What's the Time, Anna Wulf? Crisis, Temporality and Feminist Untimeliness in Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook

Melanie Waters*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

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Abstract

When Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook was first published in 1962, it was instantly lauded as a timely novel. In this essay, I investigate what is timely about The Golden Notebook through an analysis of the novel's complex temporality. Taking the book's phenomenal critical legacy as a signal indication that its timeliness is yet to be exhausted, I explore how Lessing's provocative figurations of time illuminate the ideological and representational structures that confine Lessing and her characters. In doing so, I also gesture, speculatively, toward how these structures might be subverted in the future.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)593-613
JournalMFS - Modern Fiction Studies
Volume69
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 22 Dec 2023

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