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Children of Violence #3
A Ripple from the Storm
Martha Quest, the embodied heroine of the Children of Violence series, has been acclaimed as one of the greatest fictional creations in the English language. In a Ripple from the Storm, Doris Lessing charts Martha Quest's personal and political adventures in race-torn British Africa, following Martha through World War II, a grotesque second marriage, and an excursion into Communism. This wise and starling novel perceptively reveals the paradoxes, passions, and ironies rooted in the life of twentieth-century Anglo-Africa.
A Ripple from the Storm is the third novel in Doris Lessing's classic Children of Violence sequence of novels, each a masterpiece in its own right, and, taken together, an incisive and all-encompassing vision of our world in the twentieth century.
A Ripple from the Storm is the third novel in Doris Lessing's classic Children of Violence sequence of novels, each a masterpiece in its own right, and, taken together, an incisive and all-encompassing vision of our world in the twentieth century.
334 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1958
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About the author
Doris Lessing
475 books3,183 followersDoris 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).
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).
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June 21, 2017
The third of the Children of Violence novels turns its attention directly to the process of political action, something that's been a running theme since the start but which now lurches sluggishly centre-stage. Unfortunately, the idea that leftwing activism can get bogged down in subcommittees, ideological theorising and petty infighting is now so well understood as hardly to need saying, let alone to need the kind of close, unblinking, beat-by-beat analysis that Doris Lessing brings to all her subjects.
Typically, Lessing hones in unerringly on the central issue: that political principles, however unimpeachable, can always come into conflict with feelings of basic human empathy. That conflict is dramatised here by having the heroine Martha enter into a disastrous relationship with the cold, analytical Anton, the leader of their local Communist faction. Confusingly, she finds it impossible either to agree or to argue with his ponderous, academic assessments of the best ways to address colonial racism, workers' education, or access to abortion.
Anton's interpersonal failings are underscored by how terrible he is in bed. Martha gives him a chance, but, ‘after half a dozen times the honest voice of her femininity remarked that “Anton was hopeless”. Or, to salvage her image of the man: “We are sexually incompatible”’ – the phrase resounding here, in 1958, as a wonderfully newly-minted euphemism.
The relationship did not seem improbable to me, if only because she so well explains the feeling, during the war, that ‘personal happiness was irrelevant’ because they were all about to be catapulted into a huge and cataclysmic European revolution.
What I did find a struggle to understand, with the benefit of all the cultural hindsight I've grown up with, was how Martha or her clever friends could have fallen for any of the procedural busywork offered by these political groups, which meant it was a sometimes a bit of a slog working through the minutes of all the endless meetings in this book. Then again, political engagement of any kind was vanishingly scarce when I was growing up, so in that sense perhaps they're rather to be admired.
Either way, one stays for the piercing exactness of her characterisations. Most writers, describing a wife who is at odds with her husband's career choices, would be content to describe her glances towards him as ‘rueful’ or ‘amused’ – but for Lessing, her eyes rest on him ‘not in irony, for this she would never have allowed herself, but with a certain quality of calm quizzical appraisal’. I mean—! Later, a man trying to intervene in an argument is said to be ‘melancholy with the nobilities of enforced impartiality’, while an attractive colleague's face has ‘the smooth prepared surface of a very pretty girl who feels men's eyes play over her like sunlight’. Phrase by phrase, thought by thought, she always impresses.
Typically, Lessing hones in unerringly on the central issue: that political principles, however unimpeachable, can always come into conflict with feelings of basic human empathy. That conflict is dramatised here by having the heroine Martha enter into a disastrous relationship with the cold, analytical Anton, the leader of their local Communist faction. Confusingly, she finds it impossible either to agree or to argue with his ponderous, academic assessments of the best ways to address colonial racism, workers' education, or access to abortion.
She felt him to be logically right; she felt him to be inhuman and wrong. There was no way for her to make these two feelings fit together.
Anton's interpersonal failings are underscored by how terrible he is in bed. Martha gives him a chance, but, ‘after half a dozen times the honest voice of her femininity remarked that “Anton was hopeless”. Or, to salvage her image of the man: “We are sexually incompatible”’ – the phrase resounding here, in 1958, as a wonderfully newly-minted euphemism.
The relationship did not seem improbable to me, if only because she so well explains the feeling, during the war, that ‘personal happiness was irrelevant’ because they were all about to be catapulted into a huge and cataclysmic European revolution.
They all of them saw the future as something short and violent. Somewhere just before them was a dark gulf or chasm, into which they must all disappear. A communist is a dead man on leave, she thought.
What I did find a struggle to understand, with the benefit of all the cultural hindsight I've grown up with, was how Martha or her clever friends could have fallen for any of the procedural busywork offered by these political groups, which meant it was a sometimes a bit of a slog working through the minutes of all the endless meetings in this book. Then again, political engagement of any kind was vanishingly scarce when I was growing up, so in that sense perhaps they're rather to be admired.
Either way, one stays for the piercing exactness of her characterisations. Most writers, describing a wife who is at odds with her husband's career choices, would be content to describe her glances towards him as ‘rueful’ or ‘amused’ – but for Lessing, her eyes rest on him ‘not in irony, for this she would never have allowed herself, but with a certain quality of calm quizzical appraisal’. I mean—! Later, a man trying to intervene in an argument is said to be ‘melancholy with the nobilities of enforced impartiality’, while an attractive colleague's face has ‘the smooth prepared surface of a very pretty girl who feels men's eyes play over her like sunlight’. Phrase by phrase, thought by thought, she always impresses.
August 30, 2016
The third book in Martha Quest's story is best read after the foregoing instalments. Here there is a shift in subject matter; previously Martha's political activities were not a dominant part of her life, and she engaged in them alongside other preoccupations. Here all the action is political activity, and the personal lives of the characters are subsumed in it rather than the reverse. The energies and characters of Martha and everyone else is enmeshed in a political epic taking place at all scales, from international to intimate.
