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TRANSCENDENCE THROUGH DISORDER:
A STUDY OF THE FICTION OF DORIS LESSING
BY ~ EILEEN MANION
A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT Of THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
MCGILL UNIVERSITY, 1979
0 ii
ABSTRACT
This thesis explores the way that Doris Lessing depicts the colonial order in her fiction by juxtaposing a discussion of her portrayal of colonialism with an examination of several descriptive analyses of the colonial situation and with a summary of Rhodesia's development as a colony. Looking at her work in the light of these socio-political and historical materials reveals that Lessing in her portrayal of colonialism concentrates on the way authoritarian bonds are forged and maintained. Her fictions represent family situations involving whites and African servants where relations based on domination come to seem normal, ordinary and inevitable. Racial and sexual oppression reinforce and support one another, combining to form a peculiar form of inconsistent paternalism which stultifies whites and undermines African resistance. Within her work as a whole, Lessing's portrayal
of colonialism is importan~ not only because it recreates a vivid sense of a particular historical situation, but also because it represents a typical example of a complex authori tarian system. Lessing is preoccupied with revealing both the tenacity of the social order, which persists because its assumptions are internalized and form the individual conscious ness, and the efforts of individuals to transcend society's constraints. Lessing has her characters explore the two modes 0 of human liberation offered in the twentieth century: socialism iii
and psychoanalysis/therapy. In the Children of Violence and The Golden Notebook we see the failure of political organiz- ations whose aim is to revolutionize society and free the human spirit. These groups take account only of political and economic oppression and ignore the domain of human subjectivity. However, institutionalized psychotherapy also fails in her novels, for it is uncritical of the system into which it attempts to reintegrate indiv~als, and with its narrow, ideological view of sanity, it repressively isolates and destroys those who refuse to accept its norms. In both these works Lessing suggests that a complete recovery of the irrational elements of the human mind which are repressed in a civilization dominated by instrumental reason is both possible and necessary. Her work does not merely exalt the irrational, however, for she structures her novels dialect- ically. The open-ended form of her more ambitious fiction provokes the reader to an imaginative response which takes him beyond the text, even beyond actuality, to consider alternative social possibilities. iv
ABSTRAIT
Cette these analyse les representations de l'ordre colonial depeintes par Doris Lessing et elle joint a cette definition du colonialisme plusiers analyses descriptives et un resume du developpement de la Rhodesie en guise d'exemple.
A J lumiere de son approche socio-politico-historique nous percevons nettement que Lessing s'attache a dechiffrer la genese et !'institutionalisation des liens fortement hierarch ises. Son scenario met en scene des familles blanches employ ant des serviteurs africains; leurs relations s'etablissent sur des liens de domination et ceux-ci apparaissent normaux, ordinaires et inevitables. L'oppression raciale et la domin ation sexuelle se consolident mutuellement sous la forme d'un paternalisme a caractere indelebile qui ridiculise les blancs et denigre la resistance des noirs. Dans son approche globale le portrait du colonialisme depeint par Lessing est important, non seulement parce qu'il recree une situation historique part iculiere mais surtout parce qu'il decrit un exemple typique et complexe d'un systeme autoritaire. Lessing se soucie de mettre a nu les secrets de la vigueur de cet ordre social, sa longevite s'explique ainsi; ses liens organiques sont integres a la conscience individuelle et egalement aux efforts des individus pour briser les contraintes sociales. Dans son analyse Lessing etudie les possibilites de liberation offertes par le XXe siecle aux humains: le socialisme et la therapie psychanalytique. V
Dans ses livres Children of Violence et The Golden Notebook, nous notons les insuffisances des organisations politiques qui pretendent a la revolution sociale et a la liberation de l'esprit humain. Les groupes se concentrent sur les dimensions economico-politiques de !'oppression et ils minimisent !'importance de la subjectivite humaine. D'un autre cote, la psychotherapie institutionelle accuse des lacunes graves dans la realisation de sa tache! son attitude a-critique l'incite a tenter de reintegrer les patients dans un cadre mesquin et nettement ideologique de la sante mentalei de plus elle n'hesite pas a broyer ceux qui refusent d'accepter ses regles. Dans ces deux ecrits, Lessing laisse entendre qu'il est possible et necessaire de realiser une guerison des "malades mentaux" meme si ceux-ci sont reprimes par le mode de pensee techniciste de notre civilisation. Son oeuvre ne privilegie pas l'irrationel, elle structure dialectiquement ses essais. Les conclusions de ses nouvelles les plus ambit- ieuses suscitent le reflexion chez le lecteur et l'invitent a depasser le texte et l'actualite afin de considerer les eventuelles alternatives sociales. vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Without the encouragement of my thesis advisor, Mike Bristol, I would never have begun this dissertation, and without his critical comments at every stage of the process, I could not have finished it. I would also like to thank the other members of my thesis committee, Leanore Lieblein and Don Theall, both for their advice and for their support. I am sincerely grateful to Michael Smith and Henry Srebrnik who read parts of the introductory material and gave me helpful criticism based on their expertise. I cannot forget to thank Mary Papke who was always ready to discuss Leasing's work with me, and who gave me helpful comments on the final draft, nor can I fail to acknowledge the help I received from Herda Guttman who listened patiently to all the problems I've had with my work. Completing this dissertation would have been almost impossible without the support of my lover and friend, Charles Levin, who has in our discussions over the years, helped me to deepen my understanding of Leasing's work. Also invaluable to my work have been the meetings of my thesis group, the other members of which, Elaine Bander, Prances Early, Mimi
Morton, and Suzanne Peter~ have read portions of the text at all stages and given me their detailed criticisms. The intellectual exchange and emotional support provided by these sessions overcame a large part of the isolation inherent in vii
this kind of endeavour. Finally I would like to thank my friend Sue Schein, who helped proof-read the final text, and the typists, Kathryn and Bill Shanley, who made the proof- reading more of a formality than a necessity. viii
C 0 N T E N T 5
Chapter I Introduction 1
Psychodynamics of colonialism 15
Rhodesia: Prototype of settler colonialism 42 Communism: Search for political alternatives 65
Chapter II Lessing's portrayal of colonialism
Separation and connection in the colonial 99 context
Patterns of accomodation 121
Images of possibility 145
Chapter III Modes of liberation
Lessing's portrayal of political organizations 187
Lessing's use of psychotherapy and madness 224 in her fiction
Chapter IV Metaphors of liberation
Structure of The Golden Notebook 258
Structure of the Children of Violence 290
Bibliography 316 0 CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Psychodynamics of colonialism
Rhodesia: Prototype of settler colonialism
Communism: Search for political alternatives 1
INTRODUCTION
Doris Lessing is one of the most difficult of modern novelists to categorize. To make the attempt does some violence to the spirit of her work for she transcends the limits of neat critical divisions and distinctions. In the 1950's she began writing novels and stories that were unambig- uously in the tradition of nineteenth century realism. Her own published statements in essays and interviews endorsed the realist tradition and made it clear that she embraced this tradition and its humanist values with the belief that novels "should be read, for illumination, in order to enlarge one's perception of life."1 Publication of The Golden Notebook, however, demonstrated that Lessing was not limited by the conventions of the tradition in which she had begun writing, nor was she unaware of the problems raised by the modernists. Instead, she could take the conventions of realism and adapt them in a highly self-conscious way to her own purposes which transcended the dichotomy between realism and modernism. Her subsequent publications, especially The Four-Gated City, Briefing for ~ Descent into Hell, and Memoirs of a Survivor, have shown that Lessing is a highly versatile writer capable of integrating realism, speculative fiction, and fantasy into a form that is uniquely her own. Lessing has a large number of devoted readers who 2
recognize in her fiction a serious attempt to illuminate the complex connections between the individual and the social world. Her important characters are constantly struggling to avoid the privatization of personal experience as well as to overcome the exhaustion which sets in from the failure of various kinds of idealism. Her work portrays not only the constricted lives into which so many of her characters are forced, but also the potential of men and women to transcend the limitations of their existence. Without oversimplifying the nature and extent of modern problems, Lessing creates a world in her fiction which is within the power of the individual to understand and affect. Thus despite the complexity of much of her best work, Lessing's fiction has attracted a wide and diversified audi- ence of readers who expect her novels and stories to have an impact on their lives. Her fiction has a special appeal for women who appreciate not only her portrayal of women's ambiguous situation in a world where relations between the sexes are in transition, but also the centrality of a woman's perspective in fiction which includes a ~ense of history and transcends the limits of a depiction of personal experience.
In addition to numerous readers, Lessing' s work has -~~, attracted considerable critical attention since the mid-sixties. Several studies of the modern British novel, such as those of Bergonzi and Lodge, note the importance of her fiction to any 2 consideration of the contemporary novel. The first full- 3
length study of Lessing's work was published in 1965 by Dorothy Brewster. 3 Brewster documents the biographical information available on Lessing, but her pioneering critical discussion does not go beyond plot summary and paraphrase of the major questions raised in the works themselves. Paul Schleuter provided the second extensive study of Lessing's fiction4 in which he attempts to elucidate what he sees as the principal themes in her work: "the appeal of communism to the liberals of the late 1930s and early 1940s; the black-white situation in British colonial Africa; the role of the 'free' woman in an essentially masculine world, and the manifesta- tions, particularly sexual, of that woman's keen self-analysis; and the function of writing as a means of achieving therapeutic identity, even equilibrium, in a chaotic universe." 5 Concerned as these first two books were with giving the reader an introduction to Lessing and an overview of her major published work, neither could explore particular problems in depth. Subsequent dissertations and articles have attempted to remedy this, and have taken a number of different directions. Critics have considered Lessing's "feminism,"6 her exploration of consciousness and the meaning of identity, 7 her interest in and use of Sufism. 8 Lessing has been treated as a writer who attempts to be a prophet and a visionary, 9 and studies have been done on Lessing's transformation of autobiographical 10 ma t er~a. 1 ~n . t o f'~ct~on. . Only two other full-length works have appeared since 4
Brewster and Schlueter published their early studies. In 1976 Ellen Cronan Rose published The Tree Outside the Window: Doris Lessing's Children of Violence11 which discusses Lessing's Bildungsroman in relation to Erik Erikson's theories of the growth and development of personal identity. Rose's schematic application of Erikson's ego psychology to her understanding of the series leads her to focus on Martha's
"pathology11 and to conclude that: 11 Having failed to come to terms with the world around her, Martha is left an isolate at the novel's end, doomed to continue her quest for identity."12 If Martha does fail to come to terms with the world, the world as well as Martha may be found wanting. Certainly the appendix does not project the "Utopia" which Ms. Rose claims both Martha and Lessing have substituted for the world to which they do not wish to accommodate themselves. According to Rose, in the end of the series, Lessing has 11 legitimized11 13 Martha's "pathology" which she sees as her 11 fixation" in an adolescent state of what Erikson calls "'identity con- 14 fusion. ' n Rather than seeing Martha's continuing self- exploration as an index of her growth, Rose sees it as evidence of Martha's stultification. Ms. Rose's work demon- strates the degree to which a purely one-dimensional psycho- logical attempt to understand Lessing's work is doomed to miss the full range of her concerns, for concentrating only on Martha as an individual leaves out of account the social and political dimensions of the novels. 5
Mary Ann Singleton published in 1977 a more comprehensive study of Lessing's work entitled The City and the Veld: the F1ct1on. ' o f Dor1s ' Less1ng, . 15 1n' wh' 1c h s h e d raws on th e t h eor1es . of earl Jung to illuminate Lessing. Singleton focuses on three principal motifs in Lessing's fiction: the veld, which represents "the unity of nature, whole and complete, but in which individuals count for nothing;" the city, which represents "modern consciousness, expressed in a strife-torn society;n16 and the ideal City, a utopian vision where mankind transcends the dichotomies between "intuition and reason" as well as between "myth and logic." This City "is a man-made harmony - part of nature, yet at the same time separate from
1't • 11 17 Singleton's book is the most comprehensive work on Lessing to have appeared so far, but her analysis isolates and reifies the images on which she focuses, depriving them of their historical and political dimension. 18 Interpretations of Lessing's work which stress its connections with the mythic and archetypal can never provide a consistent account of her social and political concerns, even when they recognize that these concerns exist within the works themselves.
Ac~ording to Lessing herself, "Criticism of literature is a criticism and judgment of life,"19 rather than merely a sterile search for recurrent symbols and fixed, transhistorical patterns. With this in mind, I intend to focus this study on the way that Lessing portrays the social order, an order of subordination and domination, whose structures are instilled 6
in the psyches of individuals. Lessing portrays an order
whose persistence depends on the internalization of its bonds
by individuals who initially see it as normal, ordinary, and
inevitable. Since most of the novels and stories I will be
discussing have women as protagonists, I will be concerned
with the particular way that women are integrated into this
social order. In addition, I will discuss Lessing's attempts
through her fiction to suggest not only the power and
stability of this order, but also its vulnerability, and the
capacity individuals have to affect social change.
The scope and diversity of Lessing's work have made it
impossible to include a discussion of all her fiction in this
study. Since I want to consider in detail her portrayal of
colonialism, I have chosen to analyze at some length several
of her early stories as well as her first novel, The Grass Is
Singing. The rest of the thesis focuses on Children of
Violence and The Golden Notebook which are certainly Lessing's
most ambitious works to date. With The Golden Notebook and
The Four-Gated City, Lessing begins her formal innovations and
includes a sense of the concerns and ideas which appear in her
later novels.
Although so many of Lessing's early stories and five of
her novels are set in southern Africa, critics have paid very 20 1 ~tt. 1 e attent~on. to h er portraya 1 o f co 1 on~a . 1'~sm. Perhaps
because Lessing depicts the colonial situation so convinc- 0 ingly, no one has paused to examine the particular image of 7
the colonial order which emerges from her work. At one level, Lessing's portrayal illuminates a critical period in Rhodesian history just before, during, and after World War II. Through her characters, the consciousness of white settlers, both those who accept and those who reject the colonial hierarchy, becomes accessible to her readers. In addition, Lessing portrays the first tentative revolt of the oppressed against the colonial system. However, within the context of her work as a whole, Lessing's portrait of colonial- ism epitomizes the complex bonds of subordination and domination from which her major characters, Martha Quest and Anna Wulf, struggle to free themselves. The way that Lessing portrays the colonial situation allows it to function within her work not merely as "background" for the activities of her characters, but as a typical representation of a complex, restrictive authoritarian system. Colonialism is a system in which the lines between the powerful and the powerless are drawn clearly and obviously. Relations of power which remain obscured in the metropolis by a rhetoric of equality are starkly revealed in the colony. Nonetheless, the colonizer and the colonized also exist in an intimate relationship of mutual dependence, the basis of which is formed within the family. This makes it possible for Lessing's portrayal of colonialism to take on a significance beyond itself within her longer works. Although Lessing belonged to the ruling white minority in 8
Rhodesia, it is clear from reading her fiction that she under- stood the ways in which the colonial system oppresses the colonized and distorts all types of human relations. Comparing Lessing's fiction to the well-known essays of Frantz Fanon and Albert Memmi, 21 which describe colonialism from the perspective of the colonized, reveals that she could see the ways in which the system restricts the possibilities of human interaction and understanding. Fanon and Memmi are the most articulate writers who demonstrate that colonialism is more than a system of economic exploitation and political oppression. They analyze the psychodynamic dimension of the colonial situation and reveal the ways that the system perpetuates itself through the consciousness of both the colonizers and the colonized. This makes their essays particularly appropriate for juxtaposition with Lessing's fiction. The work of 0. Mannoni, a psychoanalyst who made the first attempt to analyze the psychodynamics of colonialism, is also useful in this connection. 22 Although Mannoni assumes that a tendency to accept dependency on the part of the colonized precedes the European invasion of Africa, his dis cussion of relations of dependence is very illuminating when compared with Lessing's work. Reading the works of Fanon, Memmi, and Mannoni in conjunction with Lessing's fiction demonstrates that she has understood and portrayed the ways colonialism has deformed all the inhabitants of a colony. In addition, she reveals what these three writers miss: the 9
extent to which sexual oppression contributes to the main- tenance of colonial oppression and the importance of patri- archy and paternalism to the continuity of the colonial system. Lessing portrays the ways in which socialization within the family sustains a social system and the difficulties individuals, who learn dependency relations in the family, have in breaking out of them. In addition to looking at several abstract descriptions of the relations between the colonizer and the colonized, which I do in the opening section of the first chapter, I think it is necessary to look at the particular history of . 23 Rh o d es~a. In many ways Rhodesia typifies a settler colony, but certain features of its history are unique and have guaranteed the continuance of its white minority in power longer than European minorities have retained political con- trol in other parts of Africa. In the second section of the first chapter I will summarize the development of Rhodesia as a settler colony and discuss the principal events of its history up to the end of World War II which shed light on Lessing's portrayal of the colony in this period. The second chapter of the thesis will analyze Lessing's own portrait of the colonial order as it emerges from a selection of her early stories, her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, as well as The Golden Notebook and the Children of Violence. In order to structure this discussion I divide these works into two categories: those in which Lessing 10
portrays characters who accept the colonial order as inevit- able and accommodate themselves to it, and those in which characters recognize the injustices of the system and attempt to make some change in their own lives which enables them to transcend the system's restrictions. These characters succeed in avoiding the limitations of their socialization into either privilege or subordination and provide an image of the possi bility of both personal growth and social change. In her own life, Lessing reacted against the hypocrisies of colonialism by joining the Communist Party. The Party's opposition to racial discrimination and support of national liberation movements have attracted many of its members to it. However, the limitations of the theory with which the Party has approached the phenomenon of colonialism and the duplicity of Soviet relations with the Third World have created a glaring disparity between Communist Party practice and the moral idealism with which individual members approach the issue of imperialism. For Lessing, socialist ideals initially represented the fulfillment of her humanistic aspirations, and for a certain period she could accept the Party as the embodi ment of those ideals. In order to understand Lessing's subsequent movement away from the conviction that political organizations can affect emancipatory social change, and in order to create a context for discussions of the sections of her works in which she portrays social relations within the 0 Communist Party, I will discuss at the end of the first 11
chapter the kind of organization the British C.P. has developed, as well as the positions it has adopted on crucial issues. As a Party member, Lessing participated in debates on, among other things, culture and literary theory. Some reflec tion of Marxist critical assumptions is evident in her often quoted endorsement of the nineteenth century realist novel as well as in her attempt to create what I will call nimages of possibility" in some of her early stories like "Hunger" or "The Ant Heap ... Even in her early works where she succeeds in drawing a vivid image of repressive conditions which restrict the human potential of colonized and colonizers alike, she also portrays the possibility of transcending the system's rigid structures. Lessing's more complex works portray the limitations of the two systems which in this century have promised human liberation, socialism (at the level of the collective) and psychoanalysis/therapy (at the level of the individual). In the middle volumes of Children of Violence and in The Golden Notebook Lessing explores the emancipatory potential of political organizations which adopt the Leninist model of democratic centralism. In her portrayal, these groups assume the features of a mirror image of the state they intend to oppose. Most criticism of Lessing nods in the direction of her former commitment to Marxism and the Communist Party but the 12
impact of her membership in the Party on her work and the way she portrays political organizations in her fiction have never 24 been extensively considered. In the first part of Chapter III, I will analyze the image of political organizations and social relations within them which emerges from Lessing's novels. From the way she portrays her characters' experience in the C.P. it becomes obvious why she turned away from using traditional modes of left-wing organization to represent the possibility of human liberation. If communism with its emphasis on the collective and its attempt to create an objective view of the world cannot succeed in its emancipatory aims, neither, in Lessing's novels, can psychotherapy with its focus on the individual and on subjective experience. More critical attention has been given to Lessing's portrayal of psychotherapy and madness than to her depiction of left-wing organizations, but outside of the context of a consideration of the political dimension of her work, this discussion loses some of its meaning. Within Lessing's fiction, psychotherapy can propose at best a false mode of integration of the self so that the individual can continue to function in a world that is intolerable. At worst, psychotherapy will destroy the individual who refuses to accept its definition of normalcy. In the second half of Chapter III, I will discusss Lessing's portrayal of psycho therapy as a false or ineffective mode of human emancipation and her use of madness as a metaphor for the self-liberatory 13
breakthroughs her characters achieve. Neither of the two systems proposing to liberate the human spirit which Lessing explores in her novels can insure deliverance from the everyday experiential sense of disinte gration and fragmentation (The Golden Notebook) nor from the global destruction envisaged as the end of instrumental rationality (The Four-Gated City). However, Lessing is not a writer who creates a world in which individuals can neither understand their situation nor act meaningfully. In both these novels Lessing suggests that a complex recovery of the irrational elements of the human mind which have been repressed in Western civilization is both possi01e and necessary. In The Golden Notebook this process is crucial to Anna's development as a writer. In The Four-Gated City it becomes the means of preserving for the individual some space free from the control of an all-encompassing social system headed for disaster. Martha and Lynda's development of their visionary powers represents the assertion that the individual can act to free her/himself from the internalized bonds of a repressive social system. Lessing suggests here not only that human beings can make their own history, but also that they can self-consciously shape their own evolution. However, this depends on the possibility of transcending the propensity of Western civilization to experience all relations as those of domination and subordination: man/nature, man/woman, colonizer/ colonized, ruler/worker. At best this possibility is a 14
tenuous one. Nonetheless, Lessing's work does not collapse into debased romantic exaltation of the irrationa1, 25 for the way she develops her novels is not linear but dialectical. Each situation, relationship, image and metaphor must be seen in relation to the dialectical structure of the whole where tension is maintained among contradictory elements. As I will demonstrate in the last chapter which analyzes the structure of Lessing's major works in relation to their content, there are neither resolutions nor recommendations to be found in her works, for she refuses the reader the comfort of creating a false totality. 15
·- PSYCHODYNAMICS OF COLONIALISM
During the postwar period when Lessing was beginning to write her novels and stories, an increasing number of anti- colonial and nationalist movements erupted in all parts of Africa. As more and more African nations obtained at least nominal independence from former colonizing powers during the fifties and sixties, North Americans and Europeans were constrained to recognize Africa as a political force. No longer were many Africans willing to accept economic exploit- ation under the guise of development, although the exigencies of dependence on the world market often provided few options to newly formed states. While independence was granted peacefully, if grudgingly, in several colonies, in territories such as Kenya and Algeria, where a settled European population constituted a hegemonic minority, African rule was achieved only after dramatic anti- colonial rebellions. These revolutions had a vivid impact on the consciousness of all Europeans. The revolts and the bloody repression they called forth emphasized the extent to which colonialism had always been a coercive system imposed and maintained by violence. Rebellions and demands for national recognition obliged former colonizers to take account of the desires and the identities of peoples previously viewed only as objects. In this process, Europeans also had to confront unpleasant aspects of their own culture and 16
civilization which they had been promoting so zealously in Africa. The three writers who pioneered studies of colonialism which sought to analyze the psychodynamic relationship of the colonizer and the colonized are o. Mannoni, Albert Memmi, and Frantz Fanon, all of whom were trying to examine both the specific domination which characterized the colonial situation and the ways in which analysis of that particular kind of power relationship could be universalized in order to "enrich our general knowledge of mankind ... 26 Like Doris Lessing, these three men were profoundly affected by the idea of anti- colonial revolt, and were concerned, though in very different ways, with possibilities of social change. Each attempted to go beyond the politico-economic dimensions of colonialism in order to demonstrate that deep unconscious factors were as important for the persistence of the colonial situation as was the desire of the colonizer to maintain his obvious economic advantage. Their attempts to analyze colonialism within the context of a larger understanding of relationships based on subordination and domination make their writings particularly apt for juxtaposition with a discussion of Lessing's work. 0. Mannoni based his interpretative analysis of colonial ism on his experiences in Madagascar where an anti-colonial rebellion had broken out in 1947. 27 He published a series of essays which were collected in 1950 in a volume entitled La psychologie de la colonisation. For Mannoni both the 17
colonizer and the colonized are psychologically predisposed in complementary ways to adapt to the colonial situation. Mannoni argues that in the psyche of the Malagasies, European colonials took the place of the ancestral spirits who, through their religious system, had previously provided them with a sense of collective security. Because what Mannoni calls a "dependency complex" had characterized Malagasy culture, Europeans could easily move in and take control. In Mannoni's view, Malagasies were psychologically prepared by their own traditions to accept dependence and consequent subordination willingly. As he puts it: "Not all people can be colonized: only those who experience this need" (for dependence). (Mannoni, P.& c., p.85) The Malagasies felt threatened by feelings of insecurity and inferiority only when European support was withdrawn and they feared abandonment. Similarly, Europeans were predisposed to assume authority: "The personality of the colonial is made up, not of characteristics acquired during and through experience of the colonies, but of traits, very often in the nature of a complex, already in existence in a latent and repressed form in the European's psyche, traits which the colonial experience has simply brought to the surface and made manifest." (Mannoni, P.& C., p.97) The Europeans who emigrated to the colonies are "those who are still obscurely drawn to a world without men - to those, that is, who have failed to make the effort necessary 0 to adapt infantile images to adult reality." (Mannoni, P.& C., 18
p.l05) They are reliving the story of Robinson Crusoe, turning everyone and everything they find into instruments of their own will: "What the colonial lacks ... is awareness of the world of Others, a world in which Others have to be respected. This is the world from which the colonial has fled because he cannot accept men as they are." (Mannoni, P.& c., p.l08) The colonial cannot accept a world which contains other adults because he has never successfully integrated his infantile needs for intimate bonds into a mature personality. Instead he has denied these wishes in himself and projected them onto the society of the colonized which he sees as "the lost paradise ••• of his own early childhood." (Mannoni, P.& C., p.21) Toward his childhood, the colonialist feels excessively ambivalent, for anything which recalls it evokes his repressed feelings of inadequacy. The "typical European," according to Mannoni, relies on "his own idea of himself or his technical skill. His main concern is not to prove inferior either to his own idea of himself or to the situation." (Mannoni, P.& C., p.49) Intimacy is associated for him with childish feelings of powerlessness which must be repressed if he is to prove independent and effective in the world. The colonialist can thus accept bonds with others only when he can reduce them to the status of servants or dependents. The colonial is trapped in a sterile mastery which pre cludes authentic maturity: "If a man lives in the midst of his 0 own projections without truly admitting the independent will 19
and existence of other people, he loses his own will and independence, while the ego inflates as it becomes empty ... (Mannoni, P.& c., p.ll4) On the other hand, the colonized are trapped in an equally static dependence which allows them little possibility of taking control of their own destiny: "Colonial society .•• gives the dependent person nothing but his dependence. When confronted with reality he has no feel ing of liberation; his tools and his technological knowledge give him no sense of mastery - tools are simply an extension of the master's orders, technique just a set of rules to be obeyed; his hands are still the hands of a slave." (Mannoni, P.& C., p.l95) The basic difficulty with Mannoni's interpretation of colonialism is that he assumes the colonial dynamic pre existed the actual existence of colonialism. Consequently he minimizes the extent to which Europeans imposed their dominance on other peoples. Mannoni with his psychoanalytic frame of reference confuses an adaptation for survival within a given system with a tendency to collaborate in creating that kind of system. The limitations of Mannoni's theory preclude his arriving at a convincing explanation of the source of colonial racism. Racism for Mannoni results from the indignation felt by the colonizers when the assumed instruments of their wishes claim the status of persons with rights to independent action. Those responsible for the expression of racism are not, for 20
him, the "best representatives" of European civilization, but are "petty officials, small traders, and colonials who have toiled much without great success." (Mannoni, P.& c., p.24) Mannoni cannot admit that racism is a part of the very structure of modern colonialism which assumes the subordina- tion of one group to another on a racial basis. Similarly, Mannoni's theory cannot account successfully for colonial revolt. The anger of the colonized, according to Mannoni's argument, derives not from resentment at their subordination, but from fear of abandonment in their dependent position. Nationalism is thus a "means of restoring the ancient pattern of dependencies," (Mannoni, P.& c., p.l41) for reliance on Europeans could not guarantee permanent stability. Mannoni realizes that the colonial situation cannot persist, but disclaims responsibility for making recommendations: "We cannot draw political conclusions or deduce a method of administration from psychological analyses: they simply do not warrant such use." (Mannoni, P.& c., p.l65) Nonetheless his discussion assumes that reforms must take place through Europeans' enlightened intervention if the Malagasies are to undergo successfully their "painful apprenticeship to freedom." (Mannoni, P.& C., p.66) To leave them to their own devices and initiatives would constitute "abandonment." Mannoni provides here the psychological justification for a gradualist mode of decolonization, which we can see from the perspective of the present day has meant simply a shift from 21
colonialism to neocolonialism. Frantz Fanon in his analysis of racism argues that what Mannoni calls the "dependency complex" did not exist in the minds of Africans in pre-colonial days. 28 For analysts like Fanon or Memmi, "It is the racist who creates his inferior." (Fanon, B.S.W.M., p.93) For them dependency relations are the creation of colonialism1 the colonizer is responsible for initiating and maintaining that type of unequal relationship with the peoples he encountered on distant shores. They both minimize the extent to which the colonized are complicit in sustaining relations of dependency. This is why, in spite of the inadequacies of his theory, Mannoni's description of the complexities of colonial dependency is useful when looking at Lessing's portrayal of family relations involving masters and servants. The work of both Memmi and Fanon proceeds from a strong personal engagement with colonialism. Both have clearly been indebted to existentialism, especially the work of Jean-Paul Sartre. 29 Their analyses of racism recall his discussion of anti-Semitism in Anti-Semite and Jew. Just as, "It is the anti-Semite who makes the Jew," 30 it is the colonizer who is responsible for the construction of the colonized, the racist who creates the Negro. Once a colonial system is established, the colonized become involved in the colonizer's dialectic, whether they accept his determination of their character and behave in a manner reflecting his assumptions, or whether in 22
reaction against his domination, they violently repudiate him. In 1957 Memmi published Portrait du Colonise precede du portrait du colonisateur, a descriptive analysis of the colonial situation based on his own experience of living in Tunisia while it remained under the domination of the French. Memmi states in his 1965 preface to the English edition that he had a personal reason for writing the essay: "I undertook this inventory of conditions of colonized people mainly in order to understand myself and to indentify my place in the society of other men." 31 Sympathetic reactions to his book from members of other oppressed groups who could identify elements in his portraits which corresponded to their own situations convinced him that "all the oppressed are alike in some ways." (Memmi, C.& C., p.ix) He was thus able to generalize some of his observations on colonialism in his later volume of essays written during the sixties and collected under the title, Dominated Man, Notes toward a Portrait. Here he considers the situation of a variety of oppressed groups - Afro-Americans, Jews, French Canadians, women, workers - and concludes with a definition of racism which is for him "the symbol and the sum of all . .,32 oppress~on.
Memmi argues that within a colony there exist only two groups, radically distinct from one another, but linked by a mutually corrosive interdependence: the colonizers and the colonized. He postulates the existence of another category, 23
"the colonial," whom he defines as "a European living in a colony but having no privileges, whose living conditions are not higher than those of a colonized person of equivalent economic and social status." (Memmi, C.& C., p.lO) According to Memmi's argument, this hypothetical individual cannot exist. Although Memmi does not underestimate the importance of class divisions among the colonizers, he maintains that members of the colonialist working class share the colonizers' privileges. Other ethnic minorities assume their own distinct places in the colony which can be identified neither with the hegemonic colonizers nor with the subordinate colonized. In this category fall groups like the Italian minority in Tunisia. Although their economic status may be unenviable, in compari- son with the colonized they have "better job opportunities; less insecurity against total misery and illness; less pre- carious schooling. 11 As they aspire to identify themselves with the dominant minority, "Their behaviour vis a vis the colonized has much in common with that of the colonizer. 11
(Memmi, C.& C., p.l4)
Memmi uses the word 11 privilege" to refer to the whole situation of the colonizers; it describes not only their superior economic position, but also their political, cultural, and even psychological advantages. Europeans who emigrate to the colonies could expect a standard of living as well as a position of power and influence beyond what they might have anticipated had they remained at home. 24
The economic and political advantages they gain are secured at the expense of the colonized who become dispossessed and subordinated in their own homeland. Memmi refers to the creation of the colonizers' privileges as "usurpation, .. because their advantages are not legitimately acquired. This "usurpation" generates guilt and a consequent need to con struct an ideology which will justify colonial oppression. This need to find a rationalization for colonial rule explains the existence of colonial racism. The colonizer uses racism to justify his effort to main tain the social immobility which protects his privileged status. Memmi defines racism as "the generalized and final assigning of values to real or imaginary differences, to the accuser's benefit and at his victim's expense, in order to justify the former's own privileges or aggression." (Memmi, D.M., p.l85) Racism guarantees that the liberal principles of abstract egalitarianism, ideologically ascendant in Europe, will not be applied to the colonized. The colonizers construct what Memmi calls a "mythical portrait" of the colonized - they are lazy, weak, backward, childish, unpredictable, ungrateful, etc. - and project this distorted stereotype onto each individual. Instead of perceiving the colonized as men like themselves, the colonizers see only an undifferentiated mass of units each of which embodies a set of ascribed character istics. This dehumanization permits the colonizer to attempt to realize his ultimate desire: that the colonized "should 25
exist only as a function of (his) needs. 11 (Memmi, C.& C., p.86) The colonizer's hegemonic position guarantees that the colonized will begin to recognize themselves in the "mythical
11 11 portrait : Willfully created and spread by the colonizer, this mythical and degrading portrait ends up by being accepted and lived with to a certain extent by the colonized." (Memmi, C.& c., p.87) Economically dispossessed, excluded from govern ment, denied citizenship in their own country, and deprived of the weapons of resistance, the colonized can no longer imagine themselves as the subjects of their own history. The former dynamic of their social life has been interrupted: "Colonized society is a diseased society in which internal dynamics no longer succeed in creating new structures." (Memmi, C.& C., p.98-9) The disruption of customs, religion, and family life among the colonized often makes the colonizer's culture seem an attractive, though unattainable, alternative: "All effectiveness and social dynamics ••. seem monopolized by the colonizer's institutions." (Memmi, C.& c., p.l03) The minority among the colonized who attend colonial schools learn the colonizer's history and language; they must measure their attainment of "civilization" according to their proficiency in these subjects, as well as the extent to which they can denigrate and suppress their own language and traditions. Thus the colonized are entangled in a destructive process of self-denial and self-negation. Needless to say, colonialism for Mernrni has no redeeming 26
features: "If colonialism destroys the colonized, it also rots the colonizer." (Memmi, C.& c., p.xvii) What of the rare individual among the colonizers who remains unconvinced by colonialist rationalizations? As a result of a crisis of conscience, can he decide to reject his privileges and throw himself into the struggle against colonialism on the side of the colonized? Memmi argues that the position of the "colonizer who refuses" to accept colonialist privileges is untenable. Rejected by the European community, he will fail to find acceptance among the colonized. His only practical alternative is to leave the colony. For the colonized, two paths of escape from the oppressive colonial dynamic seem open: assimilation or revolt. Assimila tion remains chimerical, for the colonizer refuses to recognize the humanity of the colonized. In any case, it cannot be chosen without very destructive internal conflicts. The only real hope lies in revolt against oppression, although even here the colonized remains enmeshed in a complex dynamic.
In order to recreate and assert an identity, the colonized must resurrect and affirm the traditions, religion, language which he had learned to deride. In addition, the colonized must reject colonialist institutions. The very necessity of this process can involve an irrational absence of discrimin ation. Paradoxically, in revolt against colonialism, the colonized remains undermined by it: "In the midst of revolt, the colonized continues to think, feel and live against and, 27
therefore, in relation to the colonizer and colonization." (Memrni, C.& c., p.l39) Fanon's first published work, Peau Noire, Masques Blanques (1952), also proceeds from an anguished personal need to understand the situation of a black man existing within a predefined category in a white man's universe. To some degree, his analysis takes the political and economic condition of colonialism for granted. His purpose is to give a "psycho- analytical interpretation .. (Fanon, B.S.W.M., p.lO) of the problem of racism. By analyzing racism's psychological deformations (making unconscious material conscious), he hopes to contribute toward their destruction. The situation Fanon adopts as his prototype is that of the black Martiniquean who unquestioningly has assimilated a set of values which automatically assigns him an inferior position. Such a man does not recognize himself as black until he finds himself among whites. When he is forced to confront his own blackness, he must also realize that the idea of blackness itself has been determined for him by hegemonic racist stereotypes which he has internalized. For the racist, blacks occupy a lower position on the evolutionary scale; they are identified with the irrational, the biological, and specifically with the genital, in a construct which can be phobogenic. In many instances, the white man projects onto the black his own repressed sexual desires: "As for the 0 Negroes, they have tremendous sexual powers. What do you 28
expect, with all the freedom they have in their jungles! They copulate at all times and in all places. They are really genital. They have so many children that they cannot even count them." (Fanon, B.S.W.M., p.l57) In addition, blackness is the symbol in the European imagination of sin, wickedness, Evil. The black man's recognition of this cultural stereotype in the consciousness of the white Other, as well as within his own system of values, produces a traumatic reaction of self- negation. This finds its expression in the desire of individuals to appropriate as much of "white" culture as possible in an effort to emulate whites, distance themselves from "niggers," and stifle a constant sense of inferiority. Thus the "assimilated" West Indian has been wont to deny his fraternity with the African, whom he sees as a savage. One of the most obvious indices of the Martiniquean's identification with the French is the way he speaks the language: "To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture. The Antilles Negro who wants to be white will be the whiter as he gains mastery of the cultural tool that language is." (Fanon, B.S.W.M., p.3B) To the extent that his speaking French involves a refusal to speak Creole, the Martiniquean is alienated from himself. Thus something as primary and basically human as the acquisition and use of language involves the colonized man in a whole drama. Similarly the West Indian who desires to marry a white man or woman in order to embrace "white culture, white beauty, white whiteness" (Fanon, B.S.W.M., 29
p.63) is denying himself in his longing to identify with the white Other. His or her choice of a love object cannot be made without the experience of self-destructive feelings of inferiority.
11 Negritude 11 as an ideology which tries to affirm the black man's condition is no escape, Fanon argues, from the racist dialectic, for it creates an affirmative stereotype as a counterweight to the white man's negative portrait. As a moment in the struggle to free himself from the destructive determination of the Other, the embrace of Negritude has a psychological and historical utility for the black man, but ultimately it must be transcended in the search for an authentic identity. Fanon's discussion of racism differs significantly from that of Memmi. Memmi's explanation is limited by his functionalist assumption; he sees racism as a useful ideology for the colonizer for it guarantees the continuation of his privilege. He recognizes that the mythical portrait created by the colonizer is internalized by the colonized but he accounts for this in primarily politico-economic terms. As a psychiatrist, Fanon's inclination was to explore the penetra- tion of racist assumptions into the psyches of both whites and blacks and look for their connection with neuroses and psychoses. Fanon's second volume, L'An cinq de la revolution algerienne (1959), reflects his experience in Algeria in the 30
midst of its revolt against France. His polemical purpose is to analyze the new social forms which are being forged in the midst of revolt in order to argue that colonialism has already been superseded. "A new kind of Algerian man," 33 he argues, is coming into existence who is in the process of transcending the past deformations of colonialism. Traditions and institutions among the colonized which had become stultified under colonial administration were being radically transformed. Even the most basic institution, the family, has undergone such a transformation which, of course, has had a profound effect on the social position of women. The outbreak of the revolt has undermined the absolute authority of the father in the family; each family member has become an individual who must make his/her own choice about participating in militant activity. If we compare the ways in which Fanon, Memrni, and Mannoni discuss relationships between the sexes in a colonial context, we find in all three a fundamental inability to recognize the strength of masculine hegemony - in both the social relations among the colonizers and the colonized. Their failure to integrate an analysis of women's subordination into their work undermines the claims they make to universalize the implica tions of their account of colonial subordination. In describing the metamorphosis of the Algerian family,
Fanon minimizes the tenacity of patriarchy~ he implies that it is only a kind of old-fashioned and out-moded custom - part of 31
the "feudal tradition1134 - which will be swept away with modernization. He does not recognize that male hegemony is at least as complex and important in its dynamic as colonial domination. This omission raises questions about the primary essay of A Dying Colonialism, "Algeria Unveiled." The veil worn by Algerian women is the symbol of their position within . . 35 I s 1 am~c soc~ety. The French sought to "liberate" women from the wearing of the veil, Fanon argues, as part of their deliberate effort to destroy indigenous culture. Retention of the veil became a mode of resistance to colonialism, but the choice of this mode was not necessarily made by women themselves, but by the men who had ultimate authority within the family. Fanon glides over this dual oppression which the colonized woman suffers. A kind of sexual aggressiveness on the part of the French, he argues, stimulated them to try to tear off the veil and uncover Algerian women in a symbolic act of rape. However, the Algerian men who desired to protect
their women by keeping them covered displayed a sexual defensiveness which made any authentic choice on the part of women themselves very difficult. Similarly, as Fanon describes it, the decision to have women participate in militant activity was made by men. As militants, women wore the veil when it was necessary for concealing weapons, or removed it when European dress was a more convenient disguise. The veil no longer symbolized either a woman's place or passive resistance 32
to colonialism; it became a "means of struggle." (Fanon, D.C., p.61) Although Fanon recognizes the patriarchal nature of Algerian society, he does not discuss the ways in which women might have resisted that specific form of oppression. His description of the various modes of resistance to the penetra tion of Western institutions like Western medicine or the radio is constructed on the model of resistance to women's "emancipation." His analysis emphasizes the passive resistance on the part of the colonized to what "objectively" might seem beneficial but was refused when it came from the colonial regime. The doctor's visit to the countryside or the establishment of sanitary installations constituted, for Algerians, "fresh proof of the occupier's hold on the country," {Fanon, D.C., p.l22) and were often boycotted. During the revolt, such "backwardness" gave way to acceptance of what could be adapted from the modern world. Radio became a useful instrument; Western medicine was adopted for its intrinsic efficacity. Similarly, Fanon maintains, patriarchal institutions were gradually abolished. However, the analogy does not bear scrutiny in the light of post-revolutionary events, for Algerian men were determined "to recover the power colonization had taken from them," including power over their women. 36 Concentrating as he did upon the oppression created by colonialism, Fanon obscured the force of male domination and 33
missed the sense in which the cultivation of "femininity," symbolized in Algeria by the wearing of the veil, might also represent a complex element in the relationship between men and women, as well as a gesture asserting national identity. For Algerian women, wearing the veil might not have been solely a mode of resistance to Europeans, but might also have been, in a paradoxical sense, a mode of resistance, as well as a gesture of subordination, to Algerian men, insofar as it symbolized the existence, not only of a national culture, but also of a specifically feminine culture existing apart from male hegemonic culture. Assuming the veil thus could have a twofold dimension for the colonized woman, only one element of which Fanon was willing to admit to his argument. Not only did the veil thwart European penetration, but it also represented the assertion that the separate sphere to which women were confined could become women's private kingdom if they wished to make the most of the only power - as guardian of traditional morality within the family - available to them. It is difficult for the formerly colonized woman, however, to escape the limitations of this role without being labelled "Westernized" or "Europeanized." 37 Memmi in The Colonizer and the Colonized does not mention the distinctions between men and women's oppression within the colonial situation, but his discussion of colonial paternalism reveals that he does not recognize its importance nor its connection with masculine hegemony. Memmi mentions 34
paternalism at the very end of his discussion of racism and calls it "charitable racism - which is not thereby less skillful or less profitable." (Memmi, C.& c., p.76) Paternalism is merely a superficial and hypocritical attitude which the colonizer assumes; clearly Memmi does not take it seriously as an important feature of the relations between the colonizer and the colonized. In his volume of essays, Dominated Man, Memmi has one chapter on the oppression of women entitled "A Tyrant's Plea" which is a critique of Simone de Beauvoir. The essay concentrates not on her principal theoretical work on women, The Second Sex, but on her life as a model for women's emancipation. For Memmi, de Beauvoir fails in this regard because she avoided elaborating on the sexual dimension qf her relationship with Sartre where she hints at dissatisfaction, and because she refused to have a child. For
Memmi the refusal to have children mutilates a woman; in order to make such a decision she must "sacrifice ••. an essential part of her nature ••• To reject maternity is to reject one's essential femininity." (Memmi, D.M., p.l53) The focus of Memmi's discussion reduces women to the sexual and the pro creative. While he would never tolerate any discussion of the "essential nature" of the colonized, he can introduce such a presumptive and obscuring category into his discussion of women without flinching. Memmi's effort to include women in his portrait of "dominated man" must fail to convince anyone that he has considered the subject seriously. 35
Mannoni's treatment of the sexual dimension of colonialism also reveals a masculine bias. He tries to explain what he sees as an increasing distance between Europeans and Malagasies as "due to the racialist influence of the European women," who, he claims, "are far more racialist than the men." (Mannoni, P.& C., p.llS-116) This extreme racism results, in his account, partly from sexual jealousy directed at Malagasy women who often prove attractive to European men, and partly from guilt over the "unconscious urge to dominate a male figure" which finds satisfaction through the tyranny the white woman exercises over her servants. Mannoni sees the sex lives of the Malagasies themselves as "relatively easygoing," (Mannoni, P.& C., p.ll2) less conflict-ridden and neurotic than those of Europeans, in spite of the fact that, according to his own description, "The woman is very obedient and docile ••• very restrained in her expression of feeling," and "The sterile woman is disgraced." (Mannoni, P.& c., p.ll3) Perhaps we might be tempted to conclude from his description that the sexual lives of Malagasy men are less problematic than those of European men, but such a conclusion also would probably be the kind of wishful projection which Mannoni himself has elsewhere analyzed. In Fanon's work, the passion of his revolutionary idealism accounts in a limited sense for his distortions. His last volume, Les Damnes de la terre (1961), is both an affirmation of the potential for social transformation intrinsic in the 36
anti-colonial struggle and a stringent critique of newly independent nations where African elites have moved into the oppressive positions vacated by Europeans to act as middlemen, filtering their countries' resources into Western coffers, as long as they can take their shares. Wherever the colonizer has voluntarily granted independence to the colony, he argues, some type of nee-colonial arrangement has emerged. Fanon's most famous essay argues that the violence of colonial conquest and rule demands an equal and opposing violence on the part of the colonized to throw off their oppression. As long as colonial rule lasts, the colonized turn their resentful aggression against one another; interne cine violence is common. Once militant activity begins, conflicts among the colonized are automatically resolved.
