The Golden Notebook

Anna’s fear, echoed by the other characters in the novel—Molly, Tommy, Marion, Saul Green—of “cracking up,” or one’s perception breaking from reality and experiencing deteriorating mental health, can be read as another motif of the 20th century. In a world that has been torn apart by war, that has descended into a terrifying Cold War (the threat of nuclear annihilation is ever-present in the book), the notion of “cracking up” embodies a double meaning. It is both the fear of sinking into personal “madness,” as Anna herself actually does near the end of the novel, and a clear description of a world that is disintegrating into factionalism and cruelty. Anna notes this on the very first page of the novel: “‘The point is,’ said Anna […] ‘the point is, that as far as I can see, everything’s cracking up’” (3).

Later, Anna wonders what it means to relinquish one’s “sanity” on a personal level: “If someone cracks up, what does that mean? At what point does a person about to fall to pieces say: I’m cracking up? And if I were to crack up, what form would it take?” (389). This thought is intimately bound up with her identity as a writer—indeed, that is the only identity that saves her from the thought. She has been shaken by her encounter with Richard and the jostling of bodies on the underground; in order to recover herself, she keeps repeating her name and imagines herself “seated on the music-stool, writing, writing” (389). These efforts ground her, remind her of who she is: Anna Wulf, the writer. Thus, writing functions to keep the world from “cracking up,” to keep the mental health of the person experiencing that world.

Anna’s descent into “madness” with Saul Green is accompanied by an attempt to heal the fragmentation that she has imposed on herself as an echo of the fragmentation that the world itself has experienced. She plays what she calls “the game,” wherein she “move[s] out into space, and watche[s] the world” (548). This game has the effect of showing the world as a whole—all of the earth, bound together, seen from the lofty heights of space—as well as illustrating the divisions that still perpetuate the cycle of violence and war that has defined Anna’s life. The Golden Notebook represents the effort of one writer, Anna Wulf (aka Doris Lessing), to keep the world whole, to maintain the cohesiveness of the self.

This phrase applies both to Anna and Molly as they see themselves—unencumbered by husbands or old-fashioned social and political values —and to the title of Anna’s novel-within-the-novel, Free Women. However, Anna uses the term as her title with decided irony. In fact, “free women” is an oxymoron, for women are never free of their desires (for love, for security, for dignity), and these two women, in particular, are never free of their longing for male companionship or their responsibilities as mothers. “Free women” is, instead, more of an aspirational symbol, representative of changing social mores, pointing toward a possible future wherein women are as sexually and financially independent as men.

In The Shadow of the Third, Anna’s partially completed novel recorded in the yellow notebook, Ella and Julia—stand-ins for Anna and Molly—also contemplate their positions in a changing society:

They both considered themselves very normal, not to say conventional women. Women, that is to say, with conventional emotional reactions. The fact that their lives never seemed to run on the usual tracks was because, so they felt, or might even say, they never met men who were capable of seeing what they really were (171).

What each of them “really” is, this passage implies, is an artist, and the all-encompassing male gaze does not allow them to flourish in that unconventional identity (especially as women). Society at large does not always approve of progressive and original women; in fact, as Ella recounts, “their friends saw them as women who positively disdained ordinary morality” (171). As such, Ella and Julia, Anna and Molly wade against the tide of what is expected of women.

This also explains the string of affairs that Anna (and her fictional counterpart, Ella) has with married men: “Married men, temporarily wifeless, trying to have an affair with her—etc., etc. […] All this was taken by her as part of the hazards and chances of being a ‘free woman’” (452). However, these attachments lead to a kind of emotional sterility, which in turn fuels Anna’s writer’s block. If being “free” means being free of attachment and of love, then Anna (and Ella and Molly and Julia) are not truly “free women.” What Anna really wants is to free her consciousness to experience what the world has to offer beyond war and conflict.