While Lessing sometimes seems to ridicule the machinations and dogma of political groups or criticise them scathingly, she effectively demonstrates that every level of existence has a political dimension, which is often overlooked by the particular ideological framings at work among the participants. Greek activist Athen's attempts to communicate the all-embracing political framework of Marxism to ingenue Maisie, whose sympathethic indolence might be meant to represent an easily influenced reader, involve humanising politics, softening ideology into an integrated (even living) body of varyingly flexible ethical positions. This humanistic approach is the opposite of ideologue Anton's rigid and dogmatic intellectualism. I remembered reading about dry stone walls and why they are stronger than bricks and mortar: the stones flex with the moving earth, and each tiny shift wedges them more tightly together. Anton's Marxism is accordingly much more robust than Anton's.
Martha's character development during this phase seems limited or liminal. She has gained skills but she has not gained a feeling of control, she still discovers herself in action at the whim of invisible forces, thistledown of history. Since Zambesia is fictional its travails need no direct exposition, but the situation is an effective vehicle for the exposure and exploration of reactionary attitudes and the development of radical politics in the context of Apartheid. Lessing brings such a pitch of expertise and passion to the scenario as to give it the veracity of memoir, but the coherence and intensity of plotting took me into depths of awareness and feeling that only fiction touches.
Like Martha in A Proper Marriage Jimmy has an encounter with the natural world, after dramatically (but frivolously) 'escaping' from the formidable fence of the RAF camp. This action is a microcosm of the broader situation. While the fence itself is real, Jimmy does not really have to get out of it by squeezing under a loose section in the middle of the night - he makes things difficult for himself, and forces a black man to help him who is terrified of getting into trouble. He 'strains his body' to help Jimmy and receives nothing in return but thanks. Once out, Jimmy experiences elation and wonder at the environment: the strength and sweetness of the grass, the loveliness of the moonlight, but this quickly turns to fear and disgust as insects gather and crawl on his body.
The contrast with Martha's transcendent experience is very striking, and perhaps reflects their gendered occupations at the time: Martha is pregnant and preparing for a caregiving period, Jimmy has just reflected that he physically enjoys his work maintaining military aircraft. The terms of his pleasure are actually related to the life-giving of parenthood and social reproduction because he thinks of the 'lazy' steel coming to life under his hands, the 'dead' machine revived by repair. But this action seems, especially with his concession to his friend that 'everything's just machines now' more like the unwholesome reanimation of the dead, a zombie life-giving. Thus, the real life of nature actively repels and rejects him, treating him with threatening hostility like a stray pathogen, where it welcomed Martha with joy.
Martha has fever dreams and hallucinations about protecting others, which throw light on the emotional roots of her communism. She also dreams of a huge, ancient, partly dead 'saurian' buried in the Earth like a dinosaur fossil, its eyes covered with dust. She does not feel threatened by this embodiment or creature of the land, rather she feels anguished concern for it. I was unsure about Lessing's intent for this symbol (which could have been an autobiographical recollection) but to me it suggested the buried histories at the foundations of the white nation.
Lessing makes a highly gendered critique of social relations that cuts across political groupings: Anton, though dedicated and educated, apparently lacks any empathic ability. His communism is as lifeless and mechanical as Jimmy's military hardware, and Lessing demonstrates this most intensely through his attitude to Maisie's pregnancy, which echoes Mr Maynard's inhuman and ludicrous judgement of a woman defendant in his magistrate's court 'you should have thought of that'. Lessing also gives Martha a particularly satisfying quip in the scene when she is ill and Jimmy is simultaneously admonishing and ministering to her
Athen's affirmation of Andrew's kindness to Maisie is not undermined by their lack of emotional maturity to sustain their relationship, which becomes apparent in the extraordinary political meeting taking place in the Native location. This theatrical scene is the third episode in a series that began with the black waiter forced to dance in the club and continued in A Proper Marriage with the pageant given by children from the Coloured quarter. Lessing is composing an opera of Apartheid. The scene where Jimmy entered the house where Africans were very softly making music after curfew might be seen as belonging to this cycle, an instrumental interlude perhaps, revealing the life and sweetness daring stubbornly to exist in defiance of the white supremacist state. Lessing also recalls Jimmy's reflection on, or rather emotion about work positively. The animating potential of labour is aligned with desire on the part of black Africans for good jobs and fair pay (reminding us that slavery is not labour). To complicate matters, Marie du Preez admonishes the African men for their treatment of their wives, a piece of misplaced white feminist stage hogging that seems appropriately mocked by the presentation of bouquets.
The loaded flowers are echoed by the gesture Mrs Van makes to Martha on hearing of her marriage. Lessing spends time painting this woman's character, building sympathy and contrasting her with Martha, who, with similar background and inclinations, lacks the self-possession to pursue her desires or ideals. Mrs Van, touched by Martha's poltical commitment (she has attended the meeting on her wedding day) cuts roses from her own garden to take to her. I adored her for this poignant gesture of generosity and compassion, but it was lost, deflated, in the enervated atmosphere of Martha's life. Storms batter blooms and scatter petals.
While Lessing sometimes seems to ridicule the machinations and dogma of political groups or criticise them scathingly, she effectively demonstrates that every level of existence has a political dimension, which is often overlooked by the particular ideological framings at work among the participants. Greek activist Athen's attempts to communicate the all-embracing political framework of Marxism to ingenue Maisie, whose sympathethic indolence might be meant to represent an easily influenced reader, involve humanising politics, softening ideology into an integrated (even living) body of varyingly flexible ethical positions. This humanistic approach is the opposite of ideologue Anton's rigid and dogmatic intellectualism. I remembered reading about dry stone walls and why they are stronger than bricks and mortar: the stones flex with the moving earth, and each tiny shift wedges them more tightly together. Anton's Marxism is accordingly much more robust than Anton's.
