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Children of Violence #2
UN MATRIMONIO Per bene
An unconventional woman trapped in a conventional marriage, Martha Quest struggles to maintain her dignity and her sanity through the misunderstandings, frustrations, infidelities, and degrading violence of a failing marriage. Finally, she must make the heartbreaking choice of whether to sacrifice her child as she turns her back on marriage and security.
A Proper Marriage is the second novel in Doris Lessing's classic Children of Violence series of novels, each a masterpiece on its own right, and, taken together, an incisive and all-encompassing vision of our world in the twentieth century.
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First published January 1, 1954
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About the author
Doris Lessing
475 books3,182 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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February 27, 2017
This is page after page after page of close, conscientious fiction-writing, of the old-fashioned sort that tries unironically to put you in the mind of someone else. So successful is Lessing that after reading two books in this sequence, I genuinely feel like I've experienced growing up as a woman in 1930s Rhodesia. I can recommend the experience!
Having watched Martha Quest grow from a girl into a young woman during book one, here we see her grapple with the emotions of marriage, pregnancy and motherhood. Martha is not happily married but her unhappiness comes just as much from her own responses and expectations as from her dopey spouse; she second-guesses herself constantly, and spends hours analysing the extent to which she lives up, or down, to society's idea of a woman.
From the moment we realise Martha is going to have a baby – which is to say within the first twenty pages or so – we are in a frenzy of anticipation at the prospect of seeing this meticulous, forensic prose style brought to bear on the experience of childbirth. When it comes, it's a true tour-de-force – Lessing is equal to the challenge as no other writer I've encountered has been, at least to my (disinterested male) mind.
This goes on and on for several pages of sustained unsentimentality. Indeed Lessing's entire depiction of motherhood is an unsentimental one – Martha is determined to be independent, and though she loves her daughter, the child, like the husband, is in the final analysis an impediment to her freedom. One by one the misty-eyed clichés are dismantled, with an almost perverse need to uncover the negative realities.
(In many of Lessing's sentences there is a single word choice that lifts the whole thought on to a higher level; here, I think, it's ‘citizens’.) I suspect there are probably few women, however fulfilled and delighted with their own choices, who won't see at least some aspects of truth in Martha's postpartum-depressive ruminations. Even now this is not a subject well covered in fiction, and in part this seems to have been Lessing's motivation for writing – one throwaway remark gives you a clue to the genesis of the whole book:
I was riveted by my exposure to the mores and prejudices of this peculiar time and place; and even in its most boring moments, that livewire feeling of access to another person's mind, another person's thought processes, kept me hooked. Love Martha or hate her, but it's heady stuff.
Having watched Martha Quest grow from a girl into a young woman during book one, here we see her grapple with the emotions of marriage, pregnancy and motherhood. Martha is not happily married but her unhappiness comes just as much from her own responses and expectations as from her dopey spouse; she second-guesses herself constantly, and spends hours analysing the extent to which she lives up, or down, to society's idea of a woman.
After hours of determined concentration she would emerge with the phrase, ‘Women hate men who take them for granted.’ It would have done for a story in a magazine. But that impersonal ‘women’ was a comfort – briefly, for no sooner had she reached it than she saw the image that the words conjured up: something sought, wooed, capricious, bestowing favours. No, there was something extremely distasteful about that capricious female; no sooner had Martha caught a glimpse of her than she must repudiate her entirely: she was certainly from the past! The suggestion of coyness was unbearable.
From the moment we realise Martha is going to have a baby – which is to say within the first twenty pages or so – we are in a frenzy of anticipation at the prospect of seeing this meticulous, forensic prose style brought to bear on the experience of childbirth. When it comes, it's a true tour-de-force – Lessing is equal to the challenge as no other writer I've encountered has been, at least to my (disinterested male) mind.
Martha no longer had the energy to achieve a mild amusement. The small lit place in her brain was dimming most alarmingly with the pains. Every time, the light nearly went out; always, it flickered precariously and shone up again. Martha noted that something new was happening to time. The watch that lay six inches from her nose on her crooked arm said the pains were punctual at two minutes. But from the moment that the warning hot wave of pain swept up her back, she entered a place where there was no time at all. An agony so unbelievable gripped her that her astounded and protesting mind cried out it was impossible such pain should be. It was a pain so violent that it was no longer pain, but a condition of being. Every particle of flesh shrieked out, while the wave spurted like an electric current from somewhere in her backbone and went through her in shock after shock. The wave receded, however, just as she had decided she would disintegrate under it, and then she felt the fist that gripped her slowly loosen. Through the sweat in her eyes she saw that ten seconds had passed…
This goes on and on for several pages of sustained unsentimentality. Indeed Lessing's entire depiction of motherhood is an unsentimental one – Martha is determined to be independent, and though she loves her daughter, the child, like the husband, is in the final analysis an impediment to her freedom. One by one the misty-eyed clichés are dismantled, with an almost perverse need to uncover the negative realities.
That phrase, ‘having a baby’, which was every girl's way of thinking of a first child, was nothing but a mask to conceal the truth. One saw a flattering image of a madonna-like woman with a helpless infant in her arms; nothing could be more attractive. What one did not see, what everyone conspired to prevent one seeing, was the middle-aged woman who has done nothing but produce two or three commonplace and tedious citizens in a world that was already too full of them.
(In many of Lessing's sentences there is a single word choice that lifts the whole thought on to a higher level; here, I think, it's ‘citizens’.) I suspect there are probably few women, however fulfilled and delighted with their own choices, who won't see at least some aspects of truth in Martha's postpartum-depressive ruminations. Even now this is not a subject well covered in fiction, and in part this seems to have been Lessing's motivation for writing – one throwaway remark gives you a clue to the genesis of the whole book:
But what is most difficult is this: If you read novels and diaries, women didn't seem to have these problems. Is it really conceivable that we should have turned into something quite different in the space of about fifty years? Or do you suppose they didn't tell the truth, the novelists? In the books, the young and idealistic girl gets married, has a baby – she at once turns into something quite different; and she is perfectly happy to spend her whole life bringing up children with a tedious husband.
I was riveted by my exposure to the mores and prejudices of this peculiar time and place; and even in its most boring moments, that livewire feeling of access to another person's mind, another person's thought processes, kept me hooked. Love Martha or hate her, but it's heady stuff.
May 17, 2021
This picks up straight after book one, Martha Quest, and is a continuation of Lessing's exploration of female experience in the second half of the twentieth century. Martha is married now though she can't quite articulate to herself why and, inevitably, pregnancy and motherhood are about to enter her life.
Reading this today, it feels part of a sub-genre of autobiographically-led female-authored fiction that unpicks and kicks back against the social constraints that defined 'feminine' in the mid-twentieth century. First published in 1954, it must surely have been radically rebellious, even subversive. Despite being set in what was then Rhodesia, there is less about racial politics than we might expect though it's there in the background as Martha resents the openly abhorrent views of her friends. But her views are intuitive rather than politically-informed and it's in this book that her political consciousness starts to really stir against a background of WW2.
I think this book - and series - is one that I would have consumed avidly if I'd read it when I was Martha's own age (19 when the book opens). Now, it feels a bit like the chaotic raw material that Lessing used with far more technical proficiency in her iconic The Golden Notebook. That's not to say this isn't compulsive reading - it is - it's just that I feel I've read it before.
Technically, Lessing puts us as close to Martha's inner thoughts as possible without falling into stream of consciousness. We feel like we're living and experiencing Martha's life with her from her vexed relationship with her body to her searching for the source of her inner discontents. The chapter as she gives birth must, surely, have been shockingly frank for the time, as must have been Martha's ambivalences about motherhood, reflecting Lessing's own decisions.
It's hard not to see this as an era-defining book that provided a launch-pad for other feminist rebellion narratives - I'd shelve this alongside The Bell Jar, just be aware it's looser and baggier than Plath's taut, tense, furious text.
Reading this today, it feels part of a sub-genre of autobiographically-led female-authored fiction that unpicks and kicks back against the social constraints that defined 'feminine' in the mid-twentieth century. First published in 1954, it must surely have been radically rebellious, even subversive. Despite being set in what was then Rhodesia, there is less about racial politics than we might expect though it's there in the background as Martha resents the openly abhorrent views of her friends. But her views are intuitive rather than politically-informed and it's in this book that her political consciousness starts to really stir against a background of WW2.
I think this book - and series - is one that I would have consumed avidly if I'd read it when I was Martha's own age (19 when the book opens). Now, it feels a bit like the chaotic raw material that Lessing used with far more technical proficiency in her iconic The Golden Notebook. That's not to say this isn't compulsive reading - it is - it's just that I feel I've read it before.
Technically, Lessing puts us as close to Martha's inner thoughts as possible without falling into stream of consciousness. We feel like we're living and experiencing Martha's life with her from her vexed relationship with her body to her searching for the source of her inner discontents. The chapter as she gives birth must, surely, have been shockingly frank for the time, as must have been Martha's ambivalences about motherhood, reflecting Lessing's own decisions.
It's hard not to see this as an era-defining book that provided a launch-pad for other feminist rebellion narratives - I'd shelve this alongside The Bell Jar, just be aware it's looser and baggier than Plath's taut, tense, furious text.