Through participation in violent revel~ the colonized make a kind of leap into authenticity which frees them from the passivity induced by acquiescence in oppression. The colonized regain self-confidence, self-respect, and are enabled to turn themselves into the subjects of their own history. Based on his Algerian experience, Fanon constructs a model for successful social transformation through anti-colonial revolt. Nationalistic intellectuals too radical for urban reformist political organizations which are remote from the people are forced out of the cities and must integrate them selves with the peasants in the countryside who have no 37
illusions about the possibility of gradual, peaceful liberation from colonialism. The merging of the two groups ignites the revolt; they are subsequently joined by the lumpenproletariat of the towns who also have nothing to hope for from the persistence of the colonial regime. The two most important groups for Fanon consist of those who have been the most deprived and have not been integrated into colonial society. Although the revolt might begin spontaneously, some forms of organization are required to sustain it. Since elite groups did not instigate the rebellion solely on their own initiative, new organizational structures which do not institutionalize the authority of individuals have a chance to emerge. Fanon's insistence on the importance of violent revolt is comprehensible only in the context of his critique of nee colonialism. The maintenance of the colonial regime depended on the acceptance by the colonized of their subordinate position. Nationalistic rhetoric, a certain amount of flag waving, and stage-managed elections are not enough to overcome the passivity induced by colonialism; a sudden shift to modern "democratic" politics engenders its own kind of passivity. However, the all-encompassing nature of the anti-colonial revolt draws everyone into the vortex of events and forces everyone to participate. Fanon bases his optimistic view on the impact of violent rebellion - in its midst no one can remain indifferent, on the sidelines, cynical. In his discussion of anti-colonial revolt, Memrni 38
emphasizes the ways in which the colonized are still involved with the colonizer - even in the process of dialectical negation. Thus he is less optimistic than Fanon for he is more conscious of the vestiges of the colonized man which endure. Memrni's rationalistic assumptions do not permit him to argue that violence is itself cathartic and can enable the colonized to transcend the deformations of oppression. More over, he is not trying to construct a model or theory of total social revolution, as Fanon did attempt to do before his unfortunate and premature death. Fanon did not survive to see the inspiring heroism of the Algerian anti-colonial struggle turn into the bitter internecine fight for leadership between "progressivists" and staunch supporters of an Islamic state, 38 after independence was achieved. The focus of the struggle has been on national
liberation, not on a social programme which would replace French rule. Fanon saw the very absence of such a programme as an opportunity for the people themselves to create new social forms. Some estates vacated by French colons were in fact spontaneously taken over by groups of peasants who became famous for their cooperative experiments with autogestion, but the majority of farmers remained landless or in possession of small, inadequate plots. 39 Whatever industry existed has been
taken over by the state; "managerial, technical and adminis trative elites"40 control it. In the political sphere, a small group of F.L.N. intellectuals wrote the constitution 39
which gave primacy to the F.L.N. and to the President "the powers almost of a dictator." 41 The F.L.N. did not attempt to become a mass party, but remained "an avant-garde of militants." 42 While socialism and extensions of the principle of autogestion were declared objectives, Algeria has remained heavily dependent on foreign aid and investment. Whatever idealism remained among the people was mobilized to consoli date the power of the state. Ben Bella's authoritarian regime ruthlessly suppressed all opposition which emerged until he himself was removed by the army in 1965. Many leftists (especially in France) had displaced a large part of their own frustrated idealism onto the Algerian Revolutionr they saw in the peasants' revolt against the colons a kind of substitute for the proletarian overthrow of the bourgeoisie in the metropolis. When their expectations for Algeria were not fulfilled, they felt let down. Algerians understandably responded to the criticism made by their former supporters with annoyance: to them it seemed like another type of imperialistic interference. Algeria was just one of the African nations which followed the same pattern: high initial expectations for a liberated society once the colonialists were expelled, then disillusion ment when independence was followed by internecine leadership struggles, consolidation of power in an authoritarian regime, continued economic dependence, and the persistence of rural poverty. Since Lessing had grown up in Rhodesia, another 40
settler colony with an entrenched white minority, and since she was concerned with socialist ideals, at least until the early sixties, developments in Africa during the fifties had a profound impact on her imagination. Even a cursory reading of just The Golden Notebook enables the reader to draw this conclusion. Although Mannoni had published his essays in French in 1947 and Fanon had first published in 1952, their work, as well as Mernrni's, was not available in English until the mid sixties. I am certainly not arguing that Lessing was influenced by their work, but the juxtaposition of her fiction with their portraits corroborates her insights and illuminates her sensitivity to the varieties and extent of colonial oppression. Reading Lessing's fiction in conjunction with their analyses demonstrates that she has understood and revealed the deformations which result from living under a colonial order: the internalization by the colonized of the colonizers' negative stereotype; the effects on the colonized of the suppression of their culture; the hollowness of the colonials' own personalities, based as they are on dishonest attempts to legitimate a false sense of superiority. However, comparison of her fiction with their work also makes evident certain differences which result from her greater sensitivity to the complexities of the racial/sexual hierarchies and to the intimate dimension of both colonial and sexual oppression. 0 The masculine bias which reveals itself on close examination 41
of these three important writers on the colonial situation vitiates their attempt to gain a universal understanding of the nature of oppression from their examination of colonialism. In the next chapter I will discuss the specific features of the colonial situation which emerge from Lessing's portrayal. However, to create the specific historical context for this discussion I will first summarize Rhodesia's colonization and early political development. Certainly its social, political and economic structure typifies the colonial situation which Mannoni, Mernrni, and Fanon have analyzed. Although their works were written in the context of North Africa, and, in Fanon's case, also Martinique, it is easy to see correspondences between their descriptions and colonialism in Rhodesia. 42
RHODESIA: PROTOTYPE OF SETTLER COLONIALISM
In Children of Violence Lessing uses the name "Zambesia" to designate her white-dominated colony because, as she says at the end of The Four-Gated City: "I did not want it to be thought that what I described was peculiar to Southern Rhodesia. My Zambesia is a composite of various white domin ated parts of Africa and, as I've since discovered, some of the characteristics of its white people are those of any ruling minority whatever their colour, and some of those of white people anywhere- in Britain for instance." 43 In some of her stories she is also deliberately vague about the exact location of events, although it is clear that they take place in Southern Africa. Providing a fictional name for her colony or neglecting to name a precise location in her stories enables Lessing to generalize her portrait of the colonial situation. Her readers cannot dismiss the implications of her portrayal of the dynamics of subordination and domination with the assumption that that is merely how conditions are in one remote corner of Africa, but elsewhere things are very different. Nonetheless Lessing did live in Rhodesia for twenty-five years, and references to Rhodesia's historical and political situation occur throughout the texts. 44 She grew up on a farm just outside Banket in the northerly Lomagundi district where her father, A.C. Tayler, took up farming in 1924. After the 43
war the white population in the areas north and west of Salisbury expanded with the influx of new immigrants of which her parents were a part. This area provides the background for most of Lessing's early stories as well as for Martha Quest. Here as well as during her later life in Salisbury, Lessing had ample opportunity to observe all the anomalies of Rhodesian colonialism. The progressive institutionalization of minority privilege characterizes the history of white rule in Rhodesia. The primary initiative for settling the territory at the end of the nineteenth century came from Cecil Rhodes and his associates who dreamed of discovering mineral riches there equivalent to those being mined in South Africa. In addition to his desire for more wealth, Rhodes al. so wanted to see the territory become another British settlement, a fragment of his grand design for Africa: "Rhodes saw 'his' hinterland beyond the Limpopo as a future great white dominion." 45 He hoped that what looked to him like an empty plateau in Central Africa would provide "homes and more homes" for the British and other whites who could be easily assimilated to British culture. According to Rhodes' biographers, Lockhart and Woodhouse, he believed that "God's will must clearly be that the Anglo-Saxon stock should occupy as much as possible of the earth and that Anglo-Saxon ideas should everywhere prevail in the minds of men." They quote one of Rhodes' typical state- ments on British cultural superiority: 44
'I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race. I contend that every acre added to our territory provides for the birth of more of the English race, who otherwise would not be brought into existence. Added to which, the absorption of the greater portion of the world under our rule simply means the end of all wars.' 46 On occasions like Pioneer Day, when white Rhodesians renew their sense of history, it is the symbolic figure of Rhodes which presides. Rhodesians have attempted to perpetuate his ethnocentric vision in spite of increasing pressure from African demands for self-determination. Of course, Rhodes' plans hardly took into account the displacement of the Africans living in the territory that he would call Rhodesia. His comment on learning of brutalities committed by "his" Pioneers against the Africans was, 11 I prefer land to niggers." 47 Lobengula, the last Ndebele monarch, was perhaps doomed within the decade to be overrun by either the British, or the Portuguese, or the Afrikaners, all of whom had begun to make incursions in the late 1880's. Rhodes was determined, however, that the territory then occupied by the Shona and Ndebele tribes should become British. As Richard Brown observed in his essay, "Aspects of the Scramble for Matabeleland": As far as the whites were concerned, all the purposes for which they came to Central Africa were thwarted by the nature of Matabele society, and since it stood in the front line of their advance, occupying a region of great strategic importance, expected mineral wealth, and known 45
pastoral potential, it was their avowed aim to produce its downfall. 48 Ndebele society was organized around farming, raising cattle, and making war. 49 The Ndebele had been a Zulu off- shoot who had migrated from South Africa only about a genera- tion earlier. In their movements north, they raided many Shona villages, then settled down to extract tribute from their neighbors. The tribe was divided into castes, and their political system was highly centralized around an authori- tarian monarch, who was the effective symbol of group cohesion. All young men were organized militarily into age groups. Only men who had proved themselves in war could marry. Cattle were the basis of status as well as wealth; all cattle belonged to the king who distributed them to individuals through a system of subordinates. Cattle not only provided nourishment and symbolized wealth, but also were linked to the spiritual system in that they often were dedicated to ancestors. Thus they united the living and the dead, and created bonds between families since "cattle are intimately connected with marriage and, when a woman leaves one group for another, cattle change hands and are usually distributed among her relations; cattle sustain the marriage as well as nourish- ing the holders with their milk; they may be handed back, or at least claimed if there is a divorce." 50 The Ndebele were proud and self-sufficient. Their self- confidence made them hated by the white settlers who could not feel secure in Rhodesia until the Ndebele kingdom was 46
suppressed. Even missionaries who had worked among the Ndebele before the arrival of Rhodes' Pioneer Column hated them for their impenetrability. In fact, before British conquest, both the Ndebele and the Shona resisted conversion to Christianity, preferring loyalty to their own institutions. The Shona, in contrast to the Ndebele, had settled in the area in the ninth or tenth century. Their empire, through continuous struggle with the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, declined gradually, until the eighteenth century when a new confederation was formed which successfully resisted new incursions. The Shona were held together by a powerful religious system, organized around the authority of mediums who were supposed to communicate with the spirits of former emperors. Vestiges of their confederation still existed when the Ndebele invaded, but it had become very decentralized. The Shona were more egalitarian in their system of government than the Ndebele. They emphasized agriculture rather than cattle raising, but cattle were important to them as a kind of insurance against crop failure. The Ndebele never defeated all the Shona, as Europeans later claimed; their conquests were limited to a few tribal groups. Ndebele warriors made some expeditions for plunder outside their own territory, but most of the Shona were com pletely independent of Lobengula's rule when whites began to enter the country. Thus when the British defeated the Ndebele under Lobengula in 1893, the Shona did not automatically come 47
under their authority, as was later claimed. Many white settlers liked to assume that their occupation of the area liberated the Ndebele and the Shona from Loben- gula's brutal tyranny and the domination of superstition. The British had complete contempt for the Shona whom they saw as weak and disorganized. (The 1896 Revolt forced them to change their estimate of the Shona.) Some Europeans had a grudging respect for the Ndebele who appeared more organized and had a more comprehensible if more violent social system. Nonethe- less, it was convenient for the British to pose as liberators, to convince themselves that they were ending savage tribal warfare, in order to rationalize their occupation. Neither the Shona nor the Ndebele were seduced into European civilization by its attractions; both groups were forced into it by the overwhelming superiority of European arms. By a complicated series of schemes, Rhodes managed to secure an agreement with Lobengula known as the Rudd Concession. Lobengula thought that he was providing Rhodes with very limited rights to possible minerals. According to verbal promises, only ten white men would enter Matabeleland; they would be under Lobengula's authority; they would not dig any- where near Lobengula's towns. There would be no interference with the Ndebele way of life. However, Rhodes clearly had a different idea: There can be no doubt that there was a fundamental discrepancy between Lobengula's understanding of the concession and the use Rhodes intended to make 48
of it. To Lobengula the concession and its verbal promises were to limit severely the activities of the whites in his kingdom; to Rhodes the written concession alone was valid and was to be the key to opening both Matabele- land and Mashonaland to commercial company rule. 51 Rhodes used the concession as the quasi-legal basis for a state apparatus. As his biographers remark: "All the panoply of a modern state was extracted from the concession of mineral rights which was all Lobengula thought he had given away." 52 Once the concession was signed, Rhodes proceeded to secure a charter from the British government for his British South Africa Company. 53 Rhodes was offering Britain the possibility of acquiring another large segment of African territory with no subsequent expense for the British taxpayer. Rhodesia was supposed to be a profit making concern. He then sent in his "pioneers" in 1890. 54 For Rhodes the Pioneers were to be "a community in embryo." He wanted "men who were first class shots and if possible have experience of or an aptitude for some trade ..• He also wanted them to come from every district of South Africa, including the Republics, so that the sentiment behind the pioneers would be spread widely. The new country would then not be just another British colony. It would belong to the Cape, and therefore ultimately to the future of South Africa." 55 Thus from its earliest days, Rhodesia was linked intimately with South Africa. The Ndebele fought and lost two bloody wars in an attempt to regain their land - one in 1893 and the other in 1896. Both times, Europeans, in possession of superior firepower, 49
massacred Africans on a large scale. Lobengula died of small pox after the first defeat, and the Ndebele were never able to restore their monarchy despite the persistent efforts of Lobengula's son, Nyamanda, who attempted in the twentieth century with the Matabele National Home Movement to adapt African resistance to changing conditions. At the end of the 1893 revolt, the British South Africa Company (B.S.A.C.) dis possessed the Ndebele of about three quarters of their cattle on the dubious grounds that the cattle had belonged to the defeated king and thus belonged to the company by right of conquest. In this way, the Ndebele were not only undermined economically, but also culturally: they were deprived of one of their most important spiritual symbols. The Company wanted both to be reimbursed for the expenses of the war, and to drive the Ndebele into a money economy, that is, force a proud people to accept demeaning work for the Europeans. The Shona participated in the second revolt, contrary to the expectations of the settlers, who, with contemptuous mis understanding, saw them as the cowardly inverse of the warlike Ndebele. In the first years of European penetration, the Shona had been reluctant to believe that their land could be taken from them. To them, "Land was something sacred belonging to the whole tribe but held in trust by the chief and elders whose duty it was to allot it to those who needed it."56 By 1896 they realized that they had to resist European incursions. However, the Europeans treated the Shona very differently from 50
the way that they treated the Ndebele. Rhodes made a personal effort to make peace with the Ndebele; he gave them a few concessions, and permitted the chiefs who had led the revolt to retain some power within the new system of native administration. The Shona were treated more harshly; British troops burned their crops to starve them into surrender. When they fled their villages into mountain caves, they were dynamited. Finally, when they did submit, most of the chiefs and religious leaders were executed. The difference in attitude toward these two tribes, and the con trasting treatment given to each in defeat, provide an interesting comment on the settlers1 own mentality. It was only the centralized, authoritarian,militaristic Ndebele to whom the settlers and Rhodes would pay even a grudging respect. The Shona they merely refused to understand. After these two wars of resistance, the British govern ment began to take more of an interest in the colony. African resistance convinced the British that it was necessary to rationalize native administration. As a later consequence of the wars, it was decided in 1918 that all the land in Rhodesia belonged to Britain by right of conquest. The 1896 Revolt also strengthened the white settler community at the expense of the Company's power, and moved the inhabitants closer to self-government. Although the B.S.A.C. still officially ruled, the armed support of every settler was necessary for the maintenance of order. As Terence Ranger has observed: "It is a commonplace that what most distinguishes the history 51
of Southern Rhodesia from that of, say, Kenya is the success of the Southern Rhodesian settlers in obtaining political control."57 After the Revolt, the settlers obtained the right to elect representatives to a Legislative Council: "From 1898 onwards Southern Rhodesia moved steadily toward settler supremacy." 58 According to Leonard Kapunga, a recent historian of Rhodesian conflicts, "The events of the period 1892 and 1896 left very bitter memories with both the Africans and the white settlers. The bitterness with which the rebellions of 1896 were fought and suppressed still clouds the relationship between the Europeans ••• and the Africans of today's Rhodesia." 59 A sense of the past is maintained among the Europeans in Rhodesia by transmission to school children of
stories and legends constructed around "heroes 11 of the "rebellions," 60 as well as by collective rituals like the laying of wreaths at the statue of Rhodes on Pioneer Day. Thus Terence Ranger quotes Marshall Hole in 1932 to the effect that "racial prejudice and discrimination were 'more deeply seated' in Southern Rhodesia 'than in the older colonies of South Africa;' it was the result, he said, of the experience of the rebellions and the folk memory of them which each Rhodesian inherited." 61 Of course Africans too raise their children with a sense of history, a very different history, as Kapunga notes: The African child grows up with deep hatred of 0 the European in Rhodesia. To him the European 52
represents dispossession of his land, violation of his dignity as a person, and denial of his aspirations. He knows from stories told by his grandparents by the fireside that force and deception were employed to subjugate him ••. The stories of these injustices have been passed from one generation to another just as the white settlers have used school books to instill in their children the bitterness of the past. 62 The original charter granted to the B.S.A.C. by the British government required that the Company reserve some land for Africans. 63 Designated African areas were usually less fertile than European areas and far from markets and railway lines. White Rhodesians wanted to insure a minimum of competition from African farmers. Initially Africans living outside the reserves were allowed to remain since they could provide "a local labour reservoir for neighboring farmers before the labour market had been fully developed.n64 The Africans were required to pay rent either to the B.S.A.C. or to European "owners;" without even residing on the land Euro- peans could thus make a profit from it. Eshmael Mlambo notes the confused situation in which many African farmers found themselves: "The Africans who do not want to stay and pay rent for European lands were free to move to the reserves, but they could not conceive of a situation where the land on which their ancestors had been born suddenly became a white man's farm." 65 Anytime African "squatters" became an inconvenience, they could be evicted by a word to the local Native Commissioner. In spite of the promises made to the Ndebele after the 53
1896 Revolt, little was done to add to the land allocated to
Africans. Rhodes gave the Ndebele a two year guarantee to occupy the land they inhabited without interference, but after that they could be evicted. Ranger quotes from the account of
Ndebele grievances written by the Superintendent of Natives at
Bulawayo:
'White men of varied origin and race become in a day their landlords •.• their overlords, with power to dispossess and drive forth. To an aristocratic race the delegation of such power has appeared unseemly in many cases. The word "amaplazi" •.• meaning "farms" stands, it may be said, for almost all that is most distasteful in our rule. Almost it stands for helotage and servitude to a chance-made master.' 66
Since the Ndebele economy was virtually destroyed in the 1890's, they were forced to accept wage labour for Europeans sooner than were most of the Shona.
In the early years of Company rule, Africans had the legal right to buy land. However, few of those groups who could afford it were allowed to purchase any land by the
B.S.A.C. administration. Nonetheless, during the early years of Company rule, African agriculture prospered to some extent, in spite of rents and taxes imposed by Europeans. A ready market for surplus crops existed in the newly opened mines which used a large proportion of migrant labour. Most
Africans in the territory preferred to pay their taxes from profits made on agricultural produce rather than work for 67 wages. When discovery of minerals in the colony fell below what Rhodes and the B.S.A.C. had expected, however, emphasis 54
had to be shifted to the sale of land to Europeans and the encouragement of European cash crop agriculture if the Company were to recover its investment. Giovanni Arrighi makes the importance of this shift clear: The most important single element determining the nature of economic and political develop ment in Southern Rhodesia was the B.S.A.C.'s overestimation at the end of the nineteenth century of its mineral resources, and the persistence of this overestimation for roughly fifteen years. 68 Such overestimation meant that the investment in development, such as building railroads, had to pay off in other ways. Thus the Chartered Company was led to "foster the formation of a white rural bourgeoisie"69 who would form the core of settlers with a stake in maintaining their own privileged position in the class structure of the new territory. Thus a white rural bourgeoisie with a national character developed very early in the history of the colony. This is one of the features that would distinguish Rhodesia from most of the other African colonial territories north of the Limpopo and south of the Sahara where international capitalism carried out the exploitation of natural resources. After 1900, eviction of Africans from "European land" to native reserve areas increased, but no additions were made to reserve land to provide for the expanding African population. Consequently the production of grain per acre decreased, and over-stocking of cattle became a serious problem. 70 It must be emphasized that African agriculture declined in this period 55
not because of "primitive methods" but on account of European policy aimed at eliminating competition and forcing independent producers to become landless proletarians on labour-intensive settler farms. As Murray Steele comments, "White agricul turalists ..• saw the 'Native Problem' in terms of the Africans' reluctance to work for them." 71 While the efforts of independent African farmers were impeded, European agriculture was subsidized by the creation of a Land Bank to make loans at low interest available to Europeans and by the importation of countless experts to advise immigrant farmers on soil conditions and fertilizers. When Company rule was terminated in 1923 and Rhodesia became a "self-governing colony," 72 the settlers wanted to secure all the best land for themselves. In 1925 the Morris- Carter Commission was set up to make recommendations concerning land distribution. Its inquiries resulted in the 1931 Land
Apportionment Act (referred to as the 11 Magna Carta of the
11 11 Europeans ) which provided a basis for the institutionali zation of white rule." 73 The Act legalized and perpetuated segregation by creating what were known as "native purchase areas" where Africans were allowed to buy land. Most of the land which they were permitted to buy was the least desirable farm land. 74 It also prohibited Africans from purchasing any land in urban areas. During the 1930's, further measures were taken to protect European farmers hit by the effects of the Depression. The Maize Control Acts of 1931 and 1934 56
restricted the markets available to Africans and resulted in their getting lower prices for maize than European farmers. At the same time Africans were forbidden to sell cattle for export. All these factors ultimately contributed to produce the desired effect: the complete supremacy of European . 75 f arm~ng. European agriculture became in the words of W.J. Barber "a sheltered industry." 76 The passing of the Industrial Conciliation Bill in 1934 at the instigation of white skilled workers insured that Africans could not compete with European workers for skilled jobs, and it secured an unending supply of unskilled and unprotected African workers for white employers. As Lawrence Vambe explains: The Bill excluded all Africans from the definition of the term 'employee' on the grounds that they were unfitted for trade unionism. More than that, the Government endorsed the principle that the country would depend on skilled white rather than black labour and therefore should provide a system of apprenticeship for white Rhodesians •.• Thus, by a stroke of the pen, Huggins and his administration put all black people in a position where they could not form legitimate trade unions, acquire industrial training or go out on strike to improve their lot. In other words, the state offered all black men for open exploitation by every class of employer in the country. 77 Eliminated from the definition of "employee" by the Industrial Conciliation Act, all African workers fell under the juris- diction of the Master and Servants Act (1901). According to its provisions, the "servant" who "absents himself without leave from his master's house or premises ••• is intoxicated, refuses to obey any command of his master ••• is abusive or 57
insulting, either by language or conduct to his master or his master's wife and children" 78 is liable to criminal prosecution. With the protection afforded them by the Industrial Conciliation Act white workers were enabled to bargain more effectively through their trade unions with employers. Class conflict between groups of settlers was reduced, for white solidarity took precedence. Any prospect there might have been for unity between white and African workers was eliminated. During the thirties the political organ of the white working class, the Rhodesia Labour Party, was "almost com- pletely preoccupied with the problem of defending the position of European artisans." 79 The Rhodesia Labour Party had been established in 1920. After some initial success in the Legislative Council elections, none of the party candidates were returned to office until 1928, the year it drafted a new constitution. From 1928 to 1943 the party increased its parliamentary strength in every election until it had eight out of thirty representatives. In addition to its demand that skilled jobs be reserved for white workers, the party pro gramme advocated legislation to improve working conditions, and to secure social security as well as other state provided social services. Prominent trade unionists dominated the leadership of the party and artisans provided the core of its voters. During the Depression when the party was improving its parliamentary position, white trade unionists had little 58
interest in improving conditions for Africans. Their chief concern was to protect themselves from the threat of African competition. They feared that the British South Africa Company and overseas capitalist interests intent upon profit would gladly sacrifice white workers through employing Africans at lower pay. 80 From the Salisbury branch emerged a left wing of the Party whose members wanted to give it a more truly socialist character as well as secure admittance to Africans. In 1940 the party split into two factions, largely because of personality differences and power struggles within the leader ship. Parliamentary representatives disagreed on the degree to which they should cooperate with the government during the war. An attempt in 1944 to reunite the party as the Southern Rhodesia Labour Party failed. Previous differences were exacerbated by the Executive Committee's decision to register an African Branch of the party. This had occurred in 1941 at the request of Charles Mzingeli81 who had formerly attempted to organize Africans in the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union. The African branch called attention to itself in 1944 when it invited both Europeans and representatives of various African organizations to a meeting in Harare (the Salisbury location). After this event the Executive's decision to admit the African branch was called into question and the whole issue was reopened for discussion at the next congress. The 1945 59
Congress, which Lessing attended, also failed to unify the party. Lessing spoke against merging the two dissenting sections if that would mean creating a party with a colour bar: "The barrier between races must go down, or humanity would not survive at all. " 82 With the final split into two parties - the white trade unionists as the Rhodesia Labour Party and the Salisbury group as the Southern Rhodesia Labour Party - organized labour's representation declined in the next election: "The field of politics was left to the Centre and the Right." 83 The rancour generated by the question of registering Africans in the party obscured both the other political divisions and the attempt of a segment of the trade union leadership to gain exclusive control. The fact that this could occur demonstrates the degree to which this one issue is emotionally loaded for all white settlers. As Lessing herself commented in a letter directed, but not mailed, to the Rhodesia Herald, "Whenever racial questions are dis cussed reason flies out of the window, and people become unbalanced." 84 During World War II thousands of British servicemen were sent to Rhodesia for Royal Air Force training. Their arrival stimulated the economy as did the increases in agricultural production necessary for the war. Wartime prosperity con tinued after the fighting ended. Tobacco farmers, for example, achieved large scale gains and managed by 1950 to increase fourfold the production level of 1939. 85 This 60
unprecedented wealth transformed other kinds of agriculture as well as the standard of living in the countryside. The white population increased by 65.1% between 1946 and 1951, which is to say that "more immigrants came to Rhodesia in the five years after the war than in the previous thirty years." 86 Most of the new immigrants wanted to stay in the towns and cities rather than try their hand at farming as had previous generations of incoming settlers. Urban expansion and general postwar prosperity did little to improve conditions for Africans. A number of government investigations disclosed that urban Africans could not main tain a decent standard of living; recommendations for legislating a realistic minimum wage were not, however, implemented due to pressure from white farmers who did not want their workers to be lured away to the cities. Two post war attempts at "reform" actually only made conditions worse. The first was the 1946 Native Urban Areas Act which was supposed to distribute housing more equitably in the Locations. It limited married quarters (the euphemism for a two room bungalow) to families in which the husband had been working in the town for two years. Neither single men nor women could occupy such housing. Residents who failed to fit the new regulations were evicted. The other piece of legislation, which was aimed at reform in the reserves, was the 1951 Land Husbandry Act. This law was supposed to "revolutionize African agriculture by promoting good farming methods, like 61
continuous cultivation of the soil and destocking of cattle, and by encouraging individual ownership of land." 87 The notion of individual ownership, however, undermined the spirit of communal tenure and mutual assistance and deprived chiefs of their power to allocate land. 88 Furthermore, dividing land into individual parcels did not increase its extent so that the actual effect of the act was to render even more Africans landless and drive them off the reserves and onto the labour market. 89 In addition, destocking deprived the Africans on the reserves, once again, of their most prized possession, their measure of status, wealth and symbol of social connection - cattle. In the immediate postwar period African frustration erupted in two major strikes. The first took place in 1945; the railway workers, organized in 1944 as the Rhodesian Rail ways African Employees Association, stayed out for two weeks. The unity and discipline displayed by the railway workers forced the government to receive the Association's delegation. The second was the general strike of 1948 which affected every city and mining centre in Southern Rhodesia. It began spontaneously in Bulawayo after a mass meeting in which leaders of various nationalist groups had recommended a more cautious policy of seeking a hearing for their demands from the government. The crowd rejected this and stayed out of work the next day. Subsequently the strike spread to other towns. Although Africans were forced back to work without any 62
major concessions, the National Native Labour Board did intro duce a compulsory minimum wage the following year. However, the amount was so low that it did not relieve the poverty of urban Africans. The strike also inspired fear in white settlers most of whom responded, not by making concessions to African demands, but by hardening their attitudes. Backlash movements like the White Rhodesia Council (1949) dedicated to maintaining white supremacy began to appear. When the attempt to federate Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland was made, a rhetoric of "partnership" between races became the rule as Lessing documents in Going Home. Africans, however, experienced no real change in their situation. Continued white intransigence has led from U.D.I. to the contemporary situation where whites desperately try to maintain whatever control they can through a late coopting of moderate African leaders and a questionable constitution, while most of the country remains under military rule. Ironically the leaders of the guerillas united as the Patriotic Front continue to insist upon Zimbabwe-Rhodesia's colonial status in order to discredit the "rebels" in power. The years preceding, during and immediately following World War II are, of course, the crucial ones for Lessing's fiction, but it is not possible to understand the events of that period without looking at the earlier history of the colony. Lessing integrates a whole sense of that history into her fiction which enables the reader to understand both the 63
colonialist consciousness and reactions against it. In her early African stories, as well as in The Grass Is Singing and Martha Quest, Lessing depicts a rural world of poverty, isolation, and insecurity. The white settlers in her narratives were separated by only a generation or two from the violent conquests of the past. Their own efforts to secure a livelihood and their fear of failure stifle the development of any possible consciousness of injustice done to Africans. All their energy is directed toward turning the land and people into the instruments first of their survival and later of their profit. They see their struggle to consolidate their own power within the country as a heroic endeavour; in their own eyes they are taming an uncivilized universe in the face of grave adversities. The consciousness of the adults Lessing portrays is shaped by a sense of past conflicts with Africans, whether or not they had participated in them, and by their own efforts to survive the effects of the Depression which forced many farmers off the land. Only their children, the generation who grew up in the thirties, have any possibility of seeing the colonial situation for what it is and of recognizing their own relatively privileged position. They can, in some instances, develop an awareness of the culture and way of life that colonialism has suppressed. Their rejection of their parents' universe can become, within Lessing's stories, an image of future possibilities. However, the socialization they undergo 64
makes it more likely that members of this generation will grow up anxious to maintain the privileges created for them. Such individuals congregate at the Sports Club in Martha Quest,
move to the Salisbury suburbs in ~ Proper Marriage and become the image of stultifying repetition from which Martha must separate herself. Lessing's fiction, like the analyses of Mannoni, Memmi,
and Fanon, reveals the ways in which the colonial system's subordination and domination constrict human relations and force individuals to play roles which limit their human potential. For Lessing herself, communism initially repre sented a utopian alternative to the oppressive society in which she had grown up. However, by the time she began to portray Martha Quest's experience with the Communist Party, Lessing had begun to view it more sceptically. In order to create the context for the discussion of Lessing's portrayal of communism as a false mode of liberation it is necessary to examine the history of the party of which Lessing herself was a member and try to determine how its structures influenced her view of the limits of political organization. 65
COMMUNISM: SEARCH FOR POLITICAL ALTERNATIVES
In Going Home Lessing emphasizes the connection between her experience in Africa and her attraction to the Communist Party: "I would not, very likely, be a Communist if I had not lived for twenty-five years in Central Africa. 1190 Her initial interest in communism was based on her perception that the communists "were the only people I had ever met who fought the colour bar in their lives." {G.H., p.311} Lessing became a 91 communist, "emotionally if not organizationally, in 1942." In Rhodesia she was a member of both a large, broadly based organization called "Friends of the Soviet Union" and a small cell of communists within that group called the "Current Affairs Group." 92 In an interview with Jonah Raskin, Lessing commented on the political effect of communism in southern Africa: "The communist party had an enormous effect on politics because it ignored the colour bar. In the communist party white and black people worked together on the basis of equality." 93 Lessing officially joined the Communist Party when she went to Britain, and left it in 1956. Lessing did not leave the party solely in reaction to one event, nor did she ever radically turn against communism and denounce the party as did writers who contributed to such publications as The God That Failed. For her, as for so many others of her generation, the party had been "the major carrier of humanist aspirations." 94 66
Her leaving the party resulted from a loss of "a certain kind of belief," as she comments in the same interview: "The ex- communists of my lot can't be surprised by anything. There is no horror that one cannot expect from people. We've learned that."95 After leaving the party, however, she remained both intellectually identified with socialism and active in move- ments like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She published several articles in The Reasoner, a journal of opposition within the party, and in 1960 she became a founder and edit- orial board member of New Left Review, which combined the efforts of those associated with The New Reasoner (successor to The Reasoner) and the more academic Universities and Left Review. In the late sixties and seventies as Lessing has become more professedly interested in Sufism, she has been less enthusiastic about political activism. However, she has never lost her concern with important political issues and remains convinced of the necessity of giving shape to them in her work. The contents of both the Children of Violence and The Golden Notebook testify to the importance of socialist ideas and organizations for her work. The form of her major novels also owes something to her long intellectual involvement with dialectics. In numerous essays and interviews she has stressed the importance of left wing concerns in the modern world: It has been inside the various chapters of socialism that the great debates of our time 67
have gone on: the movements, the wars, the revolutions, have been seen by their participants as movements of various kinds of socialism, or Marxism, in advance, contain ment, or retreat. 96 Thus I think it is important to look briefly at the kind of organization the Communist Party in Britain was, as well as to examine the party's relation to two issues which are important to this discussion of Lessing's fiction: first, colonialism and second, the role of art and the artist in society. The Communist Party in Britain has always been a marginal force in national politics. Its inability to achieve the strength of other Western European Communist parties has usually been attributed to the Labour Party's monopolization of whatever left-wing enthusiasm exists. The party was formed out of the fusion of several disparate groups - the British Socialist Party (twentieth century successor to Hyndeman's Social Democratic Federation), the DeLeonite Socialist Labour Party, Sylvia Pankhurst's Worker's Socialist Federation, Willie Gallacher's Communist Labour Party, plus members of other groups like the Socialist Prohibition Fellowship - in response to a summons from the Third International. Its origins were thus unique among Western European Communist parties. 97 In accepting the leadership of Lenin, the founding members were also adopting his assumption that socialism must be brought to the workers by self-selected cadres who constitute a revolutionary avant-garde: "The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its 68
own effort, is able to develop only trade-union conscious- ness ••• The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophical, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals." 98 In addition, Leninists assumed, at least until 1939, that the revolution, "triumphant in Russia, .. was 99 "destined to become global. u The major issue of contention among the factions creating the party, the importance of activity aimed at parliamentary representation, was settled largely through Lenin's interven- tion. However, the new party's subsequent application to affiliate with the Labour Party was refused. (This rejection was repeated three times over the following years.) Labour Party leaders feared that the communists would, if permitted, use the Labour Party for their own ends. 100 In the early 1920's the organization moved toward a Bolshevik, democratic centralist model, expelling Sylvia Pank- hurst for her dissent and alienating many intellectuals and trade unionists with strict new policies set out by the Comintern. Lenin had emphasized the need for a highly disciplined party numerous times in his writings: 11 The repudiation of the party principle and party discipline ••• is tantamount to completely disarming the proletariat for the benefit of the bourgeoisie."101 The importance of a highly disciplined, relatively small, hierarchical party is a central Leninist tenet which the British party members were in no 69
position to question. In this early period it seemed natural for the nascent party to look to the successful Bolsheviks for direction, without a sense that its independence was seriously compromised. As E.H. Carr comments: "The very weakness of the party made the tutelage of Moscow inevitable, even where it was not deliberately imposed or consciously accepted."102 Membership fluctuated in the twenties, adversely affected by police surveillance and persecution as well as by the party's tendency toward sectarianism. Harry Pollitt and Rajani Palme Dutt became prominent in this period; they were instrumental in the formation of the party's discipline and character. In 1922 Dutt submitted a report on party organiza tion to the Fifth Party Congress in which he remarked: "If an analogy were wanted to the position of the Communist Party centre, it would have to be found in the organization which it is created to combat - the capitalist state. In the face of all the other dissimilarities there are the same basic principles of centralisation and specialisation - of many threads leading up to a departmentalised executive."103 At the end of the decade the Comintern intervened to confirm Pollitt and Dutt, staunch supporters of the Comintern line, in leadership positions as international discipline tightened under Stalin's regime. Stalin's major discovery- that he could "employ the state apparatus for the purpose of effecting a social 70
104 revolution from above" - meant that he had to establish absolute control over both his own party and the other national parties affiliated with the Comintern. For Communists, dis- content with capitalism and belief in the need for revolution- ary change became identified with defense of the Soviet regime. Ironically the utopian hopes and aspirations of a generation of Communists supported a ruthless totalitarian d 1ctators. h' 1p. 105 Any change in Soviet party position required the parties in the rest of the world to swing into line behind it. The 1928 policy shift which required European communist parties to attack Social Democrats as "Social Fascists" had a traumatic effect on the British party. It severed the tenuous connec- tions which had been maintained with both the Labour Party and many trade union organizations. The Depression gained the Party some support among the unemployed, but only with the triumph of Nazism in Germany, the threat of Fascism repre- sented by Mosley's party in Britain itself, and the shift to a policy of forging a Popular Front against Fascism did the party attract a significant degree of attention in the thirties, especially among intellectuals and students. The publications of Victor Gollancz's Left Book Club became instrumental in creating an audience for the party's views as well as providing a focus for other individuals opposed to Fascism. The role the Comintern played in organizing the International Brigade also secured a great deal of support for 71
the party. 106 Stephen Spender summarized the perspective of this generation: Hitler forced politics onto non-political groups who suddenly became aware that they had interests in common. Not only the Jews, but also the intellectuals, because their position was directly attacked, and through sympathy with their colleagues who lived tormented under Fascism, acquired an intensity of vision and a fury in their non-political politics which the professional politicians did not share. 107 The party lost many of the enthusiasts gained during the thirties after the publication of information about the purge trials, as well as from the shock caused by the Hitler-Stalin pact. However, Hitler's invasion of the U.S.S.R. created a new wave of support for the Soviet Union and the party in the forties. During the war the party renounced some of its distinctive activities - even the Comintern was abolished in 1943 - to contribute support to the war effort. Defeat of Hitler was higher on the agenda than discussion of capitalist injustice. As Peter Cadogan noted, "The Communist Party .•• became a pillar of the Establishment and opposed any and every suggestion of a strike."108 The party's activities during this period attracted wider popular support than at any other time either before or since. The wartime gains made by the party were eroded, however, as the Cold War set in with several well-publicized spy trials. Once again the British party found itself, under orders from Moscow, in a position of opposition to the dominant political forces in England in its campaign to curtail American aid and 72
0 influence. Much worse for the party's status were such events as the Lysenko affair, increasing evidence of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, and, ultimately, the revelations of the twentieth congress followed by events in Hungary. In the aftermath of the twentieth congress, dissatisfied party members had good reason to expect reform of the party bureaucracy. The leadership was compelled to set up a Commission on Inner Party Democracy, but the report of the majority recommended no substantive changes. The difficulty of conducting serious criticism of the party in its own press led E.P. Thompson and John Saville to begin publishing The Reasoner. This paper became a forum for criticism from party members - including Lessing - who wanted to encourage open discussion and change the emphasis from centralism to democracy within the party. They hoped to "rehabilitate the rational, humane and 109 libertarian strand within the Communist tradition." Along with Lessing, they "believed that Communism had a vitality and a moral vigor that would triumph over the brutality and intellectual dishonesty that had undermined it."110 Thompson and Saville were first warned and then suspended from the party after they published the third and last issue which denounced the Soviet invasion of Hungary. The British Communist Party did not gain any substantial new membership during the upsurge of left-wing activism in the sixties, for it was perceived by a new generation of militants 0 as a basically conservative organization. As Kenneth Newton 73
describes the contemporary Communist Party, it is fully integrated into ordinary British politics: "The Party uses normal constitutional methods- writing letters to M.P.'s, to the papers, lobbying M.P.'s, drawing up petitions, attending political meetings, and contesting local and national elections."111 As such it has remained a very marginal political force in Britain, even during periods when other Western European Communist Parties have been gaining strength. Control of the British party has remained concentrated in the hands of a relatively small group. As Henry Felling notes, from 1922 to 1952 in the Politburo, "We can identify only twenty-seven men and one woman who belonged to it; ..• all but four or five were of working class origin, and all but 112 three had joined the party before 1928." The predominance of leaders with a working class background and orientation, according to both Pelling and Neal Wood, indicates a strain of anti-intellectualism in the party which has persisted in the face of the large numbers of intellectuals attracted to the party both during the Popular Front period and during the war. On many occasions, suspicious party leaders have denounced intellectuals' "unreliability and opportunism."113 Although admitted to the party and active in publishing in its journals, intellectuals were seldom welcomed into positions of organizational responsibility. Their position was one of "continual suffrance and perpetual probation."114 According to Hugo Dewar, "This anti-intellectualism in the C.P.G.B., 74
translating itself into impatience with critical discussion, was probably the main reason why opposition to bureaucrat ization found so little response among the rank and file." 115 Existing as a small group on the fringes of British politics, the Communist Party succumbed to the worst features of Stalinist centralization and bureaucratization. Suspicious of criticism from any source, it has been unable to develop new ideas or analyses. In spite of the dessication of the postwar period, members have sustained themselves through their distaste for a seemingly declining capitalism, their sense of belonging to an international organization, their feeling of connection with an heroic past, and their sense of solidarity with third world revolutionary movements in the present. However, the genuine emancipatory impulse that usually leads individuals to join the party as a rejection of a system they find oppressive gets lost in the party's own centralizing structures. When Lessing lost the hope that the party could reform itself, she began to see it as the mirror image of the system it claims to oppose. This vision underlies her portrayal of political organizations in the novels. Looking at the party's record on colonialism reveals one instance of its inability to integrate adherence to principle with subservience to Soviet interests. However, a more fundamental theoretical problem exists in the Eurocentric bias of the Marxist tradition. Marx himself, while deploring the destructive effects of 75
British imperialism in India and China, believed that only capitalism could transform societies which he saw as stagnant into dynamic ones. As far as Marx was concerned, "Indian society has no history at all •.. What we call its history is but the history of successive intruders who founded their empires on the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society."116 For Marx, England acted as "the unconscious tool of history" 117 in drawing China, India, and Africa into a world market, and in constructing the "material foundations of
Western soc~ety' ~n ' As~a. ' ullS He h a d 1'~tt 1 e respec t f or the forms of organization outside Europe and less confidence in their own internal dynamic: Now, sickening as it must be to human feeling to witness those myriads of industrious patriarchal and inoffensive social organizations disorganized and dissolved into their units, thrown into a sea of woes, and their individual members losing at the same time their ancient form of civilization and their hereditary means of subsistence, we must not forget that these idyllic village communities, inoffensive though they may appear, had always been the solid foundation of Oriental despotism, that they restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies. We must not forget the barbarian egotism which, concentrating on some miserable patch of land, had quietly witnessed the ruin of empires, the perpetration of unspeakable cruelties, the massacre of the popula tion of large towns, with no other consideration bestowed upon them than upon natural events, itself the helpless prey of any aggressor who deigned to notice it at all. We must not forget that this undignified, stagnatory, and vegetative life, that this passive sort of existence evoked on the other part, in contradistinction, wild, aimless, unbounded forces of destruction and rendered murder itself a religious rite in Hindustan. 119 76 c In addition to seeing colonial rule as necessary for the pro- gressive transformation of non-Western societies, Marx also believed that imperialism would ultimately contribute to the demise of capitalism in Britain for the costs British colonial administration imposed on the taxpayers were so high. Thus while Marx noted that the "profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilization lies unveiled before our eyes"120 when we look at the history of British rule in India, he believed that the horrors of imperialism were necessary for the social and economic advancement of Asia and Africa, as well as for the ultimate replacement of capitalism by a society controlled by the proletariat. Lenin did not differ from Marx in this basic conclusion on imperialism. For them both, "The socialist transformation . t E . t. "121 o f th e wor ld mean t ~ s uropean~za ~on. However, revolution in Russia could not take place without the cooperation or coercion of the peasantry. Lenin's inclusion of the peasants as an important force in the theory and practice of revolution later gave hope to those who wanted to revolutionize other non-industrial societies. Nonetheless, the first Congress of the Comintern in 1919 declared that: "'The emancipation of the colonies is possible only in con- junction with the emancipation of the metropolitan working 122 class.'" As it became obvious that the workers of Western Europe were not going to revolt after World war I, this policy was revised by the second Congress, attended by 77
numerous representatives from colonized areas. The implication that anti-colonialist revolutions must be subordinated to those in the metropolis was eliminated. However, the new policy was hardly put into real practice. Emphasis on events in Europe remained central. Moreover, Lenin had imposed on his analysis of anti-colonialist struggles theoretical categ ories scarcely adequate to an understanding of their real nature. In his speech to the Second Comintern Congress he said: "It is beyond doubt that any nationalist movement can only be a bourgeois democratic movement, since the overwhelming mass of the population in the backward countries consists of peasants who represent bourgeois-capitalist relationships."123 Thus the Comintern policy was determined by this very restrictive and schematic way of understanding colonial revolution. Communist Party members conceived that their task was to support nationalist and bourgeois-democratic struggles in the colonies. Results of this policy were often both tragic and bizarre, as has been well documented in the story of the relationship between the Comintern and the Chinese Communist Party or in the case of Turkey where the Soviet Union supported a nationalist movement in spite of the execu tion of local Communist leaders. Stalin's complete subordination of the Comintern to the Soviet Party and his emphasis on building socialism in one country meant that his attitudes toward anti-colonialist struggles became even more contingent not only on the 78
exigencies of Soviet foreign policy, but also on the conse- quences of the suppression of the originally promised right to self-determination of the national minorities within the Soviet Union. In other words, from its beginning, colonialism flourished within the U.S.S.R., the homeland of the revolution. As Fernando Claudin remarks in his history of the communist movement, "In the Stalinist hierarchy of 'subordination,' the liberation movements in the colonies and dependent countries stood on the bottom rung of the ladder." 124 The turns and twists of Comintern policy sometimes seemed to favor anti- colonial movements, but often ignored their needs. During the two year period between the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact and the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, for example, Stalinists proclaimed that a crisis in imperialism had occurred which provided colonial peoples with a long awaited opportunity in their independence struggle. When the anti-war policy radically shifted to whole-hearted support for the fight against Fascism, it was difficult for the party in India to be convinced that the former policy, so much more beneficial to their interests, was incorrect. The Indian Communists, underground, with many of their leaders in jail, were ultimately persuaded to accept the new policy by a letter sent directly from Harry Pollitt since the British Communists 125 h a d b een ac t ~ve. ~n ' t h e~r . support. Th ey d eser t e d th e national liberation front led by Gandhi's Congress Party, and in return for support for the war effort, the leaders were 79
freed from prison by the Viceroy. Disagreement over the Hitler-Stalin pact split the C.P. in South Africa. It had already been weakened earlier in the 1930's when the Comintern imposed on it the arbitrary Stalin- ist line calling for "'creation of an independent Native Republic, with simultaneous guarantees for the rights of the . . 't 111126 wh ~te m~nor~ y. At this juncture, all agitation had been exclusively directed toward achieving equal rights of citizenship for all races. The irony of Communists demanding independent native republics is only now fully apparent in the light of the Nationalist Party's efforts to create its Bantustans. The wartime alliance of the Soviet Union with the Western powers resulted in the practical "neglect of colonial problems by the communists; clearly, consideration for their new allies forbade any intervention in colonial affairs."127 The Cold War, however, revived anti-colonialist propaganda so that the party could again assume the heroic stance of universal advocate of the right of national self-determination. During the fifties, sixties, and seventies, the Soviet Union has sought allies among newly independent nations as it has achieved the status of a major world power. Communist rhetoric of support for national liberation was belied, however, by the intervention of the Soviet Union in the affairs of its satellites in Eastern Europe as well as by the French party's hesitancy to support the liberation struggle in Algeria. 80
Lessing became associated with communism at a time when the Party was least active in anti-colonialist activity. However, she could identify her own rejection of colonial society with communist ideals which reject racial discrimina- tion and the subjection of national groups. From her political activity she learned a great deal about the nature of power and relationships based on the exercise of power. But when she came to portray the colonial situation in her stories and novels, she revealed a complexity of interpersonal relations which transcended the categories of political analysis to which she had been exposed. In 1969 in an interview with Jonah Raskin, Lessing remarked, 11 I am intensely aware of, and want to write about, politics, but I often find that I am unable to embody my political vision in a novel ... I feel that the writer is obligated to dramatize the political conflicts of his time in h l.S. f'l.C t'l.On. 11 128 Lessing aimed in her early work to place herself in the realist tradition. For her, realist fiction made a "statement of faith in man himself" she found lacking in other forms of contemporary literature: The highest point of literature was the novel of the nineteenth century, the work of Tolstoy, Stendhal, Dostoevsky, Balzac, Turgenev, Chekhov; the work of the great realists. I define realism as art which springs so vigorously and naturally from a strongly-held, though not necessarily intellectually defined view of life that it absorbs symbolism. I hold the view that the realist novel, the realist story, is the highest form of prose writing; higher than and out of reach of any com parison with expressionism, symbolism, naturalism or any other ism. 129 81
Like many Marxist literary critics, Lessing sees the realist tradition in art as a critical tradition. Realism confronts the reader with the disparities between illusions or idealizations and a reality he might prefer to ignore. As Marcuse observes, "Realism shows the ideal of human freedom in its actual negation and betrayal and thus preserves the trans cendence without which art itself is cancelled ... 130 This critical aspect of the realist tradition drew favorable comments on it from Marx and Engels. 131 Marxist critics like Lukacs have emphasized in discussion of the realist novel the portrayal of 11 the organic, indissoluble connection between man as a private individual and man as a social being, as a . ..132 me mb er o f a commun~ty. By contrast, naturalist or modernist work dissolves this connection and perpetrates a distorted view of man in the name of artistic experimentation. These humanistic and political aspects of the realist tradition prompted Lessing to affirm its importance to her. Unfortunately, in the postwar period, many Communist writers and critics remained under the spell of intellectual terrorists like Andrei Zhdanov, who, desiring control over ideology, maintained that the function of art is purely didactic: "Soviet writers must help the people, the state, and the party to educate our youth to be cheerful and confident of 133 their strength, unafraid of any difficulties." Writers must present a flattering reflection of Soviet society to their readers. Otherwise their works can "sow only despondency, 82
low spirits, pessimism, the inclination to turn away from the burning questions of social life and activity for the narrow
1 ~tt. 1 e wor ld o f persona 1 exper~ences. . ..134 Writers are required to see themselves as soldiers in an army "posted on the advanced line of the ideological front." They must remember that "every successful work can be compared with a battle won or a big victory on the economic front." 135 Lenin's brief 1905 essay, "Party Organization and Party Literature," is invoked to give respectability to the notion that writers must serve the party. According to this essay, Literature must become part of the common cause of the proletariat, 'a cog and a screw' of one great Social Democratic mechanism set in motion by the entire politically-conscious vanguard of the entire working class. Literature must become a component of organized, planned and integrated Social-Democratic Party work. 136 Zhdanov called the correct method in Soviet art and literature
t soc~a. 1'~s rea1' ~sm. 137 The origins of socialist realism can be found in the genuine efforts of artists themselves to trans- form their own aesthetic practice immediately after the Russ1an . Revo l ut1on. . 138 Unfortunately, fresh debate was trans- formed into stultifying prescription to the detriment of both art and critical discussion. By insisting on socialist realism as the only valid artistic mode, Soviet critics hoped to secure the critical and humanistic aspects of the realist tradition by an act of appropriation. However, in the Soviet context, the critical function of realism has been lost since art is supposed to 83
serve the state in a congratulatory role: "Soviet realistic art ••• becomes an instrument of social control in the last 139 still nonconformist dimension of human existence." Commentators on culture within the British Communist Party picked up the notion of socialist realism from Soviet critics. They declared that it was not restricted to the art of socialist countries and should be used by British writers. Thomas Russell, for example, in an essay entitled "Soviet Culture and Criticism" claimed that it was "possible in the battle of ideas under capitalism to use the method of socialist realism."140 In an essay entitled "Capitalist Reaction against Socialist Realism," Sam Aaronovitch went even further and stated that socialist realism is "not a product of socialist society but of the struggle against capitalism, an organizing and mobilizing force in that struggle."141 And for Jack Lindsay, socialist realism is "the art of the party that leads the struggle for peace and socialism." 142 These writers saw the conscious control of the 11 superstructure" maintained in the Soviet Union and recommended a similarly conscious fashioning of a new superstructure for the working class's struggle in Britain. 143 Jack Lindsay also recommended the creation of "positive heroes" to British writers; he urged them to remember that "Work must be shown as a positive energizing factor as well as a negative dehumanizing factor." 144 In their writings from the forties and fifties many 84
British left-wing intellectuals give the impression that they were envious of their counterparts in the Soviet Union. While
Soviet writers had been cast by Stalin in the role of 145 "engineers of the human soul,n the marginal position of the
C.P. in Britain doomed British Communists to ineffectuality.