Martha's character development during this phase seems limited or liminal. She has gained skills but she has not gained a feeling of control, she still discovers herself in action at the whim of invisible forces, thistledown of history. Since Zambesia is fictional its travails need no direct exposition, but the situation is an effective vehicle for the exposure and exploration of reactionary attitudes and the development of radical politics in the context of Apartheid. Lessing brings such a pitch of expertise and passion to the scenario as to give it the veracity of memoir, but the coherence and intensity of plotting took me into depths of awareness and feeling that only fiction touches.
Like Martha in A Proper Marriage Jimmy has an encounter with the natural world, after dramatically (but frivolously) 'escaping' from the formidable fence of the RAF camp. This action is a microcosm of the broader situation. While the fence itself is real, Jimmy does not really have to get out of it by squeezing under a loose section in the middle of the night - he makes things difficult for himself, and forces a black man to help him who is terrified of getting into trouble. He 'strains his body' to help Jimmy and receives nothing in return but thanks. Once out, Jimmy experiences elation and wonder at the environment: the strength and sweetness of the grass, the loveliness of the moonlight, but this quickly turns to fear and disgust as insects gather and crawl on his body.
The contrast with Martha's transcendent experience is very striking, and perhaps reflects their gendered occupations at the time: Martha is pregnant and preparing for a caregiving period, Jimmy has just reflected that he physically enjoys his work maintaining military aircraft. The terms of his pleasure are actually related to the life-giving of parenthood and social reproduction because he thinks of the 'lazy' steel coming to life under his hands, the 'dead' machine revived by repair. But this action seems, especially with his concession to his friend that 'everything's just machines now' more like the unwholesome reanimation of the dead, a zombie life-giving. Thus, the real life of nature actively repels and rejects him, treating him with threatening hostility like a stray pathogen, where it welcomed Martha with joy.
Martha has fever dreams and hallucinations about protecting others, which throw light on the emotional roots of her communism. She also dreams of a huge, ancient, partly dead 'saurian' buried in the Earth like a dinosaur fossil, its eyes covered with dust. She does not feel threatened by this embodiment or creature of the land, rather she feels anguished concern for it. I was unsure about Lessing's intent for this symbol (which could have been an autobiographical recollection) but to me it suggested the buried histories at the foundations of the white nation.
Lessing makes a highly gendered critique of social relations that cuts across political groupings: Anton, though dedicated and educated, apparently lacks any empathic ability. His communism is as lifeless and mechanical as Jimmy's military hardware, and Lessing demonstrates this most intensely through his attitude to Maisie's pregnancy, which echoes Mr Maynard's inhuman and ludicrous judgement of a woman defendant in his magistrate's court 'you should have thought of that'. Lessing also gives Martha a particularly satisfying quip in the scene when she is ill and Jimmy is simultaneously admonishing and ministering to her
'You bourgeois girls you need a good working class husband to teach you a thing or two. When I see you bourgeois girls I think of my mother and what she had to take from her life, and believe you me you could learn a thing or two from her'Sympathy remains broadly on the communist side and it is men who I feel swings the balance - the RAF men leave Anton's group because they are frustrated that he refuses to affirm their humanitarian work with people in the 'Coloured' quarter, and following this Athen expresses his warm approval of the group's solution to Maisie's problem:
'All of you,' she said 'all of you working class men have this damned sentimental thing about your mothers.'
'Sentimental is it? Let me tell you, it's the working class woman that takes the rap every time.'
'I imagined that was why we wanted to change things.'
'What do you mean?' he said hotly. He was leaning forward, sweat-covered, scarlet-faced[…]
She said, in a change of mood, grimly: 'We'll abolish poverty, and give women freedom and then they'll simmer and boil, sacrificing themselves for everyone - like my mother.' She laughed at the look of bewildered anger on his face.' There's no good talking to me about women sacrificing themselves for their families, I've had that one. And I don't want to talk about it either,' she added, as the explosion of his emotion reached his eyes in a hot stare of protest.
'What do you mean, you don't want to talk about it? I'm going to talk you out of this one, believe you me. Women are the salt of the earth. I'm telling you. My mother was the salt of the earth. My dad died when I was ten and she brought up me and my two sisters on what she got by cleaning offices until I went to work and helped her out.'
'Good, then let's arrange things so that women have to work eighteen hours a day and die at fifty, worn out so that you can go on being sentimental about us.'
'Comrades, we live in a terrible and ugly time, we live when capitalism is a beast who murders us, starves us, keeps us from the joy of life. As communists we must try to live as if the ugliness was already dead. We must try and live like socialists who care for each other and for people, even while we are hurt all the time by capitalism which is cruel. And so I am happy to hear about these two comrades. That shows we in this room are real communists. I am proud and happy to be with you in this room.'Lessing draws a parallel between Athen and Anton by making them tell similar parables. Anton: "If two communists find themselves together on a desert island, or in a city where no other communists exist, then their duty is to work together, to analyse the situation, to decide on the basis of their analysis what is to be done" and much later Athen: "If two communists find themselves somewhere, let us say suddenly in a strange town, they know they are not just two people, but that they are communism. And they must behave with self-respect because they represent the idea. And if there is even one communist - suppose any one of us finds himself [sic] alone somewhere, or perhaps in prison or sentenced to death, then he must never feel himself alone, except as a man, because as a man he is alone and that is good. But he is a communist and therefore not alone." By speaking about a lone communist, Athen shows how an ideology can remain human, since he affirms the individuality of each person as well as the social self existing in mutuality.
