Chapter Three Summary and Analysis

Lessing recalls her earliest memories of Persia and they consist an overwhelming feeling of being cold and treated roughly. Lessing speaks of child abuse, the type that involves a lack of love rather than sexual. Lessing believes she was born with not enough skins to protect her from the hurt. She turned to her father for affection, but her memories of him include some rough tickling that made her weep from pain. She remembers trying to sort out how to feel about the people around them, based on her observations of their reactions and what they say about them. She ends the chapter saying that her overall feeling of her childhood in Persia was of loss, and that everything was just too much. When Lessing was five, the family returned to England.

Analysis

Lessing's memories of a cold stone...