The Golden Notebook

In contrast to the black notebook, which she struggles with at first, the red notebook “had been begun without any hesitations at all” (153). It focuses on Anna’s experiences with the British Communist Party. In particular, it details Anna’s initial reluctance to join the Party formally, as well as the disillusionment its members suffer. In the end, Anna joins the Party and spends her time alternately defending the communists and expressing horror at the realities of the Soviet Union. The entries are usually brief, beginning in 1950 and running through 1953. This notebook also contains accounts of her relationship with her lover, Michael, a Jewish exile.

Anna notes that some of Michael’s friends are hanged in Prague, leading her to think about the relative safety of her political positions in the context of England. She records her reaction to the electrocution of the Rosenbergs in the United States and to the rampant McCarthyism there. She determines to leave the Party but waffles about when and why she might do so. She records a visit to Berlin with Michael, who seeks friends scattered by the war. When a former acquaintance insults him over the fine quality of his suit, Anna understands the implication: that he is a bad communist, a traitor to the cause.

Anna also documents the death of Stalin and the mixed responses to the news. She canvasses for the Party in an upcoming election, recognizing that the best the Party can do is split the Labour vote. She observes that every member of the Party is seemingly engaged in writing “a novel, short stories, or a play” (168) and wonders why this is so. She notes that many of the members stay committed to the Party, despite their misgivings, out of habit or loneliness.

The yellow notebook contains the uncompleted manuscript for a novel of Anna’s, entitled The Shadow of the Third. It features Ella, who lives with her friend, Julia, and her son, Michael. Ella works as a writer for a woman’s magazine she hates, one whose features are filled with conventional advice for traditional women. Her particular role is to answer letters from women sent to Dr. West about their medical concerns; Ella recognizes that many of these women are suffering from psychological malaise, living dissatisfied lives with uncaring husbands. In contrast, she and Julia do not consider themselves conventional women; they are both divorced and unconcerned with traditional mores. Julia is also a writer, having once penned a book about suicide.

Ella has been invited to a party at Dr. West’s house, and she does not really want to go but ultimately decides she should. Dr. West’s wife condescendingly refers to Ella as one of the “career girls”(177). Ella also encounters her boss from the magazine, Patricia Brent, and they talk about the letters Ella answers for Dr. West. The letters depress Ella, who genuinely wants to help these women, while Dr. West essentially dismisses their concerns as hypochondria. Ella wishes she had not decided to attend the party, until she meets Paul Tanner; she realizes he is attracted to her, and she acknowledges that she will later come to love him, but she is unsettled because it all reminds her of her disastrous marriage to George. Nevertheless, she agrees to go on a drive with him the following day and understands that “this man would be her lover” (187).

Paul comes from a working-class background, and now that he is a doctor, he actually wants to make a difference in people’s lives (in contrast to Dr. West). They talk about class and politics, to which Ella declares herself indifferent. They discuss her relationship with her father, who served in the army in India. Later, they take a blanket out to a field and make love. Paul seems both pleased and suspicious, thinking that Ella probably takes lovers all the time. She is offended, at first, but he earnestly pursues her, and they fall in love. Paul, however, is married, so the relationship eventually stagnates. Paul is alternately jealous of Ella’s imagined infidelities—she is free to do as she likes—and anxious to keep her close. They almost separate at one point, and Ella does actually sleep with another man, but they are pulled back together. Ella decides not to think too much about their future, preferring instead to believe that he loves her.

Anna interrupts the manuscript to describe her intentions: The title, The Shadow of the Third, signifies Paul’s wife, to whom he will inevitably return. She also notes that Julia is a threat to Paul, as he perceives a kind of potential relationship between her and Ella. She wants to show Ella’s maternal impulses toward Michael; she alternately wants to protect him from Paul (because she subliminally knows he will eventually leave) and to push Paul toward him, as a stand-in father. Anna also discusses Paul’s attitudes toward his own career: He has a genuine desire to help others, but he believes that whatever he does, he addresses only superficial problems, not their underlying causes. He wants to perform good works, knowing that doing so is always an uphill battle. He calls himself a “boulder-pusher” (210), referencing the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who is doomed to roll a boulder up a hill again and again, only to watch it roll back down each time. She also notes that it is difficult, especially for a woman, to write about sex.

The final section details the end of the affair. Ella presses Paul to take her to his home, and she suddenly realizes that she has been naive, that Paul will never leave his family. Paul then talks about taking a post in Nigeria, and Ella wants to join him there. He leaves quite suddenly, and Dr. West informs her that the reason for his abrupt departure was a mistress who wanted a commitment out of him. After a time, he returns to England, presumably to bring his family back to Nigeria with him, but Dr. West tells Ella that Paul’s wife did not want to go. During this time, Ella waits for Paul to come to her, but he never does. Anna is dissatisfied with the story; the end of the affair colors its beginning, making everything feel inevitable. But Anna knows that, while one is living through such an experience, one does not “think like that at all” (228).

In the blue notebook, Anna announces her intention to “keep a diary” (229). She is tired of fictionalizing everything in her life. It begins in 1950, though Anna includes an entry of an earlier journal, one from before she became a mother. She writes about Molly’s difficulties with her son, Tommy, and the contentious relationship she and Anna both have with Richard, Molly’s ex-husband. In thinking about Molly’s family, she recalls her own marriage to Max and realizes that their decision to have a child—Janet—was in fact a misplaced attempt to save their failing relationship. 

Anna also records her experiences with Mrs. Marks, her psychoanalyst. Mrs. Marks considers Anna an artist and continually encourages her to get back to her writing, though Anna remains vocally opposed to the idea. She writes down her dreams, again at the encouragement of Mrs. Marks, who interprets the dreams as a subconscious manifestation of her frustrations as a writer; again, Anna adamantly denies this interpretation. Once she writes all of this down, she notes that she quits dreaming.

Anna muses about her relationship with Michael. On the one hand, he mocks her abilities as a writer; distances himself from her daughter, Janet; and “warns [her] he does not intend to marry [her]” (237). On the other hand, she claims that she loves Michael, that she is happy with him. When Anna admits that she is keeping a diary, Mrs. Marks believes that this is the first step to unblocking her creativity, that Anna will eventually return to writing. This makes Anna quit the diary “as a personal document” (239); instead, she glues newspaper clippings to the pages. They record global events—from the Korean War to the McCarthy era witch hunts in the US to the testing of atomic weapons—between the spring of 1951 and the spring of 1954. The diary then returns to recording Anna’s personal activities.

Her psychoanalytic sessions are coming to an end, and although Mrs. Marks continues to encourage her writing, Anna is frustrated. She wonders how she can write in the midst of such terrible global chaos. She dreams that Michael leaves her, interpreting the dream as a premonition. She attends her final session with Mrs. Marks, telling her of a dream in which “I was a character in my own play” (252). In the dream, she opens a box containing fragments of horrible items representing global events: there is earth from Africa; flesh from Korea; a Soviet pin. She also sees a crocodile made of jade. When she leaves the session, she catches a glimpse of herself in a window and thinks that she herself resembles the grinning crocodile of her dream.