BREAKTHROUGH IN "THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK"

As recently as in the Autumn 1973 issue of Contemporary Literature devoted to Doris Lessing, many critics still prove unaware that a "fic? tional" Anna Wulf is juxtaposed to the "real" Anna in The Golden Note book. While John Carey does in part recognize the structure, observing the interplay of art and life, no one has considered the significance to the protagonist of such observation. Does she capitulate in the struggle to confront and contend with reality, as most critics think, misinterpreting the final page, or does she achieve a breakthrough in consciousness? In The Golden Notebook Doris Lessing shows the effect on indi? viduals of the chaotic experience of twentieth-century political and social upheaval, giving particular attention to possible consequences to the artist, as an archetypal image of the creative individual. The protago? nist is a woman who can reflect the upheaval of modern life to an extraor? dinary degree through the variety of her life's involvements as depicted in her notebooks. While Mrs. Lessing is apparently describing the nar? cissism, self-division, and alienation she has observed in the convention? al novel form which presents fiction the reader pretends is reality, she actually attempts to "break a form" and "break certain forms of con? sciousness and go beyond them." The sections called "Free Women" are not presentations of what purports to be objective reality, but Anna Wulfs "fictional" account of possible adverse consequences should frag? mentation and fear of chaos continue to govern people like herself and her friends and threaten the next generation. Mrs. Lessing does much more than reveal the blurred line between "facts" and "fiction" in The Golden Notebook: by breaking through form to reflect content, she dem? onstrates the capacity of the individual to break out of repeated patterns offailure.