The fact that more married women than ever before entered the labour market after World War II contradicts the idea that British women in the '50s were mostly housewives. It concentrates particularly on women at work and in the family. Part I deals with the position of women in society between 19. This thesis focuses on the dissenting voices which could be heard both in society and literature before 1968. This dissertation aims to oppose the assumption underlying many studies that the immediate post-war period was a `silent' time in which there were no signs that women were not generally content to follow the ideal of femininity, and that the feminist movement started suddenly in 1968. Apart from the richness that this multiple split provides concerning the psychological analysis of the characters, the reader is witness to yet another reflection of multiplicity and fragmentation in Lessing’s work: the almost infinite variety of literary styles, points of view and voices that the writer employs to enrich the already suggestive subject of the fragmentation of the self, a self that will no longer be considered to be monolithic or homogeneous.

Rather than about simple split, we should talk about fragmentation, since we do not only find couples of characters representing the divided self of the main character, but rather groups of alternative and incomplete selves, where each element stands for a fragment that results from the splitting of the original self. But it is the fifth notebook – the Golden Notebook – which is the key to her recovery and renaissance.īold and illuminating, fusing sex, politics, madness and motherhood, ‘The Golden Notebook’ is at once a wry and perceptive portrait of the intellectual and moral climate of the 1950s – a society on the brink of feminism – and a powerful and revealing account of a woman searching for her own personal and political identity.A key aspect in The Golden Notebook, by British writer Doris Lessing, is the analysis of how women in the 60s are forced to resort to an internal split to find an exit to their situation within the social and familial microcosm they inhabit. The black notebook addresses her problems as a writer the red her political life the yellow her relationships and emotions and the blue becomes a diary of everyday events. Fearing the onset of madness, she records her experiences in four coloured notebooks. Divorced, with a young child, and disillusioned by unsatisfactory relationships, she feels her life is falling apart. The landmark novel by Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing – a powerful account of a woman searching for her personal, political and professional identity while facing rejection and betrayal.Īnna Wulf is a young novelist with writer’s block.

The golden notebook