The Pit

by Doris Lessing

These three short stories taken from "London Observed" are about battles between men and women. Contains The pit, What price the truth? and Two old women and a young one.

64 pages, Paperback

First published June 10, 1996

About the author

Doris Lessing was born into a colonial family. both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Like other women writers from southern African who did not graduate from high school (such as Olive Schreiner and Nadine Gordimer), Lessing made herself into a self-educated intellectual.

In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and later had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists "who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read." Gottfried Lessing was a central member of the group; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.

During the postwar years, Lessing became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954. By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.

In June 1995 she received an Honorary Degree from Harvard University. Also in 1995, she visited South Africa to see her daughter and grandchildren, and to promote her autobiography. It was her first visit since being forcibly removed in 1956 for her political views. Ironically, she is welcomed now as a writer acclaimed for the very topics for which she was banished 40 years ago.

In 2001 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature, one of Spain's most important distinctions, for her brilliant literary works in defense of freedom and Third World causes. She also received the David Cohen British Literature Prize.

She was on the shortlist for the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

(Extracted from the pamphlet: A Reader's Guide to The Golden Notebook & Under My Skin, HarperPerennial, 1995. Full text available on www.dorislessing.org).

Reviews

[Zanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here are three stories in which the narrator sees into the mind of someone else.

The title story is by far the longest. Its narrator, Sarah, has attained independence in maturity, long separated from her husband and quite content, self-contained and self-aware. A sudden visit from her husband is the only event; she takes pleasure in it, and his offer of a shared holiday tempts her; she imagines the companionship 'with someone who truly understands her'. James' claim on her is possessive and patriarchal, reeking of unexamined male privilege. It's interesting but consistent that calm, intelligent Sarah, a self-identified feminist, has always accepted the inevitably narrow socially defined space for women's existence within marriage and family life.

More disturbing are Sarah's reflections on the racial/tribal similarity between herself and James; she repeatedly describes them as Vikings, closely matched physically and psychologically. This problematic thread shades into supremacy as Lessing fleshes out the description of Rose, perhaps the most important character in the story and James' second wife, who in Sarah's words is 'dark' 'duplicitous' and 'female in a basic gutter way that every decent woman hates'. She is also a Holocaust survivor. After James leaves, Sarah enters an agitated trace-like state in which she imagines how jealous Rose will react to James' illicit visit to her. She is contemptuous at first, and admits that Rose's background as a victim has always made her uncomfortable as it has restricted that contempt: this is perhaps a root of personal but 'unintentional' manifestations of racism (microaggressions) and white supremacy in UK and maybe USA: this discomfort that goes unexamined, chafing at the white mind.

This is explored in this article about the problem of terminology - rightly unresolved - white discomfort is a good thing and should be maintained to spur us into learning and action.

As Sarah enters into a deeper empathy with Rose, she thinks herself into a horrific experience, a Holocaust image, and emerges from it, now taking her rival’s perspective and taking action to help her. Thus, the point of the story is the power of imaginative, meaning-making engagement with history to precipitate the empathy that destroys prejudice, although it does not take us beyond a 'white saviour' narrative.

[Claire (find me on Storygraph) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Clearly a craftswoman at writing short stories. Loved the first one (The Pit) especially.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Underwhelmed by this short collection of stories, but at least it went by quickly.

[Adam]

it short