Female Identity in Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook

Heba Mohamed Abd El Aziz

Abstract


In the realm of art in general and literature in particular, the presence of Doris Lessing could not be denied as one of the most influential English novelists in the 1960s. Doris Lessing is a writer who is concerned with the representation of women identity in the West. In her renowned novel, The Golden Notebook Lessing aims at showcasing women identity in Europe and any aspect related to them, i.e., their psychology, political lives, relation to men and children, their place in a male-dominated society and their frequent attempts to escape from the social and political oppression. The aim of this paper is to present a truthful account of female identity from a feminist point of view.


Keywords


Feminist; identity; fragmentation; oppression; politics; exile; sentiments

Full Text:

PDF

References


“Doris Lessing's Mara and Dann.” World and I 13 May 1999: 246.

“More Is Lessing.” The Daily Telegraph. 25 Sept 2004.

“The Essential Library; Night & Day.” The Mail on Sunday (London, England) 20 Oct. 1996: 32.

De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Trans. H. M. Parshley. New York: Random House, 1974.

Faludi, Susan. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women London: Challo and Windus, 1999.

Fredrick, R. Karl. A Guide to Contemporary English Novels. New York: The Noonday Press, 1972.

Greene, Gayle. Doris Lessing: The Poetics of Change. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1994.

Janik, Vicki K. and Emmanuel S. Nelson, eds. Modern British Women Writers: An A-To-Z Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002.

Joannou, Maroula. Contemporary Women's Writing: from The Golden Notebook to The color Purple. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000.

Lauret, Maria. Liberating Literature: Feminist Fiction in America. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Roller, Judi M. The Politics of the Feminist Novel. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986.

Rubenstein, Roberta. The Novelistic Vision of Doris Lessing: Breaking the Forms of Consciousness. Urbana, Chicago and London: University of Illinois Press, 1979.

Sage, Lorna. Women on the House of Fiction. New York: Palgrave, 1992.

Schlueter, Paul. “Self-Analytic Women: the Golden Notebook.” Doris Lessing. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. 45-76.

Showalter, Elaine. “Towards a Feminist Poetics.” Twentieth Century Literary Theory. Ed., Newton K.M. London: Macmillian, 1989. 268-272.

---. A Literature of Their Own. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999.

Spacks, Patricia Meyer. “Free Women.” Doris Lessing. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. 95-98.

Sternberg, Phillis. Exploration in the Works of Doris Lessing. London: Macmillan, 1999.

Yelin, Louise. From the Margins of Empire: Christina Stead, Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.9n.1p.149

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Bookmark and Share


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2010-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.

Advances in Language and Literary Studies

You may require to add the 'aiac.org.au' domain to your e-mail 'safe list’ If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox'. Otherwise, you may check your 'Spam mail' or 'junk mail' folders.