The Golden Notebook Critical Essay | Meryl Altman

Meryl Altman

SOURCE: "Before We Said 'We' (and after): Bad Sex and Personal Politics in Doris Lessing and Simone de Beauvoir," in Critical Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 3, Autumn, 1996, pp. 14-29.

In the following essay, Altman assesses the unresolved sexual conflicts portrayed in Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook and Simone de Beauvoir's Les Mandarins.

Dans un espace courbe, on ne peut pas tirer de ligne droite, dit Dubreuilh. On ne peut pas mener une vie correcte dans une société qui ne l'est pas.

—Les Mandarins¹

Free! What's the use of us being free if they aren't?

—The Golden Notebook²

A taste for what has not yet been thought is not the same thing as an impasse.

—Michèle Le Doeuff³

In 1993, Sally Munt succinctly called the personal 'the discourse we now love to hate'.⁴ Feminist theory for the last ten years (at least) has been embroiled with epistemologica! and ethical...
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