英语专业论文(5)

Despite her intention of minimizing feminism both as a historical and a contemporary influence on her writing, Lessing is regarded as one of the early voices of the feminist movement, and The Golden Notebook one of its key texts. Margaret Drabble hails The Golden Notebook as “a document in the history of (women’s) liberation”(Showalter, 2004: 311). “It was the first book I’ve read, apart from Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex, which seemed to be really addressing the problems of women in the contemporary world,” says Margaret Drabble, “Nobody seemed to have written about them in the way that we were experiencing them” (Bookshelf, 1992). Showalter uses the word “monumental” to highlight it among the works of twentieth-century women writers. She interprets the novel as “the work of essential feminist implications” (Showalter, 2004: 311). Elizabeth Wilson describes it as “a manual of woman experience” (Wilson, 1982: 71). Susan Lardner calls it “a feminist gospel, a representative of Modern Woman” (Lardner, 1983: 144). Susan Lyndon describes it as “almost a Little Red Book of women’s liberationists,” “probably the most widely read and deeply appreciated book on the women’s liberation reading list, Simone de