In 1947 the British C.P. founded a National Cultural Committee 146 to take charge of the "battle of ideas." A great deal of
activity ensued: books, pamphlets, lectures, and special
Party schools on culture. Nonetheless, the passion that had
animated left-wing cultural statements in the inter-war years seems to have vanished from the publications of this period.
Although the manifestoes of the thirties are no more 147 soph ~s. t'~ea t e d , t h ey st~'11 rea d as ~'f t h ey were wr~tten. b y authors inspired by the challenge of exploring fresh ideas.
In comparison, there is a sense of fatigue in the cultural work of the forties and fifties. These essays make the reader think that their writers are bureaucrats manques.
If that is the case, why discuss them or Soviet literary theory at all? In spite of the simplicity of their formula- tions, they did preserve a commitment to emphasizing art's relationship to society in an era when elitist and new critical assumptions dominated most Anglo-American literary discussions. As Marcuse observes of Soviet literary theory:
"The most shocking notions of Soviet aesthetics testify to a 148 keen awareness to the social function of art ... In spite of reductivist attitudes and tendencies, socialist writers and 85
critics never lost sight of the political dimension of art. In her own early fiction, Lessing was attempting to restore the humanistic dimension to realism which was invoked like an empty incantation in Communist critical discussion. It is clear when one reads her essay of 1957, "A Small
Personal Voice," or The Golden Notebook itself1 that Lessing was aware of the themes running through all these discussions: both the important issues raised and their debasement and trivialization. Art's social function has always been one of her foremost concerns. However, Lessing has both used and transformed the conventions of the realist tradition in her works. The first volumes of Children of Violence give the impression that she has merely adopted these conventions. However, in the last chapter I will demonstrate that when the series is examined as a whole, we can see that she has used a dialectical form to structure it. The fragmented structure of The Golden Notebook early drew discussion to its formal innovations. Only recently has the structure of Children of Violence won any critical attention. Through examining the form of both the Children of Violence and The Golden Notebook we can see Lessing's attempts, as her perspective becomes more complex, to go beyond the alternatives which she presents in her early work. These I have divided into two categories which I call patterns of accommodation and images of possibility. 86
N 0 T E S
1 Doris Lessing, "The Small Personal Voice," in Declar ation, ed. Tom Maschler (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1957), p. 15.
2 Bernard Bergonzi, The Situation of the Novel (London: Macmillan, 1970), p.-rD0-204; Davi~Lodge, The Novelist at the Crossroads and Other Essays on Fiction and Criticism- (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971), p. 17.
3 Dorothy Brewster, Doris Lessing (New York: Twayne Publ ishers, Inc., 1965).
4 Paul Schlueter, The Novels of Doris Lessing (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973).
5 Schlueter, p. 5.
6 Ellen Morgan, "Alienation of the Woman Writer," Contemporary Literature, 14 (Autumn, 1973), p. 471-480; Elayne Antler Rapping, "Unfree Women: Feminism in Doris Lessing's Novels," Women's Studies, 3 (1975), p. 29-44; Agate Krouse, "The Feminism of Doris Lessing," Diss. University of Wisconsin 1972.
7 Lois Marchino, "The Search for the Self in the Novels of Doris Lessing," Studies in the Novel, 4 (Summer, 1972), p. 252-261; Sidney JanetKaplan, "The Limits of Conscious ness in the Novels of Doris Lessing," Contemporary Literat ure, 14 (Autumn, 1973), p. 536-549; Ellen Brooks, "Frag mentation and Integration: A Study of Doris Lessing's Fiction," Diss. New York University 1971.
8 Claudia Dee Seligman, "The Sufi Quest," World Literature Written in English, 12 (November, 1973), p. 190-206; Nancy Hardin, "The Sufi Teaching Story and Doris Lessing," Twentieth Century Literature, 23 (October, 1977), p.314-326.
9 Karen Kildahl, "The Political and Apocalyptical Novels of Doris Lessing: A Critical Study of Children of Violence, The Golden Notebook, Briefing: for~ Descent into Hell," Diss. University of Washington 1974.
10 Claudia Dee Seligman, "The Autobiographical Novels of Doris Lessing," Diss. Tufts University 1975. 87
11 Ellen Cronan Rose, The Tree Outside the Window: Doris Lessing's Children of-vioienee (Hanove~N.H.: University Press of New England; 1976).
12 Rose, p. 7.
13 Rose, p. 68.
14 Rose, p. 19.
15 Mary Ann Singleton, The City and the Veld: The Fiction of Doris Lessing (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1976).
16 Singleton, p. 19.
17 Singleton, p. 20.
18 In her discussion of Lessing's short story, "'Leopard' George," for example, Singleton sees the farm at the beginning of the story as representing an image of the "harmonious and natural. To the natives it is home." (Singleton, p. 24) Such a vision of "natural" harmony ignores the fact that the Africans who work for George have been deprived of their land and live as his tenants and employees. Lessing herself never loses sight of the social bases of colonialism, but interpretations of her work which try to relate every image to myth and archetype often do.
19 From a letter to the English publishers of The Golden Notebook, which subsequently appeared on the dust jacket of the novel. Quoted from Marjorie Lightfoot, "Break through in The Golden Notebook," Studies in the Novel, 7 (Summer, 1975), p. 278.
20 The only person who has specifically discussed Lessing's portrayal of Africa is Linda Susan Beard in two unpublished papers, "Lessing's Africa," M.L.A. Seminar 123, 27 December 1975, and "In Cyclical Time: Lessing as an African Writer," M.L.A. Special Session, 27 December 1976. 21 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press Inc.l967): ~ Dying COIOnialism (New York: Grove Press Inc., 1965); The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press Inc., 1963). AlbertJMemmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (Boston: Beacxn Press, 1965). -- -- 88
22 o. Mannoni, Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization, trans. Pamela Powesland (New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, 1966).
23 Although Rhodesia has been officially renamed, I have used its former name throughout since that was its name during the period I am discussing.
24 The only exception is an unpublished paper entitled "Dialectic and Counter-Dialectic in the Martha Quest Novels," given by Claire Sprague at the Fourth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Mount Holyoke College, 24 August 1978.
25 Michael Magie makes this argument in a provocative article entitled "Doris Lessing and Romanticism," College English, 38 (February, 1977), p. 531-552
26 0. Mannoni, Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization, trans. Pamela Powesland {New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, 1966), p. 17. All further references to this work appear in the text.
27 In the Author's Note to the English translation, Mannoni insists on the importance of the revolt itself to his understanding of colonialism: "A veil was torn aside and for a brief moment a burst of dazzling light enabled me to verify the series of intuitions one had not dared to believe in." (Mannoni, p. 6).
28 For Fanon's critique of Mannoni see Chapter Four of Black Skin, White Masks,trans. Charles Lam Markmann {New York: Grove Press Inc., 1967). All further references to this work appear in the text.
29 Sartre wrote an introduction for both Memmi's The Colon izer and the Colonized and Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth.
30 Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, trans. George J. Becker (New York: Schocken Books,-r948); p. 69.
31 Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, trans. Howard Greenfeld (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965), p. v111. All further references to this work appear in the text.
32 Albert Memmi, Dominated Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), Preface. All further references to this work appear in the text. 89
33 Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, trans. Haakon Chevalier (New York: Grove Press Inc., 1965), p. 30. All further references to this work appear in the text.
34 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York:-Grove Press Inc., 1963), p. 202. All further references to this work appear in the text.
35 "For the traditional Muslim the veil symbolizes femin ine modesty, women as sexual threat and temptation, as weak and amoral, and as impure and dangerous to man." Kay Boals, "The Politics of Cultural Liberation," in Jane Jaquette, ed., Women in Politics (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1974), p. 334. 36 Sheila Rowbotham, Women Resistance and Revolution: A History of Women and Revolution in the:Medern World (New York: Random House Inc., 1972), ~ 241.
37 Ten years after the Algerian revolution, Algerian women were still wearing veils. According to Kay Boals, Algerian women "want to be allowed to continue their education instead of being withdrawn from school when they reach puberty, to have a say in choosing their husbands rather than being married off by their parents, they want to have some freedom to come and go, and some, in addition, want the opportunity to work at a career or job which will provide some measure of independence and some contact with the modern world." Boals, p. 336.
38 David Gordon, The Passing of French Algeria (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 73-74.
39 P.A. Beckett, "Algeria vs. Fanon: the Theory of Revol- utionary De-Colonization and the Algerian Experience," Western Political Quarterly, 26 (March, 1973), p. 5-27.
40 Beckett, p. 20.
41 Gordon, p. 135.
42 Gordon, p. 149.
43 Doris Lessing, The Four-Gated City (New York: Bantam Books), p. 655. All further references to this work appear in the text. 90
44 M.C. Steele, "Children of Violence and Rhodesia: A Study of Doris Lessing as Historical Observer" (Salisbury: Central Africa Historical Association, 1974), p. 1.
45 Frank Clements, Rhodesia: the Course to Collision (London: Pall Mall Press, 1969); p. 75.
46 J.G. Lockhart and C.M. Woodhouse, Rhodes (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1963), p. 68.
47 Leonard Kapangu, Rhodesia: the Struggle for Freedom (New York: Orbis Books, 1974) ,~ 9.
48 Eric Stokes and Richard Brown, ed. The Zambesian Past: Studies in Central African History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1966), p. 71.
49 Information on the Shona and Ndebele tribes comes, for the most part, from Hilda Kuper, A.J.B. Hughes and J. Van Velson, The Shona and Ndebele of Southern Rhodesia (London: International African Institute; 1954); Terence O.Ranger, Revolt in Southern Rhodesia: ~ Study in African Resistance (London: Heinemann, 1967); Stanlake Samkange, Origins of Rhodesia (London: Heinemann, 1968); Lawrence Vambe, An Ill Fated People (London: Heinemann, 1972); and Robin Palmer and Neil Parsons, The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press: 1977). so Philip Mason, The Birth of a Dilemma: the Conquest and Settlement of RhodeSia (London! Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 187.
51 Stokes and Brown, p. 83.
52 Lockhart and Woodhouse, p. 172.
53 Lobengula later repudiated the Rudd concession, but Rhodes nonetheless was able to get a charter from Queen Victoria's government which empowered the B.S.A.C. to "Make treaties, promulgate laws, preserve the peace, maintain a police force, and acquire new concessions. It could make roads, railways, harbours or undertake other public works, own or charter ships, engage in mining or any other industry, establish banks, make land grants and carry on any lawful commerce, trade, pursuit or business." Samkange, p. 146. 91
54 Vambe describes how the Pioneers appeared to his ancestors and their reactions to the Column. It is interesting to see how the first representatives of European civilization were viewed: "Initially the ghostly looking new arrivals were little more than a spectacle of extraordinary entertainment. What could be funnier than the sudden, unheralded appear ance of several hundreds of men without knees, as they were called, and known from then on because their legs were covered by long trousers and their women by long dresses! My father, who was a very young man at the time, said that these people, with their long animal-like hair and beards, wild eyes, uniforms, hats and shoes as well as horses, ox wagons and other accoutrements, were like a circus." Vambe, p. 93. 55 Lockhart and Woodhouse, p. 176.
56 Samkange, p. 89.
57 Ranger, p. 329. 58 Ranger, p. 336.
59 Kapungu, p. 7.
60 One of the most famous of such figures is Alan Wilson who accompanied Major Forbes in his pursuit of Lobengula at the end of the 1893 Ndebele War. Wilson and a group of volun teers were sent ahead of the main body to find out which way the king had gone. They were supposed to return with the information, but disobeyed orders to pursue the Ndebele on their own. They hoped for the glory of capturing the king independently. Instead they were wiped out. Philip Mason, a historian usually somewhat sympathetic to white Rhodesians, makes the following observation on the exploits of Wilson and his men: "This tale of high courage and some folly is necessary to an understanding of Rhodesia. It has become a legend, perhaps an inspiration, certainly a symbol. There is the monument to Alan Wilson and his men at the national Valhalla in the Matabo Hills where Rhodes lies buried; there is a memorial at Zimbabwe; walk into any public building in Rhodesia and the odds are that you will see a painting of the last stand of the Shangani patrol •.. The tale of the Shangani patrol ••• stood for the symbol of the heroic few among the barbarous many, for the supremacy of the white man's spirit even in death, for the pride of the English in the last days of Queen Victoria." Mason, p. 181. 92
0 61 Ranger, p. 343.
62 Kapungu, p. 8.
63 The Reserves established for Africans were modelled on American provisions for the Indians. Lessing describes one of the reserves she remembers in her introduction to Vambe's An Ill-Fated People: "The Native reserves of Rhodesia, like those of South Africa, had, and have, the poorest soil, the least water, the worst of everything, from roads to shops. On it are scattered groups of mud and grass huts, and a store, which is a brick room selling cloth goods and the cheapest of groceries. There are no good roads, telephones, cinemas, facilities for sport or recreation. 11 p. xiv-xv.
64 Martin Loney, Rhodesia: White Racism and Imperial Response (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 1975), p. 53.
65 Eshmael Mlambo, Rhodesia: the Struggle for a Birthright (London: C. Hurst, 1972), p. 28.
66 Ranger, p. 341.
67 Palmer and Parsons, p. 228.
68 Giovanni Arrighi, "The Political Economy of Rhodesia," in Essays on the Political Economy of Africa, ed. by Giovanni Arrighi-and John Saul (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973) 1 P• 336.
69 Arrighi, p. 337.
70 "Once settled in the reserves they (Africans) could aspire to be little more than subsistence cultivators and migrant labourers, prepared to work for the prevailing low wages." Palmer and Parsons, p. 244.
71 Steele, p. 4. According to Steele's account, farmers in the Lomagundi district were particularly short of labour. Certainly Lessing's characters continually discuss this "problem. 11
72 Rhodesia's constitutional status has always been rather anomalous. When the British allowed settlers to adopt representative government in lieu of Company rule, the mother country nominally retained control over legislation 93
affecting Africans with the view that the British government 0 would protect the rights of the African majority. Britain also retained control over Rhodesia's foreign policy. However, Rhodesian affairs were administered through the Commonwealth Relations Office, rather than the Colonial Office. B. Vulindlela Mtshali, Rhodesia: Background to Conflict (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1967), p. 64. 73 Loney, p. 56.
74 Under the act, 17.5 million acres were allocated for future European purchase, while only 7.5 million acres were left for African purchase. The "native purchase areas" were not only less fertile, but also further from roads and markets. The division was clearly not based on the actual need of white farmers for land: "Twenty-six years after the Land Apportionment Act, a parliamentary committee found that of the 30 percent of the land in European areas which was arable, only 3 to 4 percent was being cultivated." Loney, p. 55-56.
75 Basil Davidson quotes Sir Godfrey Huggins, a former Rhodesian Prime Minister, on the conscious institutionaliza tion of white economic supremacy: "'I have given the Euro pean a flying start, and if he is not good enough to keep in front after being given a flying start, well, I admit it is • going to be awkward.'" Report on Southern Africa (London: Jonathan Cape, 1952), p. 225.
76 W.J. Barber, The Economy of British Central Africa (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 24.
77 Lawrence Vambe, From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976), p. 62-63.
78 Reginald Austin, Racism and Apartheid in Southern Africa: Rhodesia (Paris: Unesco Press, 1975), p. 63.
79 Richard Gray, The Two Nations: Aspects of the Development of Race Relations in the Rhodesias and Nyasaland (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 157.
80 Steele, p. 11.
81 Lessing's character, Mr. Matushi,who appears in the middle volumes of Children of Violence seems to have been based on Charles Mzingeli. Steele, p. 18. 94
82 Claudia Dee Seligman, "The Autobiographical Novels of Doris Lessing," (Diss: Tufts University, 1976), p. 76.
83 Gray, p. 306.
84 M.C. Steele, "White Working Class Disunity: The Southern Rhodesian Labour Party," Rhodesian History, 1 (1970), p. 59.
85 elements, p. 82.
86 elements, p. 78.
87 Mtshali, p. 68.
88 The degree to which the African way of life is undermined by the promotion of individual land ownership in the European manner can be better understood in the context of anthro pological description of African sense of land and space: "Instead of seeing their maps primarily in terms of 'property,' Africans see something like a map in terms of social relationships in space. They emphasize the spatial aspect of their social groups and provide themselves with a social map, so that they are left free to question the ways in which they attach either social groups or individuals to exploi tational rights in the earth." Paul Bohannan and Phi lip Curtin, Africa and Africans (Garden City: The Natural History Press, 1971), p. 124.
89 Martin Loney quotes Joshua Nkomo's interpretation of the purported and actual effects of the Native Land Husbandry Act: "'The Native Land Husbandry Act was ostensibly intended to produce a middle class of African small farmers, holding land in freehold instead of communally. But so far its main result has been to force thousands of Africans off the land -providing a useful float of labor for European enterprise.'" Loney, p. 59.
90 Doris Lessing, Going Home (London: Panther Books Ltd., 1957), p. 102. All further references to this work appear in the text.
91 Doris Lessing, "The Small Personal Voice," p. 26.
92 Seligrnan, "The Autobiographical Novels of Doris Lessing," p. 65. 95
93 Jonah Raskin, "Doris Lessing at Stony Brook: An Inter view." New American Review, 8 (1970), p. 177-178.
94 Edward Thompson and John Saville, "A Communist Salute," editorial in the last issue of The Reasoner, reprinted in David Widgery, The Left in Britain, 1956-1968 (Harmonds worth: Penguin Books Ltd:; 1976), p. 90.
95 Raskin, p. 179.
96 Doris Lessing, "On The Golden Notebook," Partisan Review, 40 (Winter/Spring, 1973); p. 18.
97 Neal Wood, Communism and British Intellectuals (New York: Columbia Univers1ty Press;-1959), p. 20.
98 V.I. Lenin, What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement (New York: International Publishers, 1961), p.31-32.
99 George Lichtheim, A Short History of Socialism (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970), p. 260.
100 At the Second Congress of the Communist International, Lenin recommended that the British C.P. "support the Labour Party as the rope supports the man who is being hanged." Tommy Jackson translated this proposition into the notion of "taking the labour leaders by the hand in order later to take them by the throat." Quoted in E.H. Carr, Studies in Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1950), p. 173. 101 V. I. Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism, an Infantile Disorder: A Popular Essay in Marxian Strategy and Tactics (New York: International Publishers, 1940), p. 28.
102 Carr, p. 171.
103 Hugo Dewar, Communist Politics in Britain: the C.P.G.B. from Its Origins to the Second World War (London: Pluto Press~976), p. 27.--- 104 Lichtheim, p. 263. 105 Lichtheim defines Stalinism as "The term signifying not merely the horrors of despotic collectivization of peasant farming in 1929-1932, the institution of slave-labor camps 96
for millions, and the bloody purges of the later 1930's, but also the growing cynicism of the regime, culminating in the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939, the partition of Poland, and the systematic prostitution of the Communist International in the interest of expanding the power of the Soviet Union." Lichtheim, p. 260.
106 Charlotte Haldane tells this story in detail in her book, Truth Will Out (London: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd., 1949).-- 107 Stephen Spender, World within World: The Autobiofraphy of Stephen Spender (London: Ham1sh Ham1lton Ltd., 1951 p. 19~
108 Peter Cadogan, "The British Communist Party in the Light of 1956," Review: An International Quarterly (October, 1961) ' p. 36.
109 Thompson & Saville, p. 90.
110 Doris Lessing, "A Letter to the Editors," The Reasoner, 2 (September, 1956), p. 12.
111 Kenneth Newton, The Sociology of British Communism (London: Allen Lane, 1969), p. 102. 112 Henry Pelling, The British Communist Party: ~ Historical Profile (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1958), p. 189.
113 Neal Wood, "The Empirical Proletarians: A Note on British Communism," Political Science Quarterly, 74 (1959), p. 270.
114 Neal Wood, Communism and British Intellectuals, p. 181.
115 Dewar, p. 36. 116 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, On Colonialism (New York: International Publishers, 1972), p.-s1. 117 Marx & Engels, p. 41. 118 Marx & Engels, p. 82. 119 Marx & Engels, p. 40-41. 97
120 Marx & Engels, p. 86.
121 Fernando Claudin, The Communist Movement: From Comintern to Cominform, Vol. I, trans. Brian Pearce (New York: Monthly Review Press, 19 75) , p. 245.
122 Claudin, p. 246.
123 Claudin, P· 263. 124 Claudin, p. 260.
125 Dewar, p. 140-141.
126 Comintern directive quoted in George Padmore, Pan- Africanism or Communism (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, In~, 1972), p. 329.
127 Fritz Schatten, Communism in Africa (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, 1966)-,-p. 68.
128 Raskin, p. 174.
129 Lessing, "The Small Personal Voice," p. 14.
130 Herbert Marcuse, Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis (New York: Random House, 1961), p. ll4.
131 See Marx and Engels ~ Literature and Art: ~ Selection of Writings, trans., ed. Lee Baxandall & Stefan Morawski (St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973), pp. 105-116. 132 , Georg Lukacs, Studies in European Realism (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1964), ~ 8.
133 Andrei Zhdanov, Essays on Literature, Philosophy, and Music (New York: International Publishers, 1950), p. 43.
134 Zhdanov, p. 25.
135 Zhdanov, p. 40-41.
136 V.I. Lenin, On Literature and Art (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1967), p. 23. ------98
- 137 Bureaucratic enforcement of socialist realism on Soviet writers dates from Zhdanov's speech at the first All Union Conference of Soviet Writers in 1934.
138 See Stefan Morawski, "The Vicissitudes of Socialist Realism: A Little Lesson in History Which Should Not Be Ignored," in Inquiries into the Fundamentals of Aesthetics (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1974), pp. 251-291.
139 Marcuse , p. 118.
140 Thomas Russell, "Soviet Culture and Criticism," Marxist Quarterly (London) (July, 1954) , p. 149.
141 Sam Aaronovitch, "Capitalist Reaction against Socialist Realism," in Essays on Socialist Realism and the British Cultural Tradition (London: Arena Publication;-n.d.), p. 48.
142 Jack Lindsay, "Some Aspects of Socialist Realism," in Essays on Socialist Realism and the British Cultural Tradition, p. 64.
143 James Klugman lists "the elements of the new super structure": "bourgeois democracy and the democratic liberties now betrayed by the bourgeoisie ••• national sovereignty betrayed by monopoly capitalism .•• the national cultural heritage" and the philosophy of "scientific materialism. 11 11 Basis and Superstructure," Essays on Socialist Realism and the British Cultural Tradition, p. 29. 144 Lindsay, P· 76.
145 Zhdanov, p. 12. 146 Neal Wood, Communism and British Intellectuals, p. 180.
147 See, e.g., c. Day-Lewis, ed. The Mind in Chains: Socialism and the Cultural RevolUtion (London: Frederick Muller Ltd:;-1937). 148 Marcuse, p. 116. c
CHAPTER II
LESSING'S PORTRAYAL OF COLONIALISM
Separation and connection in the colonial context
Patterns of accommodation
Images of possibility 99 c SEPARATION AND CONNECTION IN THE COLONIAL CONTEXT
In her preface to African Stories Doris Lessing notes
that both her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and her first
volume of stories, This Was the Old Chief's Country, "were
described by reviewers as about the colour problem. 11 However, 1 she says that this was "not how I see, or saw them." Her
statement suggests that a less restrictive interpretation be
given to these novels and stories. The phrase "the colour
problem11 suggests racial discrimination, apartheid - anachron
istic social arrangements of which no enlightened person can
approve. The 11 problem" should not exist; without doubt it
will soon disappear. To say that her fictions are "about the
colour problem" is to place them in a category where their
disturbing implications can be overlooked. All of Lessing's
African stories and novels portray not only colonialism itself,
but also the fundamental dynamics of power relationships and
the ways in which those dynamics limit the potential of the
human spirit - in both the dominant and the subordinate
groups. This becomes clear when we examine the portrait of
colonialism Lessing creates in her work.
A particular vision of colonialism emerges from reading
Lessing's fiction. Certain kinds of patterns and relation
ships predominate while other possibilities are excluded. Most
of her stories depict family relationships, which include
African servants on an ambiguous footing. There are few lOO
educated Africans in her stories2 and the predominating relationship between whites and blacks is that of master and servant. There are no wise and virtuous colonial administra tors in Lessing's work. 3 Her typical colonials are arrogant, provincial, characterized by the limitations of people whose lives are based on false assumptions and bad faith. Seldom do we see in her stories or novels Africans and Europeans forming friendships, having (non-exploitative) love affairs, or uniting in political action. 4 Through what Lessing selects and through what she excludes an image emerges of a social system which bases itself on the maintenance of illegitimate privilege. This image does correspond to the historical situation of Rhodesia. However, Lessing chooses to highlight the features and patterns which create the image of an all pervasive system based on the exercise of power to which characters must either adapt or which they must negate in their own lives. Within Lessing's work as a whole, the portrayal of this system takes on the status of a metaphor representing the kinds of deform- ing patterns from which her major characters try to free themselves. In the world Lessing depicts, we see colonial relation- ships reproducing themselves through the family. In the family children learn to exercise their privilege or accept their subordinate position. Rejection of the status quo involves rebellion against the family. Ideologically the family pro vides her colonials with their ideal model of the social order: 101
blacks, whites, men and women assume their "natural" places in a patriarchal and paternalistic structure which binds them all in relationships where separation and connection can be held in tension. Where the social divisions and dynamics of power are so much a part of the fabric of everyday life, they can almost seem - even to Martha Quest - to emerge from the land- scape itself: Each group, community, clan, colour, strove and fought away from the other, in a sickness of dissolution; it was as if the principle of separateness was bred from the very soil, the sky, the driving sun .•• Martha could feel the striving forces in her own substance: the effort of imagination needed to destroy the words black, white, nation, ~, exhausted her. 5 To see any alternative to prevailing social arrangements requires an "effort of imagination" which few of Leasing's colonials are willing to make. Even for the purposes of discussion it is difficult to separate Leasing's portrayal of the dominant and subordinate groups. In most of her fiction the focus is precisely on their interrelationship where she reveals the gestures of oppression i all aspects of everyday life. A more appropriate division which suggests itself is between works in which characters accept the assumptions of the colonial situation and find some way to accommodate themselves to the unequal distribution of power and privilege, and works in which characters reject those assumptions and realize that their role is not "natural" but is based on a social construction. In the latter group of stories and novels, Leasing attempts to create images of 102
possibility which transcend the limits of the colonial situa- tion. Before examining in more detail these two fictional patterns, however, I will discuss the elements which emerge from Lessing's work to form the picture of colonialism she gives us. The stratification necessary to the "order" of colonial society expresses itself in visible patterns of segregation. Lessing suggests in her portrayal of these divisions that they are not only necessary for the maintenance of the social and political hierarchy, but that they are also important for the preservation of the personality structures of her individual characters. Her Zambesians maintain their illusion of whole- ness through rigid exclusions. Martha Quest recognizes this kind of self-limitation when she looks at Mr. Maynard or Stella; they present themselves as "complete - finished" while she feels "formless, graceless, and unpredictable."6 Martha is open to new experience in a way that most of the other characters are not. Their rejection of personal change and development is reflected in their fear of social change or any breakdown of the rigidly established categories. Basic to the structure of colonial society, of course, is the division between the colonizer and the colonized: white settlers and Africans. Spatial images in most of the stories display these divisions; in "The Ant Heap" living arrangements around the mine reproduce, as if with immutable necessity, the segregation of the colony. Mr. Macintosh and the Clarkes live 103
0 on one side of the pit; the African compound is restricted to the other. In order to overcome this separation, Tommy and Dirk must create for themselves a third space where they can meet as equals. In "Home for the Highland Cattle" Charlie's role as appendage to the household is epitomized in the placing of his living quarters, between the backyard and the sanitary lanes. It is only in the lanes that the servants can have their own social life. The sanitary lanes and the locations are their portion of the city. The white settlers also break down into ethnic and religious categories - English/Afrikaners, northern Europeans/ southern Europeans, Gentiles/Jews7 - and cultural differences can reveal themselves initially in spatial terms. In Martha Quest the Afrikaans families live together in one section of the district - "a close-knit, isolated community of Dutch people" (M.Q., p.SS) whose members maintain their separate religion and traditions. In "The DeWets Come to Kloof Grange" the differences between Mrs. Gale and her husband's assistant's wife, Mrs. DeWet, express themselves through the description of the places where each feels herself comfortable. Mrs. Gale spends hours in the enclosed space of her garden con- templating "her" mountains: "They were what she was; they ... had crystallized her loneliness into a strength." (A.S., p.llS) Mrs. DeWet, on the other hand, enjoys long walks to the river which is regarded by Caroline Gale as a "steamy bath of vapours, heat, smells." (A.S., p.l2) Seeing Mrs. DeWet as 104
a woman of incomprehensible habits and tastes, Mrs. Gale regards the younger woman's mind as "a dark continent, which she had no inclination to explore." (A.S., p.l20) In "The Second Hut" Major Carruthers cannot contemplate the possibility of having his new Afrikaner assistant, Van Heerden, live in his own house. However, if the man "had been an Englishman, with the same upbringing, he would have found a corner in his house and a welcome as a friend." (A.S., p.82) Having relegated VanHeerden to an old hut and dismissed him from his imagination, Carruthers is appalled when he discovers that he is living there with his wife and nine children. The distance he had carefully established between VanHeerden and himself vanishes and his assistant suddenly embodies the "grim poverty" (A.S., p.84) of his worst nightmares. A look at African squalor could not have threatened him in the same way, for in spite of ethnic differences, Carruthers shares with VanHeerden a common race and a similar race consciousness. Maintaining a distance is necessary because the similarity of the other can become an omen and a threat. Both these stories suggest that the importance of ethnic segregation is linked to repressed aspects of the characters' own personalities. Mrs. Gale reflects on her husband's former "'love'" with a "small humorous distaste," (A.S., p.l09) and her aversion to the river is clearly a symbol of her denial of her sexuality. When Major Carruthers looks at VanHeerden's wife, he sees "less a human being than the expression of an 105
0 elemental, irrepressible force." For him she is "a symbol of fecundity ••• She frightened him." (A.S., p.90) She represents the forces over which he has no control. Thus the emphasis on the part of Lessing's Zambesians on race and ethnic conscious ness expresses fear, not only of others who may be different, but also fear of what the characters have denied in themselves and excluded from their own lives. The presence of the Italians in the colony also disturbs the prevailing race consciousness for they can neither be assimilated to the dominant British nor can they be identified with Africans. In "The Black Madonna" Michele's dissolute behaviour provokes reactions habitually reserved for African workers- he does not "understand the dignity of labour ••• He was felt to lack gratitude." {A.S., p.l3) Because he is white, his scandalous idleness provokes fear and resentment; he embodies a confusing collapse of categories. Although the repressed and authoritarian Captain Stacker forms a confiden tial relationship with Michele, he imaginatively tries to maintain a distance: "Michele did not count. He listened to Michele talking about Italy, and it seemed to him he was listening to a savage speaking." (A.S., p.l7) As they drink together day after day and the distance breaks down, Stacker's whole inflexible personality crumbles. Stacker's life is carefully split; he is respectably married to a white woman, but his sexual enjoyment comes with his black mistresses. Although he is constantly unfaithful to his wife, he is 106
0 obsessively jealous of her. Michele's painting of the black Madonna suggests to him a fusion of symbols he cannot accept. Thus Stocker's final rejection of Michele becomes a refusal to integrate into his life his own sensual desires. The two stores in the centre of the district where Martha Quest grows up are the territory of Greeks and Jews, both of whom are socially isolated from surrounding farmers and from each other. Sensitive to any hint of anti-Semitism in her consciousness, Martha cannot allow herself to look at Mr. Cohen in the same way as she regards Socrates: "She could find the oily fatness of the Greek Socrates repulsive without any sense of guilt at all," but with Mr. Cohen she is "on guard against herself." (M.Q., p.49) She fears that she will reproduce her mother's hypocritical prejudices which express themselves through her "tirade about how Jews and Greeks exploited the natives worse than anyone." (M.Q., p.l6) When Marnie Van Rensberg hints that Joss Cohen is "sweet on" Martha (M.Q., p.l9), she reacts by avoiding Joss, not on account of her mother's attitudes, but because of her adolescent confusion over her sexuality. In her first attempt to take control over this area of her life, she chooses as her lover the self consciously Jewish Adolph King, with one eye cast backward in defiance at her parents and the other directed anxiously inward to detect guilty traces of their anti-Semitism in her own make up. Her relationship with Adolph is disastrous, but it repre sents one of Martha's early attempts to overcome both her 107
mother's sexual prohibitions and her family's prejudices. Martha's development depends on her ability to break through the imposed divisions and fragmentation which most of the colonials are so eager to maintain. Although these ethnic divisions in the colony may belie it, a sense of white solidarity also exists. On occasion it must transcend class or national consciousness for all whites possess some privileges to defend. 8 Fear of African violence is never absent. Social forms must create the necessary feeling of common interest and shared experience. In the dis- trict where she grows up, Martha Quest notes this attempt to create a community out of a number of disparate groups: On mail days there were cars of every degree of wealth, from the enormous American cars of the tobacco farmers down to the eccentric creations like the Quests', but the owners of these cars met together without any consciousness of degree. English and Scotch, Welsh and Irish, rich and poor, it was all back-slapping and Christian names, a happy family atmosphere which had a touch of hysterical necessity in it. (M.Q., p.53) In town the existence of the Sports Club functions to preserve the same kind of egalitarian social atmosphere. The membership fee is set low enough so that any white person may join; there are no restrictions based on class or background: There were no divisions here, no barriers, or at least none that could be put into words; the most junior clerk from the railways, the youngest typist, were on Christian name terms with their bosses, and mingled easily with the sons of Cabinet ministers; the harshest adjective in use was 'toffee-nosed,' which meant snobbish or exclusive. (M.Q., p.l54) 108
0 In The Grass Is Singing these kinds of "false tokens of com munity" do not prevent Mary and Dick Turner from isolating themselves in a pathological way from their neighbors. Mary is too sensitive about their extreme poverty to accept as extended in good faith the offers of hospitality made to her by surrounding farm wives like Mrs. Slatter. Unable to tolerate invidious comparisons with the more prosperous, the Turners fail to attend "district dances, or fetes, or gym khanas,"9 and alienate neighbors who see their absence as "a slap in the face of everyone else." Nonetheless, once Mary has retreated into madness and Charlie Slatter witnesses Dick's predicament, the need to save the image of white superiority asserts itself in his offer to help Dick. After Mary's death Dick is universally pitied by those who formerly disliked him. The community's anger and resentment focus themselves on the murderer and on his victim, for Mary failed to keep up "white" standards of behaviour. Just as basic as the distinctions enforced between racial and ethnic groups are the divisions portrayed between men and women. The opening scene of Martha Quest depicts a typical situation: on one side of the veranda sit Mrs. Quest and Mrs. Van Rensberg discussing "servants, children, cooking;" on the other side "with their backs turned on the women with a firm ness which said how welcome was this impersonal talk to men who lived shut into the heated atmosphere of the family for weeks at a time," are Mr. Quest and Mr. Van Rensberg who talk 109
about "crops and the weather and the native problem." (M.Q., p.7-8) Similarly in The Grass Is Singing during the Slatters' first visit to the newly married Turners, the two couples separate so that men and women can discuss sex-appropriate subjects. The conversation performs an important function for Dick Turner: "The masculine talk .•. gave him self-assurance in his relations with Mary. He felt as though he had been given an injection of new vigour, because of that hour spent in the little room, the two men on one side, discussing their own concerns, and the two women on the other, talking presumably about clothes and servants." (G. I. S., p.l06) Separate sides of the room or the porch indicate separate roles and activi ties. Separation implies hierarchy and invidious distinctions. Visible manifestations of this sexual hierarchy in spatial arrangements are as necessary to maintain and assure masculine pride as legal segregation is to display and perpetuate white superiority. Again and again we see that Lessing's Zambesian men feel most comfortable and sure of themselves when they can bond together in groups which exclude women. Douglas Knowell, a typical colonial male, wants to celebrate his engagement to Martha with the other Sports Club "wolves." The most import ant aspect of the engagement for him is the impression it creates on his friends. His deepest desire, to perpetuate his competitive companionship with other men, accounts for his disappointment when his ulcers procure his discharge from the 110
0 army. In a torment of self-pity, he thinks that he is missing his chance at adventure and that, "Never again would he know
the comradeship of men." (P.M., p.224) This ever present
strong male bond can spontaneously assert itself anytime as it
does when Charlie Slatter casually remarks after Mary Turner's
death, in order to explain the problems she had with her
servants, "Needs a man to deal with niggers ..• Niggers don't
understand women giving them orders. They keep their own
women in their right place!" (G.I.S., p.28) He invites both
the police sergeant investigating the murder and Tony Marston
to share the sense of superiority this piece of masculine
wisdom provides them.
Lessing's men and women live in separate spheres; the
woman's is usually contracting or contracted, as in "The DeWets
Come to Kloof Grange" where Mrs. Gale has forced herself to
learn contentment in the enclosed space of her garden while
her husband is preoccupied with the farm. Similarly, in "A
Mild Attack of Locusts, 11 Margaret sees farming as a male enter
prise which she does not understand. She cannot participate
in the endless discussions between her husband and his father
about "the weather, or the soil, or the Government." (A.S.,
p.567) While they see the locust attack as a challenge, she
feels fatigued and defeated. A woman like Lucy Grange, in the
story of that name, does everything she can to resist the
crippling despondency to which women succumb on these isolated
farms, but the "life of the farm" is "her husband's life" 111
0 which "washed around the house, leaving old scraps of iron on the front step where the children played wagon-and-driver, or a bottle of medicine for a sick animal on her dressing-table among the bottles of Elizabeth Arden." (A.S., p.561) She is marooned in her house; the consequent depression leads her to take a lover whom she despises because he confronts her with her own limitations and the limitations of the life she is living. May Quest suffers a similar loss of a sense of iden tity on the farm which she never wants to acknowledge as her home. In a pathetic attempt to assert herself, she has filled the house with emblems of an inappropriate gentility - the piano she has ceased to play, the silver tea tray which gets lost "on the sideboard among bits of rock, nuts and bolts from the ploughs, and bottles of medicine." {M.Q., p.21) Most of these farm wives in Lessing's stories and novels exist in an alien world, not of their own making. They are numb, emotionally anaesthetized, preoccupied with busy work. The farms, whether successful or not, represent male concerns. Julia in "Winter in July" finds herself "parching and wither ing;" (A.S., p.246) she experiences a "dryness of the senses." (A.s., p.251) Ultimately she realizes that, in a certain sense, she does not count for her husband Tom, nor for his brother and her lover, Ken: they both "took their women into their lives, without changing a thought or a habit to meet them." (A.S., p.254) Again and again, Lessing depicts this uncompromising attitude on the part of her male characters. 112
0 Even Dick Turner in The Grass Is Singing, in spite of his weak ness and ineffectuality, expects Mary to share his life and adapt herself to it. All of society supports him in this expectation and Mary herself, no matter how she may suffer, scarcely questions it. Her attempt to run away from the farm is neither a revolt nor a demand for compromise; it is a futile effort to escape a grim fatality. Women's responsibility for the private space of home and housework takes on a unique character in the colony. No matter how poor Lessing's colonial housewives are, no matter how small their houses, they must have African "houseboys." In spite of Mary Turner's (G.I.S.) frustrations with her succession of servants, and the ease with which she did her own housework for a brief period at the beginning of her life on the farm, she continues to insist on a house servant as her due. Although Marina Giles in .. Home for the Highland Cattle" finds herself with little to do in her small flat but "arrange her actions so that she might not get in Charlie's way while he cooked and cleaned," (A.S., p.2SO) she cannot release him from her service. Simply to do her own housework would expose her
to the criticism of her neighbors, one of whom had 11 spoken with disgust of certain immigrants from England, who had so far forgotten what was due to their position as white people
as to dispense with servants." Even Martha Quest in~ Proper Marriage, after resisting her mother's pressure to hire a
11 houseboy" for her flat, succumbs to the social expectation 113
0 that she must have servants after Douglas buys their suburban house. The assignment of housework exclusively to Africans
means that the work itself becomes more socially demeaning
than it is elsewhere. The situation is paradoxical, for
although the white woman is a supervisor rather than a manual
worker, this does not increase her prestige. Typically in
Lessing's fictions she obtains this position through marriage
and her relationship with her husband. The delegation of
housework, which is still women's responsibility, to Africans
reflects in a denigrating way on women's position in colonial
society.
In the colonial context, the constant necessity of keeping
a whole race, who outnumber their masters, in subordination
seems to require an exaggeration of the stereotype of mascu
linity. White men must really be men - strong, aggressive,
sure of themselves, in command. The colonial venture elicits
and exalts all the elements of machismo - an ideal of heroic
display aimed at conquest, and a defensive, protective attitude
toward women and children. It is the prototype of the patri
archal enterprise which evokes all the associations brought to
consciousness by the word "frontier."10 Even after the land
and the "savages" have been subdued, and the heroes could
theoretically come home to rest, the problem of control
remains. Thus a 11 Successful" colonial farmer like Charlie
Slatter in The Grass Is Singing "believed in farming with the 0 sjambok." He told Dick Turner when he started farming that 114
0 11 one should buy a sjambok before a plow or a harrow." (G. I. S., p.lS-16) This constant emphasis on a display of masculinity requires both men and women to behave according to rigorously sex-determined norms. Martha Quest discovers the rigidity of socially approved modes of behaviour when she goes to her first dance at the Van Rensbergs and again later when Donovan introduces her to the Sports Club. The Sports Club sexual code dictates that any amount of kissing and necking is per mitted as long as technical virginity is preserved. If Douglas Knowell is typical, Sports Club men do not make love until they are thirty. The repression this limitation entails gives rise to the mixture of aggression and humility Martha notes in the men. It leads to concealed resentment directed at the women who are unconsciously blamed for the prohibition of the release of sexual tension. Thus Martha experiences each of her dance partner's kisses as "a small ceremony of hatred." (M.Q., p.l74) Sports Club women are required to treat the men with a mixture of deference and good-humoured, maternal concern which expresses itself in constantly repeated approved phrases. Compensation for the deference comes from their conviction that the men are "nothing but babies" (P.M., p.83) from whom emotional maturity can never be expected. Instead the men offer them protection from the threat of African violence which is never far below the surface tran quillity. In spite of Martha's conscious rejection of a code 115
0 which labels sexual expression shameful and "dirty," her nightmare of the muddied dress comes true at both the Van Rensberg and Sports Club dances. The recurrent image signi fies both Martha's own guilt and fear resulting from her mother's prohibitions and the projections of sexual guilt onto her by the young men who make demands on the women but despise them if they comply. The rigid colonial sexual code of course prohibits any contact between blacks and whites, but clandestine relations between white men and black women are tolerated. No public censure accrues to Mr. Macintosh in "The Ant Heap," to Mr. MacFarline in Martha Quest, or to George Chester in "'Leopard' George," all of whom are known by their neighbors to have African mistresses. However, sexual contact between African men and white women can only mean one thing to colonials: rape. Fear of rape is impressed on every young white woman and becomes a mode of social control of both women and Africans. The former are confined and the movements of the latter are restricted. Mary Turner's fear of Africans was inculcated by her mother: "In her childhood she had been forbidden to walk out alone, and when she asked why, she had been told in the furtive, lowered, but matter-of-fact voice she associated with her mother, that they are nasty and might do horrible things to her." (G.I.S., p.72) Martha Quest refuses to submit to similar injunctions and wanders the veld as she desires. To her mother's warnings she replies, "If a native raped me, then 116
0 he'd be hung and I'd be a national heroine, so he wouldn't do it, even if he wanted to, and why should he?" {M.Q., p.47) Martha calls into question her mother's two-part assumption that any black man will, given the opportunity, succumb to his irresistible erotic drives, and that his desires will focus inevitably on white women. Because Mary Turner projects her own repressed sexuality onto Africans, she never questions these assumptions. Once her demented entanglement with Moses is known in the district, Mary is universally despised as a woman who has unforgivably lost caste. Even her violent death does not generate any sympathy for her. All the men must try to maintain their rigid authoritarian postures. If they fall short of the heroic masculine ideal, as many of Lessing's Zarnbesian men, in fact, do, they attempt to keep up appearances nonetheless. Even Martha's father, ineffectual and hypochondriacal as he is, constantly harks back to the only "heroic" experience of his life - his part in World War I. His participation in the violence both appropri ates for him approved male modes of behaviour and gives him his excuse for subsequent failure. Whether or not individual men live up to the image of authority they are supposed to preserve, the structure of colonial society is both patriarchal and, in an inconsistent way, paternalistic. Paternalism in Lessing's stories is more than the ideology which justifies or mitigates exploitation; the very structure of the society depends on the belief that 117
0 Africans are childlike and whites are their natural protectors. Again and again Lessing's colonials remark that the Africans are "just like children" (A.S., p.l34) or "nothing but children." (A.S., p.291) In relation to whites, Africans are supposed to remain in a state of childish dependence. Accep tance of dependence on the part of the subordinated and adaptation to it for survival imply acceptance of responsibil ity on the part of those in authority. Paradoxically, while keeping them in an inferior position, those in authority must also recognize the humanity of the subordinated group if the dependence is to be maintained. However, Lessing portrays a fundamental inconsistency in colonial paternalism in stories like "Little Tembi," '"Leopard' George," and "Home for the Highland Cattle." In these stories colonial paternalism differs significantly from the paternalist ideal of feudal or slave-holding societies. 11 The bonds have been weakened through the acceptance of contradictory notions of individu alism. The capitalist fiction that the worker is a free agent, bargaining with his labour power and selling it on the open market to the highest bidder co-exists uneasily with notions of paternalism which imply responsibility toward dependents and reciprocal obligations. Lessing's colonials are not willing to grant that the Africans whom they have reduced to personal dependence have any claims on them. Materially and emotionally her Zambesians desire to reduce the colonized to a function of their needs. 118
0 For white settlers, colonial paternalism succeeds in obscuring the reality of exploitation without creating the kind of corn- munity which historically provided the justification for this type of social organization. Blind to the truth which under- lies all features of their lives in their reliance on a self- serving myth, Lessing's colonials suffer severe limitations on their imaginations. For the Africans, paternalism means that they are caught in a web of unavoidable personal relationships with whites which often makes resistance to oppression self- defeating or even self-destructive. In addition to denying the African the status of an adult and a citizen, colonialism also destroys his culture and sets up European culture and standards as models which necessarily exclude Africans. Colonials do not grant any legitimacy to African culture as they destroy its social and material bases for their own ends. They view it as savagery and superstition which must give way in the face of progress. The predominance of European cultural norms creates a colonized attitude among Africans themselves who lose a sense of identity in an attempt to imitate whites. This kind of situation is most obvious in "Hunger" where Jabavu tries to create for himself an alterna- tive to his stagnating village by adopting some of the mores of the colonizer. He was the first in his village to wash with soap, in a symbolic effort to bleach his black skin. He prefers a torn pair of shorts to his loin cloth, "the garb of a kraal-boy." 12 He attempts to comb his hair in the style of 119
0 the white man. Finally he has learned some English and has tried to teach himself how to read. 13 All these efforts
separate him from the other villagers whom he despises as
stupid and unimaginative. All his desires are focused on what
he sees as a superior way of life.
Reluctant as they are to recognize Africans as fellow
human beings, Lessing's colonials create a distorted portrait
of "the native" which they see whenever they look at individ-
uals. Africans are childish, backward, immoral, dishonest,
ungrateful, untrustworthy, lazy. Seeing only the projection
of this portrait when they look at an African, white settlers
become less capable of understanding their servants than the
servants are of comprehending their masters. Europeans also
refuse to acknowledge their responsibility in creating the
conditions under which Africans must live. Thus in "The Ant
Heap" Macintosh mines the low yielding ore of his reef by
having hundreds of Africans dig it out of a vast pit; their
labour is an effective substitute for more expensive machinery.
