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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Where did the young people in Lessing's circles get their beer?

2. In Chapter 14, what year did Lessing marry Gottfried Lessing?

3. How does Lessing describe their sex life?

4. What word did Kurt ask Esther not to use?

5. Who was the editor of The New Rhodesia?

Short Essay Questions

1. When John was 9 months old, what did Lessing and Frank decide to do?

2. In Chapter 12, how does Lessing describe her first son, John?

3. How did Lessing describe Kurt in Chapter 16?

4. What did Lessing believe to be the true cause of her father's death?

5. How did Lessing support herself when she no longer lived with her parents?

6. Describe Lessing's decision to marry Frank Wisdom.

7. Discuss Lessing's mini-vacation to Capetown.

8. Describe the letter Lessing received from her mother in Chapter 9.

9. Describe Lessing's ultimate assessment of the impact of the Communist Party in Southern Rhodesian politics.

10. In Chapter 18, what circumstances prevented Lessing from getting much writing done?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss Lessing's views on the role and consequences of violence. How did she define violence? What was her stance regarding violence on the personal or national level? Did her opinion remain consistent in all instances? Or did it vary by circumstance? According to Lessing, were there instances of justified violence or war?

Essay Topic 2

At the same time that Lessing wrote her autobiography, she critically engaged with the strengths and limitations of the form by recounting a valuable form of truth. Explore Lessing's commentary on the autobiography as a genre. What did she believe to be the value in writing her autobiography? What did Lessing perceive to be its limitation? How did exploring Lessing's perspective on the genre that she was using, illuminate the value of the text that resulted from that questioning? What did she ultimately offer her readers with regard to objectivity, subjectivity, or truth? How much more did you know about Lessing herself at the end of her work?

Essay Topic 3

Growing up in two distinct regions of the British Empire, Lessing received a very intimate portrait of race relations in the British territories before the dissolution of the Empire. Analyze the way in which Lessing approached race and race relations in her autobiography. How did she define the term, race, among the people living in Persia and Southern Rhodesia at that time? How did the different races interact in Southern Rhodesia? How did Lessing's understanding of race compare or contrast with the opinions of those around her?

(see the answer keys)

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