"British Literature·Doris Lessing·Golden Notes" Author's Introduction | Content Summary | Work Appreciation

Author's Introduction Doris Lessing (1919— ) is a contemporary One of Britain's most important writers. She was born in Iran in 1919, and her original surname was Taylor. Parents are British. When Lessing was 5 years old, her family moved to Rhodesia, and her family was impoverished for more than 20 years. When she was 15 years old (some say 12-13 years old), she dropped out of school due to eye disease and studied at home. He started working at the age of 16 and worked as a telephone operator, nanny, stenographer, etc. In her youth, she actively participated in the left-wing political movement against colonialism and once participated in the Communist Party. Lessing was married and divorced twice and had three children. When she moved to England with her young son in 1949, she had nothing but a draft of a novel in her purse. The book was soon published under the title The Grass Is Singing (1950), making Lessing famous in one fell swoop. It takes as its subject a case in which a black male servant kills a white mistress with a poor family and an unbalanced mentality. It focuses on psychological portrayal and shows the racial oppression and racial contradictions in the African colonies. Since then, Lessing has successively published five parts of "Children of Violence" - namely "Martha Quest" (1952), "A Good Marriage" (1954), "The Aftermath of the Storm" (1958), "Besieged by Land". "Living" (1965) and "The City of Four Gates" (1969) - use honest and delicate brushwork and a rather impressionistic realism style to show the life search of a young white woman growing up in Rhodesia. During this period she also completed The Golden Notebook (1962), which is generally recognized as her masterpiece. From about the 1960s, Lessing's interest in contemporary psychology and Islamic mystical thought appeared in her works, but she still focused on major social issues. In the 1970s, she wrote "A Brief Account of Going to Hell" (1971), about a personal mental breakdown, and "Memoirs of a Survivor" (1974), which discussed the future of human civilization. "The Summer Before Dark" (1973) tells the story of a middle-aged housewife's spiritual crisis. Since then, she has taken a different approach and launched a series of so-called "space novels" collectively titled "Canopus in the Southern Sagittarius: Archives"; including "Shikasta" (1979), "The Marriage Between Regions Three, Four and Five" "(1980), "Sirius Experiment" (1981), "The Creation of the Representative of Planet 8" (1982), etc., wrote thoughts and worries about human history and destiny in the form of science fiction novels. Lessing was a prolific writer. In addition to novels, he also wrote poems, essays, plays, and many short stories. In recent years, new works have continued to come out. Works such as "The Diary of Jane Summers" (1984) and "The Good Terrorist" (1985) seem to be a return to the author's early realistic methods in terms of subject matter and style.

The content summary should first explain that since "The Golden Notebook" (the Chinese translation is called "Women's Crisis") does not have a "plot" in the traditional sense, it is difficult to retell its "story outline", so it is almost impossible. Divide into "content summary" and "analysis and appreciation". In this work, Lessing breaks the chronological narrative writing method she used in the past, and presents the life of the heroine Anna Freeman Woolf from several different angles and aspects. People's names have symbolic meanings, just like Martha Quest's last name (Quest) means "pursuit", and the "Freeman" in Anna's name means "free person". The book is framed by a third-person novella called "Free Women." The story is divided into five sections, telling the life and career of Anna and her girlfriend Molly; sandwiched between each two sections is a series of so-called "notebooks", the contents of which are taken from Anna's four notebooks (i.e. black, red, Yellow and blue four copies). This is repeated four times, and a separate "Golden Notes" section is inserted before the final section "Free Women." Among them, the black notebook records Anna's life in Africa when she was young, especially her activities in a small local left-wing group, and the fantasies, passions and disappointments she experienced as a result. Her first novel "Forbidden Love" is the product of this life. The red book records matters related to political events and activities. The yellow book is a bunch of drafts describing the love affairs and writing career of a fictional character named Ella. It is based on Anna's diary, which includes her work for a publishing house in the British government, her painful state of mind before and after quitting the British government, and the loneliness and confusion caused by the departure of her boyfriend Michael, who had been with her for many years. The whole book is a deliberately arranged kaleidoscope of chaos. Readers can read in the order of the original book, or they can break the original arrangement and recombine it, such as gathering together all the fragments and chapters of "Free Women" or "Black Notes" and reading them. The multiple structures of the novel correspond to the multiple themes of the work, expressing the contradictory spiritual world of modern Westerners. Anna and Molly are both divorced single parents, each working (Anna is a writer, Molly is an actress), supporting and raising their children independently. In each episode of "Free Women" they often meet in Molly's kitchen to discuss They have been struggling to explore problems in life and thought, unwilling to blindly follow the situation, and unwilling to accept the situation as it comes.

