Anna Freeman

Anna Freeman is the main character of Play with a Tiger. Over the course of the play's action, she explains to her fiancé that she will not marry him, watches another man she is close to realize that he has been trapped into marriage, and interacts with a friend and with the woman from whom she is renting two rooms. Anna Freeman is an Australian woman who has lived in London long enough that she has lost her accent and speaks like any other middle-class Londoner. Her husband was killed in an unidentified war, perhaps World War II, and she has a child from the marriage. She supports herself by writing reviews of books, and the like, on a freelance basis. Lessing's choice of surname for Anna is significant, as much is made of Anna being "free" in the play. Yet, freedom is not a blissful...