December 30, 2015
This novel follows
Martha Quest
and personally I advise readers to come to this after reading the beginning of Martha's story. The tone of self reproach (taking Martha to be an avatar of the author) is perhaps a little softer here, and the character seems more psychologically independent from her creator and a stronger individual, although she is still written as someone at the mercy of the currents she strays into (making her tale a perfect canvas to sketch the contours of a history). Once again it is amusing and infuriating and it strikes uncomfortably true how everyone says something other than what they feel and does something other than what they say! Martha's relationship with her parents continues in the same vein, but Lessing deepens the reader's insight into it. I love how she develops the scene, the atmosphere, the tension, to emphasise the significance of some ostensibly banal exchange.
One thing that connects with me is Martha's painful attention to her own body; this is distinctly female writing, capturing the self-regarding aspect of feminine sexuality encultured by the trope of the female body as a prize. But it goes beyond, it goes far beyond that trope of the 'flawless' teenage body as 'a sharp sword' (to enter into what battle? How can we unthink sexuality as violence?) marked, unmade, desecrated by childbirth, though all these anxieties weigh in and meet critical attention. Martha's body, Lessing notes, is 'sanctioned for use by society' and thus marked by contrast as rightfully her own. How Martha experiences her body and navigates her own and others' claims on it is written in the light of that feminist bottom line. Lessing also has much to say about dressing the body, she is an author who largely ignores food but energetically writes the significance of clothes, the fraught surface of signs we write on the body, which presents a canvas varyingly cooperative and disruptive to what we intend or are forced to communicate.
The detailed account of giving birth was very striking. I can't remember where I read that all women cry out for their mothers in labour... where do we go, what selves do we inhabit in that place of primal pain? Time itself is out of shape, memory is broken, sensation fills the universe like a scriptural ocean.
I was painfully enervated by the account of Martha's experience in the nursing home; Lessing emphasises the senselessness and stupidity of separating mothers and babies and restricting feeding to regimented hours. This destructive imposition reflects the colonial attitude to nature, to all things outside the mind, at all levels; prosperity is attained through arbitrary discipline.
As in Martha Quest, the side of the novel concerned with political meetings was not very interesting to me, but I found the politics of the personal, especially the gender dynamics of Martha's marriage, utterly compelling. The set-piece at the club where the black waiter was made to dance in MQhad a parallel scene in this book, where children from the 'Coloured' community performed a variety show for a White audience. Despite its politically innocuous (indeed vacuous) content, the effect is near incendiary, and illuminates some of the distinctive features of racial emotion-politics in white-occupied Southern Africa.
The scenes of Douglas and Perry at the army hospital were also fascinating to me. Unlike in Martha Quest, where Lessing sketches the White character through appearance in author voice, here she uses an English army doctor's observations to underline the key trait of wounded entitlement that Martha also observes in Douglas. His murderous proprietorial attitude towards his family, typical of the patriarchal indoctrinate, is again shown to be part and parcel of the colonial mindset.
My favourite scene in the book has heavily pregnant women amok in the rain, luxuriating in mud holes like hippos. Civilisation and liberation stand at opposite poles here.
One thing that connects with me is Martha's painful attention to her own body; this is distinctly female writing, capturing the self-regarding aspect of feminine sexuality encultured by the trope of the female body as a prize. But it goes beyond, it goes far beyond that trope of the 'flawless' teenage body as 'a sharp sword' (to enter into what battle? How can we unthink sexuality as violence?) marked, unmade, desecrated by childbirth, though all these anxieties weigh in and meet critical attention. Martha's body, Lessing notes, is 'sanctioned for use by society' and thus marked by contrast as rightfully her own. How Martha experiences her body and navigates her own and others' claims on it is written in the light of that feminist bottom line. Lessing also has much to say about dressing the body, she is an author who largely ignores food but energetically writes the significance of clothes, the fraught surface of signs we write on the body, which presents a canvas varyingly cooperative and disruptive to what we intend or are forced to communicate.
The detailed account of giving birth was very striking. I can't remember where I read that all women cry out for their mothers in labour... where do we go, what selves do we inhabit in that place of primal pain? Time itself is out of shape, memory is broken, sensation fills the universe like a scriptural ocean.
I was painfully enervated by the account of Martha's experience in the nursing home; Lessing emphasises the senselessness and stupidity of separating mothers and babies and restricting feeding to regimented hours. This destructive imposition reflects the colonial attitude to nature, to all things outside the mind, at all levels; prosperity is attained through arbitrary discipline.
As in Martha Quest, the side of the novel concerned with political meetings was not very interesting to me, but I found the politics of the personal, especially the gender dynamics of Martha's marriage, utterly compelling. The set-piece at the club where the black waiter was made to dance in MQhad a parallel scene in this book, where children from the 'Coloured' community performed a variety show for a White audience. Despite its politically innocuous (indeed vacuous) content, the effect is near incendiary, and illuminates some of the distinctive features of racial emotion-politics in white-occupied Southern Africa.
The scenes of Douglas and Perry at the army hospital were also fascinating to me. Unlike in Martha Quest, where Lessing sketches the White character through appearance in author voice, here she uses an English army doctor's observations to underline the key trait of wounded entitlement that Martha also observes in Douglas. His murderous proprietorial attitude towards his family, typical of the patriarchal indoctrinate, is again shown to be part and parcel of the colonial mindset.
My favourite scene in the book has heavily pregnant women amok in the rain, luxuriating in mud holes like hippos. Civilisation and liberation stand at opposite poles here.
December 23, 2013
On Friday night, I was sitting at table with a few coworkers I can tolerate at our office holiday dinner and found myself thinking of this book. The holiday dinner is a formal-ish affair, held in a nice banquet space. People are in their holiday, squeaky-clean-finest. While I enjoy the sitting, talking, eating, and drinking parts, the dinner involves other things I'm not very good at and do not enjoy: the mingling, the small-talk, the awkward holiday hugs that are close to turning into someone accidentally grabbing a boob or bumping junk, the balancing of plates at the buffet table without making a mess, or fear of inevitably spilling my wine.
I found myself thinking about this book this year because this book is (amongst other topics) about responsibility. Each year I wonder why I put myself through these holiday dinners, especially considering I had given my boyfriend a pass this year by not making him come with me. And the answer comes down to Responsibility.
Being the second book in the Children of Violence series, Martha Quest is newly married and fresh off her honeymoon. We watch her experiences move from young naivety to a disillusioned woman once she realizes that marriage is really about losing her identity. On the cusp of the war she finds herself imprisoned even further when she realizes she is pregnant. This is a story about responsibility: to herself and her individual nature, to her unborn child, to her husband, to her family, to her commitments, to her passions. She struggles to mitigate her beliefs and morals with what is expected of her as a woman, wife, and mother.
I found myself reading this book slowly, much more slowly than I had expected when I first sat down with it. I don't recall Martha Quest moving this slowly, which isn't to say that this is a difficult or uninteresting book. On the contrary, this is a fascinating read, and as a woman (even though no longer 19, not married, and childless) I could relate to Martha's experiences in some surprising ways. But it's a slow read because it's like the air is slowly being sucked out of your lungs while you read. I found myself feeling claustrophobic while reading, like someone was holding me back, holding me down, putting a pillow over my face. We all struggle at some point in our lives with what it means to be Responsible. We build our lives and fill it with obligations, whether it's a family, a job (or a career), a home with a mortgage (or rent), and soon we find ourselves saying "I can't do [fill in the blank], that wouldn't be Responsible." We hold ourselves back because that's Expected, it's Responsible, we have Obligations. Even some people I know who consider themselves "free" are the ones who travel the least, leave their homes the least, have the fewest adventures, and are just stuck in some other self-created confinement.
As the story moves along, we see Martha start to move away from the expected responsibilities and back to what she knew as as a free-spirited child in the first book - responsibility to herself. It's exciting and refreshing to watch this progression, to see a female character throw off some of the confines of her society at an attempt to find herself through her work, her beliefs, her politics, and, often, her books:
I won't say that I love this book, but it is great. I enjoyed it a lot more than I did Martha Quest because I could relate to it, even during the horrifying childbirth scene, something I've never experienced and have no intentions of experiencing. I think anyone could relate to this - male, female, doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because even though this book involves many "feminine issues", everyone can relate to the prison created by responsibilities and obligations. Everyone.
I found myself thinking about this book this year because this book is (amongst other topics) about responsibility. Each year I wonder why I put myself through these holiday dinners, especially considering I had given my boyfriend a pass this year by not making him come with me. And the answer comes down to Responsibility.
Being the second book in the Children of Violence series, Martha Quest is newly married and fresh off her honeymoon. We watch her experiences move from young naivety to a disillusioned woman once she realizes that marriage is really about losing her identity. On the cusp of the war she finds herself imprisoned even further when she realizes she is pregnant. This is a story about responsibility: to herself and her individual nature, to her unborn child, to her husband, to her family, to her commitments, to her passions. She struggles to mitigate her beliefs and morals with what is expected of her as a woman, wife, and mother.
