The Construction of "The Golden Notebook"

Abstract

1 Oddly enough very little has appeared in print which is concerned with the struc ture of the book, though what has appeared indicates the need for such analysis. Frederick P. W. McDowell, for example, in two essays says that Golden Notebook is coura geous but disorganized; more ideological than aesthetically formed?despite some nice scenes and characterization. See his articles, 'The Devious Involutions of Human Character and Emotions': Reflections on Some Recent British Novels, WSCL, 4 (Autumn 1963), 339-366; and The Fiction of Lessing: An Interim View/' ArQ, 21 (Winter 1965), 315-345. Dorothy Brewster, in Lessing (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., [1965]), pp. 136-157, remarks upon the numerous questions raised by Golden Notebook and upon its many thematic interests, and points out the Mashopi Hotel episodes of the black book as especially effective; but she regards the questions as for the most part unanswered, and, like McDowell, is not much taken with particulars of structure. On the other hand, Selma Burkom, in 'Only Connect': Form and Content in the Works of Lessing, Critique, 11 (1969), 51-68, uses Forster's famous slogan to good effect in discussing Lessing's books, though on the subject of Golden Notebook her interest in humanistic realism and the need to reconcile splits is more focused on theme than on structure, however admirably focused. I am indebted to the Burkom essay on thematic matters, as indeed to Paul Schlueter, Doris Lessing: Free Woman's Commitment, in Charles Shapiro, ed., Contemporary British Novelists (Carbondale, 111.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1965), pp. 48-61. While Schlueter discusses themes and characters, he is also good on the brilliance of struc tural concept, though not very detailed thereon (see esp. pp. 55-58 of his essay). I owe a special debt to some of my graduate students for their insights into structure ?esp. to Susan Sims, Michael Civin, and Linda Frederick. Finally, to see what was occupying Lessing's attention in the late 1950s, one might well read her essay The Small Personal Voice, in Tom Maschler, ed., Declaration (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1958), pp. 185-201. She here lays out the private-public, social sexual, humanist-anarchist splits which motivate her and inform her work. Interestingly, the date of this article, taken together with its content and the 1962 publication of Golden Notebook, suggests that Lessing may have been doing some stock taking and recapitulating before moving ahead with the final two volumes in the Children of Violence series (Landlocked and Four-Gated City)? much as Evelyn Waugh wrote Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold in self-examination before finishing his Sword of Honour trilogy.