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Themes:  feminism, second-wave feminism, mental breakdown, mothering, writing, psychoanalysis,

communism, female sexuality


 
Note to Teachers
 
The Golden Notebook is a novel about mental and literary breakthrough and breakdown.  Although many
have hailed it as a feminist classic, Lessing herself did not intend for it to be so.  Rather she wrote the novel
during a period of time in which she was interested in questions about writing and about mental
functioning.  Certainly, however, the book addresses a woman’s position in mid-20th Century society and
one woman’s struggles with sex, politics, motherhood, creativity, and success, and in this way it addresses
the feminist questions of the time.
 
What is most noticeable, and most commented upon, is the book’s structure.  The book contains a novel
“Free Women” that is divided into parts, and between the parts are four separate notebooks kept by the
main character, “Anna”, in “Free Women”.  The four notebooks are black (outlining Anna’s experiences in
Africa), red (describing Anna’s political experiences and especially her disillusionment with Communism),
yellow (a novel within a novel in which Anna writes about a heroine named Ella), and blue (which is Anna’s
emotional and personal diary).  In the end of the book, the four notebooks are woven into one golden
notebook in order to represent integration and healing.  The structure of the book itself has been seen as
both breakthrough and breakdown.  On the one hand, Lessing felt that the greatness of the structure had
been overlooked and her technique has been called brilliant.  On the other hand, readers often complain
that the book’s fragmented nature keeps them at a distance and is too self-indulgent or navel-gazing.
 
More than the words themselves, the book’s structure is Lessing’s commentary about writing and mental
process.  The fragmented, vertical splits that are the structure of the book are meant to illustrate the self-
division that we all live with while we seemingly move forward in life; the notebooks represent crude, failed
attempts to organize and compartmentalize experience.  At the same time, the project of the golden
notebook suggests that integration is possible and the only real way forward.  Similarly, through Anna,
Lessing examines writing through several horizontal splits (ie, Anna who was successful but now blocked
writes about Ella who also struggles with writing, at the end of The Golden Notebook Anna is given the first
line for her next book which is actually the first line of The Golden Notebook.  These layers often raise the
question of whether anyone can write something worthwhile anyhow and Lessing adds to this question by
urging students to not to write papers about her and her work but simply to “read what I have written and
make up your own mind about what you think, testing it against your own life, your own experience” (p.
xxiii). 
 
Discussion and Paper Topics
 

1. In “Introduction” (p. ix), in reference to working on autobiographies and The Golden


Notebook, Lessing writes: “I have to conclude that fiction is better at “the truth” than a
factual record.  Why this should be so is a very large subject and one I don’t begin to
understand”.  Is fiction better than fact in expressing the truth?How does this question
relate to the recent publishing scandals in which well-known memoirs were found to be
less fact and more fiction?  Should such works be seen as fact or fiction?  Are they the
truth?
2. In “Introduction” (p. xxii), Lessing recounts that students often write to her about her work,
looking for information to include in their papers about her or her books.  She says she
would like to reply: “Dear Student.  You are mad.  Why spend months or years writing
thousands of words about one book, or even one writer, when there are hundreds of books
waiting to be read.  You don’t see that you are the victim of a pernicious system.”  Are you
the victim of the educational system?  What is the best way to learn?  Can you think of
classes or activities in which you felt that you did (or did not) really learn something
valuable?

3. The Golden Notebook has been hailed as one of the founding novels of the women’s
movement.  By titling the sub-novel in The Golden Notebook, “Free Women”, Lessing
seems to be making claims about what freedom is or would be for women.  In “Free
Women”, are Anna and Molly free?  How so and how not?  What would the life of “free men”
look like, and how and why would their freedoms be different?

4. Anna maintains four notebooks (red, yellow, black, and blue) that she then synthesizes in
the golden notebook.  One central task in the development of the self or identity is the
integration of separate aspects of the self and/or moments in time.  Discuss what four
notebooks you might keep about yourself and your life.  Then discuss how it would look for
these notebooks to become synthesized into one golden notebook of your own.  Also
address whether at this point in your life this sort of integration would promote healing or
anxiety.

5. To Lessing, and to many readers, the most important and revolutionary aspect of The
Golden Notebook is its structure.  How did you experience the structure of The Golden
Notebook?  What effect did the structure of the book have on you?  What did the structure
communicate about individual development and mental health?

6. In different ways, Molly, Anna, or Marion are portrayed as bad mothers.  What sort of
mothers do you think they are?  How do they compare to the sort of mother you did or did
not have?  What is your idea of a successful mother, and does this mother do what is best
for her children, herself, or both (if this is possible)?  Would you define a successful father
in the same way?

7. How would you characterize Anna’s romantic and sexual relationships with men?  How do
these relationships reflect upon Anna or upon the men?  What do you think will happen to
Anna?  How are Anna’s relationships similar to or different from the “Hooking Up” culture
that characterizes college campuses in the 21st Century?

8. What is life like for Janet?  What would it be like to have a mother grappling with Anna’s
questions?  Is your mother a feminist?  
Outline the history of motherhood in the United States and address the following
questions:  What do we know about how expectations for mothers have changed over the
past 250 years?  How does this historical perspective influence your opinion about what
exactly a good mother is?  What will the expectations of motherhood look like in 50 years?

9. Summarize Anna’s relationship with Mother Sugar.  Did Anna’s experience in


psychoanalysis seem harmful or helpful to her development as a person, and how so? 
Was Mother Sugar a feminist?

10. One of Anna’s central concerns was politics.  Are politics important to you?  If so, how so? 
If not, why do you think women today may be less concerned with politics than  were Anna
and Molly?

11. Describe Anna’s relationship with Saul Green.  Does this relationship contribute to her
breakdown or to her breakthrough, or both?  How so? 

12. If people are indeed fragmented and compartmentalized, then is a breakdown necessary
for a breakthrough?  How else might a person integrate various aspects of their lives?  Do
the adults in your life seem integrated or compartmentalized?

13. In the 1971 introduction, Lessing argues that no one should read a book at the wrong time
and that readers should put down any book they find boring or skip over parts they do not
like.  How do you feel about this advice?  If you followed this advice, would you have
finished The Golden Notebook?  What was your experience of reading The Golden
Notebook?

14. Do the struggles of Anna, Molly, and Marion seem relevant today?  What can women in the
21st Century learn from the three women?

15. Did you find the final “golden notebook” to be satisfying?  Was Anna able to synthesize the
parts of her life in a way that seemed healthy?  Was this a “happy ending” and, if not, what
does this say about women’s place in society?
 

 
Online and Additional Resources
 
For a chapter by chapter summary of The Golden Notebook:
http://www.impatientreader.com/html/goldennotebookmy60daystruggle.html
 
For a review of The Golden Notebook:
http://www.critiquemagazine.com/article/goldennotebook.html
 
For information about Doris Lessing:
http://www.dorislessing.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Lessing
 
Other Works by Doris Lessing
 
Alfred and Emily
Ben, In the World
The Cleft
A Four-Gated City
The Grandmothers
The Grass is Singing
Going Home
In the Pursuit of English
Landlocked
Love Again
Mara and Dann
Martha Quest
A Proper Marriage
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside
A Ripple From the Storm
Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog
The Sweetest Dream
Time Bites
Under My Skin
Walking in the Shade
 
 
 
 

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