I found myself reading this book slowly, much more slowly than I had expected when I first sat down with it. I don't recall Martha Quest moving this slowly, which isn't to say that this is a difficult or uninteresting book. On the contrary, this is a fascinating read, and as a woman (even though no longer 19, not married, and childless) I could relate to Martha's experiences in some surprising ways. But it's a slow read because it's like the air is slowly being sucked out of your lungs while you read. I found myself feeling claustrophobic while reading, like someone was holding me back, holding me down, putting a pillow over my face. We all struggle at some point in our lives with what it means to be Responsible. We build our lives and fill it with obligations, whether it's a family, a job (or a career), a home with a mortgage (or rent), and soon we find ourselves saying "I can't do [fill in the blank], that wouldn't be Responsible." We hold ourselves back because that's Expected, it's Responsible, we have Obligations. Even some people I know who consider themselves "free" are the ones who travel the least, leave their homes the least, have the fewest adventures, and are just stuck in some other self-created confinement.
As the story moves along, we see Martha start to move away from the expected responsibilities and back to what she knew as as a free-spirited child in the first book - responsibility to herself. It's exciting and refreshing to watch this progression, to see a female character throw off some of the confines of her society at an attempt to find herself through her work, her beliefs, her politics, and, often, her books:
Books. Words. There must surely be some pattern of words which would neatly and safely cage what she felt - isolate her emotions so that she could look at them from outside. For she was of that generation who, having found nothing in religion, had formed themselves by literature. And the books which spoke most directly were those which had come out of Western Europe during the past hundred years, and of those, the personal and self-confessing. And so she knelt in front of a bookcase, in driving need of the right arrangement of words; for it is a remarkable fact that she was left unmoved by criticisms of the sort of person she was by parents, relations, preachers, teachers, politicians and the people who write for the newspapers; whereas an unsympathetic description of a character similar to her own in a novel would send her into a condition of anxious soul-searching for days.
page 62
I won't say that I love this book, but it is great. I enjoyed it a lot more than I did Martha Quest because I could relate to it, even during the horrifying childbirth scene, something I've never experienced and have no intentions of experiencing. I think anyone could relate to this - male, female, doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because even though this book involves many "feminine issues", everyone can relate to the prison created by responsibilities and obligations. Everyone.
February 12, 2012
Quando all’inizio del libro la conosciamo, Martha Quest ha 19 anni, è sposata da cinque giorni con Douglas e già detesta suo marito e tutto quello che comporta la vita matrimoniale in termini di doveri: i ricevimenti, le pratiche anticoncezionali, la partecipazione ai comitati di beneficenza.
Perché si è sposata? Martha non ce lo dice, probabilmente non lo sa nemmeno lei e D. Lessing non ritiene interessante raccontare le circostanze che hanno portato a questa unione [invece io avrei voluto saperlo, ma andiamo avanti.)
Martha e Douglas sono una giovane coppia come tante in una cittadina della Rhodesia (una colonia dell’Impero Britannico, l’odierno Zimbabwe) che si sta preparando con entusiasmo ed eccitazione alla seconda guerra mondiale. Per gli uomini bianchi si tratta di un’occasione per scappare dalla monotona routine quotidiana e vivere delle mirabolanti avventure: il pensiero della morte non li sfiora sino a quando la guerra non chiede il suo pesante tributo in termini di vite. Per le loro mogli significa invece solitudine, assunzione di tutte le responsabilità: la casa, i figli, le relazioni sociali con le matrone che dettano le regole (implicite ma vincolanti per tutti) della provinciale e bigotta vita cittadina. Per i negri, i cafri (come vengono chiamati con disprezzo gli uomini di colore), i meticci significa andare a morire per una Patria che non riconosce loro alcun diritto. L’apartheid è talmente radicato nella mentalità coloniale che neanche nelle riunioni degli aspiranti comunisti se ne può parlare e una recita in cui cantano dei bambini di colore viene bollata come un attacco ai valori della Patria e dei Bianchi.
La vita della colonia appare abbastanza insulsa e vuota: il pomeriggio cocktails dalle famiglie in vista della città, poi i giovani si recano negli alberghi a ballare e ubriacarsi sino alle prime luci dell’alba. Il mattino gli uomini, ancora intontiti dai bagordi serali, vanno a lavoro e le donne rimangono a letto sino a tarda mattina per poi alzarsi, rigovernare la casa e assolvere a tutti i loro doveri. Un’eterna adolescenza che la guerra spinge brutalmente ad abbandonare.
Quello di Martha e Douglas è un matrimonio infelice? Molto, ma solo per metà. Martha si sente molto infelice: analizza con lucidità la sua situazione, i difetti di Douglas, gli inconvenienti del matrimonio ed è sicura che il marito la pensi proprio come lei. Aspetta il momento giusto per dirglielo ma non lo fa, anzi finge che vada tutto bene e nel frattempo il tempo passa. Douglas, dal canto suo, non si accorge di nulla: attribuisce il malumore della moglie alla natura delle donne, almeno sino a quando la situazione non diventa evidente anche a lui.
[Per tutto il libro avrei avuto voglia di afferrare Martha per le spalle, scuoterla e urlare: “PERCHÉ? PERCHÉ TI SEI SPOSATA? NON LO SAI?! E ALLORA FA QUALCOSA E SMETTILA DI LAMENTARTI O ALMENO LAMENTATI CON TUO MARITO E FINISCILA CON LE SEGHE MENTALI! NON SE NE PUÒ PIÙ!”]
Doris Lessing ci propone un ritratto impietoso della società coloniale basata sull’ipocrisia e sul perbenismo, sull’apparire e sulla desiderabilità sociale. Solo chi ha già raggiunto una posizione si può permettere di esprimere critiche, tutti gli altri sono tenuti al più rigido conformismo. Gli uomini bianchi della colonia sono descritti come dei bambini capricciosi che non si sentono amati dalla Madre Patria e indulgono nel vittimismo; le loro donne devono essere comprensive verso le debolezze degli uomini e accettare il loro modo di comportarsi senza mostrare il più piccolo segno di cedimento. L’Inghilterra appare come una sorta di Eldorado che tutti vogliono raggiungere, ma si tratta dell’Inghilterra dell’infanzia, dei ricordi personali oppure per i giovani nati nella colonia mediati dai racconti dei genitori. Quando la società coloniale si “incontra” con gli aviatori inglesi (che sono stanziati in Rhodesia per addestrarsi al volo) scopre che non ha molto in comune con quei giovani pallidi, mediamente colti che amano parlare di libri, di filosofia, di diritti umani e che trattano i neri della colonia come dei pari. Le buone signore dell’alta società si premurano di organizzare degli incontri per spiegare a quei giovani che (poverini non è colpa loro) non sanno qual è il modo corretto di comportarsi con i negri. Ma ormai la contaminazione è avvenuta: le giovani donne, abbandonate dai loro uomini che hanno fatto di tutto per essere arruolati (anche imbrogliare sulle reali condizioni di salute), si lasciano sedurre da quei gentiluomini inglesi, senza del resto deiderare chissà quali storie d’amore. Vogliono svagarsi e godere anche loro dei vantaggi della guerra.
Lo sguardo implacabile di Dorsi Lessing non risparmia neanche agli appartenenti “illuminati” a gruppi che si ispirano al comunismo: chiacchierano, chiacchierano ma non concludono mai nulla; soprattutto questi sedicenti rivoluzionari appaiono scollati dalla realtà sociale dell’apartheid e dalle aspirazioni della vera classe operaria, cioè i neri e i meticci. [insomma la politica non riesce a fare proprie le istanze della gente per la quale si batte: come dire che non c’è niente di nuovo sotto il sole!]
Anche la decisione se fondare o meno una sezione locale del Partito Comunista appare affondare in mezzo a tutte le discussioni e alla diverse posizioni ideologiche. Quella cittadina sperduta dell’Africa è pronta per avere un sua sede del Partito? Conoscono abbastanza bene la teoria? Hanno studiato abbastanza?
La vita della colonia fa’ da sfondo alla condizione della donna e questo è un altro aspetto interessante del libro. Doris Lessing si conferma: "Cantrice dell'esperienza femminile, con scetticismo, passione e potere " come recita la motivazione con cui le hanno attribuito il nobel per la letteratura nel 2007.
Nella Rhodesia del 1939, è opinione comune che le giovani coppie non debbano avere subito dei figli: le pratiche anticoncezionali sono un loro preciso dovere [badate bene, niente pillola, che fu introdotta in Europa nel 1961, e neanche preservativi perché ai focosi mariti danno fastidio]. L’aborto è illegale (ma ugualmente praticato): se gli anticoncezionali non funzionano c’è la riprovazione delle amiche e, se si vuole rischiare, un aborto illegale, oppure assoggettarsi a quello che è, dalla notte dei tempi, il principale dovere della donna. Doris Lessing descrive la maternità con brutale sincerità: la gioia per la nascita di un figlio ma anche la sensazione in alcuni momenti di essere in trappola, di avere imboccato una strada senza uscita. Nonostante il senso di claustrofobia che tutte le madri provano, in fondo al cuore il desiderio di maternità è come una sirena che con la sua voce chiama e ammalia (anche quando si hanno già dei figli e la fase romantica è già stata superata da un pezzo): Martha deve affrontare questo desiderio e decidere cosa fare. Le persone che la circondano non le sono d’aiuto: le amiche non possono dire cosa veramente pensano perché non si possono permettersi di essere sincere neanche con se stesse; la madre vede in un possibile nipote una seconda chance per incarnare il tipo di madre che sua figlia non le ha permesso di essere [ovviamente alla fine la colpa è sempre dei figli]; gli uomini non si pongono neanche il problema dato che il loro rapporto con i figli si esaurisce in qualche pomeriggio di gioco; i medici, se è il caso, mentono sulla diagnosi confermando la gravidanza quando ormai è troppo tardi anche per un aborto clandestino. Solo le donne indigene possono vivere la maternità in una dimensione naturale ma le giovani donne civilizzate non possono avere l’atteggiamento delle negre: “si sa per loro non è come noi, non soffrono nemmeno durante il parto” dirà un’amica infermiera a Martha.
