Doris Lessing's immense and unwieldy five-volume series, The Children of Violence, chart a spiritual journey from a woman's perspective. Though Lessing's intention was to write about a generation, in choosing Martha Quest as the heroine of her story she made women's experience central in it. Martha's quest begins in an experience of nothingness. It is uniquely shaped by her experience of motherhood, and her guide on her journey is another woman, Lynda, through whom Martha incorporates the dark side of women's experience. (p. 55)

At the beginning of Martha Quest, the first novel in the series, Martha recognizes that she lacks a role model for a positive self-image…. Through Martha, Lessing accurately states the problem of women in the modern world: they do not have images and models of self with which to shape their identities, chart their experiences. Vaguely aware that the old patterns will not work for...