"The Golden Notebook"

Argumentative Essay # 52665

English > Argument
Literature > English

An analysis of Doris Lessing's "The Golden Notebook".

1,715 words () | 2 sources | MLA | 2002 United States

Paper Summary:

"The Golden Notebook" provides a detached critique of Anna's attitudes about writer's block as expressed in "Free Women". Offering self-conscious critical detachment, "The Golden Notebook" shows Anna's ability to create lies within herself, independent of any external factors. This paper shows how this realization of her complete freedom to write produces Anna's sense of responsibility to create "Free Women", in which she can ironically treat her prior belief system. Therefore, through her "unremitting self-consciousness", Anna reveals her "complete freedom", and finds the ability to generate writing.

From the Paper:

"According to Friedrich Schlegel, "irony" stems from the artist's critical self-detachment and unremitting self-consciousness; it denotes his complete freedom "and becomes manifest in the liberty with which he creates, decreates, and re-creates". (Furst, 26) In Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook irony manifests itself in a similar manner as a means to sincerely meditate on the writing process. "Free Women", apparently the primary narrative, appears to be authentic articulation of the impossibility of producing a genuine text when words retain no transcendent meaning. The philosophy in "Free Women" progresses toward a "decreat[ion]" of literature reflected in Anna's total disavowal of fiction writing. At the same time however, this progression leads to "The Golden Notebook" which in turn subverts "Free Women" embracing writing in all its limitations and allowing for "re-creation". The recreation necessitates that "Free Women" be reread with the added consciousness of "The Golden Notebook", revealing it as an ironic testament regarding the frustration of language. The enhanced reading of "Free Women" indicates that only through an ironic understanding of language can the writer obtain a "complete freedom" given the fact of perpetual productivity."