Doris Lessing (Essay Date 1974)

SOURCE: Lessing, Doris. "Preface to The Golden Notebook." In A Small Personal Voice, edited by Paul Schlueter, pp. 23-43. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974.

In the following excerpt from the preface to The Golden Notebook, Lessing discusses the mixed reaction of women to the novel, the novel's original intent and central themes, and her support for the women's rights movement.

The shape of this novel is as follows:

There is a skeleton, or frame, called Free Women, which is a conventional short novel, about 60,000 words long, and which could stand by itself. But it is divided into five sections and separated by stages of the four Notebooks, Black, Red, Yellow, and Blue. The Notebooks are kept by Anna Wulf, a central character of Free Women. She keeps four and not one because, as she recognises, she has to separate things off from...