A Critical Realist Perspective Of Divided Civilization

Doris Lessing was a prolific, serious British novelist who was really rich in the spirit of exploration and active in the second half of the 20 th century. Her life was full of pursuit of fairness, justice and harmony of human beings. In 2007, Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Doris Lessing. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described her as "that epicist of the female experience who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny". The divided civilization here refers to the crisis of Western modern civilization in modern society.Although she is often pigeonholed as a feminist author, Doris Lessing is essentially a realist, and more exactly, a critical realist. With her keen observation and incisive language, she depicted and exposed a deeper level of social reality--- “the divided civilization”. The thesis takes The Golden Notebook as the main object of analysis to explore the characteristics of Lessing’s works, which is discussed mainly in four chatpters. Chapter one studies Lessing’s critical disclosure of the ecological crisis. The ecological crisis made itself felt by the destruction of natural environment, the destruction of human relations and the destruction of people’s dreams. The second chapter analyzes Lessing’s critical disclosure of political crisis, which is characterized by the crisis of humanism, colonialism and racialism. Chapter three discusses Lessing’s critical discosure of spirit crisis through a detailed analysis of typical characters in The Golden Notebook. Chapter four probes into the possible salvation of civilization offered by Doris Lessing.Trough the above analysis, it can be concluded that there are some distinct characteristics of critical realism in Lessing’s works. Lessing has exceeded the critical realists in the 19 th century both in depth and breadth. Just as Dickens, Hardy, and Thackery devoted themselves to exposing and criticizing British social reality--- the inherent conflicts of the capitalist system and the corruption and evil of the capitalist society, so Lessing focused on another aspect of social reality and probed into the hidden causes of the sufferings of people--- the human living environment, human’s nature and soul. So the divided civilization is just a real reflection of human life and a brilliant summary of human’s living condition. Lessing is a critical realist.