The acceptance by African workers of Macintosh's primitive,
dangerous, and humanly degrading working conditions is proof
to local racists that the African worker is himself a degraded,
subhuman specimen. Macintosh is able to attract and keep
labour because,
He took care that there was always plenty of kaffir beer brewed in the compound, and if the police patrols came searching for criminals, these could count on Mr. Macintosh facing the police for them and assuring them that such and such a native, Registration Number Y2345678, had never worked for him. (A.S., p.372) 120
0 The colonial system has created whole categories of crime designed to turn the African peasant into a worker at the dis- posal of colonialist employers. Violations of such statutes leave him to the least humane and conscientious of these employers. Then his willingness to take such jobs is used aga1ns. t h"1m 1n. t urn. 14 In the next section I will discuss at greater length several stories and The Grass Is Singing; none of the characters in any of these works questions colonialist assump- tions. A careful examination of these texts will illustrate the way in which Lessing portrays colonial paternalism and its inconsistencies, as well as the destructive potential of colonial relationships. 121
0 PATTERNS OF ACCOMMODATION
"Little Tembi" illustrates vividly the way in which Lessing's colonials create dependency relations, but fail to take responsibility for the human consequences. Jane McCluster is delighted to make a favorite of Tembi while she does not have the desired children of her own. However, she does not acknowledge that her behaviour toward him must create legiti mate human expectations. When he grows up to demand favors from both her and her husband Willi and then forces himself on their attention by stealing some of Jane's possessions, she exclaims angrily to Willi, "'Tembi behaves as if he had some
sort of claim on us.' 11 (A.S., p.l48) It is this notion of "claim" that they both repudiate. According to their own convictions, the McClusters behave decently to their African labourers. However, the medical care and vegetable provisions which Jane extends to them result from her need for activity and her good will rather than from a sense of obligation or justice. Moreover, if they require effort and expense, they also pay off in the workers' productivity. Nonetheless, she could withdraw these services at any time; Africans have no right to them. Similarly Jane can give or withdraw her attention at her own whim; Tembi cannot expect the continuity of affection which he seems to need. Never recognizing that Tembi had any legitimate cause for resentment, Jane can ask helplessly at the end of the 122
0 story, "'What is it he was wanting, all this time?'" (A.S., p.l57) Tembi's first thefts can be seen as attempts to steal the affection which, uncomprehendingly, he felt was denied him. Only later do they become acts of rebellion against a situ ation which seems hopelessly unjust. In order to win Jane's approval, Tembi had made himself "an apostle of the white man's way of life," but even such a marginal symbol of that life, a bicycle, was denied him when he asked for it. His ultimate rebellion, through crime, obviously proves self destructive. It also provides the occasion for the "dangerous simmering anger" (A.S., p.lSl) latent in relations between blacks and whites in the district to surface. The white settlers' bad conscience reveals itself in the anger they direct at Africans. The thefts in the district indicate to them an anger existing among the Africans which Europeans can avoid confronting with their self-serving cliche: "All natives are thieves." The protagonist in "'Leopard' George" also resists any notion that the native women with whom he sleeps have any claim on him. When his first African mistress presents herself at his Sunday swimming party, he is so enraged by the impli cations of her gesture that he sends her away to a mission school. Fearing that he might have behaved in a way which "put ideas into her head," (A.S., p.212) he is more abrupt with the second woman who offers herself to him. However, his 123
0 scanty acquaintance with his labourers' domestic arrangements prevents him from knowing that she is the youngest wife of his valued ancient "boss-boy" whose traditional tribal authority has always maintained order among the Africans on his farm. None of these complex events, nor the girl's subsequent death, permit George to gain any real insight into the nature of his relations with Africans. Instead, George turns his "hungry anger" (A.S., p.224) against the leopards and other animals he had previously protected. Unwilling to recognize "that cruelty" which he contained "within himself," (A.S., p.217) he tries to defeat its projection in repetitious encounters with an endless series of leopards. Like Jane McCluster, he wanted to create just the personal relationship with an African which was convenient for him, and when any "inappropriate" demand or claim was made on the relationship, he rejected the notion that the other person had any basis for self-assertion. Leasing's colonials expect Africans not only to work without complaint for subsistence wages in order to enrich them, but also to function in relation to their emotional needs and desires without making any personal demands. In "Home for the Highland Cattle," a longer and more complicated story, we can see the development of a complex paternalistic relationship along with its ultimate betrayal. The story's protagonist, Marina Giles, is a new immigrant with a certain degree of liberal idealism; she "held that discred itable phenomena like the colour bar and the black-white 124
0 struggle could be solved by sufficient good will." (A. S., p.266) Anxious to behave benevolently to Charlie, her black servant, Marina gives him a wage increase of five shillings. Charlie's using his raise to buy a pair of crimson satin gar ters indicates to Marina that "What these unfortunate people needed was an education in civilized values." (A.S., p.281) He clearly ought to save until he can buy something "worth while." But Charlie has had his "education in civilized
values~" he has noted the kinds of invidious distinctions Europeans make on the basis of dress. The crimson garters imitate and at the same time caricature such formalities. In addition, they are colorful and attractive in themselves and there is no reason for him to believe that prolonged savings of small amounts will change his status. To a liberal like Marina, who would like to believe in equality of opportunity in the face of all evidence to the contrary, Charlie's action indicates that colonial assumptions about "natives" must be true - they are childish, self-indulgent; they do not under stand the value of money. Although the higher wage provokes her neighbors' indig nation, even Marina knows that it is still too low for Charlie to aspire to what would be, for her, a decent standard of living. Nonetheless, she thinks that he ought to aspire to that standard. Since she cannot afford to pay him the amount which a white person might expect, the increase is a compromise with her conscience. When Charlie spends it on crimson garters, 125
0 she feels justified is not giving him more money - he clearly does not understand what is necessary for his own welfare. Instead she gives him rations of vegetables and a new bed. The implication is that she knows what is good for him and she will provide it. Here the formal relationship of employer/employee breaks down and Marina begins to develop what can only be called maternal feelings for Charlie to compensate for her inability and unwillingness to treat him as an equal adult. Charlie seems complicit in the evolution of Marina's parental role: he tests the limits of her patience and gen erosity when he does things like break her favorite vase or ask her for a dress for his girlfriend Theresa. When Marina
agrees to give Theresa the dress, 11 He thanked her as one might thank one's parents, for instance, from whom one expects such goodness, even takes it a little for granted." (A.S., p.297) He participates in creating a relationship with Marina in which she will be responsible for him; in some sense, she will take the place of his extended family. In accepting the logic of a paternalistic ethic Charlie can expect to win both a relative degree of comfort and a fundamental recognition of his humanity. The act which demonstrates most clearly Marina's accept ance of a parental role is her provision of lobola for Charlie's marriage to Theresa. It would seem that in doing this she is trying to satisfy her own Christian moral sense by insisting on the forms of marriage before the birth of their 126
child. 15 However, beyond this, she is symbolically substitu ting herself for Charlie's social group. Within tribal structures, lobola would be provided by the groom and his family. According to Levi Strauss, lobola is neither a dowry nor a payment. The cattle which form the lobola "assume the role of a mediary" between the two groups which "are placed in a state of reciprocal dependency ••• The completion of the marriage rites does not put an end to reciprocal obligations between groups. The reality of the alliance is attested to during the whole marriage by a series of services offered and rendered, and of gifts demanded and received."16 Although Marina is not aware of the role she has assumed in relation to Charlie, within the city she has become his "mother and father." It is Charlie who puts into words the fact that Marina has allowed herself to step into this role. "'You are my mother and my father,'" (A.S., p.297) he says after she has successfully prevented his arrest. She takes the remark as an expression of his gratitudei in fact, it is a statement of his expectations and her responsibilities. However, Marina is not prepared to follow through with the protection that such a relationship might imply. Thus the story ends with Marina's personal betrayal, her denial of responsibility in a relationship she had voluntarily assumed. When she sees Charlie in the file of handcuffed prisoners, he and Theresa are already less real to her than the table she imagines purchasing for her new suburban house. Buying the 127
0 house signifies her capitulation to the colonial way of life which she had believed she wanted to resist. A society which confuses a wage labour economy with self serving paternalism makes such betrayals at the individual level inevitable. The last scene of the story helps to generalize the particular event by stressing the ordinariness of seeing "a file of handcuffed Africans" who are on their way to court to be tried for "offenses" which are purely European creations. They will receive prison sentences and thus provide a "pool of free labour" to "mend roads, cut down grass, plant trees." (A.S., p.315) The end of the story recalls an important scene in Martha Quest where Martha, exhausted by her first night out with the Sports Club set, sits down to reflect on her situation. Her conscience tells her that she should be doing something other than participating in the empty social whirl, but the only alternative to which she has been exposed is the tame and tedious discussions of the Left Book Club. She feels that "she deserves something life had not offered her." (M.Q., p.lB3) Just at that point she sees a file of handcuffed prisoners being marched to the courts. She views this symbol of colonial injustice as a kind of historical anachronism; "It's all so dreadful, not because it exists merely, but because it exists now." (M.Q., p.l84) This kind of abstract thinking prevents her from having any real crisis of conscience over the incident. However, Martha does see the prisoners in a way that Marina does not; she takes in sensuous 128
0 details - the prisoners' "working hands, clasped together by broad and gleaming steel, held carefully at waist level, steady against the movement of swinging arms - the tender dark flesh cautious against the bite of metal." Such observations completely escape Marina who is absorbed in her vision of an ideal table. Marina is not only unwilling to accept the consequences of her relationship with Charlie, but she is also unable to understand that she is witnessing the destruction of a whole way of life. With his naive faith in science and no sense of colonial history, her husband Philip ignorantly participates in this destruction. Philip's job as agricultural technician requires him to attempt to repair the damage to overcultivated and overstocked land on the reserves: He was quite absorbed in his work ••• He was spending his days in a Government lorry, rushing over hundreds of miles of veld, visiting native reserves and settlements. Never had soil been so misused! Thousands of acres of it, denuded, robbed, fit for nothing, cattle and human beings crowded together ••. " (A.S., p.278) To remedy this situation Philip recommends or even compels destocking "for their (the Africans') own good." {A.S., p.290) The root of all African problems, according to Philip, is to be found in the Africans themselves: their beliefs are at fault and must be changed. They must be educated by experts like himself: These people had no idea at all how to farm. They must give up this old attitude of theirs, based on the days when a tribe worked out one piece of 129
ground and moved on to the next; they must learn 0 to conserve their soil and, above all, to regard cattle, not as a sort of spiritual currency, but as an organic part of farm-work. (A.S., p.300) Philip does not understand the African attitude toward cattle as an integral part of their whole way of life; he sees it as "mystical nonsense." His vulgar materialist view distorts the nature of pre-colonial African culture which did not separate "economy" from kinship or from political and religious obligation. His desire to help improve the soil through cull- ing "superfluous" cattle ignores the significance of cattle in a whole network of relationships. For him, tribal organization is backward; individuals like Charlie and Theresa are
unfortunately caught in a 11 period of transition" between tribal and industrial society. The more quickly they reach the latter, the better it will be for them. Marina may be repelled by a viewpoint which reduces Theresa to a "vital statistic," but her sentimental intervention in Charlie and Theresa's lives is no more informed and helpful than Philip's technical inter- vention on the reserves. At the end of the story the picture of the highland cattle takes on the status of a symbol of the loss of this whole tradition and way of life which Marina and Philip have failed to comprehend. Theresa's father's demand for ten head of cattle as lobola seems grotesquely inappropriate when it is juxtaposed with his squalid home in the location: In a mood of grim despair, Marina found herself standing with Philip in front of a small shack that consisted of sheets of corrugated iron laid 130
loosely together, resting in the dust, like a child's card castle. It was bound in the corners with string, and big stones held the sheet of iron that served as roof from flying away in the first gust of wind. (A.S., p.310)
In such surroundings, the ugly picture of the highland cattle is comically inappropriate. The old man is forced to accept the representation of the cattle for the reality since he has been deprived of the culture within which the animals would have been his due. He can only recapture some dignity for himself in his speech reminding Charlie and Theresa of all that has been lost.
Both of them are incapable of recreating the past for the old man or for themselves. Lessing indicates that varying degrees of power exist even here as the old man maintains a certain dignity as patriarch at the expense of his daughter and her suitor. Both of them sustain the deprivation of their culture, but Theresa is perhaps the worse off since she is denied both the prestige of a traditional wife, which lobola in part represents, and the independent status of a town woman since she must give most of her wages to her father. Nonethe- less, her father blames her for freeing herself from his tyranny in the only way available to her. The traditional supports of tribe and kinship system are missing for her; a mission school education and a job were not effective substitutes.
Although Philip and Marina have the fresh perspective of new immigrants, their concern with establishing a home and 131
0 making a livelihood in the colony prevents them from avoiding the colonialist assumption that their culture is civilization. In "No Witchcraft for Sale" Teddy Farquar will grow up to inherit the same assumption, along with his parents' property and sense of white prestige, although he has a dramatic experience which might have provided him with a fresh point of view. The Farquars have shared with their cook, Gideon, a common religion and a seeming acceptance of the "natural" position of white and black. Contemplating Teddy and his own son, Gideon remarks one day to Mrs. Farquar, "'Ah missus, these are both children, and one will grow up to be a baas, and one will be a servant ••• It is God's will.'" (A.S., p.70) Gideon does not seem bitter when he makes this statement; to the Farquars he is a loyal servant, who as a subordinate family member, rejoices in their good fortune. However, Gideon does have a separate culture and identity which become apparent only when a tree snake spits into Teddy's eyes and Gideon dramatically saves his sight with the juice of a mysterious root. The Farquars later learn that their cook, in fact, is '"the son of a famous medicine man'" (A. S., p. 75) to whom their labourers regularly apply for treatment. Their attitude to the sudden revelation that there exists on the veld "an ancient wisdom" (A.S., p.72) of which they had previously remained unconscious is a desire to aid in its appropriation for scientific progress. When they are visited by a doctor who wants to investigate the potentialities of 132
0 African folk remedies, they urge Gideon to show him the plant and are astonished at his sullen resistance. Although the passage of time dulls their resentment over this incident, the Farquars never try to understand Gideon's refusal to cooperate in what they can see only as the march of enlightenment. Their dramatic discovery of a suppressed African culture does not affect any of their assumptions or their way of life. Ironically, Teddy, whose sight was restored by Gideon, remains blind to the implications of this event. Africans have a whole civilization which Europeans have destroyed through usurping their land and compelling them to integrate themselves into a money economy; whatever remnants of their culture remain will be jealously protected in an attempt to maintain some separate identity. These realizations would prevent Teddy from unself consciously growing up to accept the farm which he considers his due. Lessing emphasizes this point in the last line of the story where Gideon remarks to Teddy, "'Soon you will be grown up with a farm of your own.'" (A.S., p. 76) Although the Farquars have developed a relationship with Gideon which is relatively friendly, he remains dependent on them for a job. Thus his only weapon is his passive resistance to demands he considers unreasonable. The same dynamic operates between Major Carruthers and his wife in "The Second Hut." Unable to determine the circumstances of her own existence in the face of her husband's desire to remain in Africa, she withdraws from him into mysterious illness. Her 133
0 acceptance of dependence makes it impossible either to challenge him, or to break off the relationship. Passive
resistance in both instances is a tactic of the powerless to
retain some independence and even to exert some control.
However, while the subordinate's passivity can defeat the dom
inant in his aims, this kind of resistance maintains the
unequal terms of the relationship.
The same incapacity for insight or for change which we
see in so many of Lessing's colonials afflicts Mary Turner,
with disastrous consequences, in The Grass Is Singing. This
complicated and ambiguous tale explores the interface of the
racial/sexual hierarchy. It is the only work in which Lessing
portrays that relationship which is so fraught with emotion
for the white settler: a sexual relationship between a black
man and a white woman. The novel must be examined carefully
in order to understand her portrait of the complex psychologi
cal interdependencies of both the races and the sexes.
Lessing presents the final act of her drama through the
eyes of another recent immigrant, Tony Marston, who, like
Marina Giles, arrives in the colony as a liberal intellectual
with "the conventionally 'progressive' ideas about the colour
bar, the superficial progressiveness of the idealist that
seldom survives a conflict with self-interest." (G.I.S., p.253)
Tony's point of view is not consistently maintained because he
lacks a vision penetrating enough to understand the situation
he faces. Marston will be another one of those immigrants who 134
0 accepts prevailing attitudes and remains in Africa, although he is sufficiently affected by what happens at the Turners'
farm to abandon his original desire for a farm of his own.
Instead he takes a more sedentary and less enterprising job in
Northern Rhodesia's copper mines.
Mary Turner's background resembles that of Martha Quest
in a number of startling ways. Each experienced an isolated
girlhood in the countryside. They both grew up in unhappy
families with ineffectual fathers and ambiguously controlling
mothers. Both escaped their homes at about the same age to
move into town; both take jobs as secretaries. However, Mary
never developed the acute critical awareness of herself and
her society that was crucial to Martha's development. Instead,
Mary's life constitutes a pattern of evasions, denials,
exclusions, and repetitions. Never questioning her rigid
assumptions about herself and the world, she does not recog
nize the necessity for any emotional experience. When she
loses her hold on a tenuous reality and her repressed feelings
surface, she is destroyed by them.
Mary's married li is a nightmare repetition of her
deprived childhood. She thought she had escaped her hardened,
seemingly indifferent mother and alcoholic father when she
went away to school, then took a job in an office. Her office
routine, her life at the girls' club, her impersonal social
life, protect her from any awareness of what she lacks. She
is as content in her abstract existence as is Kafka's Joseph K. 135
in his job as Chief Clerk at the bank. During this period of her life, which lasts until she is past thirty, Mary encourages men to treat her as a "pal." She denies the relevance of sexuality in her friendships with men; she depends in these numerous and casual relationships on what Lessing calls "an arid feminism" inherited from her mother. (G.I.S., p.44) This "feminism" is an abstract, intellectualized attitude which contradicts the facts of Mary's everyday life where she depends on sex-stereotyped assumptions and expectations. Furthermore, this "feminism" prevents Mary from confronting the emotional reality of her own situation. Her attitude allows her to feel superior to and contemptuous of men. This sense of superiority and contempt for men are part of her false sense of herself and contribute to her disastrous marriage. She has absorbed these attitudes from her mother, along with the complex resentments she feels toward her father: By dropping her father she seemed to be avenging her mother's sufferings. It had never occurred to her that her father too might have suffered. "About what?" she would have retorted, had anyone suggested it. "He's a man isn't he? He can do as he likes." (G.I.S., p.44) Mary's marriage to Dick arrests the incipient breakdown of her false sense of self which begins when she accidentally overhears a conversation in which acquaintances remark dis- paragingly on her little girl dress and manner. She has lived and behaved as if no changes have occurred since she was sixteen. At thirty, this· way of life has long since ceased to be appropriate. One of her acquaintances insists that she will 136
never marry because she is "not like that." (G.I.S., p.Sl) What that phrase means does not become remotely clear to Mary until long after she has begun her inevitable descent into madness. Mary's choice of a husband is made in desperation. She cannot replace the false sense of self that she is losing with anything real or authentic. Dick first focuses on her image, appropriately, in a movie theatre, where her face replaces for him the images on the screen. She becomes equally unreal for him; he idealizes her because of his own desperate need. He wants her to fill the vacuum created by all that he has denied himself in his five year attempt to make a success of farming. She wants him to confer upon her the identity she was unable to forge for herself, as well as rescue her from the torment of self-consciousness. Mary and Dick's relationship is undermined from the start by Mary's denial of sexuality and Dick's masochistic "venera tion" of Mary. The absence of sexual harmony contributes to the sense of inadequacy each feels and compounds the frustra tions of poverty and isolation. Their extreme poverty is partially a result of Dick's unwillingness to exploit his land with one cash crop, like tobacco, the way all his neighbors do. He prefers to diversify crops, plant trees, allow land to lie fallow from time to time. One of the things that makes Dick a fairly sympathetic character is that he cares for the soil itself in a way that neither Mary nor his neighbors can 137
0 appreciate. However, he is not a good manager, for he cannot follow through on any one project. This becomes evident as he
succumbs to one enthusiasm after another for money-making
schemes like bee-keeping or turkey-raising.
Mary has the efficiency and the instinct for making money
which Dick, for all his diligence, lacks. Initially, after
their marriage, she expends her energy in acceptable 11 feminine 11
ways - making the house cheerful with new curtains or, later,
keeping chickens. The farm itself remains an alien domain
until she is forced to look carefully at its organization when
Dick succumbs to malaria. Then her last shred of respect for
Dick gives way as she realizes that the farm's financial
failure results from his ineptitude. When she is forced to
take control, it becomes clear to her what must be done if
they are ever to succeed. Here, however, they are caught in
an emotional paradox. She needs Dick to succeed materially so
that she can depend on him, but she also needs his failure so
that she can continue to despise and disparage him. Dick
demands her advice and support, depends on her energy and
efficiency which he believes are superior to his, wants to
succeed and thereby gain her approval, but also needs to main
tain the neurotic equilibrium of their relationship which his
masochism requires. So even in the season when he does take
her advice about trying to grow tobacco, his efforts end in
failure. The stasis of their existence and relationship is
preserved. 138
0 All the events in the novel, which it is not necessary to summarize, lead to the crisis which depends on the peculiar racial situation in Rhodesia. Mary expresses her frustration and repressed rage through her treatment of her succession of black, male house-servants. It is almost as if these servants exist for her as a focal point for her anger. Before her marriage, she was hardly aware of Africans at all: She had never come into contact with natives before, as an employer on her own account. Her mother's servants she had been forbidden to talk to; in the club she had been kind to the waiters; but the 'native problem' meant for her other women's complaints of their servants at tea parties. G.I.S., p.79) The fear of Africans inculcated by her mother remains distant and abstract until she is in everyday contact with them. As her situation on the farm deteriorates, her fear and her anger become her obsessions. Mary's suspicion and severity alienate Samson, who had been Dick's "houseboy" before her arrival. He is replaced by a succession of "boys" every one of whom Mary antagonizes and drives away with her continually expressed rage. Her inability to retain a house servant becomes a focal point of contention with Dick, for whom finding and keeping workers is a never- ending problem. However, her difficulty is perhaps also a source of secret satisfaction to him since it enables him to maintain a sense of masculine superiority which seldom surfaces except in instances when he becomes defensive, or at expansive moments when he feels the implicit support of a man like 139
0 Charlie Slatter. Just as the poverty of Mary's married life is a repetition
of her childhood deprivations, her sexuality repeats the
ambivalence which she felt towards her father. Early in her
life, love for her father was undermined by fear and disgust,
which were compounded by her sympathy for and identification
with her mother. The same fear and disgust are aroused in
Mary by African men. For Mary, all men are despicable, but
the African, who is culturally identified with the sexual, is
especially disturbing. With this identification goes the
projection of forbidden and repressed wishes and desires onto
Africans. For Mary, the sight of an African arouses her
incestuous desires. This is so horrifying that the desire
must be immediately repressed and it expresses itself instead
in a Negrophobia which represents her repudiation of physical
and sexual sensations. The physical or the biological bring
her back to the idea of her father. It is clear from the
disgust she feels when she looks at African women that for her
Africans incarnate the biological: 17
If she disliked native men, she loathed the women. She hated the exposed fleshiness of them, their soft brown bodies and soft bashful faces that were so insolent and inquisitive, and their chattering voices that held a brazen fleshy undertone ... Above all, she hated the way they suckled their babies, with their breasts hanging down for every one to see; there was something in their calm satisfied maternity that made her blood boil. 'Their babies hanging onto them like leeches,' she said to herself shuddering, for she thought with horror of suckling a child. G.I.S., p.l32)
Mary's excessive fear and hatred of Africans masks 140
0 repressed sexual desire. Because of her ambivalence toward her father, she was unable to transfer her childish sexual desires to Dick or to any other white man; she had to marry a weak man whom she could despise, who would depend on her so that she could feel "maternal." She accepts Dick only in the "forgiv ing" mode which her mother had used with her father. Mary martyrs herself to Dick's ineptitude as her mother did to her father's drunkenness. However, real sexual arousal for Mary requires a childish dependence; any dependence on Dick has always been frustrated by his ineffectuality. Mary's repressed sexual desires and her desires for dependence reappear in a form she does not recognize in her encounters with her servants, but most clearly with Moses. She cannot admit the possibility of an attraction to any of these men, so she cultivates her repulsion and her tyrannical will; she requires an absolute and exact obedience. Her behavior is compulsive and sadistic. Here Lessing recalls D.H. Lawrence in portraying a psychological situation where an excess of arbitrary willfulness in a woman results from frustrated sexual desire or inability to achieve sexual fulfillment. 18 Mary fears above all a relaxation of her will, a loss of con trol or a confrontation with her servants which would reveal them to her as persons rather than as functions. Even recog nizing them as human beings would bring them too close to her; thus she often forgets their ordinary needs for food and rest. If she were to allow the distance between them and herself to 141
0 decrease, she would be engulfed. When she begins to break down towards the end of the novel, when she has lost all hope, and can scarcely take care of herself or perform her routine household duties, she allows herself to slip into childish dependence on Moses. Mary depends on Moses in a way that she never could on Dick. The dependence triggers her long suppressed erotic desires at a time when her defenses are exhausted. Slowly, by degrees, Moses begins to assert an authority over her that is both male and parental. As she permits him to take care of her as a parent, she accepts him as a lover, not in spite of her phobic disgust, but because of it. Sadly enough, awakened sexuality no longer seems appro priate to the aging and wretched woman Mary has become. In the last chapters of the novel, we are presented with the pathetic spectacle of Mary dressing up, flirting with Charlie Slatter, playing the coquette. The situation is so painful and confusing that none of the other characters knows what to make of Mary. Dick tries to ignore her condition; Charlie wants nothing more than to get her out of the district; Tony Marston feels satisfied once he has labelled her a case of "complete nervous breakdown." (G.I.S., p.256) Even the reader is not quite sure that he/she wants to recognize what is happening. There is something almost too grotesque in the idea of sexual contact between Moses and the debilitated Mary. Lessing deliberately leaves a certain ambiguity in the 142
0 situation, but the erotic implications are impossible to miss. The character who remains most opaque is Moses. What
desires lead him into this peculiar relationship with Mary?
Is she desirable because she is white and to desire her at all
is taboo? Does he seek revenge for the humiliations she has
inflicted on him, or is he seeking to get back at the whole
white community by aspiring to dominate one of its women? Is
he responding to the personal challenge she offered him by
refusing to recognize him as a person? Undoubtedly his
motivation is a compound of several of these elements. It is
possible that he feels a genuine pity for Mary and some degree
of affection. Whatever feeling of hostility and/or desire
inspired his initiation of the relationship, it seems clear
that it also affects him on a profound psychic level.
The murder seems to be motivated by Moses' feeling that
she is betraying him by her projected departure. In denying
the mutual dependence that has arisen between them, she is
deserting him. With her own mad logic, Mary has the same
feeling. As she walks out into the bush to meet death at his
hands, her fear dissolves: "Her emotions unexpectedly shifted,
to create in her an extraordinary feeling of guilt: but
towards him, to whom she had been disloyal, and at the bidding
of the Englishman." (G.I.S., p.284-5) The stabbing suggests a
symbolic sexual consummation with all the obvious phallic
associations provoked by Moses' knife. At the same time,
however, the betrayal which motivated it recalls the ending of 143 c "A Home for the Highland Cattle" where Marina also denies the validity of a relationship with a black man, with results, of course, much less consequential to her. But in both instances a significant human relationship comes into existence and is then arbitrarily repudiated by the white women who seek to retreat into the impersonal where only roles count and personal inter-dependency is forgotten. Mary's withdrawal and her dismissal of Moses mean to him a denial of their relationship, perverse as that relationship may be. In its very perversity, it has a human quality which calls into question the "normal" master/servant relationship which it has replaced, where the black servant exists only as a function of his white master's needs. In all these works Lessing portrays the destructive effects of colonialism on individuals in both the dominant and subordinate groups. Her colonials maintain their unequal relationships with Africans at the expense of their own under standing, imagination, and capacity for change and growth. Whether or not they are successful economically, they are stunted individuals, doomed to repetition of self-limiting patterns. In the case of someone like Mary Turner, the limi tations and repressions result in death. For the colonized in these stories the situation is also destructive. None of them has the opportunity to protest against the bases of their oppression. Rebellion can occur only in acts of resistance which will maintain the status quo 144
0 or in crimes which, as individual acts, prove destructive only to individuals. In the next section I will look at the novels
and stories where Lessing's protagonists begin to question or
to reject colonialism, and discuss what consequences this
rejection has on their lives.
0 145
0 IMAGES OF POSSIBILITY
Whenever Lessing wants to indicate a dawning sensitivity to the contradictions of colonialism, a character's awareness of the existence of another culture is an important factor. In "The Old Chief Mshlanga" this recognition leads the protag- onist to realize that Europeans hold their position in Africa through an act of usurpation. In this story Lessing portrays a young girl whose developing self-awareness is, simultaneously, a coming to consciousness of the surrounding racial situation. Her growing self-consciousness is expressed through a shift in the use of personal pronouns - from third to first. The protagonist's childish imagination had not been able to assimilate the African landscape; for her the landscape had been peopled with the European fairy tale figures from the books that she had read. In the same way that she could not "see" the landscape, she could not take account of the Africans; they appeared like an incomprehensible natural force: The black people on the farm were as remote as the trees and the rocks. They were an amorphous black mass, mingling and thinning and massing like tadpoles, faceless, who existed merely to serve ••. They changed season by season, moving from one farm to the next, according to their own outlandish needs, which one did not have to understand. (A.S., p.SO) Within her family the narrator experiences the socialization into racism which leads her to this view that the Africans are not people of whom one must take account: 146
It was even impossible to think of the black 0 people who worked about the house as friends, for if she talked to one of them, her mother would come running anxiously: 'Come away; you mustn't talk to natives.' (A.S., p.SO)
For her parents, Africans are only good in so far as they may
be useful instruments. Africans exist in their minds not as
individuals, but as efficient or inefficient servants. When
they learn that their cook is the local Chief's son, they find
this separate identity disturbing; it impresses them solely as
grounds for possible insubordination. Her mother comments:
"'He'd better not put on a Chief's son act with me.'"
(A.S., p.54)
As the narrator matures, however, she begins to realize
that white racism and arrogance of manner are based on fear.
Her own contempt for Africans begins to yield to self-
questionings. By chance she meets Chief Mshlanga, who displays
a "dignity like an inherited garment." (A.S., p.Sl) Her pre-
viously learned attitudes clearly are not appropriate for her
encounters with the Chief. She also begins to read more about
the country in which she is living instead of merely imbibing
the European folklore with which she had fertilized her
imagination as a child. Thus she learns that her family are
interlopers in Chief Mshlanga's country, although the name had
been changed to "a phrase which held no implication of usurped
ownership. 11 (A.S., p.52) She then begins to adopt a kind of
liberal tolerance for peoples of different cultures: "It c seemed it was only necessary to let free that respect I felt 147
0 when I was talking with Old Chief Mshlanga, to let both black and white people meet gently, with tolerance for each other's differences: it seemed quite easy." (A.S., p.53) Painfully, however, she eventually comes to face the inadequacy of this kind of sentiment as well, when she confronts her own fear and isolation in her attempt to get closer to the African past. In a spirit of casual but not unfriendly curiosity, she pays a visit to Chief Mshlanga, and comes to realize that she is as much an intruder in his village as her whole family are interlopers on the hereditary lands of the Chief's family: I had learned that if one cannot call a country to heel like a dog, neither can one dismiss the past with a smile in an easy gush of feeling... (A.S., p.58) The narrator is left with a sense of the inadequacy of her own emotional response in the face of the effects of arbi- trary exercises of power. To make this point even more clear, Lessing ends the story with one more incident. The narrator's father, angry at the Africans whose goats have trampled one of his fields, confiscates the animals and refuses to return them unless damages are paid. At the end of his discussion with the white farmer, Chief Mshlanga makes the declaration, through his son as interpreter: "'All this land, this land you call yours, is his land, and belongs to our people!'" (A.S., p.59) Such insolence cannot go unpunished. The incident is mentioned to the local policeman, who drops a word to the Native Commissioner. Chief Mshlanga and his people are moved to the reserve "two hundred miles east." (A.S., p.60) 148
0 The narrator had wanted to believe that Africa was large enough for both black and white. But whites were not even satisfied to take the best land for their own farmsi they also took arable land and let it lie fallow for years to prevent African agricultural competition. Even a descriptive detail found in the beginning of "The Old Chief Mshlanga" gives a sense of this dog-in-the-manger land policy: "They were good, the years of ranging the bush over her father's farm which, like every white farm, was largely unused, broken only occasionally by small patches of cultivation." (A.S., p.49} Lessing ends the story by making a point of white settlers' ignorance of events in the recent past. Referring to the valley from which the Chief and his people have been evicted, the narrator reflects: The settler lucky enough to be allotted the lush warm valley (if he chose to cultivate this particular section) would find suddenly, in the middle of a mealie field, the plants were growing fifteen feet tall, the weight of the cobs dragging at the stalks, and wonder what unsuspected vein of richness he had struck. (A.S., p.60) In her developing understanding, some independent knowledge of colonial history, other than that presented in school, is crucial for the narrator. 19 As she finds out more about local history and the existence of a suppressed culture, she becomes more and more distanced from her parents' universe. Her aware- ness of cultural contrast takes place in the context of her growing up, her individuation and separation from her parents. Instead of accepting her parents' attitudes, she experiences 0 149
0 an intellectual rebellion which sets her spiritually apart from them. In "The Ant Heap" Lessing goes beyond the portrayal of a character who merely comprehends the injustices of white settler usurpation. Here she depicts the successful attempt on the part of two boys, Tommy and Dirk, one white and one coloured, both to become friends and to win recognition of the coloured boy's rights. In addition, Tommy•s efforts to help Dirk parallel his exploration of his talent as a sculptor and his discovery of the potential of art. Close friendships between members of different racial groups are rare in Lessing•s work, and it is interesting to note that even here Dirk is not African, but coloured, or half white. In both Ripple from the Storm and the black notebook sections of The Golden Notebook, Lessing portrays the disas trous consequences that ensue when left-wing Europeans attempt to initiate friendships with Africans. Within the novels, colonialism has created an impassable gulf between the races. In order to make the friendship in "The Ant Heap" plaus ible, Lessing sets the events in a very remote area where Tommy and Dirk, both equally isolated, can become dependent on each other for companionship. The story takes place against the background of a small gold mine. Desire for gold brought whites into the area; fertile farm land detained them. Another of Lessing•s stories, "Eldorado," contains a sense of the tension between farming with its relative stability and mining 150
0 with its more glamorous risks. But in "The Ant Heap" there is none of the dubious adventure, romance, or excitement attached to gold prospecting; here gold just means production. Instead of turning men into dreamers, gold turns them into ants. This is one of the first perceptions that begins to awaken Tommy's conscience once he is separated from his African playmates. His awakened consciousness combined with his loneliness move him to attempt his first sculptures. The anthill is a powerful image of dehumanization, 20 but Lessing uses the image in a double sense in this story. The ant heap refers not only to the "inverted mountain" dug by Macintosh's African labourers where many of them lose their lives when tunnels "narrow as an ant-bear's hole" (A.S., p.372) cave in, but also to the separate space created by Tommy and Dirk where they succeed in creating a relationship which challenges the racism of their parents. The ant heap becomes a place where the white and coloured boys can meet on terms of equality and escape the limits of their environment. In that sense it becomes something truly utopian, compared to the social situation in the rest of the colony. Tommy's parents endure the loneliness of living in the valley because Macintosh pays Clarke "more than he would earn anywhere else." (A.S., p.372) To avoid confronting their own bad consciences, the Clarkes preserve a stoical silence which disturbs Tommy. Their silence provides a stark contrast with c both the din of the machinery which is a constant factor in the 151
0 environment, and the lively noises of the African compound. It is a silence which contains the knowledge of the necessary separation between black and white - necessary because the separation preserves the distinctions which justify oppression, exploitation, and the destruction of human life which occur on a daily basis. Tommy's parents attempt to draw him into their "false silence" of complicity in this situation. Their attempts are insidious for they try to impress upon Tommy that by drawing away from the African children with whom he has been in the habit of playing, he will leave behind his own childhood. His parents imply that "his growing to manhood depended on his not playing with the black people." (A.S., p.377) His mother also irrationally maintains that Tommy has contracted malaria from playing with the black children: "You get sick from the Africans too," she tells him. Tommy's poor health becomes one more excuse for the enforced separation. 21 Tommy defies his parents by continuing to play with and later by beginning to educate Dirk. The Clarkes are reluctant to interfere with his willfulness for fear that he will say what is for them the unspeakable, that Dirk is Macintosh's son, and get his father fired. In attempting to reproduce for Dirk his own education, Tommy begins to realize that school is more than a neutral learning experience; it is also accommodation to a certain way of life. Through his explanations to Dirk, and Dirk's comments, Tommy himself gains another perspective: c it is "as if Dirk's black, sarcastic eye had got inside him, 152
0 Tonuny, and never closed." (A. S., p. 387) Tommy's constant awareness of Dirk's point of view pre vents him from assuming unquestioningly the privileges Macintosh offers him and usurping Dirk's rightful position. He will not allow Macintosh to deny his own half-caste son; he refuses the gifts Macintosh desires to confer on him unless Dirk can receive equal benefits. Because Tommy and Dirk are both products of the colonial situation, there is an inevitable relationship between them which both must accept. They are surrogate brothers. They succeed in transcending the limits of custom and tradition, in gaining equal provision from Macintosh, Dirk's real and Tommy's self-appointed surrogate father. At the end of the story, Dirk and Tommy are able to attend university together. They have won a victory from a generation which would oppose change of any kind in black/ white relations. However, it is a limited victory, for they will still be forced to accommodate themselves to a segregated world; as Macintosh tells them, "You can't go around together just as you like." (A.S., p.422) Unlike Martha Quest, who also refuses to accept the limits of the colonial situation, Tommy does not feel that it is necessary to leave the colony. However, Tommy does gain an awareness of the political possi bilities of his talent. Tommy has been inclined to take a casual attitude toward his talent and the products of his efforts. He revolts when 153
0 his parents want him to "be" anything, even an artist. His interest in what he makes lasts only as long as the process of making does. He is content to allow the ants to destroy his wooden sculptures or to leave them where they will rot. This attitude recalls Denis Duerden's discussion of traditional African attitudes toward art objects, which are very different from Western notions: "For traditional African society the conscious and determined preservation of stored memories is a sacrilege." Thus sculpture is hidden where it will be quite likely to decay, "to prevent it from becoming a stored memory ••• It is better that it should be eaten by ants or decay to be replaced by the most contemporaneous expressions of what the society thinks, that it should slowly disappear instead of existing as evidence of what the society was like histori cally."22 The similarity between the behaviour of many traditional African societies with regard to their sculpture and Tommy's attitudes is striking. The reluctance on the part of African tribes to preserve their sculpture, as is done in the West, is thus partially explained by Duerden: The society's memory must be controlled by a natural process of dying and rebirth. It is not controlled, however, by the imposition of a unifying structure to which everyone must conform. Structures must be subject to con tinual change. Harmony in the society is not achieved by the stability of structures. Rather it is achieved by insuring that no structure will last too long, and therefore it is important that the memory of a particular structure should not persist in the society when it starts to destroy the equilibrium achieved by competing groups. 23 154
0 This same kind of reluctance to rigidify dynamic struc- tures seems intuitively to motivate Tommy. Each image
indicates a certain awareness or perception, but he does not
want the persistence of old images to inhibit the development
of new vision. As long as he is developing, he will be
creating new images and going beyond himself. The very terrain
where he lives suggests to him the impermanence of structures
and the necessity of constantly renewing relationships. The
shed which Dirk has built on the anthill is as subject to
quick decay as are Tommy's sculptures. This shed is an image
of their relationship, which, as they mature, is constantly
being destroyed and rebuilt.
Toward the end of the story a subtle shift takes place in
Tommy's attitude toward his talent. It is the images that
Tommy has made of Dirk which have initially stirred Macin
tosh's conscience and drawn his attention to some of the
graphic resemblances between father and son. As Tommy models
his last statue of Dirk, Macintosh watches him, in spite of
his feelings of discomfort. Tommy begins to realize that his
art can have an impact: "Slowly, and for the first time, he
saw that perhaps this was not a sort of game that he played, 24 it might be something else. A weapon ••• n {A.S., p.415)
For Tommy art has become a weapon with which to attack
Macintosh's colonialist attitudes and the injustice of the
colonial situation. Beyond that, Tommy can be seen as an c analogue of the writer herself who in her stories reveals the 155
0 violence and dishonesty of colonialism. Tommy's attitude toward Dirk retains a certain obtuseness.
He portrays Dirk in his final, most powerful image as only
half-defined, half-human - emerging from nature. Dirk himself
resents the implications of the statue: "You have to make me
half wood, as if I was more a tree than a human being." (A.S.,
p.421) Tommy strains to understand Dirk's resentment; it is
difficult for him to renounce the pleasure of feeling that he
has created Dirk in more ways than one. Thus the story ends
on a note of ambivalence, and with a victory for the two boys
the limitations of which are inherent in the fabric of
colonialism. Nonetheless, the boys' friendship and loyalty to
one another along with Tommy's increasing ability to direct
his talents create an image of possibility in which individuals
transcend the restrictions of their situation rather than
succumb to them.
"Hunger" is also unique among Lessing's works for here
the protagonist is African. The story portrays the trans
formations of Jabavu's desires, from selfish accumulation of
pleasure and sensation to altruistic identification with a
political commitment. In her preface to African Stories
Lessing describes the genesis of "Hunger." She says that she
was trying to write a "story of simple good and bad, with
clear-cut choices, set in Africa." (A.S., p.ix) The stimulus
for attempting such a story came from a visit to Moscow in
1952 where Lessing had participated in discussions among 156
0 British and Soviet writers. The Russians, she says, "were demanding in literature - greater simplicity, simple judgments of right and wrong." Such judgments for modern writers are difficult to make, as Lessing notes in "A Small Personal Voice": "One certainty we all accept is the condition of being uncertain and insecure. It is hard to make moral judgments, to use words like good and bad." 25 In reflecting on the story to write the preface for the collection, Lessing pronounces it a "failure," but perhaps it is more accurate to say that there are antagonistic elements in the story. Jabavu's journey gives Lessing the opportunity to portray the colonial situation from the point of view of one of the oppressed. His encounter with Mizi and Samu demonstrates the limitations of the available anti-colonial political options. However, the story's ending undermines its power as a piece of critical realism for Jabavu's development as a character seems to be forced into the mold of a schematic allegory. The name of the story immediately focuses the reader's attention on the experience which has molded Jabavu's charac ter: the experience of both physical and spiritual deprivation. Famine was the formative experience of his childhood, as Jabavu's mother reflects: "It is the fault of the Long Hunger that Jabavu is as he is." Jabavu is distinguished in his village by his nickname, "the Big Mouth," which indicates both his greediness and his unusual, individualistic self- c assertiveness. Jabavu's fellow villagers disapprove of his 157
c individualism for their traditions emphasize collective security. The colonial regime, however, by introducing a market economy, has undermined the basis of the community and its culture is no longer viable. Lessing notes that the famine which was so significant in Jabavu's childhood did not result solely from drought but from manipulation of grain prices set far away from the village. In the pre-colonial era, collective grain storage provided some security against dearth in one season. When those stores are sold and prices go up, villagers cannot afford to buy the food they need. Collective survival gives way to a crude "survival of the fittest;" Jabavu's greediness thus preserves him. Jabavu also sets himself apart from the village by his eager desire for new sensation and experience. He rejects a way of life which seems dull and stagnant; "The village is for old people," he feels. (Five, p.260) His alternative is to adopt as many of the colonizer's customs as are available to him, for he perceives in European culture a dynamic quality his village has lost. His one desire is to leave the village from which he has already psychically alienated himself. Jabavu's fantasies and daydreams illuminate the extent to which colonialism has affected his values and perceptions. He has mythologized the city: "When he thinks of the white man's town he sees something beautiful, richly coloured, strange. A rainbow to him means the white man's town, or a fine warm 0 morning, or a clear night when there is dancing." (Five, p.260) 158
0 Whatever is white must be good, civilized, attractive; his own people are dirty, despicable. His identification with white civilization leads him to fantasies of being "recognized" as soon as he arrives in the white man's town as someone who truly belongs there. He daydreams of immediately becoming a policeman, a "son of the government." 26 The fantasy repre- sents Jabavu's desire to escape his condition through absolute identification with the oppressor's institutions and values. It is a fantasy of being adopted into the white "family" 27 authority structure as a privileged member- a "son." Jabavu's fantasies about the police are quickly shattered once he arrives in town and actually has contact with several black policemen who subject him to the humiliation of the pass laws. But that daydream is replaced by others equally unrealistic. He imagines that he will be adopted by an idealized paternal- istic white man who will give him the education to become a "man of light." Education and grace are conferred only by whites from whom he fantasizes magical recognition of his potentia1. 28 Once Jabavu leaves his village, he falls under the influ ence of two diametrically opposed groups, "the men of light" and the "men of darkness." Men of darkness accost him on the road in the shape of recruiters from the mines of South Africa. These black recruiters attempt to trick Jabavu and his brother into signing contracts which they are not able to read but which will commit them to two years in the Johannesburg mines. 0 159
0 But even more dangerous than the recruiters, are Jerry and his gang who seduce Jabavu into a life of crime. The polar opposite for Jabavu to the men of darkness are Mizi and Samu, the "men of light," to whom he ironically applies a term full of racist implications. He first meets the "men of light" on the road to town, so that his choice is clearly open to him from the outset. Although Jabavu admires their education and sophistication, he resists their influence, for so many of his needs and desires have no place in their world view. The deprived adolescent in him demands more excitement and sensation than they can offer him. Emotionally he is in a situation similar to that of Martha Quest when she first arrives in Salisbury. She guiltily realizes that she prefers the company of the frivolous heavy-drinking Sports Club set to the long-winded and tedious discussions of the Left Book Club. To her, colonial society permits a relatively harm less mode of living out such impulses. But for Jabavu, no such outlets exist. The only way that he can satisfy his vague but passionate longings is through crime - theft, consumption of illegal, poisonous alcohol - and association with criminals. Mizi and Samu's failure to comprehend Jabavu's state of mind epitomizes a larger failure of the movement they represent. They see Jabavu only as a potential worker in their struggle. They "look at him like village elders who think: That child may grow up to be useful and clever if his parents are strict 0 with him." (Five, p.329) The life they offer him is only 160
0 another image of deprivation - ill-paid factory work and relentless study. Instead of acceptance they offer him tests and trials. Only Mrs. Mizi can make an intuitive leap to empathy with Jabavu's situation when she remarks: When I was a girl at the Roman school, I heard nothing but God, and how I must be good, and sin is evil, and how wicked to want to be happy in this life, and how I must think only of heaven. Then I met Mr. Mizi and he told me there is no God, and I thought: Ah, now I shall have a fine handsome man for a husband, and no Church and plenty of fun and dancing and good times. But what I find is that even though there is no God, still I have to be good and not think of dancing or a good time, but only of the time when there is heaven on earth - sometimes I think these clever men are just as bad as the preachers. (Five, p.332) Gratification of all impulses must be postponed until after the revolution. Caught up in their political abstractions, Mizi and Samu miss the personal, the individual. Even when Samu first speaks to Jabavu, he behaves as if he were address- ing a throng: After some moments of talking, it seems to Jabavu that Mr. Samu sees not only him, but many other people - his voice has lifted and grown strong, and his sentences swing up and down, as if they had been made long before, and in exactly the same way. (Five, p.284) With difficulty, the "men of light" have learned the vocabulary of the oppressor, as well as his methods of organization, in order to be able to respond to him effectively. However, this process has narrowed the range of their sympathy to those whose response to oppression is similar to theirs. They do not realize that the very language they use alienates Jabavu 0 161
0 and men like him: "Perhaps it is a weakness of such men, who spend their lives studying and thinking and saying such things as: The movement of history, or the development of society, that they forget the childhood of their own minds,
when such phrases have a strange and terrible sound. 11 (Five, p.330) Mizi and Samu are also constrained to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the criminal elements among the colonized. Paradoxically, they find them- selves in the position of trying to be subversive and res- pectable at the same time. Thus they tend to take a one- dimensional view of the anti-colonial struggle. It is true, for example, that Africans poison themselves at the shebeens, but Mizi and Samu fail to recognize that the shebeens exist because people have more needs than can be satisfied at political meetings. In addition, the nationalists condemn urban criminals without taking into account the element of protest against colonialist society that their crimes involve. They do not see any revolutionary potential in the "lumpen- proletariat" of the "Warsaw" ghetto; they regard the unemployed with almost as much distaste as do the white settlers. From the moment that Jabavu enters the city, it is clear to him that strict honesty will not bring him what he wants. He begins to steal to gratify the desires raised in him by a white society which would compel him through those desires to 't . b e ~ s men~a 1 • 29 Jabavu's growing awareness of how the inequality perpetuated by the whites will block the "legitimate" 162
0 fulfillment of his hopes draws him into the realms of Jerry and his gang. Jerry is the obverse of everything represented by the nationalist leaders. Totally self- centred, he rejects the image of altruism and disinterested devotion to principle which Mizi offers. Although Jabavu may be a potential threat to Jerry' s control of the gang, Jerry is also unconsciously attracted to Jabavu. The more involved with Jabavu he grows, the more obsessive his hatred of Mizi and then Betty becomes, up to the point that he kills Betty and tries to force Jabavu to rob Mizi's house. Jerry and Jabavu establish a camaraderie mediated through crime and compulsive expressions of contempt for women: Then he (Jerry) begins calling Betty names, and then all women names, for it is in these moments, when they are hating women, that they are most nearly good friends. Jabavu joins in the game, indifferently at first, and then with more will. Five p.355) Such contempt is the last refuge of the bruised egos of col- onized men. This feeling permits Jabavu to acquiesce pass- ively in the murder of Betty once she had become a nuisance to him. But Jerry's attempt to rob Mizi finally breaks what is left of the spell he had cast over Jabavu. The conclusion brings into focus the contradictory elements in the story: the portrayal of colonialism from the perspective of one of the colonized and the political all- egory. Lessing has included in the story an implicit critique of the movement led by Mizi and Samu. Their insensitivity to c Jabavu signifies their inability to understand the people whom 163
0 they want to direct. At the end of the story however, that critique is dropped and Jabavu from his jail cell affirms his
emotional commitment to the movement. Jabavu himself has
slipped out of focus by this point in the story; the account
of his state of mind begins to read like an anthropological
text and ceases to be psychologically convincing:
His mind is darkening in despair, in acceptance of what destiny has willed for him, and turn ing towards death. This feeling of destiny, of fate, is very strong in the life of the tribe, where guilt and the responsibility for evil is decided by the old ways of magic. (Five, p.367)
Jabavu must realize that it is his aggressive individualism
which has gotten him into trouble. It is his Big (selfish,
consuming} Mouth which he must learn to control. He discovers
that Mizi's group will allow him to devote his real energies
to collective purposes and his early tribal experiences of
community reassert themselves to permit his grasping at Mizi's
harsh letter as salvation:
For in the tribe and the kraal, the life of his fathers was built on the word we. Yet it was never for him. And between then and now has been a harsh and ugly time when there was only the word I, I, I - as cruel and sharp as a knife. The word we has been offered to him again, accepting-all his goodness and his badness, demanding everything he can offer. We thinks Jabavu, We ..• And for the first time~hat hunger in him, which has raged like a beast all his life, wells up, unrefused, and streams gently into the word We. (Five, p.381}
However, the "We" with which Jabavu learns to identify at the
end of the story seems like a rather abstract collective, and
the implicit critique Lessing offered of the group is lost. 164
0 Mizi did make a small step (pushed by his wife) in the direc- tion of sympathy with Jabavu, as the letter demonstrates. But this will not change the group's method and orientation. The abandonment of Jabavu's point of view turns the story into an optimistic political allegory. Jabavu passes through three stages which correspond to the rough outlines of Stalin's sketch of social development in Dialectical and Historical Materialism. According to Stalin, "Five main types of pro- duction are known to history: primitive communal, slave, feudal, capitalist and socialist." 30 Each type of production has its own social relations and attitudes which correspond to it: "Whatever is the mode of production of a society, such in the main is the society itself, its ideas and theories, its
. t. 1 . d . . . 11 31 po1 ~ ~ea v~ews an ~nst~tut~ons. The reader first encounters Jabavu in a condition corresponding to what Stalin calls "the primitive commune." Even before leaving his village, however, Jabavu is prone to a self-assertive individualism which he must nourish in order to survive when he enters the city. On the road from his village to the city, he encounters the recruiters who represent "relations of production" which retain archaic elements of slave or feudal systems. They try to trick Jabavu and his brother into signing a contract which would bind them to the mines for a two year period. If they broke the contract, they would be arrested and liable to be sentenced to some other kind of forced labor. This system which secures labor is worse than slavery; the employer has no 165
0 responsibility for the worker after the contract's lapse. If he succumbs to one of many industrial diseases in the mine, he is "free" to return to his reserve. Jabavu passes up this indeterminate slave/serf stage and plunges into capitalist society, where he turns to a kind of private enterprise, theft. But even in his most individualistic phase, Jabavu has intim ations of other possibilities. Thus he is prepared for the transition at the end of the story to a new collectivist out look corresponding to a society which does not yet exist. Although Mizi's group is not explicitly socialist, Jabavu is eager to view it as a potential community. I am not arguing that there are precise correspondences between Jabavu's development and Stalin's historical schema. Nonetheless, I think that Jabavu's changes evoke a sense of this schematic view of history which was part of the C.P. orthodoxy when Lessing wrote the story. It is this "allegori cal" aspect of the story which does not seem "true," because it is oversimplified both politically and psychologically.