Athen's affirmation of Andrew's kindness to Maisie is not undermined by their lack of emotional maturity to sustain their relationship, which becomes apparent in the extraordinary political meeting taking place in the Native location. This theatrical scene is the third episode in a series that began with the black waiter forced to dance in the club and continued in A Proper Marriage with the pageant given by children from the Coloured quarter. Lessing is composing an opera of Apartheid. The scene where Jimmy entered the house where Africans were very softly making music after curfew might be seen as belonging to this cycle, an instrumental interlude perhaps, revealing the life and sweetness daring stubbornly to exist in defiance of the white supremacist state. Lessing also recalls Jimmy's reflection on, or rather emotion about work positively. The animating potential of labour is aligned with desire on the part of black Africans for good jobs and fair pay (reminding us that slavery is not labour). To complicate matters, Marie du Preez admonishes the African men for their treatment of their wives, a piece of misplaced white feminist stage hogging that seems appropriately mocked by the presentation of bouquets.
The loaded flowers are echoed by the gesture Mrs Van makes to Martha on hearing of her marriage. Lessing spends time painting this woman's character, building sympathy and contrasting her with Martha, who, with similar background and inclinations, lacks the self-possession to pursue her desires or ideals. Mrs Van, touched by Martha's poltical commitment (she has attended the meeting on her wedding day) cuts roses from her own garden to take to her. I adored her for this poignant gesture of generosity and compassion, but it was lost, deflated, in the enervated atmosphere of Martha's life. Storms batter blooms and scatter petals.
July 12, 2023
A história passa-se durante a 2ª Grande Guerra, na Rodésia do Sul, atual Zimbabué, quando esta era ainda uma colónia britânica. Fala sobre os movimentos sindicais, anti-racistas e feministas. Os protagonistas são um conjunto de jovens idealistas, que formam um pequeno grupo comunista que se reúne mais ou menos clandestinamente e procura influenciar mudanças no país.
O livro foi escrito em 1958 mas os temas tratados são surpreendentemente atuais, incluindo as questões relativas às mulheres, que acabaram por ser o que achei mais interessante.
“(…) interrompeu um professor magro e corcovado, de óculos, que exigia educação ‘para que possamos crescer e ser homens’(…), para dizer: ‘Homens e mulheres, senhor. Posso chamar a atenção para o facto de não estar aqui nem uma mulher esta tarde? E porquê? As vossas mulheres servem ara cozinhar e ter os vossos filhos, mas não para lutarem lado a lado com vocês?”
”Homens! Se há uma coisa que me ensina que a cor é coisa que não existe, é o facto de os homens serem homens, quer sejam brancos, quer pretos. Não me venham com conversas! Para aí estão sentados, sessenta homens machos, com uma mulherzinha em casa a correr atrás de vocês como uma grande idiota, com a comida e os confortos, e vocês saem, senhores e amos, para se sentarem a conversar e a tomar decisões, e quando regressarem a casa vão perguntar: ‘O jantar está pronto?’
A autora consegue muito bem transmitir os conflitos interiores, e a busca pelo ajuste de sentimentos e convicções aquilo que se julga desejável.
“- Pobres diabos – disse Marie, a deitar cerveja no copo e a estender ainda mais as pernas à sua frente. - Coitados dos pobres diabos! Gostaria que a Primavera chegasse, por amor deles.
- Referes-te, presumo, ao Exército Vermelho? - perguntou Anton.
- Também me referia aos alemães.
- Creio que o camarada Ehrenburg tornou as coisas muito claras: os alemães revelaram-se bárbaros e fascistas e devem ser considerados como tal. Põe-te no lugar dos russos.
Marie redarguiu:
- Se os russos detestam todos os alemães, é natural. Mas falando por mim, há ocasiões em que o camarada Ehrenburg me causa náuseas. Não compreendo o que todo esse bater de tambores nacionalistas tem a ver com o socialismo, e isso é um facto. - Falou em tom de deliberado desafio, como se tivesse planeado dizê-lo havia algum tempo, e acrescentou: - Não posso deixar de pensar nesses rapazes alemães, pobres coitados, fascistas ou não, pois são seres humanos.”
Era livro para ser lido em 2 ou 3 dias, se este não fosse um mês especialmente ocupado. É o 3º de uma série de 5, mas tirando o início, em que andei um pouco perdida com os nomes, não notei que ter apanhado o comboio a meio prejudicasse grandemente a leitura. E agora fiquei com vontade de ler a série toda :)
O livro foi escrito em 1958 mas os temas tratados são surpreendentemente atuais, incluindo as questões relativas às mulheres, que acabaram por ser o que achei mais interessante.
“(…) interrompeu um professor magro e corcovado, de óculos, que exigia educação ‘para que possamos crescer e ser homens’(…), para dizer: ‘Homens e mulheres, senhor. Posso chamar a atenção para o facto de não estar aqui nem uma mulher esta tarde? E porquê? As vossas mulheres servem ara cozinhar e ter os vossos filhos, mas não para lutarem lado a lado com vocês?”
”Homens! Se há uma coisa que me ensina que a cor é coisa que não existe, é o facto de os homens serem homens, quer sejam brancos, quer pretos. Não me venham com conversas! Para aí estão sentados, sessenta homens machos, com uma mulherzinha em casa a correr atrás de vocês como uma grande idiota, com a comida e os confortos, e vocês saem, senhores e amos, para se sentarem a conversar e a tomar decisões, e quando regressarem a casa vão perguntar: ‘O jantar está pronto?’
A autora consegue muito bem transmitir os conflitos interiores, e a busca pelo ajuste de sentimentos e convicções aquilo que se julga desejável.
“- Pobres diabos – disse Marie, a deitar cerveja no copo e a estender ainda mais as pernas à sua frente. - Coitados dos pobres diabos! Gostaria que a Primavera chegasse, por amor deles.
- Referes-te, presumo, ao Exército Vermelho? - perguntou Anton.
- Também me referia aos alemães.
- Creio que o camarada Ehrenburg tornou as coisas muito claras: os alemães revelaram-se bárbaros e fascistas e devem ser considerados como tal. Põe-te no lugar dos russos.
