An Analysis Of Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook From The Perspective Of Trauma Theory

Doris Lessing(1919-2013)is one of the world's highly renowned literary writers,who wins a high reputation with her innovative narrative mechanism,distinctive creative style and profound ideological connotation.In 2007,Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for literature for her masterpiece The Golden Notebook.Through Anna's description of her different aspects of life,the novel reveals traumatic cause,symptom and recovery process of each character.The Golden Notebook has always been the hot spot of the domestic and foreign theoretical research and focus.However,previous researches have more concentrated on its literature theme,feminism and narrative mechanism and so on,few scholars have applied trauma theory to explore it.Since the 1920 s,psychologists,represented by Sigmund Freud,described physiology trauma in a scientific way and began to pay attention to people's psychological trauma.In the early 1990 s,trauma theory was proposed by critics,who were mainly represented by Cathy Caruth and Judith Herman.Trauma theory is a well-known theory to analyze traumatic events,traumatic symptoms and traumatic recovery as the core.Based on the trauma theory,this thesis summarizes the objective causes of the characters' trauma in the novel and analyzes people's traumatic symptoms in the physiological,cognitive,emotional and behavioral levels.Finally,based on Judith Herman's theoretical study on the three stages of trauma recovery,the thesis summarizes the characters' recovery process of the self-reconstruction,narration and writing therapy in the novel.Combining the trauma theory with literature works provides a new perspective for literary criticism and expands the depth and scope of research on The Golden Notebook.This study analyzes various traumatic experiences of specific characters in the novel through exploring the traumatic causes,depicting traumatic symptoms and seeking ways of recovery from trauma.Studies show that people's living conditions and social environment are closely linked.War and violence,social inequality and changes in mainstream political ideology will bring people endless pain.For instance,the Second World War,racial discrimination in African colonies and the weak status of women in gender relations are the specific causes of trauma in The Golden Notebook.Different trauma experiences bring people different symptoms,including psychological anxiety,confusion,silence,avoidance and writing disorder,which influence all aspects of people's life.Lessing,who is full of humanistic care and social responsibility,warns people through the depiction of characters' traumatic symptoms and draws their attention to traumatic people.At the same time,with analysis of characters' recovery from trauma,she also tries to provide effective ways to heal them.