As in "The Ant Hea~" Lessing has attempted in "Hunger" to create an image of human possibility which she places in a more overtly political context. The complexity inherent in political commitment itself emerges in later work. The work in which Lessing presents the most psycholog ically detailed account of her character's development within the colonial situation as well as the attempt to transcend its dynamics is, of course, the Children of Violence. From an 0 166
early age Martha Quest is conscious that her family and other
white settlers have imposed an alien reality on the African
landscape:
In the literature that was her tradition, the word farm evokes an image of something orderly, compa~cultivated: a neat farmhouse in a pattern of fields. Martha looked over a mile or so of bush to a strip of ploughed land; and then the bush, dark green and sombre, climbed a ridge to another patch of exposed earth, this time a clayish yellow; and then ridge after ridge, fold after fold, the bush stretched to a line of blue kopjes. The fields were a timid intrusion on the landscape hardly marked by man. {M.Q., p.8)
Her ability to recognize the oppressiveness of European rule
in the colony, in spite of the privileges that rule affords
her, comes with her rejection of her parents' values and her
rebellion against their desire to mold her in the image of
their own defeated and confused aspirations.
The Quests came to the colony with the influx of immi-
grants which followed World War I. Their move to Africa was
inspired by their "seeing an exhibition in London which
promised new settlers that they might become rich on maize
growing almost from one year to the next." {M.Q., p.20) What
ever hopes they had on arrival in the colony have long since
faded by the time we see Martha as an adolescent. Clearly
they are helpless in the face of social forces they can neither
understand nor try to control; they can only submit, and they
inevitably pass on their own submissive attitude by generating
and maintaining a "normal" authoritarian family structure. 0 Their house functions as the perfect image of their 167
desperate illusions and their incapacities; it had been built "to last for two seasons" and retains the character of a temporary residence. But the Quests have had neither the money nor the energy to build a permanent home. In addition, May Quest does not want to acknowledge to herself or demons trate to others that the farm is her home. The house thus reflects the Quests' lack of commitment to Africa and their own indecisiveness about the circumstances in which they find themselves. The plan of the Quests' house "was really suitable for bricks and proper roofing 11 but it "had been carried out in grass and mud and stamped dung. 11 The Quests have tried to impose a European model on African materials in order to main tain their sense of identity in the midst of a land which could otherwise easily just swallow them whole. Although the whole structure seems extraordinarily precarious with its insect hollowed ridge pole, which does not, in fact, act as the roof support it was intended to be, the Quests make no repairs or improvements because the whole thing is merely temporary. They cannot build for themselves a permanent home, for this would require a choice or a series of choices which they are incapable of making. Even Martha, who sees through many of her parents' delusions, cannot accept the house as her home: "This was not really her home." (M. Q. , p.22) To the extent that she feels this way, she is drawn into her parents' world view, which she bitterly resists on most occasions. However, if this house is not acknowledged as 168
her home, then Martha does not have one, nor, it seems, can she later make a home for herself. Martha's "intellectual journey," which she makes in her adolescence, is summarized in Joss Cohen's "catechism": 'You repudiate the colour bar?' 'But of course. ' 'Of course ••• You dislike racial prejudice in all its forms, including anti-Semitism?' 'Naturally.' ••• 'You are an atheist?' 'You know quite well that I am.' 'You believe in socialism?' 'That goes without saying.' (M.Q., p.52) In addition, Martha feels that she must "repudiate the shack- led women of the past" and assume the responsibility of her own sexual freedom. All her convictions are nothing short of "dangerous heresy" to other colonials, including her own parents. The problem for Martha is that her rejection of her parents' ideas is so total, but so abstract, that she does not recognize the ways in which she remains subject to their influence. Not until Martha leaves Zambesia does she realize that her very self is constructed in relation to the dynamic of domination and subordination which she thought she had left behind with her departure. Mediated through her family, this dynamic has structured her social persona, "Matty": 'Matty' now was rather amusing, outspoken, consistently incompetent, free from convention, free to say what other people did not say: yet always conscious of, and making a burnt offering of, these qualities. 'Matty' gained freedom from what other people must conform to not so much by ignoring it, but, when the point was reached when conformity was expected, by gaining exemption in an act of deliberate clumsiness - 169
like a parody, paying homage as a parody does to its parent action. An obsequiousness, in fact, an obeisance. Exactly so, she understood, had the jester gained exemption with his bladder and bells. Just so had the slave humiliated himself to flatter his master: as she had seen a frightened African laborer clown before her father. And so, it seems, certain occupants of recent concentration camps, valuing life above dignity, had made themselves mock those points of honour, self-respect, which had previously been the focus points of their beings, to buy exemption from camp commanders. Between 'Matty' and such sad buffoons, the difference was one of degree. Somewhere early in her child hood, on that farm on the highveld, 'Matty' had been created by her as an act of survival. But why? In order to prevent herself from being - what? She could not remember. (F.G.C., p.4-5) "Matty" gains acceptance based on self-deprecatory concessions to others which Martha feels she is not really making. The evolution of "Matty" has become a strategy of evasion and self- protection, but it has also introduced division and fragmenta- tion which Martha must ultimately overcome. As "Matty" Martha can acquiesce in the demands of others without feeling that her "real self" is involved. As "Matty," she can work as a secretary, go out with Donovan Anderson, frequent the Sports Club, marry, have a child, and never feel that any of these activities expresses what she wants for herself or expects from her life. Martha's new perceptions about herself are accompanied by important insights into the nature of her environment. On her arrival in London, Martha is uniquely qualified to understand the realities of the socio-political scene. Lessing uses Martha's clear-sightedness to reveal the ways that the post-war 170
rhetoric, epitomized by Henry Matheson's dinner table conversa tion near the beginning of The Four-Gated City, mystifies relations of power and authority. Matheson echoes the news papers in his belief that the Labour Party has instituted socialism in England and that, "There is no class left in this country." (F.G.C., p.30) Faced with the middle class Londoners who have been "blinkered from birth," (F.G.C., p.33) Martha realizes that the means of exercising power and privilege are much more disguised, even from the bureaucrats, professionals, and administrators who are using them, than they were where she grew up. Her awareness of the mystification of economic and political power is juxtaposed with her perception of the brutal sexual power represented in the "ugly" (F.G.C., p. 31) appraising glances exchanged at the restaurant by Matheson, his partner, John Higham, and the waiters. All of them col laborate in a subtle male complicity, of which they themselves are scarcely conscious, to place Martha in a category where she no longer seems human to them. Martha's background allows her to see what most inhabitants of London are eager to deny. Power and authority are no less real in London than in the colony, but the lines between the classes are obscured in a way that the distinctions between the races are not. Lessing makes it clear in the opening pages of The Four Gated City that Martha has not escaped from a repressive society to live in a realm of freedom. When Martha walks 171
around London, she sees workers who "all were deformed; and there was no face that did not carry marks of strain, weariness, or illness. All life, all health, the immediately recognizable spontaneity of energy was in the muscles." (F.G.C., p.8) These men have been reduced to the elements of their bodies which are useful to their society. They represent the mass of stunted and deprived men and women who survive because, like Iris, Jimmy, and Stella, "They expected so little." (F.G.C., p.l6) Before Martha enters the comfortable realm of Mark Coldridge, she receives impressions of a very different world which will not allow her to forget the deprivation which remains the lot of most of London's inhabitants. The immediate problem for Martha Quest is, however, not merely to become aware of social injustices and the need to make a commitment to eradicating them, but to recognize the ways in which a social system based on complex dynamics of subordination and domination has molded her very sense of her self. Following this recognition is the problem of "how to get out," as Lynda puts it, of this limited and fragmented self. Martha's situation cannot, however, be defined by simply saying that she has a "false" self which she must shed in order to discover her "real" self. Martha has many selves which emerge in different circumstances and in response to diverse necessities. Martha discovers that there is no hard, 0 private core of individual selfhood which forms the basis of 172
0 personality. At the farthest reaches of her self-exploration, Martha discovers her connections to others and to history. To understand Martha's complex development it is necessary to look at her experiences with the two systems which promise human liberation, socialism and psychotherapy, as well as at the dialectical structure of the series of novels. These discussions will follow in the next two chapters. Anna Wulf, unlike other characters discussed in this section, did not grow up in Africa and very little about her family background appears in The Golden Notebook. Anna's experiences in Africa were the source of her novel, Frontiers of War, which she characterizes (in contrast to Lessing's description of her own early work) as "about a colour prob-
1 em. 1132 Although Anna notes that the novel did not misrepre- sent the colonial situation, on reflection she disapproves of it because it is filled with what she calls "a terrible lying nostalgia" for the "feverish illicit excitement of wartime." Unconsciously, film and T.V. producers pick up on this aspect of it in their attraction to the book as a commercial property; unwittingly they confirm Anna's judgment of the work's effect. Trying to define what he likes about Frontiers of War, Reggie Tarbrucke of Amalgamated Vision stammers "'It's the wonderful rightness - the desperation of it all - the excitement - I've
never been so alive as I was then. • n (G.N., p.285) Anna thinks that this nostalgia for "a longing to become part of dissolution .. is "one of the reasons why wars continue." 173
(G.N., p.64) Rather than allow herself to cultivate this feel ing to fuel her writing, Anna resolves not to write another novel. Only much later does she understand that she is rationalizing a "writer's block" which results from her own inability to integrate feelings of which she disapproves into her conscious creative activity. Instead of writing fiction, in the first segment of the black notebook she decides to write "the truth" about the experiences on which she had based her novel. One of the things Anna realizes at the end of this effort is just how difficult it is to write "simply, the truthn (G.N., p.63) and do justice to all its contradictions and complexities. The distance provided by intervening years enables Anna to see some aspects of her situation in Africa to which she had been blind at the time, such as the needless cruelty to which she and her friends had subjected members of the Boothby family. To them, the colonials were "aborigines" (G.N., p.lOl) whose feelings they did not need to take seriously. Their arrogance and defensiveness harden them, just as racism stultifies the colonials they despise. Anna recognizes her own continuing tendency to fall into a defensive, ironic tone which blocks feeling, and she tries to resist such "self punishing" irony (G.N., p.65) in her account of "the facts merely." However, in a note written "some months later," she concludes that the narrative she had thought was "objective" was still "full of nostalgia." (G.N., p.l53) In her account, 174
0 Anna is recalling and giving shape to memories she feels are significant for her, as well as recreating the atmosphere of cynical acceptance of all the anomalies of this period of haphazard but intense affairs and associations. The tone of her writing reveals the continuing attraction this attitude has for her. To move closer to the significance of events at Mashopi, Anna recounts in the third segment of the black notebook one incident from the series of weekends which she had described in the first section. The exchanges which occur during the pigeon shooting episode demonstrate the difficulty of forging and maintaining a humanistic world view in the face of monstrous human oppression and grotesque mutual destruction. The African landscape itself offers symbols of both nature's prodigality in the copulating butterflies and grasshoppers and nature's blind cruelty in the pointless struggle of the ant eater and the beetle. Where does man fit himself and his idealism into such a picture? What perspective can he adopt which will include the abundance and destructiveness of nature; not to mention both the casual and the calculated cruelty of man himself? Can he also abstract himself from his limited present to account for the past and predict the future? Is it possible to mesh man's time scale or his desires with those of nature? Paul's whimsical killing of the two grasshoppers which he had previously helped to mate suggests the possibility that another order of being could contemplate the destruction 175
0 of the World War and see it "as flies to wanton boys," but that kind of fatalism satisfies none of the characters. Each of the members of the Communist group to which Anna belongs represents a possible but limited world view which emerges in their contemplation of the African landscape. Paul Blackenhurst claims that Africa confirms his Hobbesian view of the universe: "'Can we be other than grateful for this education into the realities of nature red in beak and claw?'" (G.N., p.426) Paul's cold cynicism and his "lively apprecia tion of any moral or social anomaly" (G.N., p.75) find support not only in the sight of teeming insect life, but also in the knowledge that the land on which they are shooting pigeons once belonged to the Shona and Ndebele and is also covered with Bushman paintings, 33 "But most were ruined because white oafs threw stones at them, not knowing their value ... (G.N., p.lSO) For Paul, the remnants of these paintings provide "a fitting commentary to it all." This evidence of the wanton destruction of several civilizations to make way for the white settlers (who are now enthusiastically fighting a war to halt Hitler's racist menace) demonstrates to Paul that, since destruction and exploitation form the basis of human life, he is justified in his intention to return to London after the war to become a "'captain of industry.'" (G.N., p.76) With his usual ironic detachment, Paul asks Willi, "'Comrade Willi, would you not say that there is some principle at work not yet admitted to 176
your philosophy? Some principle of destruction?'" {G.N., p.427-428) Paul sees the "principle of destruction" as a kind of archetype equally visible in nature, in history, in their own actions. Such a principle makes class rule and exploit ation inevitable. Anna does not want to accept the static and one-dimensional position represented by Paul, but she has no adequate perception of her own which will account for the "destructiveness" she sees, yet avoid the collapse of all distinctions evident in Paul's view. Paul's cynicism may derive, as Anna suspects, from "frustrated idealism," (G.N., p.93) but it is nonetheless deadly. Anna is drawn to Paul, although she frequently resents his arrogant behaviour to others. Like Paul, Anna enjoys the incongruities life in the colony perpetually offers. "I dare say the real reason I stayed in the Colony so long after there was any need was because such places allow opportunity for this type of enjoyment." (G.N., p.l05) Anna reveals her deepening realization of the danger of the cynicism Paul embodies through her portrayal in the yellow notebook of his namesake, Paul Tanner, who allows the cynical dimension of his personality to overshadow his idealism. In the midst of her breakdown, when Anna is open to the invasion of other person alities, it is the dream of Paul Blackenhurst's entering her body which represents the greatest danger for her. She fights against this image, as "against cold, a terrible cold." (G.N., p.600) This is not only the coldness of death, but also the 177
chill of the suppression of all feeling. Jimmy rejects Paul's "realities of nature" and claims that he wants nothing more than for "the long littleness of life to begin." He does not care that Paul's "realities" cannot be reconciled with the "high-minded platitudes" of their education. Repressing knowledge of the former, he will hold to the latter. However, his inability to come to terms with his own affectionate and self-destructive impulses provides the incident which ends in Mrs. Boothby's firing Jackson. While Paul shoots pigeons, Willi reads Stalin on the Colonial Question. For him past genocide and present destruc tion are merely a prelude to the socialist future (pre-history). Within his progressive view of history, individuals scarcely count. He is not disturbed when Jackson is fired from his job for, "'Now he'll be like the others,'" {G.N., p.l48) forced to leave his family on the reserve while he works for wages in town. According to Willi only a "sentimentalist" would see a tragedy in either Jackson's or George Hounslow's predicament. The hardship of neither family nor the pangs of conscience George suffers on account of his relationship with Marie seem important, for the guaranteed socialist future makes individual behaviour {outside of meetings and organizations) irrelevant. Willi asks Ted, "'Do you imagine that if you are kind to servants you are going to advance the cause of socialism?'" When Ted answers decisively "'Yes,'" Willi remarks, "'Then I 178
0 can't help you.'" (G.N., p.88-9) At the same time Willi sees nothing anomalous in Paul's prediction that the land where they are shooting will one day be covered "by semi-detached houses filled by well-clothed black workers," (G.N., p.430) whether a capitalist or socialist government develops the country. The exigencies of industrialization will dictate the future everyday life for workers in the colony, not the labels adhered to by politicians and bureaucrats. There Paul and Willi find themselves in agreement. Maryrose is the "sentimentalist" who persuades Paul not to shoot the last pigeon at which he aims. In contrast to Willi, Maryrose sees only individuals as important. Her brother's death and her lover's refusal to marry her have deadened her emotions so she finds it impossible to get in volved with any of the men she meets. Through portraying the character of Maryrose, Anna reveals something of the sexual dynamics of the group. Although Maryrose is clear-sighted enough to cut through the confusions of many of the group's discussions, her ability goes unappreciated by its male members for she does not use their jargon. Because she puts her observations simply and directly, the others "thought nothing of her capacity for political thought." (G.N., p.90) Nonetheless all the men flirt with her precisely because she makes herself seem unavailable, and they like her because in a feminine way she allows them to patronise her. Anna's life in Africa has allowed her to remain detached 179
from her own feelings. Her stay among the colonials is toler able only because of the ironic attitude she constantly maintains. This irony protects her not only from colonial imbecility but also from her own vulnerability. Anna con stantly observes and judges - her lover, her political friends, herself. Only after she has left Africa and written her novel about it does Anna self-consciously address this detachment as a problem. Anna's reflections on her wartime experiences in Africa become part of her complex attempt to integrate the feelings she has wanted to deny or reject into her sense of herself and the world. Her perspective on her memories of Africa and her ability to see them in a new way become a touchstone for her psychic growth following her breakdown. Political events in the Africa of the 1950's are also significant; the last segment of the black notebook contains newspaper clippings referring to "violence, death, rioting, hatred, in some part of Africa." (G.N., p.524) Watching the progress of liberation struggles in Africa leads Anna to incorporate a profound cynicism into the formation of her characters in Free Women. When Molly asks Anna about "your friend Mr. Mathlong - you know, the African," Anna replies, "'Well he's currently in prison so I suppose by this time next year he'll be Prime Minister.'" (G.N., p.Sl) This is the kind of self-limiting cynicism born of frustrated idealism combined with a feeling of personal impotence which Anna in the notebooks struggles to 180
transcend. This cynicism provides a defense against pain and disappointment, but it destroys the possibility of action. In the last section of the blue notebook Anna conjures up the figure of Mr. Mathlong as an image of "detachment. He was the man who performed actions, played roles, that he believed to be necessary for the good of others, even while he preserved an ironic doubt about the results of his actions." G.N., p.597) This "ironic doubt" is very different from the "dry critical irony" of Paul Tanner which had "slowly defeated the idealism in him." (G.N., p.617-8) What Anna learns from work ing over these experiences again and again is that she must be able to integrate her own idealism with her understanding of cruelty and destructiveness in order to accept the "burden of re-creating order out of the chaos that my life had become." (G.N., p.619) All of Lessing's characters who refuse to accept the colonial order as "natural" and inevitable are seen in situ ations where they are growing, maturing, or experiencing important expansions of their imaginations. In contrast to her hardened colonials who are psychologically stunted and doomed to repetition, these characters have the potential to change and develop in important ways. The bonds of domination, however, are not destroyed through merely abstractly or intellectually negating them, for they have been too deeply internalized. Both Anna Wulf and Martha Quest attempt to gain insight into themselves through psychotherapy and try to have some impact on the world through membership in the C.P. In both cases these experiences are important preparations for more intense psychological events. Both political commitment and psychotherapy can be seen as modes of transcending personal limitations and illusions about the self. However, in her novels Lessing depicts these modes of liberation as failing her characters in crucial ways. To understand the direction of the novels, it is important to examine Lessing's portrayal of her characters' experience in these realms.
0 182
N 0 T E S
1 Doris Lessing, African Stories (New York: Popular Lib rary, 1964), p. vii. All further references to this work appear in the text.
2 Mr. Matushi in Children of Violence is a notable exception. By contrast, in the novels-of Nadine Gordimer educated Africans often appear as principal characters and they pre dominate in some novels by black African writers, such as Richard Rive's Emerlency (London: Faber, 1964), or Peter Abrahams' ~Wreath _££ Udomo (London: Faber, 1956).
3 Elspeth Huxley does portray such a character in The Walled City (London: Chatto and Windus Ltd., 1948}.
4 Peter Abrahams' novel Mine Boy (London: Heinemann, 1946) ends with black workers and white supervisors going out on strike to protest unsafe working conditions which were resp onsible for the death of two workers, one black and one white. In Richard Rive's Emergency one of the main charact ers is having an affair with a white woman. Nadine Gordimer's Occasion for Loving (New York: Viking, 1963) focuses on the affair-0f a white woman and an African man, while her novel ~World of Strangers (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1958) portrays the development of a friendship between a self-consciously apolitical Englishman who emi grates to South Africa to work and an African who rejects politival activism. Most of Nadine Gordimer's novels focus on the complexities of black/white personal relationships which attempt to transcend the limitations of the South African social and political system. Lessing's fiction creates a world where such relationships seem almost imposs ible, except in very restricted circumstances.
5 Doris Lessing, Martha Quest (London: Panther Books Ltd., 1964), p. 56. All further references to this work appear in the text.
6 Doris Lessing, A Proper Marriage (New York: New American Library, 1964), p~ 5. All further references to this work appear in the text.
7 In Going Home Lessing notes, "in a country where people are always conscious of other people's colour or kind, hatred and prejudice are never restricted to coloured people only." 0 (G.H., p. 95) 183
- 8 In his discussion of racism Peter van den Berghe des cribes societies like South Africa or Rhodesia as "Herrenvolk democracies": "The egalitarian and libertarian ideals of the Enlightenment spread by the American and French revolutions conflicted, of course, with racism but they paradoxically contributed to its development. Faced with the blatant contradiction between the treatment of slave and colonial peoples and the official rhetoric of freedom and equality, Europeans and white North Americans began to dichotomize humanity between men and submen (or the 'civilized' and the 'savage'). The scope of applicability of the egalitarian ideals was restricted to 'the people,' that is, the whites .•• The desire to preserve both the profitable forms of discrim ination and exploitation and the democratic ideology made it necessary to deny humanity to the oppressed group. 11 Race and Racism: ~ Comparative Perspective (New York: John Wiley and Sons Inc., 1967), p. 17-18.
9 Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing (New York: Popular Library, 1950), p. 11. All further references to this work appear in the text.
10 In A Dying Colonialism Fanon remarks, "In the colonies .•• there is something of the cowboy and the pioneer even in the intellectual. 11 (p. 134)
11 For an extensive discussion of paternalism within slave holding society, especially the American South, see Eugene Genovese's Roll, Jordan, Roll (New York: Random House, 1972). Genovese discusses the ways in which slaves were able to tur.n paternalism to their own advantage.
12 Doris Lessing, Five Short Novels (London: Panther Books Ltd., 1953), p. 2ss:- All further references to this work appear in the text. 13 Jabavu teaches himself to read by poring over comic books evidently prepared for an audience of white children. In one of the stories he studies, a white hero rescues a girl from villains wearing black hats. Black signifies wicked ness; Jabavu of course identifies with the white hero. It is interesting to compare this incident in the story to Fanon's discussion of Martiniquean children's reading of comic books and magazines. In such publications, "The Wolf, the Devil, the Evil Spirit, the Bad Man, the Savage are always symbolized by Negroes or Indians; since there is always identification with the victor, the little Negro, quite as easily as the little white boy becomes an explorer, 184
an adventurer, a missionary 'who faces the danger of being eaten by the wicked Negroes.'" The black child "subjectively adopts a white man's attitude. He invests the hero, who is white, with all his own aggression." (B.S.W.M., p. 146-147)
14 Here we have an example of the self-perpetuating situation described by Sartre in his introduction to Memmi's The Colonizer and the Colonized: "Oppression justifies itself through oppression: the oppressors produce and maintain by force the evils that render the oppressed, in their eyes, more and more like what they would have to be like to deserve their fate." (p. xxxvi.) 15 According to A.J.B. Hughes and J. Van Velsen in their account of the Ndebele, it is accepted practice for a suitor to sleep with his projected bride when he visits her before marriage. Small gifts may be given to the parents before the ceremony, but lobola is often not handed over until after children are born.
16 Claude Levi-Strauss, Elementary Structures of Kinship, trans. James Harle Bell, John Richard von Strumer, and Rodney Needham, ed. (Boston: Beacon Press 1969). p. 466-467.
17 In Black Skin,White Masks, Fanon notes the way that racial stereotyp1ng f1ts 1nto a scheme of personal fears to create "Negrophobia": "To suffer from a phobia of Negroes is to be afraid of the biological. For the Negro is only biological. The Negroes are animals ... (B.S.W.M., p. 165)
18 For an extensive discussion of parallels between The Grass Is Singing and Lawrence's work see Charles and Liebetraut Sarvan, "D.H. Lawrence and Doris Lessing's The Grass Is Singing," Modern Fiction Studies, 24 (Winter:-1978-79')""; p. 533-537.
19 Lessing refers to the settler version of Rhodesian history as "an imaginary epic story called 'The White Occupation of Rhodesia,' concocted by the whites to flatter the whites." Introduction to Vambe's An Ill-Fated People, p. xviii.
20 One instance is in the diatribe of Dostoevsky's anti-hero in Notes from Underground where the anthill is connected with the utilitarian attempt to create a utopia which would only take into account that side of man which responds to "reason and arithmetic": "Perhaps he likes his objective only from a distance; perhaps he only likes to contemplate it and not live in it, preferring to leave it, when it comes down to it, to 185
animals such as ants, sheep, and such. Of course, ants are different. They have a wonderful everlasting piece of engin eering on which to work- the anthill." Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of ~ Rid iculous Man, and Selections from the House of the Dead,trans. Andrew R:-MacAndrew (New York: New American:Library,l961)p.ll6.
21 Mrs. Clarke's attitude is typical of white settlers in Rhodesian towns who attempt to keep African servants and labourers restricted to locations which are always inadequate for their numbers. As Vambe remarks: "In Rhodesian towns it seems that the African is considered as a form of pollution, a menace, a hazard, to the urban settler. Of course he is accepted everywhere as a source of labour, but once he steps outside the factory gates or residence of his white master he assumes a totally different aspect." Vambe, From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, p. 146.
22 Denis Duerden, The Invisible Present: African Art and Literature (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), p. 7-8.---
23 Duerden, p. 22.
24 It is difficult here not to recall some of the military metaphors used by Zhdanov and his followers in their discuss ions of art and literature. Left-wing critical discussions continually turned books and writers into arsenals and armies. It is understandable that the artist wants to have a way to refer to the impact of his work, and the atmosphere of contin uous struggle from 1917 through the Cold War has influenced many left-wing writers to adopt this mode of discourse.
25 Doris Lessing, "The Small Personal Voice," p. 14.
26 The significance of the fantasy becomes clearer when comp ared with Memmi's characterization of colonial police: "The representatives of the authorities, cadres, policemen, etc., recruited from among the colonized, form a category of the colonized which attempts to escape from its political and social condition. But in so doing, by choosing to place them selves in the colonizer's service to protect his interests exclusively, they end up by adopting his ideology, even with regard to their own values and their own lives." Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized , p. 16.
27 Vambe describes the behaviour of black police in Rhodesia as follows: "They came into the African villages for all sorts of reasons and were a law unto themselves, just as were the 186
Europeans. They used the sjambok freely. They were arrogant and insulted everybody without cause. Each man in uniform insisted on being addressed as ••• son of the Native Commissioner or the Government, a self-aggrandizing title which was accepted as meaning that whatever they did or said had the full backing of the white power they represented." Vambe, An Ill-Fated People, p. 107-108.
28 A quotation from Black Skin, White Masks illustrates what happens psychologically to Jabavu in his first encounter with white civilization: "When the Negro makes contact with the white world, a certain sensitizing action takes place ..• The black man stops behaving as an actional person. The goal of his behaviour will be The Other {in the guise of the white man), for The Other alone can give him worth. {B.S.W.M., p. 154)
29 Vambe comments on the disparity between tribal morality and ''civilized" morality and the impact on Africans of an individ ualistic ethic combined with racial discrimination: "At home, behaving dishonestly or stealing from anyone would never have entered the head of one of these people. But fifteen minutes away in Salisbury, many of our working relatives threw all their tribal restraint and Christian scruples to the winds and regarded anyone who did not live on his wits as a fool, or as someone who was not civilized; as if the essence of Western civilization was dishonesty and deviousness in dealing with your fellow man. This view is perhaps to be expected, in an environment where the white man sets the standards of conduct by which every individual was out for himself, for they were acutely aware of exploitation and discrimination by the European settlers." Vambe, An Ill-Fated People, p.246.
30 J.V. Stalin, Problems of Leninism (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1972), p. 862. Stalin simplified Marx's schema from the Critique of Political Economy (1859) by abandoning any reference to the Asiatic mode of production.
31 Stalin, p. 858.
32 Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook {New York; Ballantine Books, 1962), p. 63. All further references to this work appear in the text.
33 The Bushmen had been massacred by the combined efforts of whites and blacks; the few who remained were driven into the Kalahari Desert. For an account of their fate, see Laurens van der Post, The Lost World of the Kalahari {Harmondworth: c Penguin Books Ltd.~58). ----- CHAPTER III
MODES OF LIBERATION
Lessing's portrayal of political organizations
Lessing's use of psychotherapy and madness in her fiction
c 187
LESSING'S PORTRAYAL OF POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS
In both her major works Lessing explores at length and through multiple incidents and characters the exper ience of participating in political organizations and the process of undergoing various forms of psychotherapy. For her characters, these efforts represent their attempts to free themselves and others from the constrictions of an authoritarian system which they have internalized. The colonial order is an extreme example of such a system, but the lives that Anna and Martha both live and observe in London are equally constrained, even if the means of domin ation are much more diffused. In the colony power remains naked and visible; in the metropolis it attempts to disguise itself. In both The Golden Notebook and Children of Violence Lessing portrays the limitations of traditional left-wing political activity which attempts purportedly to organize individuals to undermine the capitalist system, and through such efforts to defeat collectively the taint of individual istic values within themselves. Although the members of the socialist organizations in her fictions are inspired with both moral idealism and a visionary dedication to an idea of total revolution, they cannot succeed in their stated goals for they ignore the domain of human subjectivity. They mini mize the extent to which capitalist hegemony has been 188
internalized within the personality structure of the individual. The focus on the collective leads members of these groups to ignore the personal and fail to comprehend
the ways in which their own refusal to consider "trivial personal matters" important perpetuates the patterns of authoritarian domination and subordination of capitalist society. In addition, their utopian idealism emphasizing man's perfectibility leaves out of account important aspects of human reality which are supposed to disappear after the revolution. Thus their organizations become mirror images of the society they purport to oppose. In Children of Violence Lessing portrays in great detail the rising curve of Martha's idealism as well as her disillusionment with politics. In The Golden Notebook Lessing condenses a whole sense of Anna's political activity into a few symbolic incid- ents. She places the emphasis on Anna's attempt to rescue herself from the legacy of cynicism her political experience has bestowed on her. For Martha joining the Communists in Zambesia represents a rejection of everything her husband and her parents hold sacred, for the Party members have a commitment to the estab- lishment in the near future of an egalitarian community which will eliminate all social distinctions based on class, race, ethnic background or sex. These distinctions help people like Douglas and the Quests to maintain the tenuous sense of them- selves they possess. Although Martha is attracted to the 189
- Party - at least partially - "because Communism would do away with the family," (F.G.C., p.70) she does not find in it the antithesis of family life she desires. Instead the Party reproduces for her many of the same kinds of conflicts in different forms. When Martha is on the verge of leaving Douglas, joining the Party gives her both a mode of resistance to his appeals to stay and an alternative way of life. Jasmine Cohen's analysis of Douglas's behaviour reduces all complexities to the simple materialist formula: "'All that's wrong with him is that his property instinct is outraged.'" (P.M., p. 307) Jasmine also gives Martha the warning that precipitates her moving out "'There might be a revolutionary situation at any moment- and here you are wasting time on personal matters.'" (P.M., p.337) This denigration of "personal matters" in the face of the assumption of imminent revolution enables Martha to repress some of the anguish connected with leaving Douglas and Caroline. In addition, Martha's conversion to communism
is accompanied by a profound anger as well as a desire to ascribe blame to those responsible for her former feelings of impotence and futility: The emotion that gripped her was mostly rage: she was twenty-two: she had been born during that revolution, which to say the least, had been important in the world's development, and yet this was the first time she had been told anything about it. Her rage was even greater because she had been a willing accomplice in this process of not think ing ••• Her upbringing, her education, her associates, the newspapers, had all conspired to bring her to the age of twenty-two, an adult, that is, without 190
feeling more about what was going on in the socialist sixth of the world - which happened to be the title of one of the books - than a profound reluctance to think about it at all. (P.M., p.285) Martha feels that there has been a kind of conspiracy which has effectively rendered her passive, then pushed her into a trivializing mode of life devoid of ideals and meaning, under the illusion that this was "normality." In this mood of anger and desire for revenge, Martha can disengage herself from all her former friends and associates as well as from her husband and child. Her first months of activism create a "bright shell," where she lives, trying to avoid the "impersonal pain that seemed to be lying in wait for her moments of weakness like an enemy whose name she did not know."1 The breakdown of Martha's marriage and her total loss of respect for Douglas leave her with an emotional void which membership in the Party fills. We can see at the outset that Martha's sense of the group is emotionally, even erotically, charged. At the first meeting of Help for Our Allies which she attends with Mr. Maynard, Martha observes two things which give her the impression that "these were people to live and die for." (P.M., p.l89) The first was the presence of an African, Mr. Matushi: "This was the first time in her whole life, and she was now twenty-one - the first time spent in a colony where nine-tenths of the population were dark-skinned - that she had sat in a room with a dark-skinned person as an equal." The other factor that warmed Martha to the people at 191
the meeting was the sight of an unknown couple in love: "Passion shone out all at once from the dingy room, and even from the measured sentences of Mr. Pyecroft." (P.M., p.l90) As Martha becomes more interested in the group, she is drawn into the atmosphere of intense comradeship. When she is invited to go with Jasmine to a meeting, "Martha waited for that first appointment with Jasmine like a girl going to her lover." (P.M., p.281) Martha longs to be included in "the look of shared mission" which she observes Jasmine and William exchange. Until she becomes a member of the group, she feels "lonely and excluded." Once she joins, however, the Party provides her with an alternative way of living and takes the place of the active, but empty, social life she had had before. Instead of going to sundowner parties, she attends meetings. More than that, the Party becomes her surrogate family. If she is away from other members of the group, "She felt let down as if a physical support had been removed." (R.S., p.25) Martha's decision to attach herself to the Party is born out of her emotional needs, her anger, and her new found enthusiasm for the Soviet Union which becomes linked with her previously vague utopian idealism. The shift of public opinion which followed the Nazi invasion of Russia makes literature about the Soviet Union more accessible. Reading it inspires Martha with a whole new world view. She goes through a conversion experience during which she sheds the cynicism and sense of futility which had previously prevented her from 192
engaging herself in political activity: "With one sudden move- ment of her whole being she discarded it •.. It was as if her eyes had been opened and her ears made to hear; it was like a rebirth. For the first time in her life she had been offered an ideal to live for." (P.M., p.285-6) It is impossible to miss the irony directed at Martha through the religious note struck in the phrasing of this passage. However, equally important is the fact that the Party does appeal to her imagination and her concern for human emancipation. For Martha the Communist passion for social change finds links with the utopian visions of her past. The group's idealism reminds her of the four-gated city which she had envisioned on the veld in her adolescence. On the evening that the group expands its membership, as Martha listens to Anton describe the anticipated future, she feels that his
11 calm voice was linking her with those parts of her childhood she still owned, the moments of experience which seemed to her enduring and true; the moments of illumination and belief."
(~., p.62) Now she can share this vision with others: "The future they dreamed of seemed just around the corner; they could almost touch it. Each saw an ideal town, clean, noble and beautiful, soaring up over the actual town they saw, which consisted in this area of sordid little shops and third-rate cafes." (R.S., p.34) The group coheres as long as its members can sustain this sense of a present in which real collective purpose and activity exist, and a sense of the future which 193
will include the whole world in that same ideal collective: When you're a communist you can go to any country in the world and be with friends at once. When members of the group talked of the future, it was as if they were interchangeable with each other, one country the same as another; they were part of the great band of international brothers, and as they talked their eyes met, exchanging looks of infinite devotion and trust. The group breaks up when the distance between vision and reality becomes too great. Both internal tensions and the change in the post-war atmosphere fragment the group. Although the Party is committed to eradicating all forms of social distinction based on race and sex, in its political practice it falls into the paternalistic patterns typical of other sectors of the colony. This affects both its relations with Africans inside and outside the group, and the relations of men and women within the group to one another. Their admiration of and respect for the Soviet Union lead Martha and her political associates to model themselves on a Leninist party. Since most of them have little or no experi- ence with thiskind of organization, they are forced to rely on Anton's leadership for he is from Germany and brings with him the moral authority of the party which had existed there. In addition, he demonstrates more familiarity than the others with the classic Marxist-Leninist texts. However, this familiarity is actually belied when he speaks, for he seems either to be caught up in a kind of religious exaltation or 'to be making a sociological "analysis" which inevitably 194
concludes that the only possible course of action is to attend an even greater number of meetings. Although Anton is often described as reading a volume of Lenin, this usually occurs when he wants to shut Martha out of his consciousness and punish her for disagreeing with or opposing him. The limitations to Anton's schematic Marxism are epitomized in one of his homilies: "Two communists on either side of the world, ought, if presented with the same set of facts, to come to exactly the same conclusion - that is the strength of Marxism. 11 (R.S., p.l92) Anton confuses Marxism with Communist Party dogma. For him, Marxism is a sort of schema reducible to propositions and axioms like those of geometry. He turns a potentially flexible method of analysis into mechanical materialism in order to compensate for his own lack of self-assurance. In describing his notion of what an ideal communist is, Anton sketches a model of self-denial more appropriate for missionaries than political revolutionaries: 'A communist, comrades, is a person who is utterly, totally dedicated to the cause of freeing humanity. A communist must consider himself a dead man on leave .•• A communist must be prepared to give up everything: his family, his wife, his children, at a word from the Party. A communist must be prepared to work eighteen hours a day, or twenty four hours if need be ••• A communist knows that in himself he is nothing, but insofar as he represents the suppressed working people he is everything; but he is not worthy to represent the working people, unless every moment of his life is dedicated to becoming worthy of them.' (R.S., p.37) Lessing seems to intend a certain irony here, not only because Anton is so far from living up to the ideal picture he draws, 195
but also because the tone and phrasing of the speech itself are clearly religious. Party members in his formulation are encouraged to make sacrifices for the realization of an ideal in an abstract future, for an abstract category of people; real individuals in the here and now are denied importance. Lessing often associates Anton with imagery of whiteness and light; he is almost colorless in appearance. His "pale blue eyes" which "shine from the white light above his head" (R.S., p.63) suggest a caricature of an angel. He most appeals to other members when he is conveying to them some sort of emotional exaltation which carries them all away. The display Anton makes of his dedication to the Party compensates for the weak sense of self he demonstrates in personal encounters. His compulsions mask his infantile dependencies and manifest profound tensions and fears of loss of control which Martha comes to suspect might lead him to a breakdown. There is also a suggestion of violence and destruc tiveness in Anton's gestures: at another meeting Lessing describes him as transferring himself from a bench to a chair "with the movement of a hinged knife opening and shutting." {R.S., p.35) The ideal of discipline and denial of the self which he recommends are destructive of any real sense of liberation and mask a barely contained violence which can be turned against either the self or others. The tacit division of labour established at the outset is reinforced for, although party members make numerous 196
resolutions to study, they are usually too busy with meetings to do any reading. What Leninism actually means to the group becomes more clear at a particularly ironic moment when Anton at the end of a meeting says in his most exalted manner, 'It is hard to become a real communist, a com munist in every fibre ••• I remember when I first became a communist, I was given some words to learn by heart, and told to repeat them whenever I became filled with doubts or despondency ••• "Man's dearest possession is life; and since it is given to him to live but once, he must live so as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live that, dying, he can say: All my life and all my strength was given to the finest cause in the world - the liberation of mankind."' (R. s., p. 4 5) Other members respond by feeling insulted; they do not need this kind of inspirational homily. As Martha comments, "'We all know it by heart .•. It was the first thing of Lenin's I ever read.'" The irony is that the passage is not a quotation from Lenin, but from the Soviet novel by Nikolai Alexeyevich Ostrovsky published in two different English translations as The Making of a Hero or How the Steel Was Tempered. 2 However, the passage embodies some of the things that Leninism signi- fies to the members of the group - a kind of existential anxiety to give meaning to life, combined with the self- abnegating sense of dedication which for them is the essence of Communism. The Bolshevik model of organization which members of the group choose involves them in two assumptions: the need for an authoritarian, bureaucratic party structure and the adoption 197
of an elitist attitude toward those outside the party. In
spite of the small size of the initial group, democratic
centralism dictates that at their first meeting the members
must elect a committee to take decisions. The committee meets
immediately after the other group members have left the room
to decide on the time for the next meeting. No one comments
on the absurdity of such a procedure. After Jackie and William
are posted, Anton thinks that Andrew should be added to the
"central committee," which would mean that a committee of
three would be running a group of five. At this point there
are finally objections from Marjorie and Martha. When the
group expands to fifteen members, the first thing that Anton,
in his compulsive way, wants to do is "discuss organization,"
and he proposes "that there should be a formal group meeting
every week, attendance obligatory, for group business, reports
on work done, criticism and self-criticism. Also that there
should be a meeting every week, attendance obligatory, for
Marxist education. Also, that there should be a meeting every
week, attendance obligatory, for education in political
organization ... (R.S., p.66) Again others successfully object
to the absurdity of what he feels is necessary, but the stress
on obedience to discipline, compulsory attendance, and other
authoritarian dicta is not lost.
As chairman, Anton begins to enforce discipline like a
fussy school master. He 11 cannot tolerate unpunctuality" and c puts Jasmine and Tommy "under severe censure" (R.S., p. 86) 198
when they arrive thirty minutes late for one meeting because they stayed too long at another. On a particularly hot evening, after the crisis over the meeting in the Location has broken, when group members decide to have a beer, Anton refuses to relax for a moment. He remarks, "'Here we sit drinking beer, and meanwhile our comrades are dying for us.'" (R.S., p.228) Although the political meeting at the Location creates more waves than anything in which the group has previously participated, Anton refuses to takes its reper cussions into account. It becomes apparent to what degree he is out of touch with reality when he calls an "emergency" party meeting and forces Martha to put emotional pressure on all the other members to attend. When those who can be reached at short notice reluctantly assemble - Marie duPreez leaves a sick child, Piet a trade union meeting, and Marjorie a sick bed- Anton announces what the emergency is: "'Comrades, it is urgently necessary that we should recover our sense of discipline.'" He proposes "'a series of lectures on the history of the Communist Party.'" (R.S., p.256) More interested in retaining control of the Party than in promoting the political effectiveness of its members, Anton refuses to make any serious evaluation of his theory or practice, even after the group has shrunk to three members. No one ever questions the assumption that the group can exist only within a structure that enforces as rigid a sense of hierarchy and authority as is found in the capitalist state. 199
- In Leasing's portrayal, this insistence on an authoritarian structure is one of the group's primary weaknesses for, instead of encouraging the political and intellectual development of group members, it ensures regressive dependence on a strong leader. In the party hierarchy women assume their "natural" place as secretaries and subordinates. From beginning to end, the history of the group is a record of male struggles for power and male possessiveness of women. Male members of the party constantly jockey with one another for power and influence. The most obvious conflict at the beginning occurs between Anton, the professional communist for whom the others are a "bunch of amateurs," (R.S., p.25) and Jackie, the self-styled "freelance of the revolution." (P.M., p. 292) They continue to snipe at one another until Jackie is posted. Jackie's departure leaves Anton in undisputed control until the new group of servicemen enter and rivalry among the males continues. When the second drama between communist bureaucrat and corn- munist rebel (Bill Bluett) splits the group, Marjorie can only ask, "'What's happened, I don't understand.'" (R.S., p.l41) She does not comprehend the combination of male competitiveness and ideological differences which splits the group again and again. While the men in the group assert themselves and their views at both public and private meetings, the women become competent organizational secretaries. Jasmine has perfected 200
her skills when Martha first meets her; she "understood that mysterious process organization; and people always suggested her first if a secretary were needed." (R.S., p.7) Martha herself learns all that she needs to know about organizing within the first three months of her membership in the Party. When Martha begins to have doubts about the group's structure, she allows her sense of her own feminine ignorance to dispel them: "I don't know enough, I simply don't know anything about anything." (R.S., p.l92) No matter what lip service men in the Party pay to the notion of sexual equality, in reality they are imbued with the most traditionally sex-stereotyped attitudes. Members of the group realize that the "woman question" exists as a legitimate political issue. They discuss "the freeing of women from male tyranny in eastern parts of the Soviet Union," (P.M., p.307) but there will never be any mention of male tyranny among Party members for their own oppressiveness goes unrecognized. When the servicemen in the Party criticize the women for wearing make-up, Anton puts them off by sayino/. "'You are raising the whole question of the position of women. May I suggest that we appoint an evening for the discussion of the position of women?'" (R.S., p.l34) Of course, the "position of women" is never discussed, nor could an issue which touches the lives of all members so closely be resolved solely through discussion. On more than one occasion Anton notes that "the problems of women have not been given sufficient thought in the 201
movement." He thinks that because women have special problems, "a woman comrade is entitled to help from her male comrades."
