Doris Lessing: A Female quest for self-knowledge
Doris Lessing: A Female quest for self-knowledge

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on Doris Lessing’s depiction of a specifically female experience in the novels Martha Quest and The Golden Notebook as an illustration of the author’s successful use of the novel form as the appropriate vehicle for the expression of the authentic female voice. The necessity of self-knowledge as the first step towards profound inner change in a variety of Lessing’s female protagonists, a recurrent theme in Lessing’s fiction in general, is thus recognized as a unifying motive in the abovementioned works. In Martha Quest, a female quest for selfknowledge is shown to be only at the beginning, as the main protagonist realizes the importance of taking responsibility for her own life, instead of blaming her condition exclusively on the social conventions, gender stereotypes and the patriarchy. In The Golden Notebook, a mature, self-confident and apparently independent heroine has to face her own self-indulgence and passivity and admit the traditional mental dependence on man as an underlying pattern which governs her behavior and her selfperception, before she finds strength to take a genuine step towards changing her position. Importantly, true transformation is not only dangerous and risky, but it necessarily requires the emancipation of both women and men. Lessing’s vision at the end of the novel is one of a radically redefined male-female relationship, in which the man and the woman overcome mistrust and confrontation and lay foundation to the new form of partnership marked by true understanding and cooperation.

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