Lessing's earlier novel Briefing for a Descent into Hell explores many of the same issues. Whereas her male protagonist, Charles Watkins, fails to achieve his identity, Kate Brown successfully completes her journey toward a greater, almost forgotten self-realization. Between the publication of these two novels, Lessing also wrote "The Temptation of Jack Orkney," a novella that presents another male protagonist undergoing a change of consciousness. With Kate's characterization, Lessing returns to the female protagonist whom she depicts so well with the new strategies of plot, theme, and a change in characterization.

Lessing returns to similar themes in her more recent Love, Again, in which an aging professional woman explores her relationships with friends, coworkers, and men.