1、中文 4890 字 ,3055 单词 Feminist Interpretation of Doris Lessings The Golden Notebook Abstract: Doris Lessing is undoubtedly one of the most influential women writers in the 20th century. In 1962, her masterpiece The Golden Notebook was published. It is regarded as the companion volume of Simon de Beauvo
2、irs The Second Sex. The novel soon became popular among the feminists because of its realistic description about womens independent consciousness and their living condition. This thesis has been written with the aim to interpret The Golden Notebook from the perspective of feminism. The novels theme,
3、 structure, characters, narrative style serve well for the aim of feminist interpretation. The thesis also innovatively discusses the challenges to feminism reflected from The Golden Notebook. Key words: Doris Lessing； The Golden Notebook； feminism； Free Women 1. Introduction: Doris Lessing has crea
4、ted her novel The Golden Notebook in 1962. She put the novel under the social background of London at the time from 1950s to1960s. During this period, the original values and moral standard of Europe have been collapsed because of the influence of World War . The chaotic world has brought people end
5、less puzzle and strong spiritual shock especially to those intellectual people who care about the world situation. The protagonist of The Golden Notebook Anna is more than thirty years old. She calls herself “free woman”-she lives a kind of free life with the remuneration from her first novel； she c
6、hooses her lover freely without the bondage of marriage； she has divorced and brought up her daughter alone. When her lover who has lived with her for 5 years leaves her. She has to reconsider her life. She feels that her life is just in a mess. As a writer, she suffers from the “writers block”, She
7、 is not able to create literary works anymore. As a free woman, she found that she could not get rid of the pain brought about by his lovers betrayal. Finally she encountered the collapse of her own world. She feels the whole world around her are beginning to fall down. The Golden Notebook is “set i
8、n London in the 1950s. with long recollections of Rhodesia during World War Two, The Golden Notebook tells a story of a womans breakdown, fragmentation and healing into Unity” (Pickering 90). Around this theme, Doris Lessing has known clearly that the traditional forms of writing will encounter the
9、difficulties to depict exactly the inner world of Anna. In another word. The traditional forms can not truly reflect the conditions of Annas breakdown and fragmentation. In the jacket of the book, Lessing explains that this novel “is attempted to break a form, to break certain forms of conscious all
10、 go beyond them”. Doris Lessing through the innovation of the novels form and structure succeeds in combining the forms with the motif of the novel and making the theme of the novel obtain its better demonstration. The contents 0f this novel are expressed perfectly through this particular narrative
11、structure. In The Golden Notebook, we can not find out that Doris Lessing gives free women the independent income and free space of their own living. Doris Lessing agrees with the thoughts of Virginia Woolf who insists that a woman should have a room of her own and independent income. Doris Lessing
12、ever says in a conversation with Florence Howe: “I agree with Virginia Woolf that every body should have a private income of Five hundred a year would have made all the difference to my 1ife.”(Howe 9). Both two writers emphasized the importance of independence from men and possession of their own sp
13、ace, which are illustrated fully in Doris Lessings masterpiece-The Golden Notebook. “The two women are alone in the London flat” begins the first chapter of “Free Women”. These two women are Anna and Molly. 2. Comparison Between Traditional Women and Free Women in The Golden Notebook 2.1 Free Life o
14、f the Free Women “Annas full name is Anna Freeman Wulf, which gives some sight into the meaning of the novel. Wulf clearly associated her with Virginia Woof with whom she shares a commitment to the act of writing. The need for a room to write in it, and a tendency to psychological breakdown； Freeman
15、 is obvious enough in its ironic juxtaposition to Free woman”(Pickering 93). Another the woman is Annas best friend Molly. In the segment of “Free Women” the two important and central heroines performed themselves not as the traditional “angels of the house” but new ones. The life of traditional wom
16、en is just the thing that free women try their best to escape from. As free women, they have their steady jobs, in other words, they have their own income and they can live a free life without depending on men. Both Anna and Molly have divorced and lived with their children without their ex-husbands
17、 economic help. Meanwhile, they also have their own house. The first sentence “The two women are alone in the London flat” tells us they have rooms of their own beautifully decorated rooms. Distinct from the traditional “Angels of the House”, Anna and Molly live freely in their own house. When the t
18、raditional womens whole life are 6lled with the households, clothes-washing and childrens crying, the free women can sit in their own space to talk about men and women, discuss what they see and what they fee1. Anna Wulf returned to her spacious house, in her house, four notebooks are laid on the ta
19、ble. “Looking down at the four notebooks as if she were a general on the top of a mountain, watching her armies deploy in the Valley be low.” (GN 55). This is a kind of feeling about predominance which will be never experienced by the traditional women. Anna is a sentimental, emotional writer. She h
20、as a steady income from the royalties of her successful novel-The Frontiers of War, a best seller. After being published, it is still welcomed by the film and TV agent. This novel not only brings Anna steady income which makes her to live a free life without mens financial support but earns the worl
21、dwide reputation for her. Annas best friends-Molly, the other free woman is also a professional one having her own career. She is an actress in the theater who plays minor comedy pans. The earning from the jobs enables her to support herself and her son Tommy without her ex-husbands held. This kind
22、of life is that traditional women never lived or imagined before. Free women are never willing to undertake those routine responsibilities of traditional womens at home. In order to stress the image of free women deeply, Doris Lessing in particular portrays two figures of traditional women-Marion an
23、d Muriel to illustrate the immense disparity between free women and the traditional women. Marion and Muriel are the mothers and wives at home being confined in their houses to take care of their husband and children: they have little freedom to pursue their dreams and values. They devote themselves
24、 to the family and their husbands. Marion as a traditional woman has brought up three children and taken care of her husband, but she only can see her husband when she has hosted dinner party for him in order to meet his career needs. She wears those clothes that she dislikes to please her husband.