La scrittura della Lessing è il principale pregio di questo libro: la capacità di entrare nei pensieri più segreti di Marta, di andare oltre i comportamenti per evidenziarne le motivazioni più recondite, la capacità di esplicitare le differenze di comunicazione tra uomini e donne.
Si, però forse troppo. Troppi dettagli di cui avrei fatto volentieri a meno. E qui arriviamo alla nota dolente della mia recensione: non l’ho ancora scritto con chiarezza per pudore (si tratta pur sempre di un premio nobel), ma questo libro è noioso sino all’inverosimile. Pagine e pagine dedicate ai pensieri di Martha, tre pagine sul dilemma interiore se allattare al seno oppure passare al latte artificiale, cinque pagine per descrivere un parto in tutti i dettagli [vi assicuro che neanche nei reparti di maternità le puerpere si dilungano così tanto sulla loro esperienza], decine di pagine sulle lacerazioni interne dei gruppi di ispirazione comunista. Insomma, troppi dettagli.
Forse è meglio provare con un altro libro per conoscere Doris Lessing: del resto questo è uno dei suoi primi romanzi. Avrà sicuramente fatto di meglio dopo. O almeno così si dice in giro negli ambienti bene informati.
Perché si è sposata? Martha non ce lo dice, probabilmente non lo sa nemmeno lei e D. Lessing non ritiene interessante raccontare le circostanze che hanno portato a questa unione [invece io avrei voluto saperlo, ma andiamo avanti.)
Martha e Douglas sono una giovane coppia come tante in una cittadina della Rhodesia (una colonia dell’Impero Britannico, l’odierno Zimbabwe) che si sta preparando con entusiasmo ed eccitazione alla seconda guerra mondiale. Per gli uomini bianchi si tratta di un’occasione per scappare dalla monotona routine quotidiana e vivere delle mirabolanti avventure: il pensiero della morte non li sfiora sino a quando la guerra non chiede il suo pesante tributo in termini di vite. Per le loro mogli significa invece solitudine, assunzione di tutte le responsabilità: la casa, i figli, le relazioni sociali con le matrone che dettano le regole (implicite ma vincolanti per tutti) della provinciale e bigotta vita cittadina. Per i negri, i cafri (come vengono chiamati con disprezzo gli uomini di colore), i meticci significa andare a morire per una Patria che non riconosce loro alcun diritto. L’apartheid è talmente radicato nella mentalità coloniale che neanche nelle riunioni degli aspiranti comunisti se ne può parlare e una recita in cui cantano dei bambini di colore viene bollata come un attacco ai valori della Patria e dei Bianchi.
La vita della colonia appare abbastanza insulsa e vuota: il pomeriggio cocktails dalle famiglie in vista della città, poi i giovani si recano negli alberghi a ballare e ubriacarsi sino alle prime luci dell’alba. Il mattino gli uomini, ancora intontiti dai bagordi serali, vanno a lavoro e le donne rimangono a letto sino a tarda mattina per poi alzarsi, rigovernare la casa e assolvere a tutti i loro doveri. Un’eterna adolescenza che la guerra spinge brutalmente ad abbandonare.
Quello di Martha e Douglas è un matrimonio infelice? Molto, ma solo per metà. Martha si sente molto infelice: analizza con lucidità la sua situazione, i difetti di Douglas, gli inconvenienti del matrimonio ed è sicura che il marito la pensi proprio come lei. Aspetta il momento giusto per dirglielo ma non lo fa, anzi finge che vada tutto bene e nel frattempo il tempo passa. Douglas, dal canto suo, non si accorge di nulla: attribuisce il malumore della moglie alla natura delle donne, almeno sino a quando la situazione non diventa evidente anche a lui.
[Per tutto il libro avrei avuto voglia di afferrare Martha per le spalle, scuoterla e urlare: “PERCHÉ? PERCHÉ TI SEI SPOSATA? NON LO SAI?! E ALLORA FA QUALCOSA E SMETTILA DI LAMENTARTI O ALMENO LAMENTATI CON TUO MARITO E FINISCILA CON LE SEGHE MENTALI! NON SE NE PUÒ PIÙ!”]
Doris Lessing ci propone un ritratto impietoso della società coloniale basata sull’ipocrisia e sul perbenismo, sull’apparire e sulla desiderabilità sociale. Solo chi ha già raggiunto una posizione si può permettere di esprimere critiche, tutti gli altri sono tenuti al più rigido conformismo. Gli uomini bianchi della colonia sono descritti come dei bambini capricciosi che non si sentono amati dalla Madre Patria e indulgono nel vittimismo; le loro donne devono essere comprensive verso le debolezze degli uomini e accettare il loro modo di comportarsi senza mostrare il più piccolo segno di cedimento. L’Inghilterra appare come una sorta di Eldorado che tutti vogliono raggiungere, ma si tratta dell’Inghilterra dell’infanzia, dei ricordi personali oppure per i giovani nati nella colonia mediati dai racconti dei genitori. Quando la società coloniale si “incontra” con gli aviatori inglesi (che sono stanziati in Rhodesia per addestrarsi al volo) scopre che non ha molto in comune con quei giovani pallidi, mediamente colti che amano parlare di libri, di filosofia, di diritti umani e che trattano i neri della colonia come dei pari. Le buone signore dell’alta società si premurano di organizzare degli incontri per spiegare a quei giovani che (poverini non è colpa loro) non sanno qual è il modo corretto di comportarsi con i negri. Ma ormai la contaminazione è avvenuta: le giovani donne, abbandonate dai loro uomini che hanno fatto di tutto per essere arruolati (anche imbrogliare sulle reali condizioni di salute), si lasciano sedurre da quei gentiluomini inglesi, senza del resto deiderare chissà quali storie d’amore. Vogliono svagarsi e godere anche loro dei vantaggi della guerra.
Lo sguardo implacabile di Dorsi Lessing non risparmia neanche agli appartenenti “illuminati” a gruppi che si ispirano al comunismo: chiacchierano, chiacchierano ma non concludono mai nulla; soprattutto questi sedicenti rivoluzionari appaiono scollati dalla realtà sociale dell’apartheid e dalle aspirazioni della vera classe operaria, cioè i neri e i meticci. [insomma la politica non riesce a fare proprie le istanze della gente per la quale si batte: come dire che non c’è niente di nuovo sotto il sole!]
Anche la decisione se fondare o meno una sezione locale del Partito Comunista appare affondare in mezzo a tutte le discussioni e alla diverse posizioni ideologiche. Quella cittadina sperduta dell’Africa è pronta per avere un sua sede del Partito? Conoscono abbastanza bene la teoria? Hanno studiato abbastanza?
La vita della colonia fa’ da sfondo alla condizione della donna e questo è un altro aspetto interessante del libro. Doris Lessing si conferma: "Cantrice dell'esperienza femminile, con scetticismo, passione e potere " come recita la motivazione con cui le hanno attribuito il nobel per la letteratura nel 2007.
Nella Rhodesia del 1939, è opinione comune che le giovani coppie non debbano avere subito dei figli: le pratiche anticoncezionali sono un loro preciso dovere [badate bene, niente pillola, che fu introdotta in Europa nel 1961, e neanche preservativi perché ai focosi mariti danno fastidio]. L’aborto è illegale (ma ugualmente praticato): se gli anticoncezionali non funzionano c’è la riprovazione delle amiche e, se si vuole rischiare, un aborto illegale, oppure assoggettarsi a quello che è, dalla notte dei tempi, il principale dovere della donna. Doris Lessing descrive la maternità con brutale sincerità: la gioia per la nascita di un figlio ma anche la sensazione in alcuni momenti di essere in trappola, di avere imboccato una strada senza uscita. Nonostante il senso di claustrofobia che tutte le madri provano, in fondo al cuore il desiderio di maternità è come una sirena che con la sua voce chiama e ammalia (anche quando si hanno già dei figli e la fase romantica è già stata superata da un pezzo): Martha deve affrontare questo desiderio e decidere cosa fare. Le persone che la circondano non le sono d’aiuto: le amiche non possono dire cosa veramente pensano perché non si possono permettersi di essere sincere neanche con se stesse; la madre vede in un possibile nipote una seconda chance per incarnare il tipo di madre che sua figlia non le ha permesso di essere [ovviamente alla fine la colpa è sempre dei figli]; gli uomini non si pongono neanche il problema dato che il loro rapporto con i figli si esaurisce in qualche pomeriggio di gioco; i medici, se è il caso, mentono sulla diagnosi confermando la gravidanza quando ormai è troppo tardi anche per un aborto clandestino. Solo le donne indigene possono vivere la maternità in una dimensione naturale ma le giovani donne civilizzate non possono avere l’atteggiamento delle negre: “si sa per loro non è come noi, non soffrono nemmeno durante il parto” dirà un’amica infermiera a Martha.
