Turning To Postmodernism:Psychological Crisis Of Intellectuals In The Golden Notebook

Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook is a literary record of postmodernist turn.Taking a metafictional device,it traces the whole process from modernism to postmodernism that literary creation and social politics has undergone.The process illustrates that the decline of left-wing movement in Britain has led to the former left-wing intellectuals' psychological crisis and their turning to postmodernism.The protagonist of The Golden Notebook,Anna Wulf,a female writer,writes three works successively.The three “novel/novellas in the novel” are Frontiers of War,Shadow of the Third and Free Women.In between are Anna Wulf's personal experiences,political activities,her self-criticism and other people's comments on her works.Each work marks a stage of the protagonist's turning to postmodernism in artistry and politics.Firstly,the postmodernist turn begins with deconstruction of modernism,which is realized by juxtaposition of modernist work Frontiers of War and the postmodernist reality Anna records in the black notebook,showing how postmodernist reality is distorted by deceptive modernist text.Through criticizing her own work,Anna manages to break up with modernism.Secondly,her failing socialist activities leads to her turning to more marginal politics such as gender issue,and the experimental writing of The Shadow of the Third,which is an unfinished product of the postmodernist turn.Finally,Free Women,along with the last golden notebook,marks her accomplishment of postmodernist turn in both literary devices and politics.The protagonist erases her quarreling with the society and recovers from her psychological crisis.This thesis sheds a Marxist light on postmodernism.With references from theorists T.Eagleton,and H.Marcuse,this thesis argues that postmodernist politics resist all kinds of dominance and existing principles without presenting any solutions.It is an underlying reason for the paradoxical ending of The Golden Notebook.