Abstract
Doris Lessing is one of the Nobel Prize winners and “A Woman on a Roof” is such a famous short story of hers. In the patriarchal society, women are in the lower status, but the woman in the story struggles bravely to fight against the male power. During her fighting, the woman has doubts and hesitation, but she finally forces the three males to put off their prejudice. This paper focuses on how the woman strives for her own rights, and talks from the perspective of Existential Feminism, taking the main male and female characters in “A Woman on a Roof” as examples, so as to explore women’s self-survival in the dualistic society. Through studying her feminist thinking in the short story, the paper points out that the woman finally transforms her role from the Other to the Subject and then she is in an equal position with the three males. Though the two genders does not reconcile with each other as it seems to be with the purification of rainwater in “A Woman on a Roof”, the woman has made a big progress in the pursuit of her own transcendence.
Highlights
Doris Lessing (1919−2013) is one of the greatest writers who is the eleventh woman and the eldest person ever to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007
This paper focuses on how the woman strives for her own rights, and talks from the perspective of Existential Feminism, taking the main male and female characters in “A Woman on a Roof” as examples, so as to explore women’s self-survival in the dualistic society
Some of the scholars analyze her feminist thinking from the perspective of the themes, for example, Orphia Jane Allen’s “STRUCTURE AND MOTIF IN DORIS LESSING’S ‘A MAN AND TWO WOMEN’” (1980)
Summary
Doris Lessing (1919−2013) is one of the greatest writers who is the eleventh woman and the eldest person ever to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. Some of the scholars analyze her feminist thinking from the perspective of the themes, for example, Orphia Jane Allen’s “STRUCTURE AND MOTIF IN DORIS LESSING’S ‘A MAN AND TWO WOMEN’” (1980). Others discuss her from the angle of the main characters and the reality her stories have manifested of the England society, like Susan Watkins’s “Remembering Home: Nation and Identity in the Recent Writing of Doris Lessing” (2007). As a female writer, Lessing feels more about the social status of women in the patriarchal society Many of her works reveal her existential feminist thinking.
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