Chapter Thirteen Summary and Analysis

Lessing meets Dorothy Schwartz again and is asked to join up with another group of communists. Lessing realizes when she joins that she has become a Communist and that it suits her attitude. Lessing begins to think of leaving Frank, and even of leaving her two children. She is overcome with a feeling of doom. She rationalizes leaving her children because she is convinced her house is already full of other women. Frank's old friend, his sister, and some others live at their house. Lessing becomes involved with another man, a sergeant in the RAF. She leaves her husband. In this chapter, she discusses sex and the politics of the world, and especially those in Rhodesia. Lessing takes a job as a junior typist in a lawyer's office, and attends socialist meetings and classes at night. She describes the...