Feminine Consciousness Of Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing (1919----), an eminent female English writer, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in2007, is a prolific writer. It’s difficult to generalize her works since the theme of her works cover a wide range of topics with her bountiful life experiences. However, feminine question is always her focus in different periods of her writing. This thesis attempts to probe into Lessing’s ideas about woman in different periods of time and the flow of changes of he ideas by discussing her five novels which represents her typical idea about women of that time.Lessing spent her childhood and youth time in South Rodesia, south Africa. She described teh tragedy of woman in African colony in her virgin book THE GRASS IS SINGING. She indicated the lack of self-consciousness in heroine resulted in her doom in the life. The novel showed her strong appealing for independent self-consciousness of woman. In her second period of writing, the novel THE VOILENCE OF CHILDREN is her representing work. It reveals the rebellious idea of woman in the wave of de-colonization. GOLDEN NOTEBOOK is categorized as her bookof third period, which illustrates her idea of building hamonized relationship between man and woman in the wave of rebellion in western society. THE SUMMER BEFORE DARK is her novel of fourth period. It shows her tendency to embracing the traditional value of woman. The novel LOVE,AGAIN, which is her latest works about woman, shows her conservatism about woman. The thesis is deviled into five parts,with each to discuss one of her novels. It exerts efforts to prove writer’s idea about woman.The author of this thesis thinks Lessing has different ideas bout woman in differnt time,which relates tightly to the thoughts of time of her living. These ideas show a stream from being rebellious to conservatism. First, she sought the independent self-consciousness of woman. Then, she became rebellious in the area. In the following stage, she thought the happiness of woman depend on the harmonic relationship between man and woman. As time passing by, she tends to agree with the traditional idea that woman’s happiness lies in her family. The process of thinking relates to the development of society and Lessing’s ideological trend of feminism has a characteristics of era.