An Analysis Of The Marginal Characters In Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child And Ben, In The World From The Perspective Of Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Theory

Doris Lessing is one of the most prolific feminine writers in the contemporary British literature world and her wonderful writings had won lots of international prizes including the most well-known Nobel Prize of 2007 which built her solid fame in the literary arena. Born as a citizen of Great Britain but spending most time of her early life in Africa, Lessing wondered at the border of imperial empire and colonies. Because of her double marginal identity, Lessing paid special attention to the marginal people and created different kinds of marginal characters in her works.This thesis selects the novel series of The Fifth Child and Ben, in the World as study objects to analyze the living conditions of marginal people and discuss the problems in their self-actualization based on Maslow’s need hierarchy theory. According to the theory, Maslow points out that the satisfaction of basic physiological needs and psychological needs will help a man to build a healthy personality and among all the needs, self-actualization is the highest one. The thesis divides the marginal characters in the novels into two groups:the marginal child and marginal women. Through analysis of the poor child Ben’s life tragedy, this thesis finds out the key factor to it is the lack of social belongingness. As for marginal women, their self-actualization is greatly limited by economic conditions and social ideology. Through analysis of marginal people’s living conditions, this thesis holds that the difficult living conditions can not meet marginal people’s basic needs and social constraints greatly limit their self-actualization which resulted in life tragedies or distorted personalities. The thesis argues that marginal people need spiritual supports to live on and the way to improve their situation and achieve their self-actualization is to break social constraints and accept their difference.