On Marginalized Females In Love, Again

Doris Lessing (1919- ) is regarded as the"Evergreen Tree in British Literary World"and"the greatest woman writer after Woolf". She is a prolific writer and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in the year of 2007, when she was eighty-eight years old. During her writing career, Lessing has created more than 50 novels, dramas, short story collections, essays and autobiography and other works. Her two following novels The Golden Notebook and The Grass Is Singing are the best-known.Love, Again was first published in 1996, written by Lessing at her age of 76, which helped her achieve a good reputation as a well-known contemporary novelist. In Love, Again, she mainly explores the unfair treatment that the marginalized aged woman, colored woman and ignored problem youth suffered in the patriarchal society. Through the vivid description of the psychological activities of some marginalized females, Lessing analyzes women's mental injuries caused by traditional norms, and the destruction of life due to the oppressed sexual desire. Lessing points out that the root of the existing social problems and these women's unfair treatment can go back to the deep-rooted patriarchal society itself.This thesis intends to analyze marginalized females in Love, Again from the perspective of feminism. The famous British feminist pioneer Katherine Mansfield condemns the oppression that women suffer physically and mentally in the patriarchal society, which makes the most of its traditional norms to confine women to their marginalized status in the family and society. With regard to women's freedom and liberation, Mansfield believes that women should depend on their own efforts to free themselves from the ideological fetters that bind them. So the thoughts revealed in the novel are in accordance with them. In Love, Again, Lessing explores the inner heart of three kinds of marginalized females: the aged women, the colored women and the ignored adolescents. The thesis reveals the aged and colored women's insufferable anguish and their oppressed sexual desire and the ignored women's lack of mother's love. The thesis consists of three chapters.Chapter One deals with anguish of marginalized females. First, from the angle of feminism, the thesis analyzes the aged woman's romances are all the more wrenching, and describes the painful struggling psychological activities in love, and indicates the perplexity and unfair treatment of aged women. Then from the angle of postcolonial feminism, the colored woman's identity is denied, the colonial culture is also denied, her rights of pursuit of love is deprived and her equal status as a human being is subverted.Chapter Two directly exposes those marginalized women's pursuit of love, freedom and independence as well as self-image and the crying need of marginalized women for their desire of love. In conclusion, the social convention is just the killer of marginalized females'perdition of love.Chapter Three explores the ignorance and loneliness of some females by analyzing the conflict between the ignored females and their mothers, it points out that mother's role as accomplice of patriarchy affects daughters'personality. So to build a harmonious mother-daughter relationship has a important meaning in constructing female identity.The conclusion of the thesis is made based on the three chapters above. The significance of concern with those marginalized females in the society is mainly dealt with. It holds the opinion that females, especially those disadvantaged females, are still suffering from the severe discrimination and confronted with various problems in such a male-centered patriarchal society. To a certain extent, it is partly due to the social norms and the social morals which interfere with women's psychological and mental health. Therefore, it is vital to discard this severe discrimination, a freer and more equal society requires more concern for those marginalized females.