The novel was a combination of two projected books, a fictional work dealing with a novelist suffering

from a "writer's block," and a book of literary criticism which would employ various styles so that "the
shape of the book and the juxtaposition of the styles would provide the criticism" in such a way that the
completed work "would make implicitly a statement about “alienation.”
The central character of The Golden Notebook is Anna Wulf, a novelist who has not published for many
years. She lives on the proceeds of her first book, Frontiers of War, a story about the racial situation set
in central Africa during World War II. Throughout the period covered by The Golden Notebook Anna's
writing efforts are concentrated on four separate notebooks which she keeps hidden in her room and
which only Tommy, the son of her friend Molly, ever reads: "I keep four notebooks, a black notebook,
which is to do with Anna Wulf the writer; a red notebook, concerned with politics; a yellow notebook,
in which I make stories out of my experience; and a blue notebook which tries to be a diary. In Molly's
house the notebooks were something I never thought about; and certainly not as work, or a
responsibility.
"The four notebooks, making up the greater portion of the novel, are all written in the first person, and
they cover the years from 1950 to 1957. In addition the novel has a fifth notebook, itself called "the
golden notebook," also written by Anna in 1957 and relating only the events taking place that year.
Besides the notebooks there are five sections entitled "Free Women," written in the third person in 1957
or early 1958 about events that took place in the summer and fall of 1957, in which Anna Wulf serves
as a central intelligence. The Golden Notebook opens with a "Free Women" section describing a
conversation among Anna and her friends Molly, Tommy, and Richard, Molly's ex-husband (GN, pp.
9-52). Then the notebooks themselves begin with excerpts from the black, the red, the yellow, and the
blue, in that order (GN, pp. 53-216). Another "Free Women" section follows. This pattern is repeated
four times so that there are four "Free Women" sections, all objective, all written in and dealing with
events in 1957 and 1958. Following each section are excerpts from the four notebooks, written during
the years from 1950 to 1957. After the last of these four repetitions of the pattern comes the section
called "the golden notebook," and then a final "Free Women" section ending the novel. Even from this
brief outline the intricacy of Lessing's design reveals itself. Clearly her structural plan depends on the
relation between the "Free Women" sections and the notebooks.
After she has presented Anna Wulf's subjective version of the events in the notebooks, it seems that in
the "Free Women" sections Lessing gives us the real "truth" of these events, "truth" which only an
omniscient author could know. If this impression is correct, however, then we must wonder why in
1957, in the first "Free Women" section, Tommy is twenty years old (GN, p. 13) and in a notebook
written in 1950 he is seventeen (GN, p. 197). Why, too, at the end of the "Free Women" sections are
we told that Tommy goes off to Sicily with Marion, Richard's second wife (GN, p. 554) while in the
notebooks he marries a young girl? Possibly these contradictions might be attributed to carelessness on
Lessing's part (after all, in the Children of Violence series she calls Jackie Bolton "Jackie Cooper" on
at least two occasions), or perhaps to her deliberate attempt to mirror the confusion of life in art. Such
explanations, however, do not seem very satisfactory.

The volume of her publications over the past twenty years proves that she obviously does not suffer
from a writer's block. Thus we must wonder in what way Anna Wulf's personal struggles in both the
notebooks and the "Free Women" sections, as well as her lack of detachment and humour, represent
Lessing's own difficulties, as many of the reviewers of The Golden Notebook seem to believe they do.
The "Free Women" sections are not what they appear. They are not the omniscient observations of Doris
Lessing; they are the novelized account of a "real" situation as described by Anna Wulf. They are
"fiction" and thus may take all the liberties of fiction. There is no reason for the "facts" they contain to
agree totally (or at all) with the "facts" in the notebooks.
Anna Wulf, the novelist, is free to draw on the "truth" in the notebooks and to use it as she wishes in
her novel, to fictionalize the "facts" as she sees fit. By thus attributing the "Free Women" sections to
Anna, Lessing carefully distances herself. The "Free Women" sections, in addition to the notebooks,
become Anna's responsibility alone. Through the "fiction" of assigning these sections to Anna, Lessing
Filters herself out of the novel entirely and makes it impossible to equate the person of Anna Wulf with
that of Doris Lessing no matter what the external similarities.

These "facts" have been so integrated into the novel that the reader cannot possibly know where the
literal truth of Lessing's life leaves off and fiction begins. So too in the "Free Women" sections, the
"facts" found in the notebooks are adapted and changed and even contradicted by Anna in such a way
that we cannot be positive which version is "true." Reality thus comes to be understood as a complex
interplay of objective experience and the subjective ordering of that experience by the artist. Life and
art are seen as a single unit impossible to split.

