“Without Contraries There is no Progression”: Splitting and Multiplicity in Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook

Abstract

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. 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. 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.