La scrittura della Lessing è il principale pregio di questo libro: la capacità di entrare nei pensieri più segreti di Marta, di andare oltre i comportamenti per evidenziarne le motivazioni più recondite, la capacità di esplicitare le differenze di comunicazione tra uomini e donne.
Si, però forse troppo. Troppi dettagli di cui avrei fatto volentieri a meno. E qui arriviamo alla nota dolente della mia recensione: non l’ho ancora scritto con chiarezza per pudore (si tratta pur sempre di un premio nobel), ma questo libro è noioso sino all’inverosimile. Pagine e pagine dedicate ai pensieri di Martha, tre pagine sul dilemma interiore se allattare al seno oppure passare al latte artificiale, cinque pagine per descrivere un parto in tutti i dettagli [vi assicuro che neanche nei reparti di maternità le puerpere si dilungano così tanto sulla loro esperienza], decine di pagine sulle lacerazioni interne dei gruppi di ispirazione comunista. Insomma, troppi dettagli.
Forse è meglio provare con un altro libro per conoscere Doris Lessing: del resto questo è uno dei suoi primi romanzi. Avrà sicuramente fatto di meglio dopo. O almeno così si dice in giro negli ambienti bene informati.
July 31, 2024
Better than I remember it! Book 2 in the Children of Violence series and continues straight on from book 1 which ended with 19yo Martha Quest rushing into a marriage with Douglas. This book covers all her disillusionments with marriage, motherhood and society in general. It begins before the outbreak of WWII but most of the story is during wartime. So the backdrop of this personal story is a backwater colonial apartheid society (called Zambesia in the novel but based on Rhodesia now Zimbabwe) with all its contradictions. Early feminism, class, racism, politics and great writing (I highlighted so many quotes!) made this a great reread for me.
January 22, 2022
Another Lessing, another great read. It's the next chapter in Martha Quest's quest (sorry) and again, Lessing excels in describing Martha's life in a complex, layered way. After doing everything hastly in the first book (moving to town, marrying Douglas), Martha's life slows down more and more in this one. Her husband has a "respectable" career and wants a "respectable" life, so Martha gets more and more reduced to a housewife and mother. At the same time, Martha tries to sort out what type of life she wants to live and whether this will be possible in this marriage.
The whole unfolding process of the crumbling marriage to me was the strongpoint of the novel. The description of the pregnancy early in the marriage was at times painful, especially towards the end of it when her body gets controlled more and more and external expectations seem to overwhelm her while she's still unsure about how to feel about motherhood. But also the arguments with her husband, the anger, the (self)hate, feelings of helplessness and insecurity, they really got to me. Doris Lessing again manages to marvellously put in front of the reader how political, societal, economic and emotional factors mix and overlap and conflict with each other and what pressure this puts onto her main character.
I had some minor issues though: I was so excited for said parts of the book that it felt almost like a distraction when the novel left her - like in the middle part when it follows Douglas' experience in the army for a while. These changes of perspective were good and interesting, but felt just a little bit out of place because I was so close to Martha at that point and the other inside perpectives couldn't reach the same level of depth. For the same reasons, I didn't like the time jumps, sometimes skipping months which seemed a bit unbalanced when sometimes days were described in great detail. Finally, there is a bit of exposition towards the end, laying out the base for the more political Martha Quest - something I'm totally looking forward to, but it just lacked payoff in this volume.
But as I said that were minor issues and Lessing manages to bring this volume to a very intense final on the last 20 pages. She proves again that she is a masterful author I highly recommend to read. And now I'm fixed for A RIPPLE FROM THE STORM!
The whole unfolding process of the crumbling marriage to me was the strongpoint of the novel. The description of the pregnancy early in the marriage was at times painful, especially towards the end of it when her body gets controlled more and more and external expectations seem to overwhelm her while she's still unsure about how to feel about motherhood. But also the arguments with her husband, the anger, the (self)hate, feelings of helplessness and insecurity, they really got to me. Doris Lessing again manages to marvellously put in front of the reader how political, societal, economic and emotional factors mix and overlap and conflict with each other and what pressure this puts onto her main character.
I had some minor issues though: I was so excited for said parts of the book that it felt almost like a distraction when the novel left her - like in the middle part when it follows Douglas' experience in the army for a while. These changes of perspective were good and interesting, but felt just a little bit out of place because I was so close to Martha at that point and the other inside perpectives couldn't reach the same level of depth. For the same reasons, I didn't like the time jumps, sometimes skipping months which seemed a bit unbalanced when sometimes days were described in great detail. Finally, there is a bit of exposition towards the end, laying out the base for the more political Martha Quest - something I'm totally looking forward to, but it just lacked payoff in this volume.
But as I said that were minor issues and Lessing manages to bring this volume to a very intense final on the last 20 pages. She proves again that she is a masterful author I highly recommend to read. And now I'm fixed for A RIPPLE FROM THE STORM!
July 19, 2015
Martha Quest. The name is appropriate. During this work, and the previous novel, I disliked Martha. Every gentle or humane action, or emotion, is crushed, either by the object, or by Martha's own determination to avoid sentimentality. She identifies frailty, and carves it away, either by laughter, or self-discipline. This determination makes her a cold mother, a shallow friend, and a temporary wife. I hoped she would allow herself one carefree, emotional indulgence. But no. Even an affair she intends to have is measured and without delusions. Youthful idealism bobs to the surface at times, but doesn't last. Martha is thirsty for passion and a sense of purpose, but no cause, or person, can carry the burden of her idealism for long. So, I did not like her, but I was fascinated by her internal quest, and her reactions to the society that developed during British colonization of Africa.
By the end, I changed in my opinion. I found an odd respect for Martha. She is true to her principles, even when being so proves to be difficult. Youth is less fearful of the results of their actions, so her courage is fueled by optimism and self-confidence. She is tempted by sentimentality, such as the desire to stay with her child, but she gives up a life of security. Irresponsible? Yes but the child will be well tended, and Martha acknowledged that the child, Caroline, would be better off without her. In the real world, I would criticize a mother who abandons her child, but not one that leaves an unsatisfactory marriage. Martha has a tendency to go with the flow, then to become highly critical. She has an inner strength and sense of conviction that is rare in that she finally decides to take action. Her insights are interesting. My plan was to intersperse other novels before continuing the series. Is it a surprise that my mind has changed?
May 10, 2010
This to me was very much a feminist book. A book about a woman with visions and passions who hasn't yet discovered her own voice or strength. It seems like things are just happening to her while her inner thoughts rebel quietly. It could be a frustrating read if it wasn't so realistic. Martha is not a hero, she is woman living in a turbulent time when people are mostly lost and the future is uncertain to say the least.
Martha's often contradictory feelings and thoughts were very familiar to me from my own early 20s. The realities of growing up as a woman are far from simple.
Martha's often contradictory feelings and thoughts were very familiar to me from my own early 20s. The realities of growing up as a woman are far from simple.
February 26, 2021
Konu ve anlatılanlar itibariyle ilgimi çeken, merakımı uyandıran, hoşuma giden bir kitap olsa da benim yıldızım Martha Quest ile bir türlü barışmadı sanırım. Bir türlü hikâyenin içine giremediğimi, kendimi kaptırıp gidemediğimi hissettim. Seriye daha fazla devam edemeyeceğim sanırım.
October 15, 2017
Κυκλοφόρησε στα Ελληνικά ως "Ένας καλός γάμος", εκδόσεις Οδυσσέας.
February 4, 2015
The second book of the Children of Violence series. This was better than the first book. It is a perceptive look at relationships and politics in Rhodesia at the time of the Second World War. The feminist main theme may not seem as radical now as it did in the fifties -- or even in the early seventies when I read this for the first time -- but it is very well-done, especially in that it is not strident but shows the protagonist as struggling within her own mind between her ideal of what a relationship should be and her traditional upbringing, between wanting to be free and active and also wanting to be the perfect wife and mother. I read this immediately after reading George Eliot's Middlemarch, and was struck that this is in the same tradition, in fact that it could be considered [Middlemarch plus eighty years; the theme of the intelligent woman who feels for the underprivileged lower classes and rejects some of the conventions of her time, who enters into a disastrous marriage thinking her husband is similar to her, and struggles against the social conventions that hem her in. There are also major differences; in the twentieth century, there are more options available, the conventions are more internalized than imposed from without, and most importantly Lessing does not, as Eliot almost has to, present the solution in the form of "rescue" by a more suitable husband. Frankly, I think Lessing is the better writer, at least by today's standards; the psychology is deeper and more conscious, and the protagonist is more confused and conflicted within herself, more believable than the too perfect Dorothea in the Victorian novel. That this is at least partly autobiographical makes it seem much more real. The political aspect is also quite credible, unlike most novels I have read. This was one of my favorites when I read it first forty years ago, and it still is after re-reading it.
June 30, 2008
Love Doris Lessing. Can't wait to read the next one.
