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    A Study Guide for Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook
    A Study Guide for Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook
    A Study Guide for Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook
    Ebook50 pages43 minutes

    A Study Guide for Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Doris Lessing's "The Golden Notebook," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateAug 14, 2015
    ISBN9781535836920
    A Study Guide for Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook

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      A Study Guide for Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook - Gale

      08

      The Golden Notebook

      Doris Lessing

      1962

      Introduction

      Doris Lessing's novel The Golden Notebook, with its themes and setting reflecting the attitudes of the 1950s, was published in 1962. It is considered the author's most significant work. The form of the novel, and its topics, were praised by some and scorned by others when the book was first released. Over time, however, scholars have recognized that The Golden Notebook was published ahead of its time. Indeed, the novel experiments with chronological sequence and narrative voice, and it deconstructs language as an endeavor to search for meaning and truth. All of these experimental aspects became the principle elements of the postmodernist movement that followed the book's publication. The Golden Notebook also touches on feminist issues that were only just beginning to be debated at the time it was published. Additionally, the book openly discusses the protagonist, Anna, as being attracted to communism (a social theory that stresses that the economic goods of a society should be managed by the laborers who produce those goods and that a society's wealth should be distributed equally among its citizens). At the same time, however, Anna is dissatisfied with communism as a practice.

      Lessing's novel is experimental and sometimes difficult to read. What holds it together is the author's skillful treatment of language and her sensitivity to her characters. The Golden Notebook, some fifty years after it was first written, still strikes powerful chords. It probes women's identities, the value of male and female relationships, the ability of language to accurately communicate experience, the definition of sanity, the power that one person has to affect his or her world, and the value and purpose of literature. These are universal themes that may never be fully exhausted.

      A recent edition of The Golden Notebook was printed by HarperCollins in 1999.

      Author Biography

      Lessing was born on October 22, 1919, in Kermanshah, Persia (now Iran) to British parents, Emily Maude McVeagh and Alfred Cook Taylor. According to Lessing's biographer, Carole Klein, Lessing's mother had been expecting a boy and was so disappointed her baby was a girl, she could not think of a name for the child. The physician attending the birth suggested the name Doris.

      In 1925, when Lessing was six years old, her family moved to a farm in Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe). Lessing attended a convent school until she was thirteen, when her formal education ended. When Lessing was nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom and gave birth to two children in quick succession (a son and a daughter). She divorced Wisdom in 1943, leaving him to care for their children. Two years later, she married Gottfried Lessing, a central figure in the local Communist Party and a refugee from Nazi Germany. They had a son, Peter.

      In 1947, Lessing completed her first novel but had trouble finding a publisher. She also wrote many short stories about her experiences in Africa. In 1949, after divorcing her second husband, Lessing moved to London with Peter. A year later, her first novel, The Grass is Singing, was finally published. From then on, Lessing was able to live on the money she made as a writer. Upon the success of The Golden Notebook (1962), Lessing's role as a major British author

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