Marie redarguiu:
- Se os russos detestam todos os alemães, é natural. Mas falando por mim, há ocasiões em que o camarada Ehrenburg me causa náuseas. Não compreendo o que todo esse bater de tambores nacionalistas tem a ver com o socialismo, e isso é um facto. - Falou em tom de deliberado desafio, como se tivesse planeado dizê-lo havia algum tempo, e acrescentou: - Não posso deixar de pensar nesses rapazes alemães, pobres coitados, fascistas ou não, pois são seres humanos.”
Era livro para ser lido em 2 ou 3 dias, se este não fosse um mês especialmente ocupado. É o 3º de uma série de 5, mas tirando o início, em que andei um pouco perdida com os nomes, não notei que ter apanhado o comboio a meio prejudicasse grandemente a leitura. E agora fiquei com vontade de ler a série toda :)
March 23, 2009
Approximately, 1984 redone as a colonial-era comedy of manners. As we know from Orwell, it was a bit difficult during World War II to keep track of what you were supposed to think of the Soviet Union. Here, Doris Lessing describes a bunch of very amateurish Communists, who are stuck in what was then Rhodesia, watching the action from the sidelines. At first, they are ostracized for supporting the Soviet Union. But Germany attacks the Russians, Stalin is suddenly our friend, and the Rhodesian Communists are now flavor-of-the-month in their provincial backwater. They enjoy it while it lasts, making sure of course that they have time left over for petty scheming and intriguing. Then the Allies triumph, the Cold War starts, and they're wrong-footed again. It's quite funny in a very understated way. She reused some of the material in The Golden Notebook.
July 23, 2015
This one was amusing. The meetings and busywork that appeared to change nothing made me chuckle for awhile, then became tedious. The POV changes allowed other characters to liven up the story as by this time Martha becomes less interesting. Political activism can be a sideshow. Few people are savvy enough to have any lasting impact.
On a different note, I've heard that Marxism is capable of gaining fervent followers because it is able to replace that need for religion in society. The Communist party that Martha joined indeed operated a bit like a religious cult. It seems that youth, in their twenties, are prone to fanaticism. In the story, as in life, people generally do not live up to youthful idealism. Martha has herself in a pickle, and her support system has changed, which leads one to open the next book....
July 20, 2011
This is the third volume in Doris Lessing's "Children of Violence" series. I believe these novels are considered highly autobiographical and are meant to show a young woman trying to find herself as she moves out of her middle-class South African/English upbringing.
The first novel in the series, Martha Quest, shows her breaking away from the family to go live and work in the city. At the end of that one, Martha impulsively marries the first man who asks her. In the second, A Proper Marriage, Martha has a baby, struggles with expectations for her as a wife and mother, and by the end has left her husband and daughter to throw herself into left wing politics.
A Ripple from the Storm opens with a communist party meeting and in fact most of the book is taken up with meetings, squabbles, and party activities, all of which I found not very interesting. That may be because of all the other books I have read from the 1950s about people becoming disillusioned with communism.
My interest in A Ripple from the Storm was engaged whenever the story focused on Martha and other women in the story. Each one is moving through their individual ideas about self as they balance relationships with activism while continually running into male patriarchal attitudes. The question or problem of finding love with a man is an old one for women these days but many of Doris Lessing's observations on the subject remain pertinent and she has a unique viewpoint. She digs deeply into the lack of self that women must always deal with when trying to assert themselves as thinking, active members of the human race.
This volume ends with Martha in a quandary between two convictions: "One, it was inevitable that everything should have happened in exactly the way it had happened: no one could have behaved differently. Two, that everything that had happened was unreal, grotesque, and irrelevant." She feels overwhelmed with futility and falls asleep.
Clearly Doris Lessing did not give in to futility. She won the Nobel prize in 2007 and is still writing novels. So I look forward to what happens next.
October 6, 2024
The third instalment in the life of Martha Quest. It’s still WWII and much of this book is concerned with left wing politics and the various parties, committees and groups and of course, all their various interactions. Set in the fictional British colony of Zambesia (based on Southern Rhodesia now Zimbabwe), race relations, class, imperialism and colonialism, feminism, marriage, work, unions, relationships and of course the war, are all issues covered in an enjoyable read for me. Martha is still waiting for the future to come where she’ll just know the right way to be herself.
January 1, 2014
Where the second book in the Children of Violence series focused heavily on Martha Quest's young marriage and the birth of her daughter, this third book finds her in an entirely new set of circumstances. In this installment Martha's interests lie more in her politics and her beliefs rather than her family, believing that the quest to find herself can be found in her Communist leanings.
I enjoyed the second book more than this one because there was a level of relatability to that part of her story, and seriously, my mind is still reeling from those childbirth scenes. There's really none of that same breathlessness to this story as in the second book, and I'd compare this more to the first book in the series in that aspect as well. I could have used a lot more; I felt Martha's distance from the reader had more to do with the writer than the fact that Martha is going through an especially distant part of her life. I half wonder if Lessing just wasn't into the character in this story. The other characters felt more of caricatures than anything, which is a shame compared to A Proper Marriage in which Stella and Alice, for example, were truly fascinating women and complemented Martha in their own ways so well.
In this book, the relationships Martha has are all with various comrades, in and outside of various Communist meetings that lead to very little. Her romantic relationships lack a spark that I cannot determine was intentional for Martha's character development or if Lessing truly was just phoning it in with this book.
I didn't dislike the story, but it did not hold my attention as much as A Proper Marriage. Martha can be insufferable at times, particularly in this installment where her mind is so much on her politics.
I enjoyed the second book more than this one because there was a level of relatability to that part of her story, and seriously, my mind is still reeling from those childbirth scenes. There's really none of that same breathlessness to this story as in the second book, and I'd compare this more to the first book in the series in that aspect as well. I could have used a lot more; I felt Martha's distance from the reader had more to do with the writer than the fact that Martha is going through an especially distant part of her life. I half wonder if Lessing just wasn't into the character in this story. The other characters felt more of caricatures than anything, which is a shame compared to A Proper Marriage in which Stella and Alice, for example, were truly fascinating women and complemented Martha in their own ways so well.