April 22, 2019
Esta novela se escribió hace mucho y leerla en el siglo XXI equivale a practicar arqueología. Los temas son: la administración colonial, la vida en las granjas de los blancos en África, el apartheid, la segunda guerra mundial, la prédica comunista en Occidente, y por sobre todo la vida doméstica de las familias de clase media que tienen casa, automóvil y varios sirvientes negros y nada que hacer además de la interminable tarea de llevar esos tipos de hogares. Y también es arqueológico el indagar en el devenir conyugal, han cambiado tanto las cosas. Martha se casó muy joven y no soporta más su vida. Su matrimonio es una cárcel en la que entró porque es soberbia y estúpida. Odia a su marido porque es un joven gordo y vulgar. Deja a su hija de tres años y comienza su vida de nuevo, ahora poniendo el foco en la militancia comunista. Más soberbia y estúpida no se consigue.
September 17, 2017
I'm a conventional male who had a happy childhood and a good marriage (55 years so far this coming December) with a wife who wanted children and who bore 7. So it should be no surprise to anyone reading this review (if there is anyone) when I say I found Martha Quest to be shallow, selfish, and rather foolish. She is rather young in this second book of Lessing's 5-volume Children of Violence series so perhaps those qualities should not be entirely unexpected. She rejected religion and many (not all) of it's values, married apparently without considering the long-term consequences, had a child rather against her will (although she eventually warmed to the idea), and left her child and husband to pursue her own desires which apparently no longer included them. Martha's attitude about children in general (i.e. "commonplace and tedious citizens in a world that was already too full of them") is appalling. She did have the significant virtues of lack of prejudice toward other races and sympathy for those who were less advantaged economically. But her idealism (particularly the notion that poverty could somehow be entirely eliminated) was quite unrealistic. She accepted the communist propaganda (as did Lessing in her younger life) that it, communism, would lead to a better world. Of course in those days the evils of the Russian communists were not so well exposed as they are today, so perhaps in a later volume Martha will reject communism as Lessing did. Many people (including myself) do foolish things in their youth and then improve with age, so perhaps the same will happen with Martha. I look forward to the remaining volumes in the series. Oh, as a final note, I hope that most, if not all, consider Martha's to be anything but A Proper Marriage. I can only assume that Lessing meant the title to be ironic.
November 29, 2023
Sanırım ben pek havasına giremedim. Bazen nefes almaya kadar detaya girip bazen uçarcasına ileriye atlamış. Savaş kendini ucundan göstermiş. Klişe kadınlık durumları ya da ben öyle algıladım! Neyse bayılmadım🤔
October 10, 2024
At times almost too frustrating to bear, culminating in an appalling amount of injustice. So vivid. Only complaint is i found the ‘leftist infighting’ bits kind of dull
February 27, 2021
Roles for women and men, gender, racism, class, colonialism, British culture and politics prior to and during WW2 in Africa all included in this second book of Lessing's Children of Violence series.
May 10, 2022
Inizio a dire che è una lettura stra-consigliatissima!
La Lessing ha voluto raccontarci una fiaba con tanto di Regina bellissima, Re guerriero e paesi lontani e difficili da raggiungere.
Ma come tutte le favole, anche Un pacifico matrimonio è un'allegoria, ha una morale da raccontarci.
Ed è la storia della paura e della difficoltà di capire ed accettare chi è diverso da noi, della fatica e della solitudine che spesso sono il prezzo da pagare per varcare dei confini, per scoprire cosa c'è fuori dal nostro piccolo guscio.
Un imposto matrimonio tra opposti, un matrimonio contro la non comunicazione e l'assenza di curiosità che dona in cambio il desiderio di conoscere e allargare i propri orizzonti.
E la morale è proprio questa, non bisogna mai perdere lo stimolo della conoscenza, mai dimenticare il gusto della scoperta (già, proprio quello che provavamo da bambini!!!)
Altimenti che vita sarebbe senza curiosità...e quindi senza desideri?
La Lessing ha voluto raccontarci una fiaba con tanto di Regina bellissima, Re guerriero e paesi lontani e difficili da raggiungere.
Ma come tutte le favole, anche Un pacifico matrimonio è un'allegoria, ha una morale da raccontarci.
Ed è la storia della paura e della difficoltà di capire ed accettare chi è diverso da noi, della fatica e della solitudine che spesso sono il prezzo da pagare per varcare dei confini, per scoprire cosa c'è fuori dal nostro piccolo guscio.
Un imposto matrimonio tra opposti, un matrimonio contro la non comunicazione e l'assenza di curiosità che dona in cambio il desiderio di conoscere e allargare i propri orizzonti.
E la morale è proprio questa, non bisogna mai perdere lo stimolo della conoscenza, mai dimenticare il gusto della scoperta (già, proprio quello che provavamo da bambini!!!)
Altimenti che vita sarebbe senza curiosità...e quindi senza desideri?
June 25, 2007
I wish Lessing's work was more well known in the U.S.
True story: I was reading this on my lunch break at a temp job for an ad agency in NYC some years ago. One of the executives walked by, a man, and asked, "Is that a marriage manual? Are you getting married?" He was trying to be friendly, so I tried not to sledgehammer him too badly. I just said, "No, it's a novel by a famous author." Duh.
True story: I was reading this on my lunch break at a temp job for an ad agency in NYC some years ago. One of the executives walked by, a man, and asked, "Is that a marriage manual? Are you getting married?" He was trying to be friendly, so I tried not to sledgehammer him too badly. I just said, "No, it's a novel by a famous author." Duh.
September 14, 2008
This is a good story - book 2 of a series. Interesting observations about life in South Africa.
August 3, 2009
I guess I'm still naive enough to be surprised that Lessing's characters had such "modern" problems lo those 60 years ago.
A slow, thoughtful book.
A slow, thoughtful book.
April 9, 2012
I finally finished this book! It was ok. I did not totally dislike it; there were parts that held my interest. It's simply another "the struggles of women" story.
January 20, 2024
Doris Lessing’s second book in her semi-biographical ‘Children of Violence’ series, A Proper Marriage (1954) is her sequel to Martha Quest (1952). Certain observations made below are not spoilers – they are mentioned briefly in the book blurb.
The point-of-view is omniscient, so we get inside the heads of several characters, often in the same scene. The story is set in the fictional African country of Zambesia (not a million miles away from Southern Rhodesia where Lessing lived most of her formative years (1925-1949)): ‘The small colonial town was at a crossroads in its growth: half a modern city, half a pioneers’ achievement; a large block of flats might stand next to a shanty of wood and corrugated iron, and most streets petered out suddenly in a waste of scrub and grass’ (p10).
Martha is now nineteen and married to a clerk, Douglas Knowell. She is strong-willed, restless and not particularly enamoured of boring married life – though at the beginning of the book she has only been married five days... ‘Until two weeks ago, her body had been free and her own, something to be taken for granted...’ (p37).
It’s the start of the Second World War, though at the outset this does not seem to affect the township. The townsfolk are conscious that there is a ‘big issue’ with the black population, however: ‘any expression of a desire for improvement on the part of the natives was immediately described as impertinence, or sedition, or even worse’ (p62). The parson’s wife observes: ‘If they learn to use arms, they can use them on us... this business of sending black troops overseas is extremely short-sighted. They are treated as equals in Britain, even by the women’ (p66).
When Douglas and his pals sign up to fight, Martha is taken aback; she is not enough for him, he prefers to ‘rush off to war’... (Douglas) ‘had not known how intolerably boring and empty his life was until there was a chance of escaping from it’ (p80).
When Martha learns that she is pregnant and the illegality of an abortion crops up, she ‘flew into an angry tirade against governments who presumed to tell women what they should do with their own bodies; it was the final insult to personal liberty’ (p106).
Throughout the book there are fine examples of Lessing’s eye for description: ‘The jacaranda were holding up jaded yellow arms. This drying, yellowing, fading month, this time when the year tensed and tightened towards the coming rains, always gave her a feeling of perverted autumn, and now filled her with an exquisite cold apprehension. The sky, above the haze of dust, was a glitter of hot blue light’ (p113). Another brief example: ‘Soon the wings of her joy had folded’ (p124). ‘Martha drifted to the divan, where she sat, with listening hands, so extraordinarily compelling was the presence of the stranger in her flesh’ (p129).
The actual scenes running up to and encompassing the birth are very well done. ‘Every particle of her flesh shrieked out, while the wave spurted like an electric current from somewhere in her backbone and went through her in shock after shock...’ (pp163-167). [Lessing gave birth to her first child in 1940].
One observation is certainly no longer true in the age of social media: ‘... one of the minor pleasures of power is to exchange in private views which would ruin you if your followers ever had a suspicion you held them’ (p188)! Also relevant, perhaps: ‘Unfortunately nine-tenths of the time of any political leader must be spent not on defeating his opponents, but on manipulating the stupidities of his own side’ (p365).
Martha gets involved with a group expounding Communism which appeals to her disenchantment with the rich crowd she has been with; and while Douglas is away training, she also flirts with RAF pilots stationed nearby. This is a depiction of a disintegration of a marriage – a marriage perhaps she should never have embarked upon.
There is very little feeling that there is a war ‘in the north’. No wounded, limbless survivors of conflict appear; food and material shortages are not evident.
Martha will appear next in A Ripple in the Storm.
