The Golden Notebook

3886 Words16 Pages
Written by: Hashem, Doaa Alaa Presented to: Prof. Nadia Soliman English Literature Pre-MA, 2013 – 2014 class Monday, 19th May, 2014 The Golden Notebook: Themes and Style The Golden Notebook is a 1962 novel by Doris Lessing with an autobiographical element. Its structure is a study in non-linearity as well as an important theme reflecting fragmentation of self and society. It explores, among other themes, mental illness, individualism and alienation, relativity of truth, dreams and psychoanalysis, feminism as well as language failure as a means of communication. It also presents a review of communism and the Communist Party in England touching on the demise of political idealism. It also conveys fear of the threat of nuclear conflagration. The themes, styles and genres incorporated in this novel make it a mixture of modernism and post modernism. The novel recounts the story of Anna Wulf, a female writer suffering from and trying not to succumb to mental illness, the four notebooks in which she records her life during the years 1950-57, and her attempt to tie them together in a fifth, gold-colored, notebook which covers the year 1957 or '58. The black notebook relates Anna's experience in Southern Rhodesia, before and during World War II, which inspired her best-selling novel Frontiers of War. Anna also logs her financial gains from publishing her novel, reviews about it and offers to make it into a film. The red one explores her experience as a member of the Communist Party in England. The yellow one is her attempt at writing another novel; The Shadow of the Third, based on the painful ending of her own love affair. The blue one is Anna's personal diary. Most of the notebooks end with newspaper clippings. The novel is interspersed with segments entitled Free Women narrating the current lives of Anna and Molly, Anna's friend, their children, ex-husbands and
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