In this book, the relationships Martha has are all with various comrades, in and outside of various Communist meetings that lead to very little. Her romantic relationships lack a spark that I cannot determine was intentional for Martha's character development or if Lessing truly was just phoning it in with this book.
I didn't dislike the story, but it did not hold my attention as much as A Proper Marriage. Martha can be insufferable at times, particularly in this installment where her mind is so much on her politics.
March 5, 2021
Three stars is generous. This is the third book in Lessing's Children of Violence series. Compared to books one and two, it's a farcical ramble, which struggles to find its footing. Martha Quest, the main character in books one and two and the most developed of all the characters in this series so far, fades in and out of this story, as if on life support. The other characters that replace her are far less developed and remain stiff and unmemorable. Failed politics is the main character of this book.
March 13, 2020
Martha is not the female hero that you may be looking for. These Marta Quest novels should be seen as a woman's search for identity and especially this third volume mostly focuses on confessions of the political history of the 20th century.
October 15, 2017
Κυκλοφόρησε στα Ελληνικά, ως "Προμήνυμα καταιγίδας", εκδόσεις Οδυσσέας.
February 9, 2013
A Ripple from The Storm is an attempt to describe the psychology of the group organised against society, the psychology of the individual in an individualistic society trying to behave as 'communal man.' By the end of the book it is apparent that the group has failed. The characters in this were so well portrayed. Lessing beautifully analyzed a group of disparate people coming together for a common cause but their different backgrounds, class, experiences made the task impossible. Great! Am re-reading this after 30 years and enjoying it so much more.
October 4, 2015
After two magnificient books, the third in the Children of Violence series is very low-down. While the others deal with a broad range of questions, this one is very political-oriented. It deals mostly with the problems of a small communist party on the fictional country of South Rodesia that is, to be frank, not even remotely efficient and from which the character of Martha Quest is just a small part. On the plus side, you have a very rich account of colonization and the communist mind before the cold war.
January 19, 2014
Ms. Lessing, uh, is intense. I feel somewhat embarrassed I am getting through the Children of Violence series out of order, as I'm getting the impression this is a Big and Important Series that ought to be tackled in the order the author accomplished it (notwithstanding the publisher's disclaimer to the contrary).
But seriously: This is a really important author. And what she's written is intense.
But seriously: This is a really important author. And what she's written is intense.
July 10, 2016
Um livro um pouco datado (o livro é de 1964). que retrata a tentativa de criar um partido comunista num país africano, tendo como temas base a emancipação das mulheres e a igualdade entre negros e brancos. Não gostei muito da escrita (também pode ser da tradução), que achei pouco criativa e um bocadinho chata, apesar de Doris Lessing ter sido prémio Nobel em 2007, o que me levou a ter vontade de ler este livro
February 3, 2020
Marta Quest y su vida participando en algún grupo marxista. Marta es un joven blanca hija de colonos británicos en África y una de las criaturas más estúpidas del planeta (por puro azar leí recién otra novela de una chica militando por los comunistas, en Chile en este caso; también es un personaje que vive fuera de la realidad).
Lessing es una buena novelista y saca adelante un tema y unos personajes poco felices. Pero es interesante para comparar con lo que escribió después en sus memorias de esa época.
Lessing es una buena novelista y saca adelante un tema y unos personajes poco felices. Pero es interesante para comparar con lo que escribió después en sus memorias de esa época.
November 2, 2024
Leave it to Lessing to make the political party fighting (of communists and socialists in South Africa) a compelling read. It boils down to being all about the human condition (in any time, any place, any group), with an extra-incisive look at relations between the sexes.
May 6, 2011
Martha Quest, the heroine of Doris Lessing's Children of Violence series, continues to be a casualty of circumstances as she lets life happen to her. Her relationship with her parents and absurd relationship with her husband point to her failure to choose from a strong heart what she should do and how she should love. She does not appreciate that her life is hers to make. How can she after so many years of her mother's emotional abuse and belittling ways? She defines herself according to her mother's limitations but does not realize it.
I read on hope she will shed the yoke, stand up, and live.
I read on hope she will shed the yoke, stand up, and live.
September 11, 2012
Huh, just noticed I never wrote a review for this book. Which is funny, because I've been so good at reviewing everything this year. I agree with Manny there that it is one of the best books of the series. "A Proper Marriage" and "Landlocked" feel almost transitional compared to the other three. The most memorable portion for me is the scene with the sick British pilot who wanders off-base and goes mad in the brush. Otherwise, this one is very much dominated by communism and Martha's awful second marriage.
May 25, 2014
This is the one that really makes me reread the series -- it's so good about marxist politics.
May 22, 2025
“Al Final de la Tormenta” (1958) es la tercera novela de la colección “Hijos de la Violencia” de la ganadora del Nobel el año 2007, Doris Lessing. Luego de dejar a Martha Quest en el libro anterior ad portas de un emancipador divorcio, nuestra protagonista asume que la política (y su afiliación al partido comunista) pueden ser el motor de su vida y el elemento clave en construir su identidad. Sin embargo, Martha seguirá enfrentándose a las desigualdades estructurales de la sociedad africana en la que le ha tocado vivir, tanto en carne propia (en su calidad de mujer) como observadora (viendo a los ciudadanos de raza negra excluidos que enfrentan trabas incluso en los partidos que se definen a sí mismos como progresistas). Por lo mismo, el título es un poco confuso. Como mujer soltera, comprometida políticamente y revolucionaria, ¿puede estar Martha viendo el final de la tormenta, o estar adentrándose en ella?
“Estamos todos desquiciados, se dijo, esforzándose por tomárselo a broma. Reconoció aquel tono de seca ironía que tantas veces había observado en Marjorie, preguntándose: ¿Por qué será que continuamente estoy atenta a todo lo que hago o digo, para descubrir el eco de otra gente? La verdad es que no soy una persona, todavía no he encontrado mi propia identidad, y quizá nunca lo haga”.