The point-of-view is omniscient, so we get inside the heads of several characters, often in the same scene. The story is set in the fictional African country of Zambesia (not a million miles away from Southern Rhodesia where Lessing lived most of her formative years (1925-1949)): ‘The small colonial town was at a crossroads in its growth: half a modern city, half a pioneers’ achievement; a large block of flats might stand next to a shanty of wood and corrugated iron, and most streets petered out suddenly in a waste of scrub and grass’ (p10).
Martha is now nineteen and married to a clerk, Douglas Knowell. She is strong-willed, restless and not particularly enamoured of boring married life – though at the beginning of the book she has only been married five days... ‘Until two weeks ago, her body had been free and her own, something to be taken for granted...’ (p37).
It’s the start of the Second World War, though at the outset this does not seem to affect the township. The townsfolk are conscious that there is a ‘big issue’ with the black population, however: ‘any expression of a desire for improvement on the part of the natives was immediately described as impertinence, or sedition, or even worse’ (p62). The parson’s wife observes: ‘If they learn to use arms, they can use them on us... this business of sending black troops overseas is extremely short-sighted. They are treated as equals in Britain, even by the women’ (p66).
When Douglas and his pals sign up to fight, Martha is taken aback; she is not enough for him, he prefers to ‘rush off to war’... (Douglas) ‘had not known how intolerably boring and empty his life was until there was a chance of escaping from it’ (p80).
When Martha learns that she is pregnant and the illegality of an abortion crops up, she ‘flew into an angry tirade against governments who presumed to tell women what they should do with their own bodies; it was the final insult to personal liberty’ (p106).
Throughout the book there are fine examples of Lessing’s eye for description: ‘The jacaranda were holding up jaded yellow arms. This drying, yellowing, fading month, this time when the year tensed and tightened towards the coming rains, always gave her a feeling of perverted autumn, and now filled her with an exquisite cold apprehension. The sky, above the haze of dust, was a glitter of hot blue light’ (p113). Another brief example: ‘Soon the wings of her joy had folded’ (p124). ‘Martha drifted to the divan, where she sat, with listening hands, so extraordinarily compelling was the presence of the stranger in her flesh’ (p129).
The actual scenes running up to and encompassing the birth are very well done. ‘Every particle of her flesh shrieked out, while the wave spurted like an electric current from somewhere in her backbone and went through her in shock after shock...’ (pp163-167). [Lessing gave birth to her first child in 1940].
One observation is certainly no longer true in the age of social media: ‘... one of the minor pleasures of power is to exchange in private views which would ruin you if your followers ever had a suspicion you held them’ (p188)! Also relevant, perhaps: ‘Unfortunately nine-tenths of the time of any political leader must be spent not on defeating his opponents, but on manipulating the stupidities of his own side’ (p365).
Martha gets involved with a group expounding Communism which appeals to her disenchantment with the rich crowd she has been with; and while Douglas is away training, she also flirts with RAF pilots stationed nearby. This is a depiction of a disintegration of a marriage – a marriage perhaps she should never have embarked upon.
There is very little feeling that there is a war ‘in the north’. No wounded, limbless survivors of conflict appear; food and material shortages are not evident.
Martha will appear next in A Ripple in the Storm.
August 20, 2023
There is a feeling of doom that pervades this series. Woman versus convention. In Martha Quest, Martha Quest rejects or is afraid of (?) university and instead goes into town to work. Like young people do, she enters the mating game, meets Douglas, and gets married, which ends the first novel. Martha has no female role model; getting married is what young women do. She is aware of this convention, this expectation, and she chafes against it, but succumbs, knowing nothing else. Knowing next to nothing about female fertility, despite not wanting to get pregnant, she does, and quickly. Martha has been led to believe by conventional thought that she would just sink into motherhood and become a different person merely by becoming a mother. This is, of course, not so. She says, "Two years ago, I was as free as air. I could have done anything, been anything. Because the essence of the daydreams of every girl who isn't married is just that: it's the only time they are more free than men. Men have to be something, but you'll find when you grow up, my poor child, that you'll see yourself as a ballet dancer or a business executive, or the wife of a PM, or the mistress of somebody important, or even in extreme moments a nun or a missionary. You'll imagine yourself doing all sorts of things in all sorts of countries; the point is, your will will be your limit. ... But you will not see yourself sitting in a small room bound for 24hrs of the day--w/ years of it in front of you--to a small child." She feels stuck in her life as a mother, married to Douglas: "Because we're not such fools any longer. We don't imagine that rushing off to earn one's living as a typist is going to make any difference. One is bound to fall in love w/ the junior partner, and the whole thing will begin all over again." All there is to do is to submit, like everyone else. She has to work through all these varies stages, and she does: Marriage, motherhood, political activism. This is vicious repetition - a woman is doomed to leave her father's house to join her husband's house and to become her mother. She is doomed to repeat.
Martha is our heroine, and there is nothing subtle about her last name - she is searching, seeking, questing. But for what? She has no idea, and there are no shining examples. All she knows is that she isn't happy, this isn't what she wants of her life, she is unable to sink into it like others do. What is the path for girls who are looking for happiness? Well, marriage, of course. Marriage to the right man validates a women. Martha is romantic and wants what all the Jane Austen novels have promised - fulfillment in love and happily every after - but she is enough of a realist to know this is not her reality. At the end of Martha Quest , her marriage to Douglas is *not* a happy ending. She is enslaved to books and literature - she follows the book in how to feed and care for her baby. But she finds no corollary to her life in these books; the women in them are not like her and her friends. So, Lessing has set out to fill that void, to write that book for the world of women where the woman's perspective and situation is made clear.
The style of writing is realism. One interesting literary analysis I found posits that Lessing in the beginning, esp during her writing of the Martha Quest novels, was ensnared in realism. She did not and could not see a path forward for Martha other than marriage, so she set her on it. She was following the realistic model set forth by her role models, Dickens and Tolstoy - women marry.
Martha is our heroine, and there is nothing subtle about her last name - she is searching, seeking, questing. But for what? She has no idea, and there are no shining examples. All she knows is that she isn't happy, this isn't what she wants of her life, she is unable to sink into it like others do. What is the path for girls who are looking for happiness? Well, marriage, of course. Marriage to the right man validates a women. Martha is romantic and wants what all the Jane Austen novels have promised - fulfillment in love and happily every after - but she is enough of a realist to know this is not her reality. At the end of Martha Quest , her marriage to Douglas is *not* a happy ending. She is enslaved to books and literature - she follows the book in how to feed and care for her baby. But she finds no corollary to her life in these books; the women in them are not like her and her friends. So, Lessing has set out to fill that void, to write that book for the world of women where the woman's perspective and situation is made clear.
The style of writing is realism. One interesting literary analysis I found posits that Lessing in the beginning, esp during her writing of the Martha Quest novels, was ensnared in realism. She did not and could not see a path forward for Martha other than marriage, so she set her on it. She was following the realistic model set forth by her role models, Dickens and Tolstoy - women marry.
May 6, 2024
A continuation in Lessing’s Children of Violence series, this picks up right where Martha Quest left off, and while the ending definitely comes after a moment of closure, it might as well be mid-sentence because all I want to know is what happens next to Martha.
She gives birth and ultimately leaves her husband in this volume, which is something Lessing did in real life - although, for her, she left two children. On paper this sounds reprehensible, but reading this book, you can only feel that it was inevitable, that she had no other choice.
Part of this is her skill as a writer, her ability to pull you into the protagonist’s viewpoint, but a lot of it is societal mores from a mid-century British colony and the expectations of white women. Rather than ignore the plight of the Black and brown people living around and among them, though, Martha absolutely cannot ignore them, refuses to spend her time upbraiding her servants or pretending they have diseases when they do not.
Ultimately, this book is Martha’s refusal to become her mother, refusal to become what every girl around her becomes, just because that is what is “done” - a group of people making the same complaints day after day about their husbands, their children, their servants and refusing to let anyone else deviate or question this.
The women around her lament this, making it seem like Martha’s refusal makes a mockery of their own lives and choices - something that felt extremely familiar to this reader, :)
This book covers the outbreak of World War II, and Martha’s dry notice of the newspapers changing their tune on Russia at the drop of a hat. The way war changes soldiers and makes animals out of them; the savagery humans can show one another when the fabric of reality begins to get a little threadbare. The formation of Martha’s social conscience and longing to join the Communist party. All of these things are deeply important to and influence her domestic drama - something that everyone else refuses to acknowledge when she finally DOES leave her family - treating it only as the end of the marriage and ignoring the political awakening entirely.
While the tenor sometimes matches the Little House books in terms of the formation of a young woman and how her family lived, the political conclusions are the exact opposite of Rose Wilder Lane.
Every page, every sentence makes one think, and reevaluate their own life and choices.
I’m excited to see what happens next to Martha, and remain deeply pleased that Lessing has such an extensive backlog that I’ll probably be perusing it for decades.
She gives birth and ultimately leaves her husband in this volume, which is something Lessing did in real life - although, for her, she left two children. On paper this sounds reprehensible, but reading this book, you can only feel that it was inevitable, that she had no other choice.
