The Golden Notebook: A Feminist Trauma Narrative

Abstract

The present research on The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing attempts to show a vivid portrayal of traumatic experiences, especially the female characters of mid-century England triggered by The Great War. The war that inaugurated intergenerational trauma for Anna and her fellow “children of violence”, born after 1918. Along with personal experiences, external circumstances also lend the characters to a chaotic atmosphere. Women are bringing up children of their own, taking lovers, having careers in the arts and professions. The traumatic experiences of being isolated, alienated, incompleteness had engulfed them. Lessings’ female characters either Anna or Molly wanted to be independent like males in their society. Being free from marital bond, Anna realizes that the freedom of the independent woman is more restrictive than marriage, for it condemns her to emotional isolation and sexual abuse. The female characters are condemned to face anxiety either in their personal relationships or in social fields concerning in their careers or in politics. Lessings’ novel captures the painful withering away of the belief in communism. To come out of the trap of mental disillusionments, the protagonist, Anna reconciles her traumatic experiences as The Golden Notebook that is also a heal for her fragmentariness, incompleteness, disinterest, self-hatred, and corporeal abjection. She reformulated her most traumatic experiences into a narrative that finally brought her out of her traumatic hangover.