25、But all of these can not prevent Richard-her husband from abandoning her. Her husband falls in love with his secretary. She takes no effective measures to win her marriage back just wastes time through drinking heavily. which makes Richard dislike her more. She has no courage to step out of her marr
26、iage, to extricate herself from the fetter of this unhappy marriage because of her subordination to her husband. She has no economic resources； she can not support herself without her husband, so she has to do that. However, as the novel develops, Marion slowly extricates from her meaningless marria
27、ge using Anna as a model. Muriel, the other traditional women.has suffered the same fate with Morion. In The Shadow of the Third, Muriel has been abandoned by her husband-Paul who betrayed Muriel and fell in love with Ella. Paul just went back for some clean shirts early in the morning or did not ap
28、pear at home for the whole week in 5 years. Paul left Muriel alone at home. She has to “reading Women at home or looking at the television set or listening for the children upstairs. ”(GN 221). Facing on this kind of unfair treatment, Muriel chooses to stand it without taking any treasures. which re
29、sults from her economic dependence on her husband. Men never really think over the womens feeling, only regard them as poor, useless attachment. When E1la asked Paul why he didnt put this kind of loveless marriage to an end, he replied proudly, “WhatWhen I go home I deal with everything. The gas hea
30、ters, and the electricity bill and where to buy a cheap carpet, and what to do about the childrens school.Everything.” (GN22l一 222). The free woman Anna has her own spacious house, steady income and successful career, she has lived a kind of life those traditional women never lived before. She explo
31、res the inner world of herself with freedom and observes the world, men, everything around her, meanwhile, Anna and Molly are both divorced woman, because of their steady income, they can independently bring up their children without their husbands interference. 2.2 The living status of the traditio
32、nal women Here we can see clearly the ignorance of the traditional housewives on politics and their total subordination to their husbands as far as politics is concerned in patriarchal society. Free women Anna and M0lly are enthusiastic about the politics and have high expectation on it, Anna become
33、s a communist in 1950. They actively have taken part in the political activities, which is absolutely different from the traditional women. The free women devote themselves to the Communist Party because they believe its description of the ideal world and its promise of changing peoples life. Compar
34、ing with traditional women of Britain, free women possess quite large degree of freedom from the angle of their marriage. The protagonist Anna wrote her novel-In the Shadow of the Third using her own emotional experience as the chief source. This part in the hook belongs to the yellow notebook. In t
35、his novel everywhere is filled with the comparison between free women and traditional women. The character who is opposite to Ella is her lover-Pauls wife, a typical housewife, just as most of the traditional women, in order to obtain a kind of security in the society dominated by men, she has gotte
36、n married at an early age and naturally stepped into the rank of traditional housewives. No love even feeling exists between she and Paul, they are short of communication. She is alone at home managing to those boring household chores and taking good care of children while her husband seeks one affa
37、ir after another outside and Days no attention to her existence. To the traditional women, the most important aim for their marri89e is to get a kind of security. Regardless of her husbands emotional betrayal to her. Muriel is still reluctant to leave him because she needs him desperately for protec
38、tion most of the time. However, the emotional experience the free women had undergone possesses large difference with the one of traditional womens. Ella has gotten once marriage before she became Pauls lover, this marriage left Ella nothing but pain and betrayal. The failure of her marriage results from their unsatisfactory sexual life, then her husband seeks one affair to unset Ella:Ella chooses to give up this marriage and pursues the perfect love in her heart freely. Talking about feminism, we have to mention the womens struggle to throw off their loveless
