s in an interview by BBC Radio. Her fame has gained steadily ever since.
It took Lessing nearly two decades following her first novel to write her next important work, the series of Children of Violence, between 1952, when Martha Quest was published, and 1969, when The Four-Gated City appeared. In the context of postwar retreat to the conventional and the conservative, The Children of Violence was “something new” (Greene, 1994: 15) indeed. It focuses on Martha Quest’s difficult, painful process of educating herself in search of true identity. Despite its conventional form, the vivid depiction of Martha’s growth in consciousness evokes the warm sympathy from many readers, especially young women who seemed to have undergone similar frustration. True to what Jenny Taylor observes, “Martha’s quest became the epic, archetypal story of our times” (Taylor, 1982: 5).
With the publication of The Golden Notebook, Lessing seems to have reached the peak of her literary fame. The impact it brought to readers as well as critics is tremendous. Gayle Greene frankly evaluates it as “a transformative work and touchstone for a generation” (Greene, 1994: 17).
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 Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique notwithstanding” (Lyndon, 1970: 48). Ellen Brooks describes Lessing’s depiction of women as “the most thorough and accurate of any in literature” (Brooks, 1973: 101).
However, Doris Lessing herself is somewhat indignant with such critical categorization. In the 1971 introduction to The Golden Notebook, she clarifies that “the novel was not a trumpet for Women’s Liberation” (Lessing, 1975: 25). She declares that rather than the sex war, the theme of “breakdown” was the point she aimed at in her novel. She questions the validity of grouping her and her work into feminism and the Women’s Liberation Movement by pointing out that the novel came out ten years earlier than the launching of the Movement (Lessing, 1975: 24).
While women are thrilled to find themselves truly depicted and named in the book, the novel receives very different readings from men. To be sure, some men recognize its importance. For example, Louis Kampt describes Lessing’s massive novel as a “significant and exemplary attempt to deal with,” “th
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