“Estamos todos desquiciados, se dijo, esforzándose por tomárselo a broma. Reconoció aquel tono de seca ironía que tantas veces había observado en Marjorie, preguntándose: ¿Por qué será que continuamente estoy atenta a todo lo que hago o digo, para descubrir el eco de otra gente? La verdad es que no soy una persona, todavía no he encontrado mi propia identidad, y quizá nunca lo haga”.
June 4, 2024
Absolutely do not read these books alone, they must be read in order. Nothing is introduced, it all just continues. While the previous book focused primarily on childbirth and the dissolution of a marriage, this one focuses primarily on political organizing in a British colony during World War II. Many other reviews of this book are like, “wow, all these political meetings just never really stop, do they?” and I’m like, “These political meetings are HILARIOUS, this book was written personally for me, and I love it.”
It is spot-on in showing how wrapped around the axle people can get about agendas and rules and theory, but also how utterly absurd ALL OF IT I’m accomplishing absolutely anything for real humans and their actual lives.
“Again Martha did not listen to what was being said: the shortest acquaintance with politics should be enough to teach anyone that listening to the words people use is the longest way around to an understanding of what is going on.” - beautiful, no notes, yes. (Even though I LOVE THE WORDS, those can be the best part!!)
All this while dealing with the most absurd of husbands married in the first place for political reasons. Still excited to read more, but forcing myself to read something different first so I don’t burn out.
It is spot-on in showing how wrapped around the axle people can get about agendas and rules and theory, but also how utterly absurd ALL OF IT I’m accomplishing absolutely anything for real humans and their actual lives.
“Again Martha did not listen to what was being said: the shortest acquaintance with politics should be enough to teach anyone that listening to the words people use is the longest way around to an understanding of what is going on.” - beautiful, no notes, yes. (Even though I LOVE THE WORDS, those can be the best part!!)
All this while dealing with the most absurd of husbands married in the first place for political reasons. Still excited to read more, but forcing myself to read something different first so I don’t burn out.
December 12, 2021
Each part of Doris Lessing's series focussing on the life of Martha Quest is itself a brilliant study of conflict, feminism and political idealism around the time of World War II. Based in a fictional British colony bordering South Africa and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, the story's strengths are mostly in the brilliant, deep characters, and how their private motivations and public personas compete and complement one another.
This is the third in the series, and so is something of a crux in the story, a turning point for Martha Quest who is battling her past as a middle-class housewife-to-be and her perceived future in a communist utopia. The protagonist here struggles with how ideals clash with personal life, and with the hypocrisy of supposedly liberal politics that exclude women, "the natives" and other non-white working class people from a perceived idealistic future. Much of this book takes place at meetings and is told through snapshots with an acute political understanding.
With Lessing's near-perfect prose and compelling storytelling, this is again a brilliant chapter in a wonderful series.
This is the third in the series, and so is something of a crux in the story, a turning point for Martha Quest who is battling her past as a middle-class housewife-to-be and her perceived future in a communist utopia. The protagonist here struggles with how ideals clash with personal life, and with the hypocrisy of supposedly liberal politics that exclude women, "the natives" and other non-white working class people from a perceived idealistic future. Much of this book takes place at meetings and is told through snapshots with an acute political understanding.
With Lessing's near-perfect prose and compelling storytelling, this is again a brilliant chapter in a wonderful series.
September 14, 2024
This is the third book in the Children of Violence series by Doris Lessing. Martha Quest / Knowell is our heroine; she has left her husband and child to devote herself to a cause she finds worthy - communism.
This is ultimately a political novel; the entire book is set in South Africa before and during WWII (specifically South Rhodesia). Martha and her comrades are attempting to establish a viable Communist Party in this remote outpost, and their fledgling effort is not successful, largely due, ironically, to an overwhelming ]abundance of individualism. The idealism of this group of people was surprising, compelling, and endearing - Lessing convinced this reader that Martha's decision to set off on this path (alienating her entire social network) was based on something noble, if doomed. Communism in this manifestation (extremely rural, in the face of colonialism, racism and classism) seems so naïve and idealistic.
One critic has written that one theme of Lessing's was alienation. Martha despises her situation - she is hyper aware of the male-dominated, back-woods, third-rate, conformal, banal, racist and prejudiced level of the society that surrounds her. She sees those colonial members of her white society as philistines. She oscillates between (increasingly rare) inspiration from her communist colleagues and a deep-seated pessimism that anything will ever change. Generally characters do not like one another. Everyone is trying to situate themselves w/in this remote outpost; those whites who came first look down on those who come later, into perpetuity. Everything that Martha tries in order to facilitate escape seems doomed to fail; she tries to move into the fringe. In A Ripple from the Storm Lessing shows how the impacts of WWII rock this parochial society when the airmen are stationed outside the town for training. The airmen send shock waves through the society b/c they are liberal (socialist) and freely associate w/ African people, esp women. Lessing's treatment of race felt honest - Martha and her friends had desperate sympathy for the plight of the African but they never made any try connections.
Throughout the series, Lessing uses the metaphor of the veld, a high desert, with its dryness and aridness to situate Martha's relationship with others in the novels. As the group disintegrates at the end of the novel, Lessing describes the oppressive heat. Rain, moisture, water are often signposts for a major change in Martha's life - she swims in a mud-filled pothole when she is pregnant in A Proper Marriage .
