On The Pursuit Of Positive Freedm And Self-realized Value Of The Heroine And Hero In The Golden Notebook

Doris Lessing is a well-known British woman writer.She has won Nobel Prize for literature in 2007.The Golden Notebook is Lessing's most-famous one which is made up of one novel Free Woman and five notebooks,Black Notebook,Red Notebook,Yellow Notebook,Blue Notebook,and Gold Notebook in 1962.Most of the scholars,both abroad and at home,study the themes,structure and artistic forms of The Golden Notebook from different kinds of perspectives.Present studies focus on Anna Woolf's pursuit of freedom,and on Anna's image and the alienation of free women from the perspective of feminist.However,in The Golden Notebook,the hero Saul Green also attaches an important role in Anna's pursuit of freedom and achievement of self-value.Saul,as a man,also experiences the suffering and loses of himself and then pursues the freedom.At present,seldom studies discuss this problem.From the perspective of Western Marxist Criticism,this thesis tries to explore how Anna and Saul get rid of the loneliness and escape of reality and then seek for the meaning of human existence with Erich Fromm's concepts of society,freedom of human,selfless love.Fromm holds the view that freedom can be divided into positive freedom and negative freedom.The real freedom is the achievement of positive freedom and it can be gained only by selfless love and creative work.In The Golden Notebook,the heroine Anna Woolf and hero Saul Green realize that they fall into the negative freedom and then try their best to escape from the spirit suffering.Finally,it turns out that only by entering to the society,can they find the meaning of human existence.Through the discussion,the conclusions are drawn as follows: Anna and Saul feel loneliness and frustrated when they cannot deal with the matters in emotional and career life.Superficially,this is caused by the traditional prejudice and the influence of paternal power over women.However,in modern society,women,as well as men,cannot avoid falling into the negative freedom.It clearly shows that both men and women face the loneliness and puzzlement due to all kinds of matters.Due to the human's social attribute,only by selfless love and creative work,men and women together can achieve the positive freedom and self-value through socialpractice.This is one of the themes of The Golden Notebook.Lessing's idea in The Golden Notebook surpasses the radical ideas concerning woman domination,which reflects the personal ideological realm in the society.The significance of this thesis is that no matter the men or women,based on the financial independence and ideological equality,need reciprocal respect and join in society,to serve the society by love,finally achieve the meaning of life and existence in the society.