Freedom and Sexuality in Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook

Abstract

This dissertation analyses the patriarchal conventions in the light of Beauvoirian existential feminism approach to the presentation of freedom and sexuality in Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook. Patriarchy, guided by useless and parochial concepts, delimits female identity realizing their potentiality that males are afraid of being substituted by them. Lessing as an existential feminist writer believes on assertion and self-reliance in female as much as male does have. Her protagonist Anna not only dismantles conventional role models but also strives for identity and autonomy. Moreover, until and unless society does allow and liberate woman especially in career and identity, the concerned people including the capable cannot enjoy and feel their intensity of liberty. Because of her attempt to subsume the female especially the single and separated, Lessing elicits an assertive character from the dominated female members, including the victims of patriarchy and as a result, intensifies the amount of great effort through her assertive fictional testimonies help her access to identical autonomy, acknowledge the ‘suppressed’, ‘exploited’ it with the sense of ‘gender biased notions towards the women’ and prepare the ground for ‘identity’, ‘autonomy’ and ‘egalitarian sphere.’