{~., p.57) The paternalistic note is underscored here by the way Anton takes charge of Martha during the conversation: he orders her food, gives her good advice "about her health and her digestion," and pays for her meal. After Anton and Martha are married, he uses a typical male ploy, his supposed inability to deal with practical details- "'But, Matty, you're so good at these things and I'm not"' (R.S., p.204) - to force Martha to take charge of this aspect of their lives. As he himself says, "'The personal life of a comrade should be arranged so that it interferes as little as possible with work.'" For him, this arranging means forcing Martha to manage all their domestic chores. Sexual tension is generated within the group by the mere fact that so many of the members are British servicemen, away from home, stuck in a town they despise, in a colony where women were in the minority even before they arrived. Each of
the RAF men proposes to each of the women in turn, and feels resentful each time he is turned down. Bill Bluett is the most aggressive in his display of sexual resentment. He masks his hostility under a critique of the women's "bourgeois" behaviour, although he himself is "proper bourgeois." (R.S., p.76) United to one another by the prototypical male bond, the army, the RAF men gang up on the women of the group in the political attack shouted by Jimmy: "'All of you- lipstick and 202
- red nails and fashion magazines. That's not communist. Women should be respected and not behave like •.. well, I can't bring myself to say what.'" (R.S., p.l34) He confuses what might be regarded as a communist ideal of simplicity of dress with the traditional notion of how a woman must behave in a world where men divide them into two categories - good women and whores. Concomitant with the authoritarian structures within the Party is the elitist assumption that party members comprise the revolutionary avant garde who must inform the working class of their historic mission. As Anton puts it on one occasion, "'The working people are the inheritors of all culture, all knowledge, all art, and it is our task to explain this to them.'" (R.S., p. 37) The arrogance implicit in this statement carries with it a wholesale contempt for those who do not share party members' political view points. This contempt is not recognized for what it is by group members, who never have to reconcile it with their idea of themselves as the only true humanists "with an all-comprehensive compas- sion for the whole of humanity." (R.S., p.45) Members judge others solely on the basis of their political beliefs or their practical usefulness. This leads them into adopting attitudes towards individuals and organizations which are highly manipu- lative. Thus they label Boris and Betty Krueger (who refused at the outset to join the party) "Trotskyists," and take the decision: 203
That they should be watched; that they should not be allowed to gain control of anything; that they should not be allowed to know that the group existed; that they should be 'exposed' at public meetings when they made statements detrimental to the honour of the Soviet Union ..• Simultaneously, however, they should be 'worked with' and 'made use of.' (R.S., p.42-3) Although the party comes into existence only after it is identified and attacked by the liberals on the Help for Our Allies executive, the members of the inner circle believe that they are directing the larger "mass" organizations because they see themselves as the only ones with a clear sense of mission and a consistent political position. As Anton puts it when he is criticizing Jackie Bolton for undermining Help for Our Allies: "'We had decided, quite correctly, that the Aid for our Allies should be kept respectable and unpolitical, that its task was to raise money for medical supplies for the
Soviet Union and nothing ~lse, and that it should be run by that bunch of social democrats - under our guidance, of course!'" (R.S., p.23) In the eyes of party members, each organization has its own appropriate task, and the rhetoric they use at each type of meeting is adjusted to what initiates think other members will expect and accept. Above all, potential contributors must not be alienated. Thus Andrew and Anton criticize Jackie for the openness with which he speaks at Help for Our Allies meetings: "'No one but an amateur would use the Help for Our Allies as a platform for Revolution,'" (P.M., p.312) according to Anton. The attitude of the initiates to most individuals in 204
these larger organizations is clearly contemptuous; at best a few might become "contacts" who are "worked on" until they "make the journey from a willing compliance with the yeasty new mood to the utter self-abnegation which was the essence of being 'ripe.'" (R.S., p.46) The very notion of "contacts" implies an alienated idea of human relations; "contacts" replace friends that members might have outside the group. If they are conscientious, members do not have a personal life which is unconnected with political work. Like Willi in The Golden Notebook, Anton can analyze the importance of individuals right out of existence, as he does in the discussion about the Coloured Quarter. The RAF members of the Party maintain that they have made "'valuable contacts in the Quarter,'" but for Anton "group discipline," signified by punctual arrival at meetings, is more important. Work in the Coloured Quarter should be relegated to one afternoon of newspaper selling a week because the small number of Coloured people in the colony - a few thousand - means that they have no real political significance. Thus for Anton it follows that, "'None of you will get involved with rent problems, birth control problems or any other such problems.'" (R.S., p.91) According to Anton, a correct political understanding prevents any real involvement in everyday life - either one's own or anyone else's. The relationship of the Party to the African population is even more anomalous. Political and economic conditions in 205
- the colony make the recruitment of Africans into the Party both necessary and impossible. The difficulty whites have meeting Africans in any capacity other than that of a servant and the fear of antagonizing other whites in the colony if they make unconventional overtures to Africans are sources of unending frustration to the group. Members feel a "continual hurt and embarrassment on behalf of the Africans" (R.S., p.l66) whom they have no idea how to reach. The only African who is, temporarily, a member of the Party, Elias Phiri, is actually a paid spy for Mr. Maynard. Group members never suspect this although he speaks at meetings about "'the communists,' as if he wasn't one of them," (R.S., p.l29) and when he leaves the group, he makes a speech "against his people who, he said, were all backward savages and fit for nothing but servitude." (R.S., p.l67) Because Elias is African and the Party members adopt a special attitude toward him - "the effort to avoid some forms of racial discrimination leads often to others" (R.S., p.67) -they never understand the extent of his betrayal. Everyone in the group agrees to the necessity of address ing the African population. Anton's analysis dictates this conclusion: "'The working people of the colony are black,'" (P.M., p.295) and it is the working people who will make the revolution. Jackie Bolton is blithely optimistic at the Party's founding meeting: "'We can easily recruit the Africans. There is no problem. '" (P .M., p. 314) As long as the group exists, members continue to expect to spread "links among the 206
African proletariat." {~., p.l66) However, there is an important contradiction. Although "in principle" the group's work "should be among the Africans," in fact, this is impossible; their activity must be restricted to "progressive white organizations" and to the Coloured community - one afternoon a week. (R.S., p.90) As usual with Anton's analyses, this one tends to limit political work to the most arid and bureaucratic activities and those most in line with the current needs of the Soviet Union. Once the analysis is made, the existence of the Africans could be virtually forgotten. In order to avoid antagonizing white settlers, members of the group decide that they must be careful of how they speak to Africans in public. The open and friendly gestures of Jackie Bolton make others in the group uneasy. The Party can praise the Soviet Union all that it wishes at public meetings and Jack Dobie can command applause for his denunciation of British imperialism in India, but any demonstrable result of revolutionary rhetoric on Africans will incur immediate adverse reaction from whites. Thus the group is caught in a position where it can never affect the racism of the local white population. In addition, the Party's view of racism is clearly inadequate to a real understanding of its seriousness and extent. The group's view of racial prejudice is consistent with its economistic social theory. Racism is simply caused by capitalist relations of production. As Jasmine puts it: 207
"'Racial and national hatreds .•. together with any forms of hostility between one group and another, were due to capital ism, and would vanish on the advent of socialism.'" (R.S., p.l28) The group supports Jimmy's resolution: "'All forms of racial prejudices are artificial, contrary to nature, and created by capitalists in order to divide and rule.'" With this simplistic and inadequate notion of racism, it is impossible for members of the group to recognize evidence of racism among themselves or account for more virulent expressions of it among the rest of the population. The existence of Mrs. Carson, Martha's landlady, calls into question, at least for Martha and certainly for the reader, this view of racism. Her Negrophobia and her patho logical fears of Africans are obviously more complex than the Party's analysis can explain. As in many other instances, Martha forgets her own perceptions when they do not match the group's assumptions. In order to maintain her convictions in the face of contrary experience, Martha takes a special attitude toward such individuals. She regards Mrs. Carson as "the product of a certain kind of society •.• a variety of psychological dynosaur." (R.S., p.27) Since this kind of society has already been "bypassed by history," it does not seem necessary to think about it too carefully. The thorny question of whether or not men in the group should go out with African or Coloured women brings into focus all the problematic aspects of the group's racism and 208
paternalism. The decision that the men should avoid relation
ships with African women is taken in order to maintain an air of respectability and conventionality. However, in taking this decision, group members choose to acquiesce in racial prejudice rather than defy it. As Tommy comments, "'When it comes down to it, we take a decision to behave like everyone else."' (R.S., p.l40) Anton responds, "'There's nothing new about white men sleeping with Coloured and African girls.'" The Party is truly in a dilemma here. What Anton says is correct - white men in the colony have always claimed it as a prerogative to sleep with African women when they chose to do so in clandestine and unacknowledgeable relationships. But the decision to forbid RAF members from having African mistresses is taken, not to protect the women from exploitative relationships, but to protect the Party from censure and to ensure the continuation of its organizing among respectable members of the white community. In order to be politically effective, Anton thinks that communists must lead what will be accepted as exemplary personal lives. This assumption leads to the most dead level of conformity. No decision is ever taken about sexual relationships between women in the Party and African or Coloured men. The possibility of such relation ships never seems to be an issue. The stance of both the Communists and the Social Democrats toward the African population is implicitly condescending and paternalistic. The Communists, with their Leninist assumption 209
that the Party is the avant garde of the proletariat and must bring socialist consciousness to the working class, cannot help but see themselves in a didactic position vis a vis the African community. The Social Democrats have the same didactic attitude, but for slightly different reasons. They see them selves as models of responsible action and want to guide the Africans so that they will imitate their modes of organization. Africans, in their initial attempts to find their own political voice, turn to the most liberal white organizations in the colony. In order that African members may have any effective status at all within the Labour Party, it seems necessary to the left-wing to form a separate African Branch. Ironically this means that the Party will be divided along racial lines which reflect the divisions within the colony itself. According to Mrs. Van der Bylt, "'In this country progressives have to fight on bad moral grounds.'" (R.S., p.244) Labour Party members who are reluctant to see any Africans at all in the Party maintain that it is more democratic to have them "'attend ordinary branch meetings as ordinary members.'" (R.S., p.261) Although this arrangement seems more democratic, it would negate Africans' potential effectiveness within the Party. Thus the progressives are caught in a dilemma which seems to force them to support a measure which perpetuates segregation. The Africans' request for aid and advice precipitates the 0 calling of the meeting at the Location which provides the 210
climax of Ripple from the Storm. 3 When the Africans at the meeting vividly describe their sense of oppression, Social Democrats and Communists alike feel gratified; this is no more than they have long expected. Nonetheless they feel that they must try to keep control of the meeting and maintain their role as speakers and teachers. When an African asks why white trade unionists reject Africans as skilled workers, Piet seizes the opportunity to speak "for half an hour on the
principles of trade unionism." (~., p.201) The question serves as pretext for the prepared speech. Even more ironic is Marie's harangue to the all-male audience on women's rights. Her gestures and manner give the impression of an irate "white 'missus' long used to handling servants." She scolds the men as any white matron might rebuke her "boy" for doing an inadequate job of the cleaning. After the meeting is over, Jasmine and Martha feel that they have been acting like a "'bunch of do-gooders uplifting the poor.'" (R.S., p.203) For Martha there is an unrecognized ironic parallel in her earlier experience. Just before she leaves Douglas, she agrees to help Mrs. Maynard with another "first" in interracial encounters. Ml:'S'. Maynard and her friends allow themselves to feel quite liberal and unconven tional when they organize a show for Coloured children to present to a white audience. Martha agrees to pick up a few of the children to bring them to the performance, although she knows that she is letting herself be drawn into a situation 211
where whites are enjoying their roles as paternalistic philanthropists. At the meeting at the Location, that aspect of the affair is masked by the attempt at "political education." Both Social Democrats and Communists are anxious that Africans be exposed to the correct political influence; Mrs. Maynard wants the children to receive the right impression of "responsible" white people. In each case, the hidden motive is to reduce tension created by oppression and deflect the anger which might channel itself into revolt. All the whites are anxious to structure the kinds of contacts they have with Africans, and all believe that what they are doing is for the Africans• own benefit. The social changes in the colony precipitated by the war modify the relationship of white left-wing groups and politically conscious Africans. No longer are Africans willing to sit passively listening to lectures from whites. 4 Their activities become more and more confusing to Martha and seem 5 more and more distant to the reader. When the general strike finally occurs, it seems that both Communists and Social Democrats hear about it from a radio announcement. Nonetheless they take it upon themselves to discover "the right thing to do,"6 to protect Africans from white violence. Ironically Mrs. Van der Bylt, the socialist, and Mrs. Maynard, the liberal-reactionary, come to the same conclusion about what the right thing is - to lock all the Africans in the Location. 212
Although the absurdity of troops enforcing a strike brings it to an end, progressives have the satisfaction of thinking that all the Africans have received, in Johnny Lindsay's words, "'a week's course in the theory and practice of trade unionism.'" (Ll., p.270) Martha and Marjorie spend the first day aiding Mrs. Van der Bylt and "'giving lectures on trade unionism to house servants. '" (Ll., p. 259) Then there is nothing for them to do with all the Africans locked in the townships. When African mass political activity does occur, Communists, Social Democrats and the authorities all find themselves in the same position, making the same decision. If the libertarian forces and the authorities are on the same side during a situation of mass unrest, it would seem that something is wrong with the leftists' perspective. Lessing makes it clear in this final dramatic incident that the Communist Party, as it constituted itself in Zambesia, is, unintentionally, the mirror image of the colonial authorities and really has no more to offer the Africans than the government. Martha's participation in the Communist Party takes her from inspiration to disillusionment. When she realizes that, as an entity, the Party in Zambesia is defunct, she feels "cut off from everything that had fed her imagination: until this moment she had been part of the struggle in Europe, part of the Red Army, the guerrillas in China, the French underground, and the partisans in Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece." (R.S., 213
p.278) The irony Lessing directs at Martha - whose exploits have been so much less heroic - should not obscure an essential truth: Martha's sense of connection to an inter- national liberation struggle has been important to her development. However, to remain within this kind of group would be to succumb to the "nightmare repetition," as Lessing indicates at the end of Landlocked where Martha attends a meeting of the new generation of leftists who are eager to replace the tarnished image of the Soviet Union with the much shinier one of Communist China as the hope for humanity. Jasmine sums up their discussion: 'It is unlucky for the world that the first socialist country chanced to be Russia, because that country's backwardness had branded socialism itself with a barbarousness which had nothing to do with socialism. China, being an ancient country of deep and imperturbable civilization •.. would restore to communism moderation, calm, sense, humanity, humour, tolerance, etc.' (Ll., p. 287) Martha realizes that these new radicals are arrogant enough to have no respect for the experience of their predecessors and that, consequently, they will repeat their forerunners' mistakes. Martha's disillusionment with political militancy makes her anxious to avoid the kind of job Phoebe initially proposes on her arrival in London. However, Martha cannot escape politics in her job as Mark's secretary for the insecurity and paranoia of the early Cold War years force themselves upon her when Colin defects to the Soviet Union. Martha's observations 214
of Mark in his subsequent communist phase provide her with some of the same insights Anna Wulf has in her reflections. In Mark's conversion to communism, "He had walked into a personality ••• and he was inhabiting it." (F.G.C., p.l83) He uses words, phrases, and adopts gestures and attitudes which Martha recognizes from her own earlier experience. These realizations about the self and its possibilities prefigure her exploration of the depths of her own mind and her dis coveries within herself of normally undeveloped human potential as well as her attempt to construct for herself a whole new way of working, both alone and with others, in her endeavour to preserve and extend human capacities. Anna Wulf writes about her experience in the British Communist Party primarily in the red notebook. All the entries are brief and most are critical of the Party. However, there are references to her political experiences in almost all the other notebooks as well as in the "Free Women" sections. In the black notebook she recalls her life as a communist in Africa: the story she recounts is one of increasing disillusionment. She was attracted to the Party "because the left people were the only people in the town with any kind of moral energy, the only people who took it for granted that the colour bar was monstrous." (G.N., p.69) The members' idealism is gradually eroded, however, by their isolation from the African population. Their inflexible policy rejecting African nationalism as a "right wing deviation" (G.N., p.90) while 215
insisting on an inconceivable union of white and black workers has no appeal for Africans. In addition, the racial situation in the colony restricts contacts between blacks and whites. The group's confidence, based on "a dedicated faith in humanity," (G.N., p.66) is also undermined by what Anna calls "the inner logic of 'centralism"' (G.N., p.68) which caused the group to divide into smaller and smaller units each of which disagreed with the others. Their ignorance of socialist history prevented their anticipating such a development. In the face of both their own experiences and the terrible destruction of the war itself, their hope for a better world turns into Paul's self-punishing irony. Maryrose succinctly sums up their loss of faith when she says, "'Only a few months ago we believed that the world was going to change and every thing was going to be beautiful and now we know it won't.' .. {G.N., p.l31) In "Free Women .. Anna incorporates this irony and cynicism into the characters' everyday conversation. Molly and Anna of "Free Women .. represent two aspects of Anna of the notebooks. In their initial dialogue Anna refers to the necessity of "'thinking out what it all means.'" She is not only referring to the anonymous quality of the letters on the Twentieth Congress which she has received from the three Party comrades, but also of the whole course of their political life. Molly is bored with politics and unwilling to make the effort such as an analysis would require. Neither of these two characters 216
can integrate her political past, nor any other aspect of her life, into a coherent world view which would prevent her opting for the self-limiting fates each accepts at the end of the novel. In conversation with Tornrny, Anna confronts her own cynicism as well as the paralysis it causes. Offered a job looking after Africans at one of Richard's firms in Ghana, Tornrny refuses both the "welfare work" aspect of the job - "'Because everyone's got used to the idea of whole countries changing completely in about three years ••. And if they can't see a complete change ahead they can't be bothered,'" (G.N., p.262) as well as the opportunity he might have had to organize "revolutionary groupsn - "'Because now we know what happens to revolutionary groups - we'd be murdering each other inside five years.'" (G.N., p.263) Having absorbed this total cynicism from Molly and Anna, Tornrny acts out their self- destructiveness by shooting himself. His consequent blindness becomes an analogue for their refusal to look seriously at what has happened to them. The self-limitation of false wholeness he achieves presages their fate. The Anna who reflects on her political experience in the red notebook has shed the naive idealism of her past in Africa but it is more difficult for her to transcend the cynicism which is its obverse. Anna's first entry in the red notebook reveals that she sees the Party as potentially a menace to its own members as she warns Molly not to mail the letter she has 217
written exposing her "doubts and confusions" about communism: "'Supposing the British C.P. ever gets into power, that document will be in the files, and if they want evidence to hang you, they've got it- thousands of times over.'" {G.N., p.l53) Stalin's purge trials and events in Prague provide enough substantiation for such fears. Nonetheless, Anna does join the Party, as in Africa, because of her reaction against the world outside it, in this case the literary world, "It is a world so prissy, maiden-
auntish; so class-bound~ or if i~s the commercial side, so blatant that any contact with it sets me thinking of joining the Party." (G.N., p.l54) Within the Party Anna admires the spirit of seriousness and responsibility which inspires certain of its intellectuals, although it is a spirit which, she believes, is part of the Marxist heritage and has little to do with the everyday realities of Communist publishing in which she becomes immersed. On the very day of her leaving the Party she comments on this atmosphere: There is no group of people or type of intellectual I have met outside the Party who aren't ill-informed, frivolous, parochial, compared with certain types of intellectual inside the Party. And the tragedy is that this intellectual responsibility, this high seriousness, is in a vacuum: it relates not to Britain; not to Communist countries as they are now; but to a spirit which existed in international communism years ago, before it was killed by the desperate, crazed spirit of struggle for survival to which we now give the name Stalinism. (G.N., p.343) What Anna labels Stalinism has corrupted the Party leaders in Britain and infected them with the anti-intellectualism which 218
,,~ is a mask for their fear of critical ideas that represent a threat to their hegemony. Paradoxically there is an aspect of Anna which is attracted by this anti-intellectualism which is revealed to her in the tinge of contempt in the voice of the man who
interviews her and remark~ "'In five years' time, I suppose you'll be writing articles in the capitalist press exposing us as monsters, just like all the rest.'" (G.N., p.l55) This Party anti-intellectualism appeals to the Anna who despises her own writing and feels that it is not worthwhile, as she
says to Saul Gree~ 'At that moment I sit down to write, someone comes into the room, looks over my shoulders, and stops me ••• It could be a Chinese peasant. Or one of Castro's guerrilla fighters. Or an Algerian fighting in the F.L.N. Or Mr. Mathlong. They stand here in the room and they say, why aren't you doing something about us, instead of wasting your time scribbling?' (G.N., p.639) This self-destructive guilt has ruined Anna's ability to create a coherent work aimed at an audience for it has under- mined her faith in her own imagination. Anna also joins the Party because she desires a sense of conununity, "the atmosphere of friendliness, of people working for a conunon end," (G.N., p.l54) which Martha Quest experiences when she enters the Party orbit. Ironically, however, Anna finds herself feeling "isolated," for once she is in the Party other insiders and outsiders alike take a certain attitude towards her. If a non-Party friend or acquaintance begins to attack the Party, Anna must rush to its 219
defense, although she herself might have made similar remarks in a different context. This behaviour does not result from dishonesty on her part; her contradictory actions indicate her own divided consciousness. Joining the Party cannot satisfy, as she had hoped it would, her 11 need for wholeness, for an end to the split, divided unsatisfactory way we all live." (G.N., p.l61) Instead, her reflections on her political activity reveal to her 11 the roles we play, the way we play parts." (G.N., p.l57) This sense of the self as a social construction which Martha Quest also gains at the opening of The Four-Gated City - unnerves Anna and contributes toward her experience of dissolution of meaning; "Words lose their meaning" for her on various occasions and 11 serious" conversations turn into gibberish, presaging the beginning of her breakdown. In addition to being trapped in prescribed roles vis a vis one another and outsiders, Anna records that Party members are caught up in myths and illusions about themselves and the world. Anna's "private myth" is "That while most of the criticisms of the Soviet Union are true, there must be a body of people biding their time there, waiting to reverse the present process back to real socialism." (G.N., p.l60) She records evidence of other private myths she finds: the short story she reads to the Writers' Group about the teacher summoned to a private interview with Stalin, the "true" story of Harry Matthews who expects for years to be invited by the leaders of the C.P.s.u. in order to explain to them where they 220 c have erred. In addition to private myths, Party members succumb to collective myths which find expression in the manuscripts Anna must read as part of her job. One novel portrays Britain as "locked in deep poverty, unemployment, brutality, a Dickensian squalor;n and the British workers as "all communist or at least (they) recognized the Communist Party as their natural leader." (G.N., p.346) As Marxists, Party members are committed to understanding and changing the world, but this goal becomes more and more illusory as they isolate themselves from people outside the Party, inside a private sense of reality which they reinforce for each other. Members remain in the Party not because they see it as politically effective, but because of their own
needs, as Anna remark~ "The Communist Party is largely com posed of people who aren't really political at all, but who have a powerful sense of service. And then there are those who are lonely, and the Party is their family." (G.N., p.l69) Anna does not leave the Party totally disillusioned with political organizations. As she records in the third section of the red notebook, she spends several months going to meetings of groups who want to reform the Party. However, she realizes ultimately that if their analysis of the situation within the Party is correct, reform of the bureaucracy is impossible, and it is equally impossible to set up a rival organization for then "the energies of both would be occupied by throwing insults at each other and denying each other's 221
right to be conununist at all." (G.N., p.447) Reflecting on her involvement with these organizational efforts, Anna conunents cynically, "Sometimes I think that the one form of experience people are incapable of learning from is political experience." (G.N., p.448) This observation finds confirma tion as Anna watches Molly's son Tommy become involved with "the new group of young socialists" who use "'that awful jargon we've been making fun of for years and years.'" Having no respect for the political experience of their parents' generation, Tornrny and his friends are condemned to repeat all their mistakes. Anna leaves the Party to avoid one cycle of repetition of which she becomes aware on her last day at the office. On that day (recorded in the blue notebook) Anna understands the roles both she and John Butte are playing and how they contri- bute to the Party's continuity: "I realize that my role is to argue, to play the part of the critic, so that Comrade Butte may have the illusion that he has fought his way through informed opposition. I am, in fact, his youthful self, sitting opposite him, which he has to defeat." (G.N., p.347) Anna leaves the Party to break this cycle of young rebel turning into old conservative in her own life, to prevent herself from becoming a fossilized bureaucrat like Butte. This cycle whereby the Party, "like any other institution, continues to exist by absorbing its critics into itself," (G.N., p.344) recalls Anna's nightmare of the interchange- 222
ability of victim and executioner. When they change places they exchange .. a brief, bitter, accepting smile. They are brothers in that smile. The smile holds a terrible truth that I want to evade. Because it cancels all creative emotion." (G.N., p.345) This fantasy or dream recurs in several contexts and takes on increasing importance. Anna sees Michael and Jack as possible actors in this drama, which frightens her for they are "the two men I can talk to, and who understand everything I feel. 11 (G. N., p. 351) What Anna does not want to accept about herself is that she is capable of taking the executioner's position. As she remarks to Jack, "'The essence of my position is that I am essentially the one to be shot.'" (G. N., p. 341) The experience of living with Saul finally forces Anna to confront the destructive potential inside herself as they torture each other in their internecine intimacy; she asks Saul: "'Can't you see that this is a cycle, we go around and around?'" (G.N., p.621) Paradoxically Anna's recognition of her own potential for cruelty as well as her capacity for suffering allows her both to reconcile her idealism with her sense of limitation in accepting the boulder pusher metaphor and to transcend her "writer's block" in beginning her novel. The insights recorded in the golden notebook permit Anna to replace the lost community of the Communist Party with the notion of the group of boulder pushers originally attributed to the cynical Paul Tanner in "The Shadow of the Third," 223
re-experienced in a dream as coming from an idealized composite figure of Paul and Michael, and finally adopted seriously by Anna as she says to Saul: 'There's a great black mountain. It's human stupidity. There are a group of people who push a boulder up the mountain. When they've got a few feet up, there's a war, or the wrong sort of revolution, and the boulder rolls down - not to the bottom, it always manages to end a few inches higher than when it started. So the group of people put their shoulders to the boulder and start pushing again.' (G.N., p.627-8) Anna's image is equivalent to Saul's idea of a team: "'There are a few of us around in the world, we rely on each other even though we don't know each other's names. But we rely on each other all the time. We're a team, we're the ones who haven't given in, who'll go on fighting.'" (G.N., p.642) Both Anna and Saul gain comfort and a feeling of camaraderie from this belief that they are not alone in their ideas and values. Their new sense of community is much more abstract and tenuous than what Anna had anticipated or what Martha Quest had (temporarily) experienced inside the Party, but this kind of abstract collective does not violate anyone's individuality nor does it reintroduce the authoritarian patterns of the society radical organizations are supposed to challenge. Anna learns the courage to make contact with others through her writing as she realizes that although her naive idealism must be mitigated by experience, it does not have to become the defensive cynicism which denies the possibility of change. 224
LESSING'S USE OF PSYCHOTHERAPY AND MADNESS IN HER FICTION
If communism with its emphasis on an objective view of the world cannot provide the wholeness both Martha and Anna seek to create in their lives, neither can psychotherapy with its focus on the subjective, for its practice tends to dissipate the energy needed for action and its theory constrains the possibilities of consciousness. Anna's visits to Mrs. Marks may prepare her for the breakdown which she records near the end of the novel, but when this experience actually occurs, Anna does not seek psychoanalytic help which might either involve her in a destructive dependence or limit the possibili ties of the insight to which her disintegration leaves her open. She maintains her hold on her sanity by describing her interior events in her notebooks. In The Golden Notebook psychotherapy places limitations on the possibilities of the imagination through its emphasis on a false integration, but in The Four-Gated City it is even more dangerous. Here Lessing portrays psychotherapy as a direct mode of social repression. Martha consults Dr. Lamb when she realizes that her mother's imminent arrival in London leaves her feeling helplessly depressed. However, Lynda's warnings make her guarded in her approach to him. Ultimately she decides, after the crisis has passed, that independent reflection on her memories can reveal more to her than psycho therapeutic sessions which drain her of energy. Lessing's 225
portrayal of Lynda, however, provides her most stringent critique of psychotherapy used as a means of making individuals conform to a social norm. Psychiatric tyranny has destroyed Lynda in its attempt to preserve acceptance of a one-sided rationality which excludes the existence of powers outside its own narrow confines. Nervous breakdown or madness offers three possibilities to Lessing's characters. They can "use" the breakdown as an opportunity for growth, as Martha and Anna do, or they can be destroyed by it, as Mary Turner is. In addition, they can survive the experience, but learn nothing from it. In The Four-Gated City we see Phoebe Coldridge put herself back together after a breakdown, but her personality has become more rigid, more controlled than before. As a consequence of her failure to explore and possibly change her sense of herself, Phoebe hardens and becomes incapable of insight. When she later attains political power, she is as authoritarian and repressive as the government she had spent her life opposing. It is she who orders the dispersal of Francis's commune, for she believes such groups are "inculcating principles inimical to those held by the majority of the people in this country."
(F.G.C. I p.633) Several critics have tried to illuminate Lessing's choice of temporary madness as a metaphor for the self-liberatory breakthroughs her characters achieve by placing it in the context of a discussion of the work of R.D. Laing. Marion 226
Vlastos in her article "Doris Lessing and R.D. Laing: Psycho politics and Prophecy," 7 observes the conjunction of Lessing's use of "madness as revelation and cure" 8 with Laing' s notion of schizophrenia as a journey of self-discovery which should not be interrupted by conventional psychiatric interventions, but should be guided by those who have survived the journey and returned as spiritually renewed individuals. 9 If a reading of Laing is helpful to an understanding of Lessing, however, it is not only his controversial views on schizo- phrenia which must be examined, but also his critique of the "normal" family. 10 It is the family which mediates between an authoritarian social structure and the growing individual who becomes deformed in the process of socialization. According to Laing, those labelled schizophrenics only exhibit in an extreme form symptoms of a much more widespread illness. Near the beginning of The Four-Gated City Martha realizes the extent to which her growth has been stultified by her internalization of both her parents' fears and their conflicts. Her family life has produced a diminished self equipped with elaborate defense systems which must be transcended through her inner journey. Lessing's choice of the descent into madness as a way of representing this process of self- transcendence is linked to her own critique of the family which I discussed in connection with the analysis of the early stories and novels in Chapter II. The psychiatric relation ship for Lessing can only reproduce the unequal power 227
relationship of family life, for no matter how benevolent the doctor's intentions are, the patient still depends on the therapist for a .. cure." At her first session with Mrs. Marks, Anna presents her reasons for beginning psychoanalysis: "'I've had experiences that should have touched me and they haven't.'" (G.N., p.232) Mrs. Marks reinterprets what Anna say.s about herself and defines Anna's problem as a "writer's block." She assumes that Anna's inability to feel is really an inability to create. Mrs. Marks analyzes the dreams Anna has in which she is unable to perform as proof that she is right about Anna. Only after Anna has participated with Saul in the breakdown of her rigid sense of herself does she realize that she has been experiencing a "writer's block" which she had been rational izing away. Mrs. Marks' respect for art, indicated by the display in her office, her reified notion of "the artist," and her systematic insistence that she understands Anna's problem better than does Anna herself prevent Anna's accepting this insight while she is in analysis. Anna resists Mrs. Marks' interpretation in order to defend herself both from the negation of her own self perceptions and from the banality of the "commonplaces" about art which Mrs. Marks presents to Anna in her capacity as "witch doctor." Because the therapist/patient relationship assumes a certain authority on the part of the doctor, Mrs. Marks can offer Anna remarks "she would have been ashamed of 228
if she were with friends and not in the consulting room." (G.N., p.62) Anna resents this distinction and reacts against Mrs. Marks' insight. Anna's psychoanalysis helps her neither with her problems as a writer nor her difficulties with others. Because Anna feels that all her intimate relationships are characterized by the same radical shifts of feeling from love to hatred, she and Mrs. Marks agree to confine their discussions of these patterns to analysis of Anna's relationship with Michael. Their discussions, however, seem to have no impact on the relationship itself which continues to exist on the terms Michael has dictated. The analysis helps to stabilize the relationship by giving Anna an outlet for her feelings of frustration. Michael permanently divides his feelings between his family and his mistress, keeping all emotions compartmental ized. Within their relationship Anna may be free from women's traditional economic dependence, but her emotional dependence makes it impossible for her to control any of the basic every day aspects of their being together. When Michael arrives, Anna is there. Anna's tendency to rationalize her feelings out of existence prevents her from openly admitting the anger and resentment which arise out of the limits Michael imposes. Her feelings emerge only in the section of the blue notebook where she records all the details of one day. Although she labels this description a "failure," (G.N., p.368) it allows 229
'- the reader to see her conflicts more clearly than do most of her self-analyses. Whenever Michael spends a night with her, it is Anna's responsibility to get him, as well as her daughter, up, fed, out of the house on time. Because Michael is jealous of Janet and would rather play the role of Anna's elder child than assume the responsibility of Janet's father surrogate, Anna is forced to provide for each separately. Her responsibilities make her tense, resentful: Resentment against what? An unfairness. That I should have to spend so much time worrying over details. The resentment focuses itself on Michael; although I know with my intelligence it has nothing to do with Michael. And yet I do resent him, because he will spend his day, served by secretaries, nurses, women in all kinds of capacities, who will take this weight off him •.• The anger is not related to him. Long ago, in the course of the sessions with Mother Sugar, I learned that the resentment, the anger, is impersonal. It is the disease of women in our time. (G.N., p.333) By classifying this kind of anger as "impersonal," not directed at Michael, Anna provides herself with a reason, sanctioned by her psychoanalyst, to avoid acting on it and hence to avoid taking responsibility for what she feels. Her discussions in psychotherapy act as a stabilizing device on her situation; both Anna and Michael remain childishly dependent on one another. Her sessions with Mrs. Marks give her no motive for change, but merely provide another way of distancing herself from feelings she would prefer to deny. Since Anna refuses to act on so many of her feelings, she 230
ceases to believe in her own perceptions unless they are con- firmed by Michael, as she records in one of their last conversations. Referring to their affair, Michael remark3 'Anna, you make up stories about life and tell them to yourself, and you don't know what is true and what isn't.' 'And so we haven't had a great love affair?' This was breathless and pleading; though I had not meant it. I felt a terrible coldness at his words, as if he were denying my existence. He said, whimsically; 'If you say we have, then we have. And if you say not, then not.' 'So what you feel doesn't count?' 'Me? But Anna, why should I count?' (G.N., p.331) Anna cannot maintain her own idea of the affair because within it she has systematically canceled herself out. Anna has been so eager to please Michael that she almost annihilates herself with the effort. On the same day which she describes in the second section of the blue notebook, we see her fearful that he might criticize her dirty stockings (G.N., p.340) or her "boyish" pants. (G.N., p.360) She strains to cook an elaborate meal for him although she knows he is leaving her. When he does not arrive for dinner as promised, she can do nothing to express the anger and pain she feels. Anna allows Michael to walk out of her life - seemingly arbitrarily - without a word of reproach. We only get a hint of the way their relationship dissolved from her interpolation of it in The Shadow of the Third. By cancelling out an important part of herself - as Ella suppresses her critical intelligence - Anna also cancels Michael out. To avoid slipping into the unreality of psychic annihilation, Michael leaves Anna. Anna writes in her notebooks to bring herself back into existence. 231
In making her character Paul Tanner a psychiatrist who has stereotypical ideas about women, Anna indirectly reveals some of her resentment against Mrs. Marks for the assumptions she makes on the basis of gender. In his conversations with Ella about his patients Paul displays a sensitivity which does not extend to Ella herself in so far as he wants to protect himself from her need for him. Clearly he has a blind spot in his relations with women which allows him to fall back on self serving notions of 11 good 11 women and 11 loose" women. He constructs his image of Ella in line with the second category. This explains the totally unfounded but obsessive sexual jealousy he demonstrates toward the end of their relationship. She sees this aspect of their relationship only intermittently, as when she envisions his gesture of "putting money onto a mantelpiece." (G.N., p.202) Most of the time her love robs her of her defenses and prevents her from recognizing the limitations Paul has placed on their affair and the role he requires her to play in his life. Like Michael with Anna, Paul hates Ella's writing. The idea of such a degree of independent self-assertion does not accord with his need to see her as a relative being.
