Martha Quest

Lessing, Doris. Martha Quest. London, Panther, 1974.

This is about a young girl growing up in a white family in South Africa. It is about the construction of the intellectual woman - the pangs of growing up. The novel opens with Martha reading a book sitting on the steps of her porch. Her mother and her woman friend Mrs. Van Rensberg (who is visiting with her husband), are gossiping behind her in the porch. Her father and Mr. Van Rensberg are speaking about public affairs in the lawns. Martha is struck by the hypocrisy of the conversation of the middle class families. They are going on talking about all that is most inconsequential in their lives and will continue to do so. She decides she will never be like her mother, nagging and frustrated, nor fat and homely like, Mrs. Van Rensberg. Her only comfort seems to be the Cohen boys who lend her books to read – books in Sociology and Psychology. Even Marnie, the Van Rensberg’s daughter, who is interested in high heels and lipstick and boys and who is Martha’s age bores her. Marnie is puzzled by Martha’s nasty tongue and does not know how to react to it, since she has a slavish admiration for her. The novel is about her quest, quest for identity and meaning in life, and the confusions of growing up female.
Though Martha hates the small farm and the failed father and the nagging mother, she does not take that one step that will allow her to escape. In her own mind there is no justification for all that. She does not pass the Matriculation,though it would have been a cakewalk for her. Nor does she maintain her relationship with the Cohen boys, with the excuse that she does not want to face the gossip. They read it as anti-semitism from her side. Joss, one of the brothers is very close to her, yet, she never considers him a lover, or envisages a life with him. She can be herself only with him. But, instead of taking his cues, she dances with Billy Van Rensberg in her first dance, and later starts a relationship with Donovan Anderson when she moves into the town. It is Joss who gives her a job in his uncle Jasper's law office. She trains to be a secretary, though she is frustrated with her job. Joss comes into her life only to bid adieu before he moves to the university.

Her relationship with Donovan reminds one very much of any heterosexual relationship. He wants her for a particular role, and she resents this. But, there are moments when she enjoys playing that role for him - the passive, pliant woman in his expert hands which keeps moulding her. Donovan has serious problems with women's sexuality and cannot bear any suggestion of a sexual self from women. This role playing is very prominent in his presentation of her - in his choice of clothes and his pride in public appearances with Matty.

In order to escape Donovan, she ends up with another mismatch - a Jew who is ashamed of his jewness - Adolph. He is suspicious of her leaving him, and is not at all confident. The relationship continues because of Martha's mixed feelings of confusion mixed with pity and revulsion. This is her first sexual relationship. Martha senses the feelings of amazement and disgust with which her immediate audience - the sports club people and her friends, Stella and Donovan views this development. The relation ends with Stella and others persuades Martha to humiliate Adolph publicaly. Martha goes along with this in her confusion and later feels liberated as well as disgusted with herself.
Later, she develops a relationship with a guy called Doughlas. It ends in marriage and the novel ends with her wedding to Doughlas. Though it has the potential to be a companionate relationship, it never becomes that. Doughlas, whom Martha meets in the bohemian setting of the Sports club is interested in settling down and moving into a stable and boring middle class life. She is misataken about his political ideas and this is proved beyond doubt when they see Joss and others in a public ralley against Hitler.
The novel is also aware of the native-white problem constantly, and this appears as a background for Martha's growing up. Though she is pro-blacks, never once in the narrative does a black person appear as an important character. Her political opinions are voiced only to find another kindred white soul, and she meets only Joss like herself.
I particularly liked the way she moves towards marriage like a fateful journey towards doom and knowingly so.
Read a biography and another review of the text here.

The Bleeding Heart

French, Marilyn. The Bleeding Heart. New York: Summit Books, 1980.

One More Time: A Memoir

Burnett, Carol. One More Time: A Memoir. New York: Random House, 1986.
I just finished reading One More Time. maybe because i am at a stage in my life where i feel my life is over and wasted, as far as a career is concerned. At that stage, Burnett's work seems to be such a break. She is so focussed on her career. she also speaks about how she discovered herself - that she wants to be a stage artist, and nothing but a stage artist. it was completely by fluke, and she had absolutely no role models. her mother and father, were both failures and alchoholics, her grandmother (nanny) who acted as her mother figure was a manipulative woman with a hidden past. due to her terrible experiences in the past, she had become cunning and cynical, and she tried to go on breaking her daughter's confidence throughout. inspite of all these circumstances, Burnett comes up in life, she is writing to recreate her life for her children. i am touched by that gesture, a baring it all for her children that she undertakes, for she does not want them not to know her as she had not known her nanny and mother.

I see her as human when she writes - her fears before she gets on stage, the way she performs, the way she does not perform because of over-confidence once...so many things, comes out.

but, more than anything else, i like the way she bares the processes of writing to us, the letters that she wrote to others to unearth her nanny's secret life, the truth about her mother and herself - that their grandfather was actually mellon and not creighton as her nanny had made them both believe, the reconstructions of people that she does over the years...the taperecorders that she uses to record her immediate thoughts so that she could write it, and the feeling of being a spy on herself while she writes...she has been wonderful, actually!