Structure and Theme in "Briefing for a Descent into Hell"

Abstract

Of major fiction writers now on Anglo-American scene, it is perhaps Doris Lessing who best sustains James's faith in novel as the most independent, most elastic, most prodigious of literary forms.' We know that James would find much to dispute in Lessing's handling of her narrative materials; but we may be certain that he would applaud her visionary fullness, concern for form, and willingness to be difficult in order to engage moral urgencies of a complex age. Lessing's stature rose greatly with publication of The Four-Gated City, and praise given her earlier for such works as The Grass Is Singing, Martha Quest, and The Golden Notebook seemed by 1969 fully justified.2 Where middle volumes of Children of Violence series sometimes lack textural vigor and heightening (as in A Ripple from Storm and Landlocked), The Four-Gated City restores promise of project's inception through its richly conceived and executed resolution. The novel at once concludes