Mrs. Marks, retaining her fixed notion of a 11 real woman," necessarily dependent on a man in a certain way, (G.N., p.237) cannot help Anna recognize her anger and the consequences of its repression. Here Lessing suggests the bias in psycho analytic theory which has tended to regard the ego development 232
and maturity normative for men as inappropriate for women. Anna insists to Mrs. Marks that she wants to "'separate in myself what is old and cyclic, the recurring history, the myth,
from what is new, what I feel or think might be new.'" (~., p.472-3) Mrs. Marks' interpretations of Anna's experiences tend to confine them to patterns of recurring myths and symbols. Her Jungian notion of personal development depends on the recognition that personal pain and suffering can be understood and integrated into a total sense of self only through seeing events in relation to mythic patterns. This goal projects as a model an ideal of wholeness Anna distrusts, for it negates both her hope of human freedom and her belief in the possibility of social change. Anna remarks to Mrs. Marks: 'Perhaps the word neurotic means the condition of being highly conscious and developed. The essence of neurosis is conflict. But the essence of living now, fully, not blocking off to what goes on, is conflict. In fact I've reached the stage where I look at people and say - he or she, they are whole at all because they've chosen to block off at this stage or that. People stay sane by blocking off, by limiting themselves.' (G.N., p.469) On the other hand, Anna continues, "'But sometimes I meet people, and it seems to me the fact that they are cracked across, they're split, means they are keeping themselves open for something.'" (G.N., p.473) What is important to Mrs.Marks is balance, the ability to see things whole by considering all aspects at the same time, imaginatively fusing contraries into a whole perspective. 233
Anna feels that she must choose between a notion of wholeness she both craves and mistrusts and the neurotic frag mentation which, in spite of her suffering, keeps her open to new experience. She has seen in this openness a source of her strength. What Anna must do is discover for herself a way of integrating opposites which will not merely produce the ideal of static unity offered to her by Mrs. Marks, but retain the freedom from self-limitation she desires. Her approach to this dynamic integration is through her haunting preoccupation with accounting for the violence and destructiveness she sees as so fundamental an aspect of twentieth century reality. Anna's concern with violence and destruction moves from the collection of newspaper clippings in the blue notebook into her dreams and finally into her waking life: "'It seems to me that ever since I can remember anything the real thing that has been happening in the world was death and destruction. It seems to me it is stronger than life.'" (G.N., p.235) Her dreams of a principle of "joy in spite" become embodied in actual individuals in two encounters with men, Nelson and de Silva, the one cruel out of infantile self-centredness, the other out of calculated disregard. In both cases Anna allows herself to become the victim of a destructiveness she did not want to admit was possible for the very possibility of such behaviour coming from people Anna knows threatens her sense of herself as well as her humanistic ideals: 234
It was safer to have that terrible frightening force held in a shape associated with the mythical or the magical, than loose, or as it were at large, in a person, and in a person who had the power to move me ••. If the element is now outside of myth, and inside another human being, then it can only mean it is loose in me also, or can only too easily be evoked. (G.N., p.479) In writing Free Women Anna projects all the personal destructiveness she fears onto her male characters. Within this novel we can see both Anna and Molly become increasingly embittered as they are tormented by the spiteful and selfish egotism of Richard and Tommy. In casual street encounters a man can become a threat, by leering suggestively and following Anna. Even within her own apartment Ronnie is able to make her so uncomfortable with his homosexual misogyny that she finally evicts Ivor who, without his lover, had been a helpful tenant. The Anna of Free Women experiences the "principle of joy in spite" as embodied in men she encounters and as completely outside herself. Unable to recognize her own accumulated anger and hostility, she succumbs to a depression in which she can do nothing but place newspaper clippings on the wall. Her internal fragmentation is projected outward and rationalized as an attempt to find patterns in disparate pieces of information. Her affair with Milt jolts her out of this syndrome but also confirms her cynicism about men's emotional limitations. Thus Anna is forced to use external sources to create a sense of herself. She decides to take a job at a "marriage welfare centre," join the Labour Party, and
"teach a night class twice a week for delinquent kids. 11 235
(G.N., p.665) Through all that activity, presumably she can escape the fears about herself which have plagued her. In the last section of the blue notebook Anna's disintegration permits aspects of herself to emerge which had been repressed by her rigid self-control and limited sense of herself. Here we begin to see the dangerous possibilities inherent in the two roles Anna has assigned herself vis a vis men: victim and caretaker. Through seeing herself as a passive victim of either men's aggression or their unwillingness to commit themselves to responsible, long-term relationships, Anna has seriously limited the possibility of comprehending her own complicity in her failed romances. Eventually Anna realizes that seeing herself as victim has prevented her from achieving a more accurate understanding of her situation: Somewhere here is a fearful trap for women, but I don't understand what it is. For there is no doubt of the new note women strike, the note of being betrayed. It's in the books they write, in how they speak, everywhere, all the time. It is a solemn, self-pitying organ note. It is in me, Anna betrayed, Anna unloved, Anna whose happiness is denied. (G.N., p.596) Not only does assuming this role prevent Anna's recognizing her responsibility within her relationships, but it also undermines her creativity. Constantly seeing herself as victim allows Anna to retain her ambivalence about the exercise of her creative powers and remain a being acted upon rather than acting. Anna's psychoanalytic sessions have not helped her identify this danger for Mrs. Marks has been all too ready to dignify this victim role with the term "real 236
woman" and to celebrate the "womanly" virtues of patience and endurance, as well as the courage of "the first blades of tentative green grass that will poke into the light out of the lava in a million years time" after the holocaust. (G.N., p.545) Once Janet has left for boarding school, Anna the care taker, the responsible, self-disciplined mother, has a chance to disappear. However, Anna is attracted to Saul, as she was to Michael, partly by his evident childish need for her. He reaches out for her in his sleep and clasps her around the neck like a little boy grasping for his mother. Eager to feed him, sleep with him, envelop him in the warmth of her own feelings, Anna creates an atmosphere Saul quickly finds cloying: "'You're looking for happiness. It's a word that never meant anything to me until I watched you manufacturing it like molasses out of this situation.'" (G.N., p.564) When he temporarily flees this atmosphere, Anna feels deserted. Again and again they compulsively repeat this cycle until Anna
begins to understand how destructive this 11 Caretaker11 aspect of herself is, as well as how attractive it is as a feminine ideal which would swallow up Anna: "He was looking for this wise, kind, all-mother figure, who is also sexual playmate and sister; and because I had become part of him, this is what I was looking for too, both for myself, because I needed her, and because I wanted to become her. 11 (G.N., p.587} In her
11 nurturant" role Anna both annihilates herself and perpetuates 237
the child in Saul, as they both realize in a culminating moment when he is about to leave: I lay, fighting not to touch him, as he was fighting not to appeal to me, and I was thinking how extraordinary that an act of kindness, of pity, could be such a betrayal. My brain blacked out with exhaustion, and while it did, the pain of pity took me over and I cuddled him in my arms, knowing it was a betrayal. He clung to me, immediately, for a second of genuine closeness. Then, at once, my falseness created his, for he murmured in a child's voice: 'Ise good boy.' Within a few moments, Saul comments, 'We can't either of us go lower than that.' (G.N., p.640) This scene epitomizes for them both the way that a feminine ideal of nurturance and protectiveness can undermine both men and women and entrap them in a mutually destructive pattern. At the beginning of her breakdown Anna tries to use the figure of Mrs. Marks by thinking of her "in a new way, as if the idea of her can save me." (G.N., p.547) Ultimately, however, she must transcend her psychiatrist's vision of wholeness to achieve an ideal of her own which will allow for the possibility of psychic growth. Through her dreaming as well as through her waking life with Saul, Anna begins to recognize the connection between the destruction she had identified in the external world and the destructive aspects of their relationship to one another: I knew ••• that the great armouries of the world have their inner force, and that my terror, the real nerve-terror of the nightmare, was part of the force. I felt this, like a vision, in a new kind of knowing. And I knew that the cruelty and the spite and the I, I, I, I of Saul and Anna were part of the logic of war: and I knew how strong these emotions were, in a way that would 238
never leave me, would become part of how I saw the world. {G.N., p.589) No longer is Anna solely the victim of Saul's arbitrary wilful- ness. Anna's dreams begin to represent them as accomplices: I was the malicious male-female dwarf figure, the principle of joy-in-destruction; and Saul was my counterpart, male-female, my brother and my sister, and we were dancing in some open place, under enormous white buildings, which were filled with hideous, menacing black machinery which held destruction. But in the dream, he and I, or she and I, were friendly, we were not hostile, we were together in spiteful malice. (G.N., p.594-5) Paradoxically, once Anna has envisioned this complicity, she has experienced the dream "positively." This means that she can begin to understand the kind of courage she had previously refused to recognize, the courage of Mrs. Marks' "first blades of tentative green grass." She begins to need this kind of courage to maintain any sense of herself at all in the face of the disintegration of her ego and the invasion of multiple personalities: "It's a small sort of courage which is at the root of every life, because injustice and cruelty is at the
root of life. 11 (G.N., p.636) Still Anna does not want to give "all that much reverence" to the blades of grass if to do so would mean adopting a quietism which admits the inevitability of the holocaust. If the holocaust is one human possibility, so is the vision of the golden age, even if it is "a shadow in the imagination
only. 11 (G.N., p.546) Anna learns that in addition to recog c nizing and integrating her own destructive impulses into her 239
creative imagination, she must also be able to retain her idealism, even in the face of her knowledge of the evil in herself and the world. As she remarks to Saul, "'We've got to believe in our blueprints?' 'We've got to believe in our beautiful impossible blueprints.'" (G.N., p.638) In both The Golden Notebook and The Four-Gated City Lessing emphasizes not the development of relationships but the evolution of a certain kind of independent selfhood in her major characters. Rather than existing either as important ends in themselves, or as symbols for the resolution of con flicting forces, the intimate relationships of both Martha and Anna contribute toward this development. Thus at the end of The Golden Notebook Saul leaves Anna; both agree that his departure is necessary. In Landlocked Thomas Stern leaves Martha to pursue a fate which cannot include her, but their affair has opened up emotional possibilities to which she had self-protectively closed herself off in her marriages. In the midst of The Four-Gated City Martha decides to put an end to her affair with Mark, for she decides that her dependence on him interferes with her self-exploration. These relation ships fulfill necessary functions for Anna and Martha, but Lessing's characters cannot grow and develop within them beyond a certain point. Although Lessing does not use male/female relationships to provide a resolution in either of these novels, she also does not create characters who develop or discover a sense of 240
self which is static or self-contained. One of Martha's most important discoveries is that when she gets past the socially constructed self which she labels "Matty," she finds that her "self" is not something individual and private, but a part of a consciousness which can only be called collective or global. The development of the "self" is paradoxical in these novels. Both characters must reject relationships with men which can only limit and restrict them. Their "independence," however, does not maintain them in a privatizing mode of existence, for it becomes the first step in their recognition of their connection to much larger social forces. The beginning of Martha's affair with Mark coincides with her mother's arrival in London and her recourse to Dr. Lamb's treatment. Previously Martha's relations with him had been defined by his reliance on her. When he and everyone else in his household had been "clutched in such fearful anxiety" p.ll6) that they could not function on a day to day 0 mother surrogate because of the breakdown she experiences when her mother comes to London. Her routine is interrupted and she comes into closer contact with Lynda. May Quest's arrival undermines all of Martha's competence and shifts the balance in her relationship with Mark so that their affair becomes defined by her dependence on him. The very "paternal" qualities of patience, strength, and warmth on which Martha relies reduce her to a childlike dependence which she must ultimately reject if she is to make any progress with the effort to reclaim painful memories: "She had to stop being this helpless creature who clung and needed." (F.G.C., p.287) Martha consciously withdraws from Mark, for as a woman in love she lacks integrity as a person: "If one is with a man, 'in love,' or in the condition of loving, then there comes to life that hungry, never-to-be-fed, never-at-peace woman who needs and wants and must have." (F.G.C., p.301) Just as Martha withdraws from the possibility of a more intense relationship with Mark, she also withdraws from her mother when she forces her to return to Africa. She faces the painful truth that no reconciliation or understanding will take place between mother and daughter. Instead Martha must come to terms with her own internalizations of her mother's imperatives and prohibitions. Rather than engage in conflict with her mother as another person, Martha must struggle with aspects of herself to regain her memories and examine them for the clues she needs to understand her situation. She does not do this through her 242 0 sessions with Dr. Lamb whom she fears as another authority figure, dependence upon whom would undermine her self confidence. Talking to Dr. Lamb drains Martha of the energy she needs for what she calls the "work" of exploring her own mind. She performs this "work" in a solitude which prepares her for later psychic adventures. If the institution of psychiatry is not helpful to Martha in her distress, it has been positively destructive to Lynda. Subjected to the tyranny of arrogant doctors committed to a medical model of mental illness, Lynda "had been made a psychological cripple before she was twenty." (F.G.C., p.524) Psychiatric "treatment" had been inflicted on her because she was sensitive enough to others to receive subtle emotional messages from them, or, as she put it, to hear what they were thinking. She was too naive to understand that insisting on her own version of reality would win her the label "insane." Although Martha had known the information about Lynda's back ground for years, she could not recognize the most important fact until she attends Lynda during her breakdown: "Lynda need never have been ill." (F.G.C., p.523) She can never learn this through what Lynda tells her; instead she must develop the empathetic power to "see" Lynda's memories. Lynda's inability to cope with everyday life is neither a disease nor is it inherent in her character or temperament; her fragility was induced by the doctors who tried to convince her that her unusual powers were evidence of serious illness. 0 243 0 Lynda preserves the psychological strength to resist their diagnoses which reduce her to the status of a "nothing but." However, she cannot free herself from the guilt she must endure for continually disappointing those who want her to live an ordinary family life. The process through which Martha comes to the realization that this is neither possible nor desirable for Lynda is a long experientialone; only when Martha "at last had reached the same place in experience" (F.G.C., p.S34) can she simultaneously see the meaning of Lynda's situation and the new direction in which her own self exploration must go. The reader must also accompany Martha through that process in order to appreciate the realization that Lynda's visionary powers are important, even essential to the survival of the human race. With this new insight Martha realizes that in so-called primitive societies, individuals with the psychic powers Lynda possesses are respected, encouraged, and become central to the spiritual life of the group. Western society, in order to preserve intact the instrumental rationality necessary for its progress, relegates such individuals to a marginal status unless they can be induced to forget their own perceptions: "They were calling people mad who merely possessed certain faculties in embryo." (F.G.C., p.523) Mental hospitals thus serve the function in Western society that neuroses serve for the individual; they permit what is painful to be repressed (through incarceration of certain individuals 244 and groups) at the price of continuing anxiety and the absence of the possibility of awareness. Lynda's personal tragedy is that early in life she did not meet anyone who could confirm her perceptions; instead she was forced to internalize the fear and hatred with which she was regarded. This became "the antagonist 11 with which she has spent her life locked in combat. These inner conflicts have prevented her from engaging in intimate relationships,for the boundaries of her sense of self are very tenuous and the proximity of others easily turns into a threat. However, her disability has kept her free from distracting entanglements. The breakdowns she has experienced over the years have gradually dissipated any fears she has had of her unconscious. Once she begins to receive confirmation of her perceptions and support from others, she can confidently develop her visionary powers. Through her relationship with Lynda rather than through her sessions with Dr. Lamb, Martha learns more about her own inner world. At the beginning of The Four-Gated City she had begun to get an intimation of unexplored capacities in her own mind. Her arrival in London had given her unexpected freedom. Liberated from the familiar pressures of others' expectations, Martha does not have to adopt a particular mask. Realizing this, she discovers that the boundaries of her identity are fluid and she attempts a few experiments. In casual conversa tions she invents names and histories for herself. Adopting 245 0 a new identity as easily as she might change her dress makes Martha feel "like an empty space without boundaries." (F.G.C., p.lS) She realizes the extent to which her sense of self has been a construction of others who "filled in for you, out of what they wanted, needed, from - not you, not you at all, but from their own needs." (F.G.C., p.l7) Concomitantly she has glimpses of a self which exists independent of this "social" self. While walking around London and allowing impressions to imprint themselves on the "soft dark empty space" (F.G.C., p.38) of her mind, Martha discovers "areas" of herself of which she had previously been unaware. Making love with Jack also brings Martha into contact with remote, unexplored aspects of herself, for he has intuited a way of using "their two bodies like conductors .. (F.G.C., p.495) for a force they can neither name nor under stand. An unconscious sense of self-preservation, however, prevents Martha from remaining in these "areas" which she will later explore with such determination. Martha's relationship with Lynda develops very gradually. When she first contemplates meeting Lynda, "a close secret nerve ached and nagged in Martha;" she is afraid. What she first hears of Lynda makes her feel that Lynda "came too close" to her. (F.G.C., p.ll4) However, Martha represses the intuition of what she and Lynda have in common when she begins to encounter Lynda on a day to day basis. The atmosphere of Lynda's basement is stifling, unpleasant, "There was a low 246 stuffy smell of sickness and drugs." (F.G.C., p.l89) On the basis of occasional visits to her flat, Martha can safely consign Lynda to the category "mad" and dismiss her. The seances and tea leaf readings conducted in the basement confirm Martha's impression of the distance between Lynda and herself. Martha interacts with Lynda primarily as "Mark's deputy" (F.G.C., p.l97) for Lynda cannot tolerate the emotional pressure of his loving concern. Not until Lynda leaves him near the end of the novel does Mark entirely dismiss the possibility that they might live one day as husband and wife, but Lynda can only keep her tenuous hold on everyday reality as long as Mark makes no demands on her. Martha mediates between them when Lynda seems "normal" and absorbs "like a safety valve" (F.G.C., p.397) Mark's tension when he tries to care for Lynda during one of her psychotic episodes. Although Mark with his inalienable love for Lynda keeps her from being sequestered permanently on the back ward of a mental hospital, he can neither understand what she represents nor what is important to her. The tragedy of their relationship is that he wishes her to return to normality while she desires only to escape its traps. Mark Coldridge is the character in the novel who repre sents the limits of rational intelligence combined with tolerant sensitivity. In a purely intellectual way, through assembling the maps and figures on the walls of his study, he 247 0 arrives at the same conclusion Martha and Lynda achieve through the expansion of their visionary capacities. However, Mark and his refugee camp are destroyed by his refusal to acknow ledge the validity and importance of the irrational phenomena that have been so close to him. For Mark, Lynda's predictions of disaster for his camp express only "'the landscape of her paranoia. In (F.G.C., p.61B) After her encounters with Dr. Lamb, Martha realizes that Lynda is the only person in the household from whom she can expect comprehension when she admits that she feels as if she were at least two people, watcher and watched. With this realization comes a new understanding of the language of the basement which she had previously "thought was too crazy to take as more than pitiable." (F.G.C., p.227) After Martha's breakdown and her efforts to recover her memories, her relationship with Lynda shifts in an important way. Martha supports and assists Lynda in her long battle to free herself from drugs, rid herself of dependence on Dorothy, and play at least a marginal role in the household. Lynda's participation in household affairs relieves some of the guilt she feels for her inability to behave as a mother to Francis. As Martha has more contact with Lynda, she occasionally begins to experience precognition - she envisions Dorothy's slitting her wrists - and starts to "overhear what people are thinking," (F.G.C., p.371} as Lynda has been doing for years. Once Lynda and Martha confirm one another in their perceptions 248 of what is happening to them, they try to find others who have had similar experiences. Afraid of "losing opportunities through finding anything distasteful," (F.G.C., p. 373) they read books and order periodicals on the occult, parapsychology and various other marginal phenomena not recognized as legitimate by the world of rational scholarship. Here they discover a widely acknowledged belief which accords with their own experience: through cultivation and discipline more potential is available to the individual than he will ever develop in the normal round of everyday life. Martha and Lynda reach toward this potential in themselves not through any traditional religious or mystical practice, but through the "door" of madness. The existence of this "door" which "had always been standing here, ready for her any time she wished" (F.G.C., p.493) is revealed to Martha when she attends Lynda during one of her breakdowns. Martha does what few psychiatric workers are willing to attempt during the month she spends with Lynda in the basement; she allows herself to see the world from Lynda's perspective and abolishes in herself the everyday distinction between sanity and insanity. Mark had been unable or unwilling to make such an effort, or take such a risk. His attempt to treat Lynda "sensibly" reproduced for her the mental hospital atmosphere of regular schedules and parental imperatives which had evoked Lynda's defiance. 0 For Martha to take this plunge into Lynda's madness 249 0 requires courage; she has no guarantee that she will later be able to function in the everyday world. At the outset this world is called into question, for "The machinery of ordinary life seemed a frightening trap" (F.G.C., p.493) from this new perspective. She realizes that only through renouncing it and attempting to break with its all-encompassing demands can she hope to "'get out'" as Lynda puts it. Martha realizes that Lynda, in her frantic movement around the walls of her apartment has not been under the delusion that her flat is a prison. This is the "sensible" interpretation that Mark gives to her behaviour. Lynda is creating an existential metaphor; the flat is herself and her exploration of the walls is a testing of the limits of her own mind. Her choice of this particular symbol reflects Mark's attempts to mold her according to the image of his desire for a wife and the pressures imposed by the larger social world on women to con fine them to keeping house. "How to get out" of or transcend herself is the problem on which Lynda focuses. It also becomes the central dilemma for Martha. Martha cannot make her own inner journey in Lynda's presence, for Lynda is too vulnerable to tolerate seeing Martha, the person upon whom she relies, disintegrate. The message which Martha takes from the culmination of Lynda's experience is, "'I can't do it, but you can. And when you do it, you'll do it for me too.'" "It" refers to the process of "testing the walls" of the self-as-prison in order to find a 250 0 "thin place" where "one day, you will simply step outside, free" (F.G.C., p.494) to discover previously undreamt of powers. Lynda's visionary hope - "'Our brains could be rockets and space probes if they can be radios and T.V. sets'" (F.G.C., p.502) -is for nothing less than a dramatic expansion of the potential of human consciousness to replace the machines we now use to compensate for limitations we have the ability to surpass and into which we often empty our humanity. Lynda no longer believes in her own capacity to achieve such breakthroughs for her mind has been dulled by years of "therapy" - drugs and electro-shocks. Martha alone cannot, however, achieve the self-transformation which both desire. In Lynda's absence, all she can do is overcome her fear and confront aspects of herself which are most at odds with her potentialities. In the weeks Martha spends locked in the room of Paul's apartment building, she learns that she can discover within herself all existing human potential: "The tortured and the torturer. Am being both." (F.G.C., p.538) What she comes to understand of her own feelings leads to comprehension of all social possibilities. She calls her ordeal the "Stations of the Cross" and her self-hating dimension "the Devil, 11 linking her psychic exploration with other accounts of mystical experiences. Martha's self-exploration represents a trans cendent reality, a level of awareness and meaning which escapes both the everyday world of personal relationships and 251 the socio-political world which has become increasingly alienating. No longer does Martha experience herself as a social creation of other people. When she writes, "I am the creation of my own mind," (F.G.C., p.543) she is asserting the existence of the tremendous potential of the individual consciousness. Before Martha returns to her life at Radlett Street, she reminds herself that she would not have survived her experience if she had become frightened enough to seek help from a psychiatrist: "A doctor or a psychiatrist would have needed only to use the language of the self-hater and that would have been that. Finis, Martha!" (F.G.C., p.553) In Lessing's portrayal, most psychiatrists are not concerned with discover- ing the kinds of powers Martha is exploring within herself. Instead they make use of their patients' fear of the irrational to maintain their own authority and their patients' dependence. As an institution psychiatry does not promote understanding of the self; it is one of the regulating mechanisms of a complex social system which keeps deviant individuals in line or out of circulation. Throughout The Four-Gated City Martha oscillates between engagement with an external world which takes on more and more the aspect of a kaleidoscope and intense preoccupation with her own mind. Lessing portrays London life as a spectacle which becomes more and more interesting and diverse as the deprivation of the post-war years gives way to the appearance 252 c of affluence in the sixties. She reproduces the details of fashion and hairstyles as well as the shifts of political and ethical styles embodied in characters like Graham Patten. Through her inner journey Martha attempts to find a dimension of experience free from the control of a system which has become, increasingly complicated and incomprehensible. The political and economic system scarcely seems amenable to change. It encompasses all aspects of the social world, and renders individuals impotent. The power and extent of this system is represented in the tableau at the end of the novel (preceding the appendix) where the authorities of church and state congregate on Margaret's lawn and are joined by Graham Patten, followed by "a cloud of poets and writers and artists and pop singers which settled on the dewy grass around those so solidly shod feet." {F.G.C., p.590) Neither art nor the media perform a critical function in this society but sit humbly at the feet of authority. Confronted with this image of a system which coerces not merely through a display of force, but also through the marshalling of all aspects of everyday life for its perpetua tion, the individual must create some space for her/himself by turning inward. Social life consists of little but shifting ephemera. Family life offers nothing but an emotional trap. Paradoxically, when Martha turns in on herself she finds the connections to larger social forces which she could not make in the external world. Having judged political commitment to 253 0 be an inadequate mode of representing human liberation, Lessing chooses in this way to indicate the potential of individuals to escape the system's total control. The implied question throughout the novel which becomes ever more insistent is: Who is fit to cope with this world? More and more characters seem unable to deal with the "society of the spectacle"11 on its own terms. Martha encounters these "drop-outs" in Paul's apartment building or clustered around Francis and Jill. Many of them are impelled to leave London and move to the country in an attempt to recover a sense of community no longer available to them in the city. These are the people who will ultimately accept Martha and Lynda's warning and will make provision for the inevitable catastrophe whose aftermath we see in the novel's appendix. Those who have been least successful in the everyday world of the present become the most likely to survive in the end. They are the "shadow of the future," for they have not been entirely duped by the system's pseudo-rationality. The visionary powers which Martha and Lynda have culti vated take on increased importance in the novel's science fiction-like appendix, for the children born with them represent nothing less than a hope for the transformation of the human race. Even after the holocaust, however, the children born with powers at which Martha marvels must be con cealed and protected from the ruling bureaucracy. The Four Gated City ends with the tenuous suggestion that mankind might 254 begin again at a new and higher level. Our last image is of Joseph Batts about to begin his career as a gardener. The situation of these children makes them so vulnerable, however, that the book certainly does not end with anything like a prophecy of a utopian future. The capabilities developed by Martha and Lynda restore to the individual the power of which~e has been deprived by a system which has tried to organize everyone and everything for its own ends and has robbed individuals of a sense of their ability to affect it. Francis records the reaction he first had when he heard of the existence of people possessed of such unusual capacities: "The old right of the individual human conscience which must know better than any authority, secular or religious, had been restored, but on a higher level, and in a new form which was untouchable by legal formulas." (F.G.C., p.623) The powers which Martha and Lynda describe and which appear in an expanded degree in some of the children on Martha's island undermine all modes of bureaucratic social control. By the late sixties, a communist world view no longer seemed adequate to Lessing as a way of understanding the com plex nature of contemporary society. Nonetheless, she has remained intensely concerned with the possibility of social change. In The Four-Gated City she has created a symbol of the power of the individual to affect such change and to insert him/herself not only into history but also into the 255 whole course of human evolution. The image itself must be seen in relation to the structure of the whole, for in her later work it is primarily with the structure of her novels that Lessing creates her metaphors of liberation rather than merely with images of individuals who transcend a particular set of limitations. 256 0 N 0 T E S 1 Doris Lessing, A Ripple from the Storm (London: Panther Books Ltd., 1964), p. 32. All further references to this work will appear in the text. 2 Nikolai Ostrovsky, How the Steel Was Tempered, trans. R. Prokofieva (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1967), vol. II, p. 85. The novel was originally published in 1937 in English under the title, The Making of ~ Hero. The passage occurs in a reflection of the hero, Pavel Korchagin, on the graves of some of his comrades who died in the Civil War. I am grate ful to Doris Grieser Marquit who identifies the quot ation in a note published in the first issue of the "Doris Lessing Newsletter," Winter 1976. 3 Lessing bases her portrayal of the split in the ranks of the Social Democrats on the actual events in the Rhodesian Labour Party described in Chapter I. However, in the novel she deviates from the actual history by leaving out of her account the political factors - other than rejection by white trade unionists of African membership in the party - which precipitated the schism. In her fiction she wants to emphasize the degree to which racism affects the judgement of her colonialists. It can lead them to act in opposition to their own pragmatic political interests, for the split in the party reduces it to ineffectuality. 4 According to M.C. Steelein "Children of Violence and Rhodesia: A Study of Doris Lessing as Historical Observer," Lessing in Landlocked "projected the racial confrontation of the very late 1950s and early 1960s back a full decade, a procedure which not only distorts historical perspective but also is less than fair to those forces which give rise to the multiracial experiment of the Central African Federation." (p. 28) While it may be true that the racial polarization in Rhodesia did not actually occur as quickly as she portrays it in the novel, later events did prove the accuracy of Lessing's perception of the direction race relations would ultimately take. Lessing's"distortion" of 257 actual history serves her larger purpose of port raying the destructive effects of relationships based on subordination and domination. 5 Here Lessing condenses the two actual post-war strikes into one event. 6 Doris Lessing, Landlocked (London: Panther Books Ltd., 1965), p. 255. All further references to this work will appear in the text. 7 Marion Vlastos, "Doris Lessing and R.D. Laing: Psycho-politics and Prophecy," P.M.L.A., 91 (March, 1976) 1 P• 245-258. 8 Vlastos, p. 245. 9 Laing's most provocative account of the spiritual meaning of the schizophrenic experience can be found in The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 1967). 10 For Laing's views on the family see The Politics of the Family (Toronto: C.B.C. Learning Systems, 1969)-.- 11 Guy Debord uses this term to characterize contemporary life: "Considered in its own terms, the spectacle is the affirmation of appearance and the affirmation of all human, namely social life, as mere appearance." Society of the Spectacle (Detroit: Black and Red, 1970), paragraph 10. 0 0 CHAPTER IV METAPHORS OF LIBERATION Structure of The Golden Notebook Structure of the Children of Violence 258 0 STRUCTURE OF THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK The Golden Notebook is the most widely known of Lessing's novels and has attracted more critical attention than any of her other work. Numerous critics have attempted to elucidate its structure and to situate it in relation to other modern novels. 1 Lessing published The Golden Notebook after she had completed the first three volumes of Children of Violence, which had given her readers no suspicion that she intended to write any kind of fiction other than what could, without 2 hesitation, conveniently be labelled "realistic." The Golden Notebook is, however, a highly self-conscious novel about, among other things, the problematic writing of fiction, and the relationship of art to life. In it Lessing eschews the devices of third person narration, chronological sequence, and clear cause and effect relationships which she had been using up to that point. The self-conscious novel or the novel which includes within it a sophisticated sense of itself as creating an illusion is not peculiar to the twentieth century. The complex relation of fiction to reality has been a subject of the novel from its very beginnings, if we think of Don Quixote. As a genre, the novel has always been characterized by its inclusiveness, and novelists have, from the outset, been eager to play with its "form," as Sterne does in Tristram Shandy. Richardson's epistolary novels provide very early examples of 259 0 the use of multiple narrators, and Fielding interrupts his narrative to comment upon what he is doing, breaking the illusion, and reminding the reader that he must remain aware of the work as fiction. In the twentieth century, however, many writers have added another dimension to their self-consciousness by taking the artist himself as the subject of their fiction, as do Mann, Joyce, Proust, and Gide. All these novelists explore the artist's own complex psychological state as well as his relationship to society. Gide's The Counterfeiters, although less complex in structure, seems to be the most obvious precursor of The Golden Notebook, in its portrayal of the process of Edouard's novel writing within the novel. In this section I want to analyze the structure of The Golden Notebook, not merely for its own sake, but in order to explore the relation of its form to its content, to place the experience of Anna's "breakthrough," discussed in the last chapter, in the context of the whole novel, and to discover the meaning of the novel's structure in relation to Lessing's other work as well as to her political concerns. In conceiving The Golden Notebook, Lessing wanted to avoid the glorification of her artist-protagonist. She remarks that she did not want to create a "monstrously isolated, monstrously narcissistic, pedestaled paragon" whose life must be sacrificed to his creativity. Thus she gave her novelist, Anna Wulf, a fundamental problem, a "writer's block." This device enables 260 Lessing to explore her sense of "the disparity between the overwhelming problems of war, famine, poverty, and the tiny individual who was trying to mirror them." 3 Anna's "block" has not, of course, prevented her from writing, for she has been constantly adding to her four note books. What she has deliberately avoided is the process of organizing and shaping her work in order to address an audience, for she cannot write the kind of novel which she can only envision as a possibility. In the first section of the black notebook she writes, "I am incapable of writing the only kind of novel which interests me: a book powered with an · intellectual or moral passion strong enough to create order, to create a new way of looking at life." (G.N., p.61) Anna feels that her sense of fragmentation is the governing quality of her life and her era, but it is what prevents her from writing a novel which would create the comforting illusion of order. Only when Anna discovers the shape that can include the chaos, the fragmentation, the sense that "everything's cracking up" within an ordered structure does she direct her work to others. Lessing uses Anna's "ordering" of her series of fictional projections of herself as a means of structuring The Golden Notebook. Anna, as editor, divides each of her four notebooks (black, red, yellow, blue) into four parts which she inter- sperses with the five sections of her "finished" novel, "Free c Women." The golden notebook provides the transition and key 261 0 to the whole. Near the end of that section, Saul uses the strength he has acquired from their mutual experience of breakdown to give Anna the support and direction she needs in order to overcome her "writer's block." He forces Anna to stop making excuses or concocting rationalizations for herself by giving her a theme and a first sentence: "'There are the two women you are, Anna. Write down: The two women were alone in the London flat.'" (G.N., p.639) Since we recognize this as the first sentence of both "Free Women" and The Golden Notebook, we realize here that the relationship among all the projections of Anna is more complicated than it had at first seemed. On a first reading, we receive the impression that the notebooks belong to Anna of "Free Women" for she also keeps four notebooks and at the end of the first section of the novel within a novel we see her preparing herself to write in them. We assume that the notebook extracts which follow are the creation of this Anna. Not only is the opposite the case, but the Anna of "Free Women" is a very different character from the Anna of the notebooks, or the Anna who, as editor, puts together the whole. Many critics fail to distinguish between these two characters and misinterpret the novel by confusing them. Not only is Anna of "Free Women" not the same character as the Anna who composes the notebooks whose segments we read, but the other characters and their interrelationships are also 262 0 very different. Tommy in the notebooks does not make the memorable suicide attempt which occurs in "Free Women." The experience of working in a coal mine given to his friend in "Free Women" is his experience in the notebooks. Afterwards he lectures on coalminers' lives, marries a prudent, cautious woman, and joins a group of young socialists who, rejecting the political experience of their parents as irrelevant to them, will repeat their mistakes. He represents repetition of the kind of experience, discussed in the previous chapter, which Anna wishes to avoid. Anna in the notebooks mentions no direct relationship with Tommy; her entries record only what she hears of him from Molly who disapproves of his marriage and the direction his life is taking. Richard and Marion, central to "Free Women," play almost no role in the notebooks. They assume significance only in Anna's "conventional novel" to play out their parts in the sex-war drama that Anna has constructed to demonstrate the ways their interactions represent emotional dead-ends for them all. There is a perceptible discontinuity in style between Anna's notebook entries and those ascribed to the Anna of "Free Women." The disparities of style as well as the shifts of emphasis introduce one of the major themes of "Free Women" and indicate the way it functions within the novel as a whole. In the second section of "Free Women," Tommy reads excerpts from Anna's notebooks and questions her about why she chooses to emphasize ordinary activities and bracket "the madness and 263 the cruelty." (G. N., p. 273) The notebook entry he reads in the course of their conversation is much more melodramatic than the contents of the actual notebook sections: "'I stood looking down out of the window. I could see myself lying on the pavement. Then I seemed to be standing by the body on the pavement. I was two people. Blood and brains were scattered everywhere. I knelt down and began licking up the blood and brains.'" This fantasy is juxtaposed with a statement about buying groceries, making lunch, and taking Janet to the park. The Anna of "Free Women" cannot integrate the everyday self who is concerned with food, nurturance, Janet's welfare and the self who experiences violent self-destructive or cannibalistic longings. One or the other must be defined as "untrue" or "unrealistic" and it's the violence she brackets. Anna's self-limiting compartmentalization infuriates Tommy: "'You despise people like my father who limit themselves. But you limit yourself too. For the same reason. You're afraid.'" (G.N., p.274} The Anna of "Free Women" will never overcome this kind of self-limitation for she will not allow herself to have the experience of breaking down which Anna, her creator, records in the blue and golden notebooks. Anna uses her projection in "Free Women" to illustrate the failure to integrate destructive aspects of the self with the self who is both efficient and caring. Anna of "Free Women" does not go through the process that enables the Anna of the notebooks to draw creative energy out of experience 264 which seems self-destructive. Instead she shores up her personality with external props - a job, membership in the Labour Party, volunteer work. With such a busy schedule, she will never again be able to think about what took her to the brink of madness. Just as the Anna of "Free Women" is not the same character as Anna, her creator, Molly of "Free Women" is not an exact analogue of Anna's friend Molly who appears in the notebooks. Within "Free Women, " Molly functions as another aspect of Anna herself. In their initial conversation, Molly and Anna seem to be probing into and testing one another to confirm that they are still in basic agreement after their separation. Anna, as novelist, uses their dialogue to express some of her own ambivalence: she reveals her contradictory feelings about psychotherapy, men, politics, art. When they discuss psychoanalysis, Molly defends Mrs. Marks: "'She was wonderful, and I was in much too bad a shape to criticize,'" while Anna insists on the reductiveness of Mrs. Marks' therapeutic practice, "'Mother Sugar used to say, "You're Electra," or "You're Antigone," and that was the end as far as she was concerned.'" {G.N., p.S) Referring to male friends and acquaintances, Anna says angrily, "'They still define us in terms of relationships with men, even the best of them.'" Molly responds, '"Well we do, don't we?"' (G.N., p.4) Molly puts the kind of psychological pressure to write on Anna which has made writing impossible for her. She 265 0 functions for Anna as a kind of destructive super-ego, making demands which Anna cannot fulfill. Molly is full of political cliches about the kind of novel Anna ought to write: "'After all, you aren't someone who writes little novels about the emotions. You write about what's real.'" (G .N. , p. 42) Although she retains these unexamined commonplaces from their Communist past, when they actually discuss politics, Molly refuses to analyze their experience in the Party, "'I don't care any more, Anna. I simply don't.'" (G.N., p.SO} Molly and Anna in "Free Women" are fragments of Anna's own consciousness. With this fictional device, Anna finds one way to use her fragmented sense of self, creating a "conventional novel" and, at the same time, exploring its limitations. The ''plot" of this novel revolves around Molly and Anna' s relationships with men. In "Free Women," insensitive men, who are all emotional cripples, persecute women. Women see them selves as victims, for they are never able to recognize the "feminine" modes of interaction which perpetuate the childish male egotism of which they complain. Molly is involved in a mutually punishing relationship with her ex-husband Richard although they have been divorced for years. They remain linked through their son, Tommy, whose inability to decide what he wants to do with his life precipitates the crisis. From his position as representative of the respectable bour geoisie, Richard can attack Molly, Anna, their values, "'What astounds me is your fantastic arrogance. Where do you get it 266 from, Molly? What are you?'" To justify himself and his own way of living, Richard will blame all of Tommy's problems on them, the mother and mother-surrogate. Minutes later, however, he will try to implicate them in his self-pity and elicit from them the feminine sympathy to which he feels he has a natural righb "'I know there's one problem you haven't got- it's a purely physical one. How to get an erection with a woman you've been married to fifteen years?"' (G.N., p.31) Richard's account of his "purely physical" problem is grotesque; with his discon- tented wife and sexually accommodating secretaries, he is a male cliche. His selfish egotism permits him to expect deference and sympathy from women, although he anticipates making no reciprocal effort to understand Molly and Anna's situation. He sees Molly or Anna, like any other unmarried woman, as fair prey for any man, and, at the same time, contradictorily, as removed from the conflicts of family life. In his view they are living on "pretty safe sidelines" and cannot judge his conduct, although he can and does judge theirs. When Tommy makes his suicide attempt, Richard was "openly condemning them both." (G.N., p.371) They too examine their own lives carefully to see where they might have failed Tommy. All three implicitly accept the notion that Molly and Anna are responsible in some way for what has happened. Molly's feelings of guilt prevent her from confronting Tommy with her suspicion that after the suicide attempt he uses his blindness 267 0 as a weapon against her. Tommy becomes for both Molly and Anna "the centre of the house, dominating it, conscious of everything that went on in it, a blind but all-conscious presence." (G.N., p.377) Even in her own apartment, Anna feels deeply affected by the boy's act. She can scarcely make entries in her notebooks: "She felt as if the boy, his hot dark eyes accusing, stood at her elbow. She felt that her room was no longer her own." (G.N., p.380) Although Tommy requires little emotional or physical support, Molly's guilt forces her to live her life in reference to her son; his blindness confirms him in a state of manipulative dependence. This is apparently just what he desires, for he seems to Anna and Molly no longer self-divided: "'He's all in one piece for the first time in his life.'" (G.N., p.378) Ironically, his mutilation has made him whole. Tommy not only compels his mother to live as his captive, but he also attracts Marion away from Richard. In what appears to be a delayed and transposed Oedipal drama, Tommy succeeds completely in gaining Marion's affection and attention. Their intimacy isolates Molly and makes her feel like a stranger in her own house. By befriending the desperate Marion, Tommy causes anguish to both his parents, for Richard is both furious and aggrieved. He feels abandoned by the woman he has taken for granted for years. Both Richard and Tommy expect women to minister to their every need and whim without allowing the women themselves any sort of 268 individuality. They manipulate women through guilt and demand the exclusive attention a mother pays to her infant. Anna is also deeply implicated in this drama. She responds to Richard as she would to a paternal authority figure, with fear and contempt. Any interaction between them makes her loathe herself for she allows him to draw her into "the whole stupid game" (G.N., p.385) of mutual recrimination and abuse. Nominally free of men and their traditional control in marriage, Anna cannot avoid male manipulation. When Richard summons her to his office, she complies with his wish although she knows that nothing but a display of bad feeling can result from their conversation. Richard's reluctance to allow her to leave the office without subtly humiliating her and demonstra ting his power over her, parallels his inability to let go either of Molly or Marion, both of whom are desired by Tommy for that very reason. Father and son compete for "mother" while Richard wants to marry a woman young enough to be his daughter. Shaken by her fear of Richard, Anna sees masculine persecution all around her, on the underground, on the street, in her own apartment. Anna feels "as if a spirit of perverse and ugly spite were everywhere" (G.N., p.394) in her home. She locates this spirit in Ronnie and Ivor and thinks she can banish it by evicting them. Only after her conversations with Tommy, Marion, Molly, and Richard, however, does Anna acquire the psychological strength to compel Ivor and Ronnie to leave. 0 269 0 Anna helps affect a temporary resolution of conflict, which allows all of them to settle into the future of self limitation Molly and Anna had been so strenuously avoiding. The illusion of wholeness Tommy presents comes to symbolize the future of all the other characters who ultimately make self-limiting decisions based on a restricted understanding of themselves and others. All the characters seem emotionally exhausted by the series of events which they can neither analyze nor understand. They sacrifice whatever possibility of openness to new experience they might have had to their fear of their own vulnerability. Near the beginning of "Free Women" Anna wants to reject "the security and balance" offered her by "Mother Sugar" as an ideal. She asks herself, "What's wrong with living emotionally from hand-to-mouth in a world that's changing as fast as it is?" (G.N., p.lO) However, without going through the process of self-confrontation experienced by Anna, her creator, Anna of "Free Women" cannot maintain this attitude and must retreat to a false wholeness, 11 integrated with British life at its roots," {G.N., p.666) as Molly ironically puts it. In the last segment of "Free Women," Anna condenses and foreshortens experiences previously recorded in the notebooks, but there are important differences which illuminate the relationship of Anna to this fictional persona. When the Anna of "Free Women" spends a night with Nelson, she "conspired 270 0 with him, out of chivalry, in pretending there was nothing seriously wrong." (G.N., p.649) In the third section of the blue notebook where Anna records her encounters with Nelson, she discusses his sexual problems with him in a frank and open manner he finds disconcerting. The notebook entries reveal her awareness of the tendency women have "to bolster men up," (~., p.484) to create and sustain male egos at the expense of the fulfillment of their own desires. This insight is one of the beginnings of the breakthrough Anna later makes in the course of her relationship with Saul. After going through her charade with Nelson, the Anna of "Free Women" finds herself in a "low helpless depression" for she is unwilling to confront the implications of her dishonesty. In the notebooks, Anna describes the continuation of her relationship with Nelson and the ways in which he gets his revenge on her. Anna records several incidents in which she identifies herself as a victim of men's spiteful anger. However, she does not remain trapped by that view of herself. She moves toward greater self-awareness in her recurring nightmares, which she labels the "joy in destruction dreams." Before Janet's departure for boarding school, Anna oscillates between dependence on her responsibilties to her daughter to maintain her sanity and the dreaming awareness of her own "destructive" potentialities: "I remember thinking in the dream: So now I am the evil vase; next I'll be the old man-dwarf; then the hunch-backed old woman. Then what? Then 271 0 Nelson's voice down the receiver into my ear: Then the witch, then the young witch." (G.N., p.496) "The young witch"- that embodiment of feminine, seductive evil, feared by men, used as a taunt in the dream by Nelson, who fears "castrating" women -is an image from Anna's own unconscious which indicates her ambivalence about the source of her creative powers. Only in the last section does Anna realize to what degree this ambivalence is connected to her relationship with men. Ultimately Anna experiences a real breakdown and dissolu tion of her personality which leads to the reawakening of her creativity. However, the Anna of "Free Women 11 does not go through this process; she externalizes her disturbance in the symbolic activity of cutting out fragments of newsprint and pinning them to her walls. She simultaneously believes that she is cracking up and that 11 people who were not as obsessed as she was with the inchoate world mirrored in the newspapers were all out of touch with an awful necessity ... (G.N., p.651) She is trying to understand the world through putting together a mass of discrete facts. In the notebooks however, Anna begins to understand something of the world by looking within herself. She experiences the "negative" aspects of her "positive" desires to care for others and to nurture them, and the "positive .. aspects of the feelings of anger and violence which she had long sought to deny or suppress. The arrival of Milt wrenches Anna ("Free Women") out of .Q her mania; he takes the clippings off the wall and she quickly 272 returns to normalcy. Milt, who parallels Saul Green, also differs from him in important ways. Saul is less self-defined and less static a character than Milt. Like Anna, he gains important insights from their mutual breakdown, and is able to "use" their experience to rediscover his own creativity. Milt, however, like Richard, is another type of male clich~: "'I can't sleep with women I like.'" (G.N., p.660) He feels optimistic about his situation, for he believes that "'Knowing what's wrong, admitting it'" and making a firm resolution to 11 ' beat it'" will be his salvation. (G.N., p.661) His very acute self-perceptions, however, seem, paradoxically, to insure that his problems will perpetuate themselves: 4 there is no indication that he is trying to submit himself to the painful process of real change. He defines the reasons for his attitudes to women as "sociological:" thus he is not responsible for his own feelings. When he leaves Anna, he intends to take his self-conscious self-pity to the next woman he encounters, for he firmly believes that he and other neurotic men are having a harder time than the women: "'Don't you see it's all much worse for us than it is for you?'" (G.N., p.663) Implicated in his self-pity through the feminine ideal of nurturance and concern for others, the "well-tempered" women he meets help maintain his condition. Like Richard and Tommy, Milt believes that he has the right to expect an unlimited amount of feminine sympathy, "'Because you're tougher, you're kinder, you're in a position to take it.'" 273 0 If she wants Milt to stay, Anna knows that he will leave. With no prospects for the future, their relationship is meaningless in the present. Anna reveals her anger in spite ful remarks, but she gains no new insight from the experience. For both of them, their relationship represents repetition of a previously established pattern. For Anna, it becomes merely the last in a series of incidents which leads her to the conviction that she must close herself off from experiences which are likely to exact too high an emotional toll. Taking a job, joining the Labour Party, and doing volunteer work with delinquents parallels for Anna Molly's "safe marriage." Both Anna and Molly are removed at last from the "emotional rat race" in the resolution provided for "Free Women." The fates of the two characters represent the modern woman's two possibilities: career woman and housewife. The "conventional novel" demands that the conflicts which are portrayed be resolved neatly at the end. "Free Women" fulfills this requirement; it concludes with each of the characters facing a settled and more or less secure future. Juxtaposing its segments with the fragments of the notebooks calls into question this kind of "closed" structure which parallels the closing off of the characters' lives through the choices they make. The constraints of the form seem as unsatisfactory as the limitations the characters have imposed on their lives when the novel is placed in the context of the whole complex work. "Free Women" is the most complete 274 0 of Anna's fictions. Almost as complex is "The Shadow of the Third" where Anna creates another, more distanced, projection of herself. Through writing "The Shadow of the Third," Anna analyzes the break-up of her affair with Michael, gains her revenge by portraying him as Paul Tanner, increases her distance from her own distress, and exorcises one possibility for her future attitudes toward men with the creation of Ella. Anna's note book entries make Michael's departure seem arbitrary and cold, except in the record of the day where she tries to recall all her thoughts and feelings. This entry reveals that her own suppressed anger has poisoned and deadened the atmosphere between them. Anna gives symbolic expression to this insight by making suicide the subject of the novel Ella is writing. Like Ella herself, the suicidal protagonist in this novel is not conscious of the illusions he has about himself and the future. The idea for the novel emerges from Ella's conscious ness of her own inability to make choices, her tendency to surrender her will to that of others, her deadening of herself. Anna reveals another crucial aspect of her relationship with Michael by giving his name to Ella's son. Her constant catering to Michael's whims has perpetuated the childishness and the egotism which she so much resents. This too hovers on the edge of Anna's awareness: "I used the name of my real lover for Ella's fictitious son with the small over-eager smile with which a patient offers an analyst evidence he has 275 0 been waiting for but which the patient is convinced is irrelevant." (G.N., p.211) Writing this novel enables Anna to explore the breakup of her relationship with Michael in a way that she was otherwise unable to do, even in psychoanalysis. Unlike 11 Free Women," this "novel" is not finished; there is no resolution. The fragments written do not fit together; Anna constructs them to explore possibilities. They are much less dramatic in style than Anna's completed novel,for there is less dialogue and more exploration of Ella's consciousness. Large parts of the story are summarized and Anna injects into it notes of her intentions. Ella is more clearly differen tiated as a character from Anna, her "creator," than is the Anna of "Free Women ... She is a woman with fairly conventional desires and expectations whose thought patterns are often rendered in the cliches of the women's magazine for which she works. However, she despises this magazine and rationalizes her contempt for her work by reflecting that, "She knew no one who was absorbed heart and soul in the work they did; everyone seemed to work reluctantly, or with cynicism, or with a divided mind, so she was no worse than anyone else." (G.N., p.220) The integrity she seeks for herself is not to be found in her work, she thinks, but in her relations with men. Anna is not so self-deluded as to believe she can achieve one without the other. Anna deliberately focuses "The Shadow of the Third" on the process through which Ella deludes herself about her lover. 