Monday, April 16 2001
The Golden Notebook -By Doris Lessing
- By-
Roopa Malavally BelurRoopa Malavally Belur is a writer, poet and a Carnatac music enthusiast. Roopa is a Technical writer by profession, and takes keen interest in combining writing skills with technology. She volunteers with Women Support groups in the US. Roopa is a mother of a four year old daughter and she takes initiative in volunteering with play groups for children of her daughter's age group.
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Doris Lessing was born in Iran, and grew up in Africa and Rhodesia. She was a passionate communist fighting against all kinds of oppression and colonialism. She has written short stories, non-fiction, and fiction. Doris' most influential book is The Golden Notebook published in 1962, which is aptly described as:
"An experimental book exploring the destructive relationships between men and women that mirror the lack of coherence and order in our fragmented, materialistic century."
Some good web sites about Doris Lessing:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/01/10/specials/lessing.html
http://lessing.redmood.com/
In 1966, in an interview with Florence Howe, Doris Lessing said,
"The Golden Notebook is more truthful because it is more complex the same people occur again and again in our lives. Situations do. And any moment of time is so complicated and the ideas we live with are complex" (12)
The structural complexity, the intricate content, the thin line between art and reality, and the startling use of persona in Doris Lessing's novel The Golden Notebook often leave readers puzzled and perplexed. Yet, these characteristics also make Lessing unique and awe-inspiring as her book opens avenues for new insights, interpretations, and understanding of the novel.
The dominant theme of The Golden Notebook is the fragmentation of life and consciousness, and its excruciating consequences. Anna Wulf, the protagonist, is a novelist who experiences alienation and fragmentation of her consciousness in the disintegrated world. The highlight of the novel is - the structure of the narrative reflects the theme and content of the book, the theme of division of self.
The novel consists of four notebooks, which symbolize the four aspects of Anna Wulf. We see her diverse representations as a novelist (Black notebook), political activist (Red notebook), "her efforts of imagination" in the Yellow notebook, and quest for identity as a writer in the Blue notebook. The Blue Notebook has a structure of a diary where she "attempts" to keep a factual account of her life.
The fifth notebook called the "Golden notebook" is about the successful self-healing from fragmentation and blocked creativity, and this book enables Anna Wulf the writer to begin her new book called "Free Women". It is a story of an artist, Anna Wulf, and her loss of creative power. We, thus, are faced with a protagonist Anna Wulf that Doris Lessing creates in The Golden Notebook, who in turn creates another Anna Wulf in the chapter "Free Women" in a Golden notebook section of the novel.
This novel by Doris Lessing evoked significant responses in the area of criticism. The philosophical, modernist, feminist, psychological, postmodern, formal, and historical-political approaches provide varied perspectives to the book. Jean Pickering offers a unique perspective of Existentialism to the book and views that,
"Anna, like Sisyphus, engages in an "unceasing struggle" to confront the absurd where this mind and this world straining against each other without being able to embrace each other."
The novel thus exemplifies the fragmentation of Anna's mind and personality, the problem of her blocked creativity, and the final psychic integration that restores the creative power in the protagonist. A must read for a serious reader.
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