However, women like them are not "free". On the contrary, they are trapped in many difficulties. The first thing to bear the brunt is the ideological crisis. Like many Western left-wing intellectuals who came of age in the "Red" 1930s, Annas once enthusiastically participated in political activities seeking change, but later became confused for various reasons and were tortured by deep disappointment and doubts. But on the other hand, they are still very critical of the current status quo of capitalism and cannot ignore the exploitation, oppression, conflicts and turmoil in the world and just eat a piece of middle-class buttered bread with peace of mind; they still have a "continuous cutting edge" towards the ideal of world unity and the leftist cause. , the emotional connection between rationality and chaos. Due to ideological confusion, their confidence in their work and career has almost been wiped out, which is especially reflected in Anna's "writing psychological disorder". Anna despised her first novel, believing that such best-selling works distorted and whitewashed the truth of life, turning the cruel and banal reality of racial oppression into an old-fashioned sentimental romance. She developed a profound distrust of language, so much so that she could no longer put pen to paper. In their private lives, "free women" are also in a dilemma. Like Ella, who fell in love with a married man in Anna's novel, they are unwilling to be old-fashioned good wives and mothers, but they have not yet got rid of the desire for protection and dependence; they have to deal with when their boyfriends leave or are "unfaithful" They have jealousy and sense of loss, and they have to deal with the "respectable" men who have wives and children and are successful and who regard them as potential entertainment. Parenting is a different kind of challenge. Anna's daughter is determined to go against her mother's ways, go to boarding school, and become a "normal person" who follows the crowd and follows the rules. Molly's son inherited not only his mothers' radical thoughts and critical spirit, but also their fears and doubts. Sometimes he was cynical, sometimes negative and desperate, and even attempted suicide, resulting in blindness. Anna deeply felt that she was trapped in many contradictions, had a split personality, and was at a loss as to what to do, so she turned to a psychiatrist nicknamed "Sweet Mom" ??to talk to her about her anxieties, describe various dreams, and listen to her. her analysis. The reason why she uses four notebooks at the same time and divides her experiences into the past and present, politics and private life, reality and fiction is to try to find some order in the chaotic life. However, this division of life into many "parts" undoubtedly deepened her schizophrenia. In this situation, Anna met a new boyfriend, Saul, an American who had similar experiences and thoughts to her. They love and support each other, but also torture and hate each other, experiencing some kind of mental breakdown. The section "Golden Notes" seems to indicate that they gained a new "wholeness" and some new strength from this almost crazy experience. The two of them got inspiration from each other, determined the title of their next work, and determined to "continue to fight." In the final section, "Free Women," Anna and Molly meet again in the kitchen as usual. Until the end of the novel, they only imagined some compromises and expedients: Molly planned to marry a "progressive" businessman; her son decided to inherit the property of his capitalist father and use the property as a means to do something useful; Anna plans to go to night school to teach juvenile prisoners and join the Labor Party. Regarding these, they themselves also hold a sarcastic and skeptical attitude. This is a kind of "cold treatment" of the hope revealed in the "Golden Notes" captivating song. Obviously, Anna's problems and crises have not been finally resolved.

Appreciation of Works Lessing’s early works were deeply influenced by the realist narrative tradition of the 19th century. The carefully conceived polyphonic complex structure of “The Golden Notebook” was in sharp contrast to this, which aroused the attention of many critics. of attention. This work is often considered to be Lessing's rethinking of literature and novels. It emphasizes the gap and contradiction between rationalized language and objective existence. Language always strives to approach an order and an explanation, while life is essentially an indescribable chaotic whole that is both one and the other, cause and effect. Therefore, the contents of Anna's four notebooks become a mockery of her original intentions: For example, her concern for politics was not captured in the "Red Notes". The problems are intertwined and echo each other. And her personal notes sometimes became a scrapbook of newspaper reports. In this novel, the "story" is broken into pieces, split into many fragmentary records and narratives, no part of which is authoritative. "Free Women" describes the lives of Anna and Molly in a third-person narrative from a traditional omniscient perspective, but Anna's four notebooks show that human thoughts and activities are so multifaceted and contradictory that it is impossible to be clear and simple. Included in any "omniscient" narrative. The boundaries and relationships between “illusion” and “reality” have also become difficult to determine. Ella in The Yellow Note is a fictional character. But her situation and mentality are very similar to Anna herself. No wonder Anna said in another place: Ella is Anna. However, words that try to be "realistic" are doomed to deviate from reality. Anna was horrified to discover that not only was her novel "Forbidden Love" suspected of distortion, but even her supposedly most authentic private diary ("Blue Notes") was "equally false." Sometimes she records the day's activities and psychological feelings in detail in her diary, but she does not think that the sum total of these details of eating, drinking, sleeping, and eating is the "truth" of her life. So she crossed out all of this and replaced it with "an ordinary day", "everything is the same as before" and other expressions that also made her uneasy.

Anna's hysterical American boyfriend in The Blue and Gold Notebook is named Saul, but when such a character is mentioned in the final section, "Free Women," he is not named Saul at all, and he is not that crazy. The narration of "Free Women" has the authoritative tone of traditional novels, which seems to be objective and credible. However, other parts of the novel suggest that it is just another work of Anna's. The whole book contains many overlapping narratives that sometimes corroborate and sometimes contradict each other, but nothing is absolutely affirmed or denied, and there is no way to judge which is "true" and which is "false." But on the other hand, in Lessing's works, form and content are integrated, and the doubts and problems of art are also the doubts and problems of life. As the "protagonist", Anna's mind is in many crises and she cannot find a ready-made plot pattern that can be used as a blueprint for life. No matter in social activities or private life, she does not know how to control her own destiny. The "story" of fragmentation tells exactly this kind of fragmented, confusing and uneasy life. In a sense, all the fragmented and fragmented narratives in the notebooks are "authentic": they all reflect or express the mental dilemma of the protagonist (sometimes also the narrator) in different ways. As independent and uninhibited "free women" with a sense of justice, Anna has no place to turn to in both thought and practice, and is hesitant and painful, but they are unwilling to completely give up their faith and become depressed and despairing. Anna's notebooks recorded the thoughts of their painful search. Although this novel pays close attention to the issue of art form, it is obviously not just art for art's sake. Lessing remained as concerned about society and life as ever. For this reason, "The Golden Notebook" not only received the attention of literary critics, but also aroused considerable response and controversy among left-wing (or former left-wing) intellectuals and many women with feminist tendencies.