I loved Mrs Van. As a young woman she was much like Martha, always wanting to learn the truth about the world, reading forbidden things. She imagines discussing ideas with her husband-to-be. After marriage she realizes this was not true - that she was superior to her husband; she realizes that he had no interest or maybe even capacity for discussing intellectual matters with her. Rather than fight this, she instead decided that she would educate herself in private. She decides that "Emotion is dangerous. It could destroy her." Mr Van is not stupid - he knows what is going on; he knows not to interrupt his wife's reading, but he consistently demanded her attention, as if he were one of their children. There was a key night in their early relationship where Mrs Van has been lying motionless beside her husband, crying silently, knowing that to touch her husband would be seen as an apology, that he would forgive her, that it would be a sort of acceptance that something had to change. However, she didn't feel she had done anything that warranted forgiveness, so she holds herself separate and thereby protects herself from the slow errosion of self she can so clearly predict as a result of her married life. She saves herself; "her heart had remained untouched. She had remained herself." Martha doesn't do this with Anton, who immediately starts to see her involvement w/ the party as energy and concern and interest he feels should be focused his way as her husband.
In the Children of Violence series, Martha opens one door at the beginning of the novel and closes another at the end. Here, Martha marries Anton Hesse in an incredibly selfless action that again is so clearly doomed from the start.
This is ultimately a political novel; the entire book is set in South Africa before and during WWII (specifically South Rhodesia). Martha and her comrades are attempting to establish a viable Communist Party in this remote outpost, and their fledgling effort is not successful, largely due, ironically, to an overwhelming ]abundance of individualism. The idealism of this group of people was surprising, compelling, and endearing - Lessing convinced this reader that Martha's decision to set off on this path (alienating her entire social network) was based on something noble, if doomed. Communism in this manifestation (extremely rural, in the face of colonialism, racism and classism) seems so naïve and idealistic.
One critic has written that one theme of Lessing's was alienation. Martha despises her situation - she is hyper aware of the male-dominated, back-woods, third-rate, conformal, banal, racist and prejudiced level of the society that surrounds her. She sees those colonial members of her white society as philistines. She oscillates between (increasingly rare) inspiration from her communist colleagues and a deep-seated pessimism that anything will ever change. Generally characters do not like one another. Everyone is trying to situate themselves w/in this remote outpost; those whites who came first look down on those who come later, into perpetuity. Everything that Martha tries in order to facilitate escape seems doomed to fail; she tries to move into the fringe. In A Ripple from the Storm Lessing shows how the impacts of WWII rock this parochial society when the airmen are stationed outside the town for training. The airmen send shock waves through the society b/c they are liberal (socialist) and freely associate w/ African people, esp women. Lessing's treatment of race felt honest - Martha and her friends had desperate sympathy for the plight of the African but they never made any try connections.
Throughout the series, Lessing uses the metaphor of the veld, a high desert, with its dryness and aridness to situate Martha's relationship with others in the novels. As the group disintegrates at the end of the novel, Lessing describes the oppressive heat. Rain, moisture, water are often signposts for a major change in Martha's life - she swims in a mud-filled pothole when she is pregnant in A Proper Marriage .
I loved Mrs Van. As a young woman she was much like Martha, always wanting to learn the truth about the world, reading forbidden things. She imagines discussing ideas with her husband-to-be. After marriage she realizes this was not true - that she was superior to her husband; she realizes that he had no interest or maybe even capacity for discussing intellectual matters with her. Rather than fight this, she instead decided that she would educate herself in private. She decides that "Emotion is dangerous. It could destroy her." Mr Van is not stupid - he knows what is going on; he knows not to interrupt his wife's reading, but he consistently demanded her attention, as if he were one of their children. There was a key night in their early relationship where Mrs Van has been lying motionless beside her husband, crying silently, knowing that to touch her husband would be seen as an apology, that he would forgive her, that it would be a sort of acceptance that something had to change. However, she didn't feel she had done anything that warranted forgiveness, so she holds herself separate and thereby protects herself from the slow errosion of self she can so clearly predict as a result of her married life. She saves herself; "her heart had remained untouched. She had remained herself." Martha doesn't do this with Anton, who immediately starts to see her involvement w/ the party as energy and concern and interest he feels should be focused his way as her husband.
In the Children of Violence series, Martha opens one door at the beginning of the novel and closes another at the end. Here, Martha marries Anton Hesse in an incredibly selfless action that again is so clearly doomed from the start.
November 17, 2017
In chi ha vissuto (anche marginalmente) gruppi, gruppuscoli, dibattiti, amori più o meno liberi nel '68, questo libro (per quanto ambientato in Sudafrica durante la seconda guerra mondiale) non può non suscitare un senso di cupo 'deja vu'. Quando ho visto di che si trattava volevo mollarlo, ma ho ceduto, morbosamente, al desiderio di riscoprire l'ineluttabile ripetitività di certi modelli di comportamento... Il che non toglie, ovviamente, che Doris Lessing sia una grande scrittrice.
June 9, 2019
I do love Doris Lessing’s writing, but found it hard to get through the futility that, while it seems to suffuse all of her novels I’ve read to philosophically interesting ends, reached a level of second-hand anxiety that forced me to take a break in the middle. Coming back to it, though, I was renewed in my appreciation for her ability to build interestingly flawed characters in a complex and problematic societal setting.
August 1, 2022
Hasta ahora el más político de la Pentalogía, y en cuanto a la vida de Martha, el menos intenso. Tal como la autora lo quiso, Martha se ha casado de nuevo pero no por amor; el abandono, la soledad y las normas sociales, la han obligado a desposar a un fanático bien intencionado, que no la quiere, la admira pero a la vez la manipula para que ella haga y piense a su modo, no al de Martha.
Martha no soporta que le digan qué hacer ni con quién, pero no puede ella sola con su propios miedos.
Martha no soporta que le digan qué hacer ni con quién, pero no puede ella sola con su propios miedos.
February 23, 2018
After a gap of more than 20 years I have returned to the Children of Violence series. I enjoyed the relentless meetings, situational analysis and party discipline immensely. Martha remains annoying but Lessing bluntly presents numerous conflicts she must negotiate. Can’t wait to read Landlocked next.
September 18, 2025
Like the two books before, this is an incredibly dense book where very little happens and it is so slow moving however I really appreciate the hero, Martha, and the familiarity of dense, patient writing.
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