276 Only before their affair begins is Ella capable of accurately c observing Paul Tanner. When she first meets him, his aggressive "pursuit" of her makes her uncomfortable. She realizes that gaining her attention at the party represents for him winning some kind of contest. When she agrees to go with him for a drive the following day, she sees on his face a look of "triumph. He's won a kind of victory.n (G.N., p.l85) He is operating in their first encounter in terms of a male ethic of competition, performance and success. Ella and Paul begin their relationship from different premises; where she desires to become acquainted, he wants to conquer. Her uneasiness reappears after they first make love; she sees a "hard, almost ugly look" (G.N., p.l93) on his face. Already seeing in him a potential lover, she resists disappointment; she closes her eyes. Afterwards, he wants to believe that she set up the seduction and that she habitually makes love to men in casual encounters. Ella tries to ignore the Paul who self-consciously plays a rake, flaunting a cynical "understanding" of women. When she sees him in this role, "It was as if he had a personality at these moments not his. 11 If she allowed herself to admit the existence of this Paul, "She would have to break off with him." G.N., p.l97) When she can no longer ignore this aspect of her lover, she rationalizes it away with psychoanalytic sleight of mind. She decides that this "rake" is his "shadow," his negative self, and that it is really his "positive" self 277 he is presenting in relation to her. Nonetheless, she allows herself to be controlled by his expectation that she will sleep with other men when she goes to bed with the editor, to whom she is not attracted, feeling "as if she floated on someone else's will." (G.N., p.203) Under his psychological pressure, she behaves in a manner that can legitimate his self-justifying assumptions about her. All the tension between Paul and Ella stems from their very different perspectives on their affair. Ella imagines that it is leading toward marriage; she convinces herself that Paul will choose the right moment to leave his wife for her. She is eager to abandon her will to his desires, as she feels she does on their first day together. This frees her from responsibility for her own actions. When Paul tries to warn her that he has no intention of marrying her, she feels "chilled and full of dismay;" (G.N., p.200) she becomes sexually frigid. To Paul she reveals none of her feelings; he notices no difference in her responses. To protect herself from pain, she develops "a mechanism which would prevent her from hearing him when he made remarks that might make her unhappy." (G.N., p.205) Ella allows Paul to "put her intelli gence to sleep," (G.N., p.211) to create a "naive" Ella who refrains from judging him. Intellectually and spiritually Paul has left his wife behind in his ascent to middle class status. For that very reason, however, she remains important to him; she represents 278 continuity with his past and he will not divorce her. Because his experience has been split in two, he maintains a division in his feelings for his wife and his mistress to cope with the fragmentation of his life. Ella must remain in her category; when he sees her as a potential wife, she becomes unattractive to him. Paul does not want to accept the faithful and domestic Ella; in his mind he turns her into a "flighty piece" scheming to entrap him into marriage. He endeavors to trans form her into the mistress of his fantasy by encouraging her to dress in a more sexually provocative way. Wanting to believe that she has other affairs, he imagines that she flirts with strange men in front of him. The limitations Paul places on his emotions restrict his total development, intellectually and psychologically. He is so dissatisfied with his inability to fulfil! his "ambition to be a creative scientist" (G.N., p.210) that he tells Ella, "'I wish I had died, Ella. I wish I had died.'" (G.N., p.211) Condemned to be what he cynically calls a "boulder-pusher," he labels himself a "failure," for his work amounts to "'putting poultices on unnec_essary misery. '" (G.N., p. 212) This perspective reduces his patients to a lifeless abstrac tion. His cynicism deadens all his potential. In desperation, Paul leaves London to go to Nigeria, seeking to restore wholeness to his life by "'working for something new and growing.'" (G. N., p. 224) Anna makes Paul's feelings about the future of the affair 279 evident in one of his first exchanges with Ella. When she complains about the ugliness of the London working class suburbs as they drive through them, Paul responds that it would be impossible to sweep away the buildings which offend her without killing the "spirit of the people" who dwell in them, and who are connected through the landscape with their past. Ella remarks, "'A continuity isn't necessarily right, just because it's a continuity.'" Paul contradicts her, "'Yes, Ella, it is. It is. Be 11eve. me, 1. t 1s. . I 11 (G__ ._.,N p.l90} With this kind of dialogue and with constant chronological shifts which indicate ways an initial misunderstanding between Ella and Paul can become "a poisoned spot which spread," (G.N., p.l92) Anna structures her story to reveal "the laws of the dissolution of the relationship between Paul and Ella." (G.N., p.227) Using this pattern, however, frustrates Anna, who is conscious of the limitations the very structure imposes. The focus on the affair's deterioration prevents Anna from conveying the quality of the period during which Ella was happy with Paul. Anna's fictional intentions limit the scope of the novel for she must make the sense of the relationship's end obvious from the beginning. Because Anna can see the novel as if it "were already written," (G.N., p.211) there is little incentive for her to finish it. The novel becomes a kind of therapy for Anna. She analyzes her own fiction as she is writing it the way a psychoanalyst might interpret a dream. From the figures of 280 Paul and Ella she can draw conclusions about Michael and herself. Like Paul, Michael refuses to unify his emotional experience; wife, mistress, Communist past, cynical present are all maintained in separate boxes. Like Ella, Anna permits this dissociation to continue so that she may remain "free" of traditional entanglements. When Ella visits the suburban house Paul shares with his wife Muriel, she sees it as a "trap," (G.N., p.222) for she despises the security and petty bourgeois respectability it represents. Later she dreams of living in this house and she realizes that the role she played in Paul's life was also a trap. Anna too has adopted the same attitude toward "respectable" marriage. This contempt paradoxically creates a situation where she conspires with Michael, as Ella did with Paul, to remove him from his wife long enough so that he can always tolerate going back to her. Like prostitutes, "free" women permit "respectable" bourgeois marriage to perpetuate itself. In addition, both Anna and Ella, with their tolerance, allow the very emotional limitations and fragmentation they condemn in men to endure. Instead of attaining the freedom and authentic love to which they aspire, they find themselves entangled in crippling dependence and self-delusion. In trying to write about the sexual dimension of Paul and Ella's affair, Anna uses a detached authorial tone which masks her own ambivalence. The confusing shifts of point of view correspond to the confusions of Anna's own mind. Implicitly 281 0 she condemns all men for their insensitivity and emotional repression: Sex is essentially emotional for women. How many times has that been written? And yet there's always a point even with the most perceptive and intelligent man, when a woman looks at him across a gulf: he hasn't understood; she suddenly feels alone; hastens to forget the moment, because if she doesn't she would have to think." (G.N., p.214) According to Anna, men trust in the perfection of their sexual technique, while women concentrate on the intensity of their emotion: "A vaginal orgasm is emotion and nothing else, felt as emotion and expressed in sensations that are indistinguish- able from emotion. The vaginal orgasm is a dissolving in a vague dark generalized sensation like being swirled in a warm whirlpool." (G.N., p.215) Anna describes Paul as "afraid of the emotion;" he withdraws and relies on "mechanical" means to stimulate Ella, for he cannot respond to her with his whole being. Anna implies here what Ella certainly believes: that women possess a superior emotional authenticity. Anna must qualify this view after her breakdown reveals to her the para- doxical complexity of her desires. When Anna describes Ella's life after Paul abandons her, she not only transposes some of her own experiences into those of her character, but she also exorcises various emotional possibilities, living them out through Ella. Ella spends a year in a depression, knowing that Paul will not return to her, but finding herself continually recreating the space for him in her life. Having sequestered herself for five years to 282 0 accommodate Paul's jealousy, she is no longer at ease in casual encounters with other men. Ella is conscious of her state of mind; her response to her situation is to have a brief experimental affair with a caricature of an ambitious American, a brain surgeon who specializes in lobotomies. (His specialization represents the attenuation of the emotional dimension of his own life, which is also epitomized by his wife's frigidity.) Having decided that her desires for a settled relationship with one man do not fit the kind of life she leads, Ella tries to behave "like a man" and sleep with the first person who attracts her sexually. Cy Maitland has the restless vitality of Paul Tanner, but otherwise looks like a semi-domesticated animal, with his hair "like brown fur." (G.N., p.316) Anna makes Ella's experiment a failure for, unlike a man, she cannot have orgasm when she is with someone whom she does not love. For her this represents the kind of feminine integrity formerly associated with virginity. Just as the Victorian woman was supposed to be more "pure" than her male counterpart, the modern woman assumes she has a natural claim on a superior emotional authenticity. For Ella, the conclusion seems to be that women are doomed to be victimized in a world where their emotional integrity deprives them of the potential for pleasure - which is all that remains to those who reject marital shackles. Only later does Anna recognize the danger for women of continually assuming the 0 victim's role. 283 c Ella's self-defeating experiments cannot mitigate her bitterness. When at Paul's instigation Ella moved out of Julia's house, a rift occurs in their friendship which can be re-established only when they create for it a new basis of female solidarity against men. Ella's employer, Patricia Brent, has represented for her a cynical, world-weary attitude to men which Ella had previously rejected. Now she finds herself feeling nothing but a cynicism which "poison (s] " (G.N., p.452) her toward all the men who pay her any attention. She cannot transcend her disappointment for she never questions her assumption that a man's emotional initiative must "create a woman's desire" while she floats comfortably on a dark sea of feeling where thought is unnecessary. The inevitable result of Ella's expectation is distrust and disillusionment. Anna does not finish the story of her alterego, Ella; instead another inversion takes place between creator and character. The last time we see Ella she is trying to imagine a story about, "A man and a woman - yes. Both at the end of their tether. Both cracking up because of a deliberate attempt to transcend their own limits. And out of the chaos, a new kind of strength." (G.N., p.467) This is not a story that Ella can write, but it is the story that Anna lives out and records at the end of her notebooks. The "new kind of strength" Anna gains from her breakdown enables her to bring together all the fragments of her 0 284 c notebooks, plus the conventional novel which she had not wanted to write, into a whole which becomes greater than the sum of its parts. The way the pieces are juxtaposed and the resulting confusion this creates for readers are as important to examine as any insight gained from analyzing one of the pieces. As I have argued in Chapter III, the revelation which finally stimulates Anna's dormant creativity involves the necessity to recognize the destructive aspects of her own personality, which she has repressed,and integrate them into a whole sense of herself. Through this process Anna transcends both her pattern of repetitious actions and the cynicism of disappointed idealism. Nonetheless, Anna's integrating vision is not the ideal of static wholeness which was offered to her by Mrs. Marks or a mere reconciliation of opposites. Anna has discovered through her self-exploration a mode of dynamic integration which will sustain the possibility of both personal growth and participation in new social possibilities. The form of the novel reflects the complexity of Anna's breakthrough. Anna's "breakthrough" provides not an ending or a resolution, but a transitional stage which gives Anna the inspiration she needs to put all of her selves or projections in one book, The Golden Notebook. The golden notebook is not the end or last word of The Golden Notebook. The novel in some sense does not end, but directs the reader back to its beginning. None of the notebooks ends with any kind of resolution 0 285 0 to the problems or questions each raises. The last item Anna records in the black notebook is a dream of a television production done at the Mashopi Hotel. Although the director claims that he "'only filmed what was there,'" G.N., p.525) Anna recognizes none of what is said or done as her memory. When her memories are turned into public products, Anna loses them. She "names" this dream by saying it is "about total sterility." At this point Anna is not yet capable of new insight about her past, the images of which slip away from her. The last entry in the red notebook is the story of Harry Mathews who spent his entire life self-denyingly studying the history of the Russian Communist Party. His fantasy is that he will ultimately be invited to the Soviet Union to explain to the Party leaders just where they went wrong. By chance he is asked to join a delegation of British teachers who are going to visit Russia after the Twentieth Congress. The illusion that has furnished meaning to Harry's life is shattered when no one in the U.S.S.R. asks him for the results of his life's work. This is the story of a loss of faith in a private myth which had taken over a man's whole life. At the end of the story, we are told that Harry married the widow with whom he had previously been living: she had become pregnant. Losing his belief presumably enables Harry to pay more attention to his "personal" life, but this is hardly a 0 gain if he merely retreats, like so many other disappointed 286 0 Communists, into domestic privacy. Anna seems to have recorded this story as a warning to herself. The last section of the yellow notebook contains a series of sketches for short stories and short novels followed by a heavy-handed parody of what Anna calls "the romantic tough school of writing" (which may represent the style she thinks, at her most resentful and cynical, Saul might use). Many of the schemes for these fictions focus on the complexities of love affairs in which there is some obvious disparity between the man and the woman. In most of them, the woman becomes the victim of a man's infantile needs, or the prey of a man who feeds off her like a parasite. Most of the sketches reveal different aspects of Anna's perspective on her relationship with Saul, although this is not clear until one reads the last section of the blue note book. Anna makes notes on her affair with Saul simultaneously in both the blue and yellow notebooks. In the latter, she transposes events into fiction to give herself the distance she needs to retain some element of sanity or self-control. She cannot write any of these stories, however, for each pro vides an inadequate and partial 11 truth" about the affair. Anna, as editor, carefully correlates the story sketches with the entries in the blue notebook. In several places Anna notes that what she is writing "belongs" in the other notebook, indicating that the divisions are breaking down and a convergence is approaching. 287 c All the stories are full of bitterness and cynicism. Instead of functioning as a mode of gaining therapeutic insight, as do the previous sections of the yellow notebook, this last section signifies Anna's desperate effort to hold onto her old sense of herself. This segment demonstrates Anna's anxiety at the feeling of loss of control which accompanies her "breakdown." It represents some of her resistance to insights the breakdown will offer her. The last section of the blue notebook has no dates for Anna has begun to lose her sense of time. It provides the transition to the golden notebook through the direct record of Anna's affair with Saul and her gradual take over of "his" anxiety state. At the end of the blue notebook, Anna makes an important gesture: she refuses to give Saul the notebook she has just bought herself when he childishly demands it, although resisting his demand costs her a great deal of effort. Her refusal forces him to return to his adult personality and enables her later to give him the book as a free gift. Anna and Saul can thus become adults capable of true reciprocity, rather than remaining alternately parent and child, trapped in a mutually crippling dependence. The only segment of The Golden Notebook which actually does contain a resolution is the last part of "Free Women." However, this is the resolution of accommodation, even of failure. All the characters accept a future which Anna, at least, knows to be one of self-limitation, of the closing off 0 288 c of possibilities. The juxtaposition of this "finished" novel, where problems find their solutions, with the other fragments creates a necessary dissatisfaction with this kind of structure as well as with the psychological defenses and mechanisms it mirrors. Rejecting this "ending" the reader turns back to the text. The Golden Notebook seems to be a very involuted novel which merely turns in on itself. Paradoxically, however, Lessing has created a novel with an open structure where all the fragments remain in permanent tension with one another. Even when we look at the golden notebook section itself, we find not a resolution but a transition and a statement about the limits of what can be expressed. It is impossible to interpret any segment as the "last word" for the novel pushes the reader beyond the limits of fiction and even beyond the limits of language itself. At the center of the golden note book, Anna acknowledges her inability to convey the complete significance of the "illumination" she has had: "The fact is, the real experience can't be described ••. The people who have been there, in the place in themselves where words, patterns, order, dissolve, will know what I mean and the others won't." (G.N., p.633-4) Having recognized this, Anna admits that she must still "preserve the forms, create the patterns." The experience of reading The Golden Notebook does not enclose the reader within the text. Lessing uses Anna's recreation of Anna to create the open-ended structure of The Golden 0 289 c Notebook which not only draws the reader into Anna's experience but also, through considering the limits of fiction and the relation of fiction to experience, forces her/him to confront the world outside the novel. 0 290 0 STRUCTURE OF THE CHILDREN OF VIOLENCE With the Children of Violence, Doris Lessing makes use 5 of and transforms the Bildungsroman or "novel of education." In the course of the series, Martha oscillates between periods of intense involvement with others and periods of withdrawal and isolation. Lessing's concern is to portray the psycho- logical patterns into which Martha is locked and the ways in which she continually breaks those patterns. Martha's development is not linear, however, and the series does not resolve itself into a static "recognition of identity" or "maturity" on Martha's part where she either willingly accepts or resigns herself to prevailing social forms. As in The Golden Notebook, Lessing creates fiction which is open-ended and refuses conclusions or resolutions. She structures the series dialectically so that we can see Martha's progress as a series of movements between alternatives which at first seem to present themselves as opposites, but actually converge into syntheses of previous experiences which are, however, always on a new plane. Seeming oppositions reveal themselves as false dichotomies, as Martha discovers during her self- induced descent into madness: "Is this what all those books call 'the pairs of opposites?' Love, hate, black, white, good, bad, man, woman." (F.G.C., p.539) When Martha rebels against her family by moving to 0 Salisbury, she wants to live in a manner she believes is 291 c antithetical to her parents• values. She devotes herself to personal independence and pleasure, explores her developing sexuality, and leaves behind the ethic of resentful self sacrifice her mother has embodied for her. However, when her evenings of dancing and drinking with a series of men result in her marriage to Douglas, it becomes clear that Martha has not left her family behind. Instead, she creates another family to fill the emotional void left by her abstract rejection of her parents. Her marriage synthesizes the values embodied by her family and the way of life of the new genera tion represented by the Sports Club set. It provides the basis for a second rebellion against conventional housewifery and motherhood. Divorcing Douglas implies refusing to live as a prosperous matron of suburban Salisbury. This renunciation involves Martha's choice of the Communist Party which she sees as the antithesis of all her previous experience. As I demonstrated in Chapter III, the Party proves to be a surrogate family for Martha rather than the negation of the family. However, Martha is not merely repeating her past. Although with each move she conserves some former patterns, she also transcends previous limitations. When she joins the Communist group, she transfers her emotional involvement from traditional family relations - mother, father, husband, child - to a wider group of people to whom she is related neither by blood nor by marriage. Although the group cannot live up to it, the members 0 292 0 do subscribe to a utopian model of social relations in which individuals do not limit their affections to immediate family members, but extend them as widely as possible. Martha's life at Radlett Street, where she assists Mark with his very extended family embodies this ethic, as does her experience on the island with the group of people who find themselves there after the holocaust. Not only does a broad overview of Martha's progress suggest this dialectical pattern, but an examination of her important relationships also reveals the same structure. Martha's relationship with her mother has a profound effect on her subsequent relationships with other women and on her own experience of motherhood. May Quest attempts to project whatever hopes and dreams she had had for herself (represented in her dream in Landlocked as three roses which metamorphose into a medicine bottle) onto her daughter. She wants to use Martha as a source of compensation for her own frustrations. Martha's success must absolve her of her own sense of failure. To avoid losing her tenuous sense of herself and merging with her mother, Martha must continually act in opposition to her. In her conversations with Mrs. Van Rensberg, May Quest refers to Martha's potential career, "not in terms of some thing Martha might actually do, such as doctoring or the law, but as a kind of stick to beat the world with, as if she were saying, 'My daughter will be somebody, whereas yours will only be married.'" (M.Q., p.lO) Before Martha can have any 0 293 0 ambitions of her own, Mrs. Quest has appropriated them and used them for her own self-aggrandizement. In order to reclaim herself from her mother, Martha is obliged to block her own ambition and avoid taking the examinations which might have been "a simple passport to the outside world." (M.Q., p.30) However, she cannot win; this strategy backfires because the conflicted Mrs. Quest wishes not only to live vicariously through Martha, but also to compete with her. Thus Martha's failure to take the examinations affords her mother the secret satisfaction that her daughter will not, after all, avoid the constricted fate of most women, and thereby surpass her. May Quest's double messages as well as her conflicted desires and expectations confuse Martha, leading her to dis trust other women and deeply distrust herself in the role of mother. In her early life, Martha does not choose any close women friends; she finds herself linked to women like Stella through relationships with men. When she moves with Douglas to the Salisbury suburbs, she discovers that she is a member of a "circle of women" (P.M., p.250) who meet, casually, to discuss common problems. Martha goes to their tea parties because she is "uneasily curious as to how these other women felt." Their lives reflect what she least wants to acknowledge in her own situation: the process of "self-narrowing," {P.M., p.254) resulting from constant accession to the tyranny of small economies and small children. These other women pose a 0 294 0 threat to Martha's sense of self-control. Although she has determined not to have another child, Martha recognizes the power exerted by the compound of psycho logical and social compulsions she labels her "female self." She fears that the concentration of female energy and the validation of these "female selves" which occurs when the women come together will negate her own private resolution. However, with many of her problems Martha finds sympathetic resonance solely from other women. Although Martha must look to other women for emotional response which intimacy with Douglas cannot provide, she finds this empathy dangerous. While it sustains all the women, it also inhibits change. In Landlocked Martha finds herself in a parallel situation. Once she quits her secretarial job at the law firm and types independently at home, other women from the disintegrating Communist group begin to drop in on her. Although these women are supposed to be educated and progressive, Martha perceives that the subjects they discuss are strikingly similar to those favored by the suburban housewives she knew while she was married to Douglas. Martha feels that their visits create a "soft, poisonous, many-coloured web of comment and gossip," (Ll., p·.ll4) and that the talking itself drains the women of will and energy: "They are hypnotized into futility by self observation." (Ll., p.212) In both instances, Martha finally refuses herself the satisfaction of confirming that her com plaints and perceptions are shared by other women, for this 0 295 0 knowledge undermines any determination to take her own feelings seriously. If everyone feels exactly the same way, she is absolved both from guilt and from responsibility for change. Martha cannot gain any sustenance from friendships with other women until she encounters Lynda and begins her conscious self-exploration with her. Martha's relations with her mother force her to negate any potential for sustaining relationships with other women until she can develop a mode of expressing her own maternal possibilities without becoming like her mother, as she so deeply fears when she is about to have a child: "There was no reason why at fifty she should not be just another woman as Mrs. Quest, narrow, conventional, intolerant, insensitive." (P.M., p.34) Martha cannot possibly approximate the relaxed mother of her ideals - for whom maternity comes as naturally as breathing (P.M., p.l76) -for any momentary relaxation of her vigilance she experiences as "disloyalty and even danger to herself." She is caught in a double bind of guilt where if she "relaxes into Caroline," (P.M., p.201) she will lose herself, and if she does not, she will become the anxious "maternal force" (P.M., p.lll) of her worst fears. Martha finds nothing in her relationship with her mother which can reassure her about her relationship with Caroline. Her tension focuses itself in a number of painful scenes on Caroline's eating. Unsure as she is of her ability to nourish her child, Martha oscillates between trying to force Caroline to eat and attempting to 0 296 0 assume indifference. These battles result from her mother's accusation that Caroline is small for her age and is not being adequately fed. May Quest is actually trying to foist her own guilt for inadvertently under-feeding Martha as a child onto Martha as a mother. If Martha can be made to seem the guilty one, then Mrs. Quest will be absolved. In abandoning Caroline, Martha thinks that she is liberating her daughter, but she is actually trying to leave behind herself as mother in order to avoid becoming like her own mother. Martha is never able to resolve the conflicts with her mother even when May Quest comes to London. However, she does reclaim her own maternal potential when she plays the role of mother surrogate to Mark's son and nephew as well as to Phoebe's daughters. Free of attachment to her own bio logical children, Martha symbolically gives birth to and raises the exceptional children we see at the end of the novel who represent a hope for the evolution of the human race. Martha attempts to negate her experience with her mother by refusing the possibility of friendship with other women and by renouncing her role as mother. Ultimately, however, it is a relationship with another woman, Lynda, that becomes the most important element in her psychic journey and it is as symbolic mother to a whole group of children that Martha takes on an importance beyond the scope of her personal existence. The trajectory of Martha's relations with men is very different. 0 297 0 In childhood and adolescence, Martha looked to her father to protect her from the contradictory demands of her mother. In the face of her mother's interventions, her father's dreamy detachment took on a positive character. From time to time he could emerge from his hypochondriacal self-absorption to attend to Martha's concerns. As a result, Martha learns to expect to rely on men for support at crucial moments in her life. Throughout her early life, Martha looks to men to direct and transform her. When she goes to the Van Rensberg dance, she anticipates a Cinderella-like metamorphosis in the arms of Billy Van Rensberg. From reading the books lent her by the Cohen brothers, she hopes to gain some of their masculine self-confidence and power to act effectively in the world. Through a man's love, Martha expects "the ideal person within her" to emerge; even when she is kissed by the clumsy Perry at the Sports Club dance, she can entertain this fantasy until the spell is broken by his tearing her dress. Although Martha is prepared to defy the imperative that every girl must arrive at the altar a virgin, she cannot resist the idea that she must love the man with whom she sleeps. Even with Adolph King she experiences "waves of emotion" after they make love, although these feelings have no basis in any of their other interactions. Each time Martha marries, she behaves compliantly with her husband up to the moment when she leaves him. Her conflicts remain internalized 0 298 0 for she expects that these men will create for her the sense of self she lacks. Disappointed each time, she can only abandon both of them. When she is considering leaving Douglas, she needs William to "rescue" her and provide her with an alternative way of life. Her dissatisfaction with Anton expresses itself in her expectation that another man will "unify her elements;" he must be "like a fire burning in the centre of an empty space." (Ll., p. 37) Martha's affair with Thomas Stern finally breaks this pattern, for Thomas never allows her to fall into the illusion that she can depend on him as a father surrogate. Thomas displays none of the contradictory paternal and infantile qualities so apparent in Douglas and Anton and he refuses to allow Martha to treat him "maternally." This affair ends Martha's indecisiveness and enables her to break her habit of constant availability to others which she had been using to evade her own sense of purposelessness. Through loving Thomas, Martha discards her cynicism and discovers her potential for an intensity of feeling she had not known existed. This intensity expresses itself in their heightened sensitivity to one another and to nature, but also in an openness to the "revelation of brutality" (Ll., p.l58) which intrudes when Martha, Thomas, Anton, Millicent, Athen, and Maisie dance at the Parkland Hotel. After eating dinner at the hotel, Thomas catches sight of Sergeant Tressell, who represents for him what he calls 0 299 0 "murder by good-natured stupidity." (Ll., p.l49) The absolute hatred Martha observes on Thomas's face when he describes Tressell makes her aware of the potential for violence each one of them possesses: she looks at her own hand and sees "something cold and predatory." (Ll., p.l58) Like Anna Wulf, Martha realizes the degree to which violence has affected her development - the violence of the war which preceded her conception, the approaching violence of the Second World War which shadowed her growth, the violence of oppression inherent in the world she inhabits: "Martha was the essence of violence, she had been conceived, bred, fed, and reared on violence." (Ll., p.202) Through her portrayal of Martha and Thomas's relationship, Leasing demonstrates the interpenetration between the personal and the suprapersonal or historical. Martha and Thomas, through their love for one another, find themselves in connection with the conduits of great impersonal forces: "When Thomas and she touched each other, in that touch cried out the murdered flesh of the millions of Europe - the squandered flesh was having its revenge, it cried out through the two little creatures who were fitted for much smaller loves ••• it was all much too painful." (Ll., p.l07) Through her love for Thomas, Martha reaches new levels of self-consciousness which prepare her for her more intense self-exploration in The Four Gated City. Thomas himself anticipates future possibilities beyond the realms of the imaginations of any of Martha's other 0 300 0 associates:"'Perhaps there'll be a mutation though. Perhaps that's why we are all so sick. Something new is trying to get born through our thick skins. I tell you, Martha, if I see a sane person, then I know he's mad. You know, the householders. It's we who are nearest to being what's needed.'" (Ll., p.l22) However, his insights gradually separate him from others, isolate him, and lead him to madness and death. Deeply haunted by the memory of the extermination of his family, he feels compelled to go to the African reserves to recover the culture and the history of a people who are being as callously disposed of as were the Jews in his native Poland. His determination and courage are not, however, enough to sustain his life. Although Thomas serves an important function in Martha's development, she must take the succeeding steps free of the expectation that a man will show her the way. Martha begins her affair with Mark Coldridge at a moment of psychological weakness. When she realizes that continuing her passionate dependence on him would diminish her ability to reclaim her memories, she detaches herself from him. Their relationship remains intimate: they continue to work together, live together, sometimes sleep together, behave toward one another like "an old married couple." (F.G.C., p.298) However, Martha no longer expects that this relationship with a man is going to provide the basis for her life. Martha has realized that through her own efforts she must discover the self that 0 she had hoped a man would create. As she moves closer to 301 c Lynda, she moves subtly away from Mark, for she cannot share with him her deepest concerns. The dialectic of Martha's relations with men moves in the opposite direction to that of her relations with women. Although she initially anticipates male guidance in the creation of her 11 ideal self," she gradually realizes that her dependence on men has prevented her development of any real selfhood. She must free herself from close attachments to men if she is to find within herself the direction she had expected from them. Not only in Martha's relationships with other characters is the dialectical form of the novels apparent, but also in her relations to significant objects like books, clothes, and houses. During her adolescence on the farm, Martha depends on books to provide an alternative to her parents• constricted view of life. They supplement the hopelessly narrow social life available to her in the country. However, books can also become a "narcotic" for Martha; she reads lazily in a "trance of recognition," (M.Q., p.35) or to confirm opinions she already has. Thus when she looks at Engels 1 Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, she 11 agreed with every word of it - or rather with what she gained from it, which was a confirmation of her belief that the marriages of the district were ridiculous and even sordid, and most of all old-fashioned." (M.Q., p.66) As she gets older, Martha con tinues to depend psychologically on books. Each volume she 0 302 0 picks up stimulates the same question, "What has this got to do with me?" (M.Q., p. 220) She hopes to recognize herself and her feelings in what she reads, for in her actual life she denies so many of her own feelings and perceptions. After she marries Douglas, Martha expects that she will be able to find in books "some pattern of words which would neatly and safely cage what she felt - isolate her emotions so that she could look at them from the outside." (P.M., p.61) Her feelings of revulsion against Douglas are so intolerable that she can barely admit that she feels them at all. She must try to account for them through reading psychological formulae which, by generalizing them, will remove the necessity of taking them seriously. The books that she reads at this time help Martha obscure and repress what she is actually feeling. When Martha considers visiting Doctor Lamb, she reads a large number of books which reveal to her the world of psycho analysis and which fortify her against dependence and easy credulity. She is no longer reading to discover a description of what she feels: for the first time she can try to under stand her actual feelings without relying on a "pattern of words" to articulate them for her. Now from books Martha "extracted an essence, a pith, got necessary information, no more." (F.G.C., p.222) When she later reads a large number of books on mysticism and the occult, she does the same thing. She takes what she needs from the works and draws her own 0 303 0 conclusions. No longer is Martha dependent on books either to elucidate or to obscure her feelings and perceptions. She does not need to seek in them an alternative world. They are no longer fetishized objects for her, but she can use them for her own purposes. Martha's relation to her clothes follows a similar pattern. Initially Martha uses her clothes and the construc tion of her appearance as a mode of rebellion against her parents. May Quest tries for as long as possible to force Martha to wear the clothes of a pre-pubescent girl; Martha responds by adopting the manners and gestures of an awkward young boy in an attempt to evade the constraints of conven tional femininity. When she grows a little older, she adopts the opposite tactic: she deliberately fashions herself in the image of an attractive young woman to defy her mother's attempt to repress her developing sexuality. Whether she cuts up one of the childish dresses her mother has made for her, or sews a formal dress for herself, clothes are one mode of asserting herself in opposition to her parents' conception of her. Martha begins to view clothes as magical objects which can transform not only her appearance, but her very self. When she imagines buying a dance dress, "She knew that the moment this dress clothed her body she would be revealed to herself and to others, as something quite new, but deeply herself." (M.Q., p.l57) However, from Donovan Anderson's 0 304 0 coaching, she learns that she must manipulate both her clothes arid her image. By themselves, clothes do not affect magical transformations; she must adapt herself to the "look" that a particular style attempts to create: "'Now, listen, Matty, you really must see that you must change yourself for a dress like this.'" (M.Q., p.l63) Clothes are no longer a mode of self-assertion for Martha; they have become a device she uses to attract men. Concern with clothes continues to exert a kind of tyranny over Martha even after she is married, when she spends a great deal of time "running up sundowner frocks, dance dresses, out of a remnant from the sales, even discarded curtains or old- fashioned clothes her mother had kept." (P.M., p.65-6) All Martha's dress-making talents go into her evening wear, for these are gowns upon which she depends to maintain her image of sexually attractive young woman. While Martha is intensely involved in the Communist Party, she seems less preoccupied with her appearance, but she is not truly free of her attach- ment to clothes until she can manipulate them at will as she does in The Four-Gated City where she can playfully adopt new styles without the expectation that her clothes will create a new person: Clothes parodied, reminisced, were like private fantasies; they mocked, peacocked, and joked; and Lynda and Martha handed half a hundred dresses to Paul, who told a dressmaker what to do with them. · Thus, though briefly, they became fa~onable women. (F.G.C., p.464) 0 305 0 Martha's position as surrogate mother to a shifting group of young women (Phoebe's daughters, Arthur's other daughters) has emancipated her from a personal concern with sexual attraction: "It was as if a shell or a skin had been peeled off, as if an aspect of one's self had floated away." (F.G.C., p.387) She does not need clothes either to assert herself, or to attract a man so she is free to dress as carefully or carelessly as she pleases. As I argued in Chapter II, the house in which Martha grew up expressed her parents' inability to commit themselves to their choice of the farm and of Africa. Although the house seems in imminent danger of collapsing, they make no repairs, for they see it as a temporary dwelling. However, they cannot build for themselves a permanent home. Martha herself does not accept her parents• house: "This was not really her home;" (M.Q., p.22) nor does she later ever create a home for herself. When she marries Douglas, she moves into an apartment which does not represent any of her choices: "It was not her flat; it belonged to that group of people who had seen her married." (P.M., p.65) When Douglas is discharged from the army, he decides to buy a house in an attempt to compensate himself with this symbol of domestic permanence for what he feels he has lost by being excluded from the adventure of the war. Martha acquiesces in his decision. Although she spends as much time as any other woman of her acquaintance managing and contriving with a conscious effort to save money while 0 306 0 creating the image of a well-kept house, her ambivalence about her position makes her feel that nothing in her surroundings expresses her choice: "She never felt that she really lived in this house, whose furniture had been chosen by the woman who lived in it before her, whose garden had been arranged by someone else." {P.M., p.250) When Martha marries Anton, she also allows him to furnish their home without any reference to her wishes or tastes. Regarding each of her residences as fatefully temporary, Martha never tries to create a home for herself. Before she begins her affair with Thomas, Martha has an important dream in which a house becomes a metaphor for her fragmented self which she divides among responsibilities toward so many other people that she does little but rush from work to her parents' house, to Party headquarters, to Maisie's apartment. She dreams of "a large house, a bungalow, with half-a-dozen different rooms in it, and she, Martha (the person who held herself together, who watched, who must pre serve wholeness through a time of dryness and disintegration) moved from one room to the next, on guard. These rooms, each furnished differently, had to be kept separate - had to be, it was Martha's task for this time. For if she did not - well, her dreams told her what she might expect. The house crumbled dryly under her eyes into a pile of dust, broken brick, a jut of ant-eaten rafter, a slant of rusting iron." 0 (Ll., p.20-21) Her love for Thomas ends this feeling of 307 0 self-division, which again expresses itself in spatial terms: the loft where she and Thomas make love becomes a kind of centre for her: "Adding a new room to her house has ended the division." (Ll., p.l03) Lessing begins to represent Martha's sense of her inner self in spatial terms; Martha discovers and explores new "areas" of her mind of which she had been previously unaware. Ultimately, she realizes that she can enter or leave states of feeling as she might come into or go out of different rooms. For Martha, the sense of "home" has become internalized, which frees her to make a home for others. When she takes over the management of Mark's house on Radlett Street, she helps maintain for him, Lynda, and the children the permanence and security such a house was built to convey: "Nothing in this house believed in the possibility of destruction." (F.G.C., p.l06) Ultimately this appearance of stability proves illusory when the house is taken over by the London Council "to be used, with minor alterations, for administra tion." (F.G.C., p.545) It is an ironic fate for the relatively unfettered space which had been created there. Lessing's use of the house as metaphor does not fix Martha in a conventional female mode of achieving identity, for Martha does not externalize herself in managing the house hold, nor does she reproduce in the Radlett Street house the nuclear family structure in which she herself was raised and which she fled by leaving Douglas and Caroline. The 0 308 0 unconventional relationships among the residents of this house do not allow them to escape conflict and pain; however, they do free them from the impositions of the "normal" family and allow all of them scope for growth unavailable in that setting. Taking charge of this household does not mean that Martha merely accepts the female role of housekeeper, but that she participates in creating a community of individuals where such stereotypes can be transcended. When we examine Martha's progress through the series as a whole, whe·n we look at her relationship with other characters, or when we follow the recurrent images, we can see that Lessing has made use of dialectical patterns to structure a work which, at first reading, may seem as if it rambles on without any structure at all. Like The Golden Notebook, the series avoids the resolution of the conventional novel; Martha dies, but her death is almost incidental. The last time we see Martha, she is living on an island off the west coast of Ireland with a small band of hardy survivors and their children. From this community of marginal subsistence emerge the children who become the tenuous hope for the future. The catastrophe which has ended one phase of Western industrial civilization has pushed survivors out of England either into the third world or back in time to a more primitive condition of life. Why does Lessing give us this image of scarcity as the foundation from which her highly evolved children spring? 0 309 0 Lessing is extremely suspicious of technical reason which, in its attempt to dominate nature, has brought ecological disaster upon the world in the novel. In addition, she is highly conscious of the ways that our system of productivity, which provides us with the promise of abundance as well as with the threat of deprivation, is connected with our system of domination which maintains the distinctions between the affluent and the deprived. Thus Lessing could not envision a situation of abundance which did not bring with it hierarchy and domination. Desiring to portray an image of new possi bilities and freedom from domination, Lessing felt compelled to depict a community where people must cooperate in a situation of scarcity to produce the bare means of survival. From this community, the special children will supposedly emerge innocent of social relations based on hierarchy and unequal distribution of wealth. However, this is not intended to be an image of an ideal collective. This community is transitory and will dissolve when the island's inhabitants are "rescued." The ending of The Four-Gated City suggests a tenuous new beginning with Edenic overtones as we see Joseph Batts embarking on his career as gardener. However, the world in which he lives remains highly bureaucratized and his special capacities, which, in any case, are not recognized, must be indefinitely concealed. The authoritarian system which is attempting to cope with the trauma the world has experienced 0 310 cannot deal with exceptional individuals. The tension between an order which resists change and individuals who desire to go beyond it endures. For Lessing, the real image of hope for the future cannot be embodied in any system or organization; even after the disaster, authoritarian modes of control prevail. Instead, the potential of individuals to evolve beyond the limitations of their contemporaries becomes the only possible image of liberation. 0 311 0 CONCLUSION In portraying the colonial system, Lessing depicts a social order which perpetuates itself through molding individuals who internalize its authoritarian norms which constrict the development of their full human potential. From the beginning of her career to the present, Lessing has been preoccupied not only with depicting the social order and its tenacity, but also with demonstrating both the necessity for and the possibility of new perceptions and new forms of social relations. She uses her fiction to explore such possibilities, to create images of expanded human powers through her characters' growth and development. For Lessing, the totally administered society in which we live is as oppressive as the colonial order whose injustices and contradictions she depicts so convincingly. It also persists through mobilizing not only the labour power, but also the wishes and aspirations of its members. Hope for the progress and even for the survival of the human race depends for Lessing on a renewal and expansion of human subjectivity to oppose a system which would - if possible - colonize even the individual's inner life, his dreams and desires, in the service of its own perpetuation. Lessing's disenchantment with Marxism and the Communist Party led her to realize that since the forms of oppression which are most difficult to resist are the "mind-forged 0 312 0 manacles," reliance on objective social forces, a class-in and-for-itself (either the proletariat or the colonized) to revolutionize society is an evasion. The real problem, the most basic oppression, is the limitation of the imagination, the acceptance of impoverished social forms and attitudes. Lessing was maturing as a writer in the early sixties, the period before the student movement had created a temporary upsurge of idealism which paralleled the idealism of Lessing's own Communist phase. During this period, she turned to an exploration of Sufism, 6 an ambiguous variety of mysticism which provided her with support for her own aspirations to depict individuals who could transcend the constraints of everyday life and pursue an exploration of their consciousness. Those who read Lessing's work in the late sixties and early seventies often tended to see her as a pessimist, a prophet of doom, or a writer who had abandoned her belief in revolution and collective endeavour for a preoccupation with "inner space." However, today when we see the way in which the system has been able to absorb its own critics and even seems to thrive on social criticism itself, we can turn back to Lessing and understand the political implications of her work more clearly. Through the experiments of her characters with their inner lives and social relations, Lessing gives us an image of human potential. Through the dialectical and open ended structure of her major novels, she both provides a sense 0 of the power of the imagination and she provokes an 313 0 imaginative response from the reader who is encouraged to look beyond the fictions and actuality in order to consider alternative social possibilities. Both the forms and the content of her novels are meant to push the reader beyond the boundaries of conventional thought patterns and open up the possibilities for new vision and new desires. 0 314 0 N 0 T E S 1 Selma Burkon, " 'Only Connect': Form and Content in the Works of Doris Lessing," Critique, 11 (1969), p. 51-68~ John L. Carey, "Art and Reality in The Golden Notebook," Contemporary Literature, 14 (Autumn,-r973), p. 437-456; Joseph Hynes, "The Construction of The Golden Notebook," Iowa Review, 4 {Summer, 1973), p. 100-113; Annis Pratt, "The Contrary Structure of Lessing's The Golden Notebook," World Literature Written in EngliSh."";" 12 (November, 1973), p. 150-160~ Dennis Porter, "Realism and Failure in The Golden Note book," Modern Language Quarterly, 35 {March, 1974), p. 56-65; Marjorie Lightfoot, "'Fiction' vs. 'Reality': Clues and Conclusions in The Golden Notebook," Modern British Liter ature, 2 (Fall,-r977), p. 182-188. 2 Anne Mulkeen in her article, "Twentieth Century Realism: The 'Grid' Structure of The Golden Notebook," Studies in the Novel, 4 {1972), p. 262-274, analyzes the structure-of The Golden Notebook and argues that the novel is realistic in Lukacs's sense: "In creating Anna Wulf and her world, she seems to depict Lukacs's 'typical' (not average) characters people who are symbolic because in their lives the most important forces of change at this moment in history can be seen at work." (Mulkeen, p. 263) This is true, but Lessing also includes in her characterizations the modernist themes Lukacs identifies in the work of such writers as Joyce, Kafka, Gide and Musil: "attenuation of reality and dissol ution of personality." Georg Lukacs, Realism in our Time: Literature and the Class Struggle (New York: Harp~r and Row, 1962), p. 26. The Golden Notebook transcends Lukacs's realist/modernist dichotomy for in it Lessing creates charac ters in whom "all the humanly and socially essential determ inants are present on the highest level of development." Georg Lukacs, Studies in European Realism (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964), p. 6. In addition, she conveys the sense in which, as for other "modernists," identity and relationships are problematic. 3 Doris Lessing, "On The Golden Notebook," Partisan Review, 0 40 (Winter, 1973), p:-19 315 0 4 Milt's observations about himself are reminiscent of a remark made by Dostoevski's perverse underground man: "As a result of heightened consciousness, a man feels that it's all right if he's bad as long as he knows it." (Dostoevski, p. 95) 5 M.H. Abrams characterizes the B~ldung44om~n as follows: "The subject of these novels is the development of the protagonist's mind and character, as he passes from childhood through varied experiences - and usually through spiritual crisis - into maturity and the recognition of his identity and role in the world." M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., 1957), p. 112-113. 6 Doris Lessing discusses her own view of Sufism in an article entitled "An Ancient Way to New Freedom, 11 reprinted in The Diffusion of Sufi Ideas in the West: An Anthology of New Writings-~ and about-rndrres Shah, ed. L. Lewin (Boulder, Colorado: Keysign Press, 1972), p. 44-54. For her, Sufism represents an attitude of mind which encourages examination of "'the bases of your ideas.'" (p. 47) The Sufi belief in the possibility of conscious evolution is also an attraction for Lessing: it is the Sufi motif which appears most often in her fiction. 0 316 BIBLIOGRAPHY I PRIMARY SOURCES : Selected list of books and articles by Doris Lessing, arranged chronologically, with editions used in the preparation of this text noted : The Grass is Singing. London: Michael Joseph, 1950; New York: Popular Library, 1950. Martha Quest. London: Michael Joseph, 1952; London: Panther Books Ltd., 1964. Five Short Novels. London: Michael Joseph, 1953; Panther -:BOoks Ltd., 1953. ~Proper Marriage. London: Michael Joseph, 1954; New York: New American Library, 1964. Retreat to Innocence. London: Michael Joseph, 1956. "Being Prohibited. 11 New Statesman, 51 (April 21, 1956), p. 410, 412 "The Kariba Project. 11 New Statesman, 51 (June 9, 1956), p. 647-648. "A Letter to the Editors." The Reasoner,2 (September, 1956), p. 11-13. "The Cult of the Individual." The Reasoner, 3 (November, 1956), p. 35-36. Going Home. London: Michael Joseph, 1957; rev. ed. London: Panther Books Ltd., 1968. The Habit of Loving. London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1957; London: Panther Books Ltd., 1957. "The Small Personal Voice." In Declaration. Ed. Torn Maschler. London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1957, p. 11-27. A Ripple from the Storm. London: Michael Joseph, 1958; London: Panther Bokks Ltd., 1964. Each His OWn Wilderness. In New English Dramatists: Three --pra~ Ed. Elliot M. Browne:- Harrnondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 1959, p. 11-95. In Pursuit of the English. London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1960; 0 New York: Popular Library, 1960. 317 The Golden Notebook. London: Michael Joseph, 1962; -:New York: Ballantine Books, 1962. Play with a Tiger: A Play in Three Acts. London: Michael Joseph, 1962: Rpt. in Plays~ and about Women: An Anthology. Ed. Victoria Sullivan and James Hatch. New York: Random House, 1973, p. 201-273. A Man and Two Women: Stories. London: MacGibbon and Kee, - 1963;--London: Panther Books Ltd., 1963. African Stories. London: Michael Joseph, 1964; New York: Popular Library, 1964. "Zambia's Joyful Week." New Statesman, 68 (November 6, 1964), p. 692,694. Landlocked. London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1965; London: Panther Books Ltd., 1965. "Introduction." In Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm. New York: Schocken Books, 1968, p. 1-18. The Four-Gated City. London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1969; New York: Bantam Books, 1969. Briefing for a Descent into Hell. London: Jonathan Cape, 1971~ London: Panther Books Ltd., 1971. "An Ancient Way to New Freedom." Vogue, 158 (July, 1971), p. 98, 125, 13-131. Rpt. in The Diffusion of Sufi Ideas in the West: An Anthology of New Writings ~and about Indries Shah. Ed. L. Lewin. Boulder, Colorado: Keysign Press, 1972, p. 44-54. The Temptation of Jack Orkney and Other Stories. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972; New York: Bantam Books, 1972. The Summer Before the Dark. London: Jonathan Cape, 1973; ~armondsworth: Pengu~n Books Ltd., 1973. "On The Golden Notebook." Partisan Review, 40 (Winter, 1973), p. 14-30. Memoirs of a Survivor. London: The Octagon Press, 1974. 0 318 II SECONDARY SOURCES : Selected List of Criticism on and Interviews with Doris Lessing: Barnouw, Dagmar. "Disorderly Company: From The Golden Notebook to The Four-Gated City." Contemporary Literature, ~(Autumn, 1973), p. 491-514. Beard, Linda Susan. "Lessing's Africa." M.L.A. Seminar 123, 27 December 1975. ------"In Cyclical Time: Lessing as an African Writer." M.L.A. Special Session, 27 December 1976. Bergonzi, Bernard. The Situation of the Novel. London: MacMillan and Co. Ltd., 1970. ----- Brewster, Dorothy. Doris Lessing. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1965. Brooks, Ellen W. "Fragmentation and Integration: A Study of Doris Lessing'sFiction". Diss. New York University, 1971. Brown, Lloyd W. "The Shape of Things: Sexual Images and the Sense of Form in Doris Lessing's Fiction." World Literature Written in English, 14 (April, 1975)p. 176-186. Burkom, Selma. "'Only Connect': Form and Content in the Works of Doris Lessing." Critique 11 (1969), p. 51-68. Carey, John L. "Art and Reality in The Golden Notebook." Contemporary Literature, 14 (Autumn-;-1973), p. 473-456. Carnes, Valerie. "'Chaos, That's the Point': Art as Metaphor in Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook." World Literature Written in Englis~lS (April, 1976), p. 17-28. Cohen, Mary. "'Out of Chaos, a New Kind of Strength': Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook." In The Authority of Experience: Essays in Fem~n~st Criticism. Ed. Arlyn Diamond and Lee R. Edwards. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977, p. 178-183. Craig, Joanne. "The Golden Notebook: The Novelist as Heroine." University of Windsor Review, 10 (Fall-Winter, 1974), p. 55-66. Godwin, Gail. "The Personal Matter of Doris Lessing." North American Review, 256 (Summer, 1971), p. 66-70. Graves, Nora. "Doris Lessing's Two Antheaps." Notes on 0 Contemporary Literature, 2 (1972), p. 6-8. 319 Hardin, Nancy Shields. "Doris Lessing and the Sufi Way." Contemporary Literature, 14 (Autumn, 1973), p. 565-581. ------"The Sufi Teaching Story and Doris Lessing." Twentieth Century Literature, 23 (October, 1977), p. 314-326. Hinz, Evelyn J. and John J. Teunissen. "The Pieta as Icon in The Golden Notebook." Contemporary Literature, 14 (Autumn, 1973), p. 457-470. Howe, Florence. "A Conversation with Doris Lessing." Contemporary Literature, 14 (Autumn, 1973), p. 418-436. Hynes, Joseph. "The Construction of The Golden Notebook." Iowa Review, 4 (Summer, 1973), p. 100-113. Kaplan, Sydney Janet. "The Limits of Consciousness in the Novels of Doris Lessing." Contemporary Literature, 14 (Autumn, 1973), p. 536-550. Karl, Frederick R. "Doris Lessing in the Sixties: The New Anatomy of Melancholy." Contemporary Literature, 13 (Winter, 1972), p. 15-33. Kildahl, Karen. "The Political and Apocalyptical Novels of Doris Lessing: A Critical Study of Children of Violence, The Golden Notebook, and Briefing for a Descent into Hell." Diss. University of Washington, 1974. Krouse, Agate. "The Feminism of Doris Lessing." Diss. University of Wisconsin, 1972. Lightfoot, Marjorie J. "Breakthrough in The Golden Notebook." Studies in the Novel, 7 (Summer, 1975),~ 277-284. ------. "'Fiction' vs. 'Reality': Clues and Concl usions in The Golden Notebook." Modern British Literature, 2 (Fall, 1977), p. 182-188. Lodge, David. The Novelist at the Crossroads and Other Essays on Fiction and Criticism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971. Lowenkron, David Henry. "The Metanovel." College English, 38 (December, 1976), p. 343-355. Magie, Michael. "Doris Lessing and Romanticism." College English, 38 (February, 1977), p. 531-552. Marchino, Lois. "The Search for the Self in the Novels of Doris Lessing." Studies in the Novel, 4 (Summer, 1972), p. 252-261. 320 Markow, Alice Bradley. "The Pathology of Feminine Failure 0 in the Fiction of Doris Lessing." Critique, 16 (1975), p. 88-100. McDowell, Frederick P.W. "The Fiction of Doris Lessing: An Interim View." Arizona Quarterly, 21 (Winter, 1965) , p. 315-345. Morgan, Ellen. "Alienation of the Woman Writer in The Golden Notebook." Contemporary Literature, 14 (Autumn, 1973), p. 471-480. Mulkeen, Anne. "Twentieth Century Realism: The 'Grid' Structure of The Golden Notebook." Studies in the Novel, 4 (Summer, 1972), p. 262-274. ----- Mutti, Giuliana. "Female Roles and the Function of Art in The Golden Notebook. 11 Massachusetts Studies in English, 3 (Spring, 1972), p. 78-83. Newquist, Roy. "Doris Lessing." In Counterpoint. Ed. Roy Newquist. Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1964, p. 414-424. O'Fallon, Kathleen. "Quest for a New Vision." World Literature Written in English, 12 (November, 1973), p. 180-189. Porter, Dennis. "Realism and Failure in The Golden Notebook." Modern Language Quarterly, 35 (March, 1974), p. 56-65. Porter, Nancy. "Silenced History - Children of Violence and The Golden Notebook." World Literature Written in English, ~(November, 1973), p. 161-179. -- Pratt, Annis. "The Contrary Structure of Lessing's The Golden Notebook." World Literature Written in English, 12 (November, 1973), p.lS0-160. Rapping, Elayne Antler. "Unfree Women: Feminism in Doris Lessing's Novels. 11 Women's Studies, 3 (1975), p. 29-44. Raskin, Jonah. "Doris Lessing at Stony Brook: An Interview." New American Review, 8 (1970), p. 166-179. Rose, Ellen Cronan. The Tree Outside the Window: Doris Lessing's Children of VIOlence. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1976. Rubenstein, Roberta. "Outer Space, Inner Space: Doris Lessing's Metaphor of Science Fiction. 11 World Literature Written in English, 14 (April, 1975), p. 187-197. 0 321 Ryf, Robert. "Beyond Ideology: Doris Leasing's Mature 0 Vision." Modern Fiction Studies, 21 (Sununer, 1975), p. 193-201. Sarvan, Charles and Liebetraut. "D.H. Lawrence and Doris Leasing's The Grass is Singing." Modern Fiction Studies, 24 {Winter, 1978-79), p. 533-537. Schlueter, Paul. The Novels of Doris Leasing. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois UniVersity Press, 1973. Seligman, Claudia Dee. "The Sufi Quest." World Literature Written in English, 12 {November, 1973), p. 190-206. ------"The Autobiographical Novels of Doris Leasing." Diss. Tufts University, 1975. Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their OWn: British Novelists from Bronte to Lessin~ Princeton, N.J.: Pr1ncetori Un1vers1ty Press, 1977. Singleton, Mary Ann. The City and the Veld: The Fiction of Doris Leasing. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press,l976. Soos, Emese. "Revolution in the Historical Fiction of Doris Leasing and Jean-Paul Sartre." Perspectives on Contemp orary Literature, 2 (1976), p. 23-33. Spacks, Patricia Meyer. "Free Women." Hudson Review, 24 (Winter, 1971-72), p. 559-573. Spilka Mark. "Leasing and Lawrence: The Battle of the Sexes." Contemporary Literature, 16 (Spring, 1975), p. 218-240. Sprague, Claire. "Dialectic and Counter-Dialectic in the Martha Quest Novels." Fourth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Mt. Holyoke College, 24 August 1978. Steele, M.C. "Children of Violence and Rhodesia: A Study of Doris Leasing as Historical Observer." Salisbury: Central African Historical Association, 1974. Sukenick, Lynn. "Feeling and Reason in Doris Leasing's Fiction." Contemporary Literature, 14 (Autumn,l973),p.515-535. Thorpe, Michael. Doris Leasing. London:Longman Group Ltd.l973. Vlastos, Marion. "Doris Leasing and R.D.Laing:Psychopolitics and Prophecy." P.M.L.A., 91 (March,l976), p. 245-258. Wiseman, Thomas. "Mrs. Leasing's Kind of Life." Time and Tide, 43 (April 12, 1962}, p. 26. 0 Zak, Michele Wender. "The Grass is Singing: A Little Novel about the Emotions." Contemporary Literature, 14 (Autumn, 1973), p. 481-490. 322 0 III OTHER WORKS CONSULTED Abrahams, Peter. Mine Boy. London: Heinemann, 1946. A Wreath for Udomo. London: Faber, 1956. Albert, Michael. What Is to Be Undone: A Modern Revolutionary Discussion of Classical Left Ideologies. Boston: Porter Sargent, 1974. Arrighi, Giovanni, and John S. Saul. Essays on the Political Economy of Africa. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973. Austin, Reginald. Racism and Apartheid in Southern Africa: Rhodesia. Paris: The Unesco Press, 1975. Balandier, Georges. Ambiguous Africa: Cultures in Collision. Trans. Helen Weaver. New York: Avon Books, 1966. Barber, William J. The Economy of British Central Africa. London: Oxford University Press, 1961. Beckett, P.A. "Algeria vs. Fanon: The Theory of Revolutionary De-colonization and the Algerian Experience." Western Political Quarterly, 26 (March, 1973), p. 5-27 Bohannan, Paul, and Philip Curtin. Africa and Africans. Garden City, New York: The Natural History Press, 1964, rev. 1971. Boyers, Robert, and Robert Orrill. R.D. Laing and Anti Psychiatry. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. Cadogan, Peter. "The British Communist Party in the Light of 1956." The Review (October, 1961), p. 26-44. Carr, E.H. Studies in Revolution. London: Macmillan, 1950. Claudin, Fernando. The Communist Movement: From Comintern to Cominform. Vol. I The Crisis of the CommuniSt International. Trans. Brian Pearce-.--Vol. II 'The Zenith of Stalinism. Trans. Francis MacDonagh. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975. Caute, David. Fanon. London: Fontana, 1970. Chesler, Phyllis. Women and Madness. New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1972. Chodorow, Nancy. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley: University of 0 California Press, 1978. 323 Clements, Frank. Rhodesia: The Course to Collision. London: 0 Pall Mall Press, 1969. Cooper, David. The Death of the Family. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 1971-.------The Dialectics of Liberation. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 1968. Davidson, Basil. The Africans: An Entry to Cultural History. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 1969. ------Report on Southern Africa. London: Jonathan Cape, 1952. Day-Lewis, C., ed. The Mind in Chains: Socialism and the Cultural Revolution:- London: Frederick Muller, Ltd.~937. DeBeauvoir, Sirnone. The Second Sex. Trans. H.M. Parshley. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 195~ Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black & Red, 1970. Dewar, Hugo. Communist Politics in Britain: The C.P.G.B. from its Origins to the Second World'War. London:- Pluto Press, 1976. Duerden, Denis. The Invisible Present: African Art and Literature. New York: Harper & Row, 1975. ------ Essays on Socialist Realism and the British Cultural Tradition. London: Arena Publication,~d-.-- Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press, 1967. ------~ Dying Colonialism. Trans. Haakon Chevalier. New York: Grove Press, 1965. ------Toward the African Revolution: Political Essays. Trans. Haakon Chevalier. New York: Grove Press, 1967. ------. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington.~ew York: Grove Press, 1963. Firestone, Shulamith. The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. New York: William Morrow & Co.~970. Gann, L.H. A History of Southern Rhodesia. New York: Humanities-Press, 1969. 0 324 Geismar, Peter. Fanon: The Revolutionary as Prophet. New York: Grove Press, 196g:- Genovese, Eugene. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Random House, 1972. Good, Kenneth. "Settler Colonialism in Rhodesia," African Affairs, 73 (January, 1974},p.l0-36. Gordimer, Nadine. Occasion for Loving. New York: Viking, 1963. ------A World of Strangers. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1958. Gordon, David. The Passing of French Algeria. London: Oxford University Press, 1966. ------. Women ~Algeria: An Essay on Change. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Un1vers1ty Press, 1968. Grainger, G.W. "Chaos in the British Conununist Party" Problems of Conununism, 6 (March-April, 1957), p. 8-14. Gray, Richard. The Two Nations: Aspects of the Development of Race Relations in the Rhodesias and Nyasaland. London: Oxford University Press, 1960. Gutkind, Peter, and Peter Waterman, ed. African Social Studies: A Radical Reader. London: Heinemann, 1970. Haldane, Charlotte. Truth Will Out. London: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd~949. Hobsbawm, E.J. "The British Conununist Party." Political Quarterly, 25 (1954), p. 30-42. ------Revolutionaries: Contemporary Essays. London: Quartet Books, 1973. 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