Part of this is her skill as a writer, her ability to pull you into the protagonist’s viewpoint, but a lot of it is societal mores from a mid-century British colony and the expectations of white women. Rather than ignore the plight of the Black and brown people living around and among them, though, Martha absolutely cannot ignore them, refuses to spend her time upbraiding her servants or pretending they have diseases when they do not.
Ultimately, this book is Martha’s refusal to become her mother, refusal to become what every girl around her becomes, just because that is what is “done” - a group of people making the same complaints day after day about their husbands, their children, their servants and refusing to let anyone else deviate or question this.
The women around her lament this, making it seem like Martha’s refusal makes a mockery of their own lives and choices - something that felt extremely familiar to this reader, :)
This book covers the outbreak of World War II, and Martha’s dry notice of the newspapers changing their tune on Russia at the drop of a hat. The way war changes soldiers and makes animals out of them; the savagery humans can show one another when the fabric of reality begins to get a little threadbare. The formation of Martha’s social conscience and longing to join the Communist party. All of these things are deeply important to and influence her domestic drama - something that everyone else refuses to acknowledge when she finally DOES leave her family - treating it only as the end of the marriage and ignoring the political awakening entirely.
While the tenor sometimes matches the Little House books in terms of the formation of a young woman and how her family lived, the political conclusions are the exact opposite of Rose Wilder Lane.
Every page, every sentence makes one think, and reevaluate their own life and choices.
I’m excited to see what happens next to Martha, and remain deeply pleased that Lessing has such an extensive backlog that I’ll probably be perusing it for decades.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 4, 2025
“Un casamiento convencional” es el segundo libro de la saga “Los hijos de la violencia”. En tono autobiográfico, continúa narrando la historia de Martha, una mujer de 19 años que en el libro anterior dejó el campo para buscar oportunidades en la ciudad. Avanzada para la época, sus ideas en lo sexual, reproductivo, racial y político le han significado más de un problema. Por eso sorprende que de manera inesperada, decida contraer matrimonio. Poco a poco la Matty de antes desaparece (incluido su nombre, pues adopta el apellido del marido), sintiendo que estamos volviendo al mundo rural del que habíamos escapado el mundo anterior. El desafío será volver a encontrar un camino a la libertad, sin someterse a lo que las mujeres de África siempre se han sometido, demostrando que otro tipo de vida es posible.
“Lo que no logro entender es esto: hace dos años me sentía libre como una paloma. Hubiera podido hacer cualquier cosa, ser cualquier cosa. Porque, esencialmente, en eso consisten las ilusiones de toda chica soltera: es el único momento de su vida en que somos más libres que los hombres. Los hombres se ven obligados a ser algo; nosotras, en cambio, cuando crezcas ya lo descubrirás, nos vemos de bailarina, o de mujer de empresa, o de esposa de un primer ministro, o como fulana de alguien importante, o incluso, en momentos extremos, de monja o misionera. Te imaginarás haciendo todo tipo de cosas en innumerables países; la verdad es que que tú eres tu propio límite. Todo será posible. Pero no te imaginarás sentada las 24 horas del día en un cuartito cuidando de tu hijo. Caroline, por lo que más quieras, no te cases joven. Te lo prohibiré, aunque tenga que encerrarte”.
“Lo que no logro entender es esto: hace dos años me sentía libre como una paloma. Hubiera podido hacer cualquier cosa, ser cualquier cosa. Porque, esencialmente, en eso consisten las ilusiones de toda chica soltera: es el único momento de su vida en que somos más libres que los hombres. Los hombres se ven obligados a ser algo; nosotras, en cambio, cuando crezcas ya lo descubrirás, nos vemos de bailarina, o de mujer de empresa, o de esposa de un primer ministro, o como fulana de alguien importante, o incluso, en momentos extremos, de monja o misionera. Te imaginarás haciendo todo tipo de cosas en innumerables países; la verdad es que que tú eres tu propio límite. Todo será posible. Pero no te imaginarás sentada las 24 horas del día en un cuartito cuidando de tu hijo. Caroline, por lo que más quieras, no te cases joven. Te lo prohibiré, aunque tenga que encerrarte”.
January 30, 2019
Ég las fyrstu bókina í bókaflokknum fyrir nokkru síðan. Hún heillaði mig ekkert sérstaklega. Einhverra hluta vegna varð ég vör við þessa bók og fannst útdrátturinn hljóma áhugaverður. Ég dreif mig á bókasafnið og náði í eintak. Ég varð ekki fyrir vonbrigðum.
Þessi bók fjallar um allt aðra hluti en Marta Quest. Hjónabandið, seinni heimsstyrjöld er hafin, barneignir og margt fleira. Ég man ekki eftir að hafa lesið jafn góða lýsingu á því þegar fæðing er að fara að eiga sér stað. Heilt á litið er dekkra yfir sögunni hér, æskan er að baki og raunveruleikinn tekinn við.
Persónusköpunin er samt það allra besta við þessa bók. Stundum fer Marta ótrúlega í taugarnar á manni. Mann langar einna helst að hrista hana til og koma vitinu fyrir hana. Annars staðar langar mann til að vernda hana gegn ósanngirni og ofbeldi. Enn annars staðar dáist maður að hugrekki hennar til að ganga gegn ríkjandi hugmyndum samfélagsins.
Eina sem ég get sett út á er hvernig eiginmaður Mörtu, Douglas, breytist. Manni finnst það vera hálf fyrirvaralaust þótt maður viti að stríðið hafi haft áhrif á hann. En kannski er það líka allt í lagi. Því þegar öllu er á botninn hvolft, þá er þetta saga Mörtu, en ekki sagan hans.
Þessi bók fjallar um allt aðra hluti en Marta Quest. Hjónabandið, seinni heimsstyrjöld er hafin, barneignir og margt fleira. Ég man ekki eftir að hafa lesið jafn góða lýsingu á því þegar fæðing er að fara að eiga sér stað. Heilt á litið er dekkra yfir sögunni hér, æskan er að baki og raunveruleikinn tekinn við.
Persónusköpunin er samt það allra besta við þessa bók. Stundum fer Marta ótrúlega í taugarnar á manni. Mann langar einna helst að hrista hana til og koma vitinu fyrir hana. Annars staðar langar mann til að vernda hana gegn ósanngirni og ofbeldi. Enn annars staðar dáist maður að hugrekki hennar til að ganga gegn ríkjandi hugmyndum samfélagsins.
Eina sem ég get sett út á er hvernig eiginmaður Mörtu, Douglas, breytist. Manni finnst það vera hálf fyrirvaralaust þótt maður viti að stríðið hafi haft áhrif á hann. En kannski er það líka allt í lagi. Því þegar öllu er á botninn hvolft, þá er þetta saga Mörtu, en ekki sagan hans.
December 11, 2023
The main character of the book, Martha Quest, is a girl who married a civil servant at a very young age and grew up on a farm in one of the British Empire's colonies in South Africa. Beyond its title, this novel, which probably contains traces of Doris Lessing's own life experience, is not only about marriage life, but also about Martha's mental health, mother-daughter relationships, military recruitment processes in the World War II, and the socio-economic factors that took place during this period. It is almost a panorama of political and social events.
In Martha's character, the author clearly reveals being a mother and the restrictive/guiding aspect of the mother figure in children's lives through both her own mother and her child. The fact that society has made having children a status and that young women struggle to accept this situation is depicted through different characters. The novel, which is about feminist thought, the views of the dominant the upper-middle class (White) about the Black people, and Communist party invitations, offers very vivid pictures of the world of the 1940s.
At the breaking point of an unhappy marriage, Martha picks a different life for herself with a brand new idealism. She sets her child free as she aims and thinks it should be.
In Martha's character, the author clearly reveals being a mother and the restrictive/guiding aspect of the mother figure in children's lives through both her own mother and her child. The fact that society has made having children a status and that young women struggle to accept this situation is depicted through different characters. The novel, which is about feminist thought, the views of the dominant the upper-middle class (White) about the Black people, and Communist party invitations, offers very vivid pictures of the world of the 1940s.
At the breaking point of an unhappy marriage, Martha picks a different life for herself with a brand new idealism. She sets her child free as she aims and thinks it should be.
July 14, 2022
Martha Quest (ahora ya hace 4 a��os que es Martha Knowell) ha visto su vida tan vacía y monótona como la mayoría de los matrimonios de su círculo cercano, vivir en una de las colonias inglesas no es fácil en plena crisis de la guerra, a pesar de ser británicos no son considerados como tal; pero sobre todo, Douglas ha tenido la brillante idea de desperdiciar el talento de su esposa y tratarla como un esposa trofeo. Aunque Martha es consciente de su fuerza y su talento, no pudo ir contra corriente en los aspectos que su madre y sus amigas le imponen. Hasta que conoce a un grupo de socialistas, y ahí conoce a William, quién le da un buen pretexto para analizar su matrimonio tan convencional. Ama a su hija, pero Douglas la sofoca, y ella no tiene idea hasta dónde él es capaz de llegar con tal que ella no lo deje.
"Lo único que le sucede [...] es que su instinto de propiedad ha sido ultrajado."
Muy interesante, las disertaciones sobre política de la época.
"Lo único que le sucede [...] es que su instinto de propiedad ha sido ultrajado."
Muy interesante, las disertaciones sobre política de la época.
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