It (the blue notebook breaks off for several years) serves to blur reality, to prevent the reader from
identifying the real "truth" of a situation or of a time. By thus destroying our sense of time Lessing
impresses on us the chaos behind the seemingly smooth flow of external events. The Golden Notebook
unfolds not like a traditional novel, but like a motion picture in which a series of disparate, though
overlapping, images is flashed on a screen in the form of the notebooks. The producer of this movie is
Lessing; but the script writer, insofar as we know her, is Anna Wulf.

This reflection occurs when Anna is still engaged in psychoanalytic therapy with Mrs. Marks. One of
the benefits of these sessions is her developing understanding of the role "words" have played in her
life. She begins to see that if, as she concludes, "words are form," then without the application of words
the individual units of life have no form of themselves; without this application the possibility of fixing
the chaos does not exist. By "naming" something Anna had fixed the chaos. By relating an object, a
place, a person to the universe, she had created order and achieved a moment of rest and tranquillity.

During a violent quarrel, she turns on Saul and "names" him in the most despicable way she can imagine.
By so "naming" him, she hopes to fix him in his place and in his relation to her and to the universe. Her
words are prompted by Saul's wonder that she lets him attack her verbally over and over. Anna here
uses the "naming game" to place Saul on a level with Dick Turner, Anton Hesse, and Douglas Knowell,
characters from Lessing's earlier novels. This time, however, the "name" does not apply. Saul will not
accept this relationship to Anna and to the universe. Having used words to keep himself from accepting
the "name" Anna gave him, Saul can now rationally accept his "responsibility" to the world and to be
himself, unique, individual, a person in his own right.

Shortly after this incident Anna goes out and buys a new notebook, the golden one. Partly as a result of
this scene with Saul, she begins to feel she may be able to put all of herself into a single volume, to
reach a personal insight which will allow her to resolve her writer's block. She begins to comprehend
how, by words, she can give meaning to the chaos of the universe and find a place for her (In the
complicated structure of the novel, Anna's insights overlap and her moods fluctuate. She does not move
to knowledge in a strictly logical progression. It is the cumulative effect of all her insights, moving from
optimism to pessimism and back again, which finally breaks her writer's block). In the golden notebook
Anna shortly follows up this insight and goes back to "name" the events of her past life for the last time
and in a different way. This "naming" finally resolves her writer's block and enables her to face what
she understands as the relation between art and reality.

The "fictional" Ella, who has been created out of the consciousness of Anna Wulf, just as Anna has
been created out of the consciousness of Doris Lessing, helps Anna to understand herself, her world,
and the relation of the artist to his creation.(the shadow of the third- a novel written by Anna where Paul
and Ella represent her relationship with Michael in first years after she came to Britain).

Lessing is saying that all artists should do the same: they should include the "real" and the "unreal" so
that finally there is no way of telling which is more "true" or "factual." This, perhaps, is the underlying
assumption behind the entire structure of The Golden Notebook.

With the writing of this novel Anna is preparing herself for the other novel she will later write, the "Free
Women" sections of The Golden Notebook. Before starting this other novel she must learn more about
herself and the relation between fiction and life. Her consideration of Ella helps her to do so. It helps
her to see how not only the reading of a novel but the writing of one can change a life.

The "Free Women" sections of The Golden Notebook, a mingling of "fact" and "fiction," a form based
not on nostalgia but on the unity of life and art, are the result. And Lessing herself, who is "responsible"
for the whole novel, seems, by her intricate structure, by her involved chronological sequence, by the
mutual interrelation between her "fictional" and her "real" characters, to be illustrating this unity. If The
Golden Notebook finally is a book about "alienation," as she suggests, it is also a book which in the end
shows us how to accept alienation and live with it. The last sentence of the novel indicates what Lessing
seems ultimately to be saying: "The two women [Anna and Molly] kissed and separated" (GN, p. 568).
Anna Wulf, it would seem, has at last become her own woman; she has accepted herself for what she
is and can walk free in her own person. By writing the "Free Women" sections of The Golden Notebook,
she has fulfilled her "responsibility" as a writer and as a human being; she has fought the chaos and
resisted the nostalgia. Now she can go on "pushing boulders"; she can, despite the pressures of society
and the more profound and universal pressures of her own human nature, change history, even if only
infinitesimally.

In the end Anna (Doris) understands that reality does indeed exist, that it is a blend of the "good" and
the "bad," of "truth" and "fiction," and, most importantly, she understands that existence is better than
nonexistence. It is better to be a "boulder-pusher," to accept the chaos, to fulfil one's "responsibility,"
than to "give in.”