The Limits of Consciousness in the Novels of Doris Lessing

Martha Quest is dead by the end of The Four-Gated City (1969). That long series of novels, Children of Violence,' has come to its end, and with it perhaps, a notion of feminine which has permeated most of Doris Lessing's fiction. It is not really surprising that the direction of her most recent work is away from the concerns of feminism, from the kind of penetration of the female mind which was so remarkable, especially in The Golden Notebook (1962).2 In fact, Doris Lessing has recently remarked that she is annoyed with advocates of sexual liberation, which she now sees as a minor issue compared with the overwhelming possibility of nuclear war.3 Shifting her focus to the consciousness of a male character in Briefing for a Descent into Hell4 might in itself be a statement of her new position.