and the significance of the thesis as well as its organization.Chapter two reviews the studies on Doris Lessing and The Golden Notebook at home and abroad.Chapter three briefly expounds feminism and Existentialist Feminism.As a representative of Existentialist Feminism,Simon de Beauvoir explains feminism from the perspective of existentialist under the influence of Sartre.She reveals women's status as the Other in the patriarchal society and discusses why women become the Other.Chapter four examines the image of Marion and Anna as the Other.Marion,the traditional housewife,rotates herself round family and children.She is controlled by her husband financially and suffers from the betrayal of her husband in emotion too.Thus,Marion becomes the Other.Anna,the free woman,loves her lover Michael blindly.Under Michael's control,Anna becomes the other.After abandoned by Michael,Anna makes love with different men to seek for love.But men just regard her as a sex tool and ignore her feeling.Anna becomes the Other again in terms of sex.Chapter five discusses the intrinsic and extrinsic causes why they become the Other.The former ones are the restraint of Marion's own femininity and Anna's emotional attachment to men.And the conventional requirements from patriarchy and men's attitude towards women in terms of sex are the latter ones.Chapter six draws to a conclusion.No matter Marion as a traditional housewife and Anna as a woman to pursue liberation,they become the Other to some extent.Based on Beauvoir's Existentialist Feminism,through the analysis of Marion and Anna,the thesis holds that these two kinds of women face the plight of becoming the Other.It shows how difficult for women to pursue real freedom.Meanwhile their ceaseless endeavor also shows their spirit to pursue freedom.The female should not only awaken their own awareness of subjectivities but also win the respect and recognition of the male.Only in this way can the female obtain the real freedom and shake off the burden of otherness.