Kate’s Alienation And Self Salvation In The Summer Before The Dark

Doris Lessing(1919-2013)is a famous contemporary British novelist.As the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature,she is known as another great female writer after Virginia Woolf.She is devoted all her life time and energy to social issues such as ethnic conflicts,cultural conflicts,and gender relations.Her works often focus on female characters,taking female life as the subject,and focusing on themes such as female spiritual growth,identity pursuit and self-value realization.The novel The Summer Before Dark,published in 1973,was praised by The New York Times as the best novel after Marquez’s "Cien a?os de soledad".The novel depicts the middle-class housewife Kate,who has worked hard to perfectly interpret the roles of wife and mother for many years.When she is the "angel at home",lost herself and becoming a "regulator".In the summer when all family had their own arrangements to spent their holiday out,and their house was let out,Kate,not needed by the family and having nowhere to go,reluctantly accepted a translation job at an international conference where she tried to find self-value from work but in vain.Later,she went on a trip to Spain with a young man,and then returned to London.A series of stories about de-alienation and self-seeking and self-salvation happened in the hotel and in the girl’s apartment.The novel focuses on Lessing’s discussion and reflection on the main topics in the second wave of feminism,such as women departure,femininity and maternal position.While criticizing the patriarchal society’s suppression of women,it encourages women to get rid of the shackles of traditional notions about women’s position at home,improving self-awareness and subjective awareness.This paper discusses the causes and manifestations of women alienation under the oppression of capitalist society and patriarchy.Taking the Marxist concept of human liberation as the guiding ideology,it analyzes the process of women’s pursuit of the self,self-salvation,and improvement of subjective consciousness.There are seven chapters in this thesis.The first chapter introduces the background of the topic,the status quo of domestic and foreign research,as well as the research purpose,significance and innovation.Chapter two gives a brief overview of the theories that will be used to analyze the text,alienation theory and gender theory;Chapter three means to criticize the traditional gender role for women and femininity by analyzing the alienation of the protagonist,the housewife Kate,demonstrating how she lost herself and alienated from the "angel in the room" to the emotional "regulator" under the influence of gender oppression and motherhood from perspectives of social gender and alienation;Taking into consideration of the background of the novel,the world in 1960 s,chapter four discusses the gains and losses of women in work,sexual liberation,and pursuit of identity,revealing that external factors have limited effects on women self-salvation,and thus turns to Kate’s internal salvation and growth to improve self consciousness and subjective consciousness;Chapter fivehighlights the importance of Kate’s acceptance and practice of her true self,which is important for the improvement and construction of her own subjectivity,while women handle the relationship between individuals and collectives with a positive attitude,and are more rational and tolerant of marriage and family.The attitude is not only conducive to her own growth and development,but also conducive to harmonious coexistence between the sexes;Chapter six discusses Doris Lessing’s view of the harmonious coexistence of the sexes,and the enlightenment that Chinese women can get about marriage and self-growth from Kate’s experience,and discusses the importance of women improvement of subject consciousness for the harmony of the sexes and their own growth.The last chapter is the conclusion.