This morning I awoke to the news that Doris Lessing has died. I’ve read only one of Lessing’s novels, The Golden Notebook, and I read it years ago: long enough ago that I don’t remember much about the plot or characters. What I remember about the book, though, is that it was challenging to read, but it somehow felt significant. Even when I didn’t “get” what Lessing was trying to do with her character of Anna Wulf, I somehow found myself resonating with what I might call the “story behind the story.”
I read The Golden Notebook years ago, when I was (unsuccessfully) trying to juggle grad school, teaching, and an ultimately failed first marriage. I read The Golden Notebook because through all of this, I was a sporadic scribbler, starting then abandoning a seemingly endless series of never-filled notebooks, trying to make sense of my life between the lines. Not one but several people suggested I “must” read The Golden Notebook, given its female protagonist’s similar struggle to use writing to make sense of her life and the multiple selves that women create as we try to juggle the various roles society expects us to flawlessly fill. Wulf juggles these disparate demands by dividing her life into several neatly compartmentalized notebooks, and she ultimately finds wholeness when she integrates these separate selves into a single narrative: the all-encompassing Golden Notebook of the novel’s title.
When I finally read The Golden Notebook after so many ardent recommendations, I initially didn’t find myself relating much to Anna Wulf: the superficial details of her life were too far removed from mine. Ultimately, though, I realized that The Golden Notebook wasn’t really about Wulf or the particulars of her life and work: instead, the book is about the centrality of self-expression in women’s lives. The Golden Notebook communicated this theme through the example of Anna Wulf just as Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own used the example of Mary Beton, Mary Seton, or Mary Carmichael: the name you assign to Woolf’s narrator doesn’t ultimately matter because the experience Woolf describes transcends the particular details of this Mary or that. What Mary faced is what Virginia faced; what Anna faced is what Doris faced; and what all the Marys, Virginias, Annas, and Dorises of the world face is what Lorianne does, too. The details of an individual woman’s story don’t matter as much as the determination to TELL that story.
Self-expression is central in women’s lives because women who are not heard become either self-destructive or passive, bowing under the weight of society’s conflicting expectations. Women who are not heard become either Woolf’s Judith Shakespeare or Euripides’ Medea, venting their anger either inward or out. Freud may not have understood what women want, but he spoke truth when he said that depression is anger turned inward. In a society where female rage is demonized, it should come as no surprise that many women are depressed, their experience having no outlet other than self-destructive behaviors.
Men, of course, need to express themselves…but our society is used to listening to men. When a man raises his voice, we assume he has something to say, but when a woman raises her voice, we condemn her as a witch, a bitch, or both. In The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing was unflinching in her attempt to chronicle one woman’s life as an exemplum of all women’s lives. Anna Wulf creates her own identity out of disparate influences and among conflicting expectations, and Anna Wulf does this self-crafting through writing. THAT is what I took from The Golden Notebook. Regardless of whether you’re a Mary, a Virginia, an Anna, a Doris, or a Lorianne, self-determination is inextricably linked to voice. Regardless of whether anyone seems to be listening, write as if your very life depends on it, because ultimately, it does. If you don’t create your own unified self, society will slice you into petty roles of its own choosing. I’m grateful to Doris Lessing for underscoring this fact in The Golden Notebook, and the world seems a smaller place because of her passing.
This is my Day 17 contribution to NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month, a commitment to post every day during the month of November: thirty days, thirty posts.
The photos illustrating today’s post come from the Boston Women’s Memorial on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, which I photographed in April, 2010 and blogged the following month. One of the things I love about this memorial is the fact that both Phillis Wheatley and Lucy Stone are shown WRITING while Abigail Adams is shown standing up for herself, all three women finding a better use for a pedestal than simply being placed upon it.
Hoarded Ordinaries 
Nov 18, 2013 at 3:28 am
I had not yet heard this about Doris Lessing — but frankly, I thought she was already dead. As you may remember, I did not relish “The Golden Notebook” when I read it several months ago. I understand that women have their own perspective on self-expression, and an understandably frustrating inability to be heard in society (especially at that time). But I think everyone’s life is somewhat divided in the way Anna Wulf’s was — we all have distinct notebooks for our social selves, our work lives, our private lives, our political lives. Don’t we?
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Nov 18, 2013 at 4:08 pm
Yes, I remember how much you “loved” The Golden Notebook when you read it: as I was writing this post, I wondered how you’d respond!
You’re right about everyone having divided lives, but I think the issue is particularly problematic for women, given how women are conditioned by our society to be nurturers and “people pleasers.” If a man focuses on his career, for instance, few will fault him for his ambition or condemn him for neglecting his family…but should a woman do the same, heaven help her.
Men in our society are allowed/encouraged to focus on ONE “notebook” to the exclusion of the others, in other words, whereas women are expected to have (and juggle) them all.
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Nov 19, 2013 at 1:30 am
Yeah, it is true that women are expected to play multiple roles equally well, while men are still expected to be primarily breadwinners. At least men participate more these days in domestic duties.
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Nov 19, 2013 at 11:18 am
I wasn’t expecting to relate to this as deeply as I did, but as I kept reading, I kept getting drawn further and further into the telling of the story. I often have a hard time keeping up with any kind of book review because some part of my brain automatically assumes the writer has such an advanced body of knowledge (true, oh so true) and I won’t be able to keep up or understand their points of reference. I appreciate that this discussion about The Golden Notebook completely discharged any and all objections, but rather, drew me in like a fly to a sticky spider web. I accidentally found myself immersed in the comparisons, and was questioning right along with you. Thanks for making this an interesting journey. It felt like sitting in a classroom, and at the same time, like having coffee with a friend. That’s good writing.
As for the subject at hand? My perspective tilts from a different angle, in that I was raised to serve the needs of others, which ultimately had the effect of silencing me. My own experience has been that writing became one of the tools I used to finally expose the silence, and allow my voice to be heard. But even with all the progress I’ve made in recent years, I still have entirely too many notebooks. Very interesting. Enjoyed the post.
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