The Golden Notebook 705Lessing has noted that, although she thought
the name of her novel clearly indicated what she
intended to be the main theme, it has been over-
looked in most of the critical writings on the novel.
When Anna is unable to keep the different parts
of her life clearly separated—which is her inten-
tion with the different diaries—she, on the verge
of becoming insane, brings them all together in the
writings of the golden notebook.
Eva Lupin
Gender in The Golden Notebook
The Golden Notebook contains five parts called “Free
Women,” and the novel opens with the sentence,
“The two women were alone in the London flat.”
These references to gender, which are echoed
throughout the plot, have produced innumerable
readings of the novel as a feminist text despite Less-
ing’s assurance that her intentions were completely
different. In any case, gender is clearly a theme in
the novel.
The two women referred to in the opening
sentence are Anna Wulf and her best friend Molly
who are both “bringing up children without men.”
Together with Anna’s daughter Janet they live in
an apartment where they occasionally let one of the
rooms to male tenants. Although Molly also has a
child, Tommy, the two women’s roles as mothers are
strongly marginalized, and the narrative seems to
emphasize their lives as “free women.” Their world
is a female realm where men come to visit, but where
the more traditional fate of women, that of marriage,
is avoided. And while marriage in the early sixties—
when the novel was first published—was even more
of a norm than it is today, Anna and Molly meet
different men throughout the novel.
That Anna is torn between her role as a free
woman and her role as a mother is especially clear
in one of the scenes where she wakes up next to
her present boyfriend Michael. As she wakes up
she becomes aware of the need to get Janet off
to school before Michael will wake up and ask
for breakfast. For a moment she is jealous of the
fact that while she is worrying about details, such
as getting Janet going and buying the tea that is
missing from the cupboard, Michael “will spend
his day, served by secretaries, nurses, women in all
kinds of capacities, who will take this weight off
him.” Her double roles become even more obvious
when they start to make love, aware that Janet is
moving around in the other side of the apartment.
After they’ve finished Michael remarks: “And
now, Anna, I guess you are going to desert me for
Janet?” Anna fights the resentment she feels by
reminding herself that his remark is impersonal,
and a sign of “the disease of women in our time.”
Clenching her teeth she tells herself: “If I were a
man I’d be the same.”
The two women’s living arrangement and their
close friendship appears to offer a way of living
without men; yet they both seem to fear complete
autonomy and the men they have relationships
with are often the dominating type. Saul, one of the
men to whom Anna is drawn and who she calls a
“real man,” is in truth misogynistic and oppressive;
and Anna is not the only female character in the
book who is drawn to such men. Anna’s husband,
for example, has met a new woman whom he treats
badly by cheating on her; and one of the main
plots in the novel that Anna is writing is about
another man having a mistress. Overall, women are
depicted as rather weak and dependent on men,
while the novel’s men are powerful and dominant;
it seems that women’s attraction for these men
helps to select the kind of men who will continue
to oppress them.
The novel also deals with homosexuality, but
Anna expresses her preference for heterosexuality
when she lets the room to a gay couple and wor-
ries about Janet’s well-being. A “real man” would
“spark tensions, set a balance,” she muses, thinking
that Janet would be better off with a heterosexual
tenant than she is with the “charming, friendly
perceptive young man Ivor.” Her thoughts, how-
ever, are ambiguous and she wonders at herself
feeling uneasy “when [she sees] Ivor with Janet
because he’s like a big friendly dog, or a sort of
harmless elder brother.” All men, however, assume
superiority over women, and the two gay men’s
exaggerated use of female attributes mocks women
and becomes a way to show their domination
over them. After having overheard their mocking
ways one night, Anna finds herself devastated and
asks herself: “And when had this new frightened