The five volumes in this series include Martha Quest (1952), A Proper Marriage (1954), A Ripple from the Storm (1958), Landlocked (1965), and The Four-Gated City (1969). Taking the series as a whole, critics rank this work as among the best of Lessing’s fictions, exceeded only by The Golden Notebook (1962).

The series follows the maturation of the protagonist, Martha Quest, so to a certain extent it is a Bildungsroman spread over many volumes. But because it covers such a large number of characters and such a large range of time—more than 40 years—it also meets the criteria for a roman-fleuve. The series begins in psychological realism, but it also includes elements of social and political satire, and by the end of the story the narrative comes to resemble an apocalyptic work of science fiction such as Childhood’s End.

Doris Lessing

The series is also an important work for feminism, since it is a powerful fictional exploration of the failure of marriage to provide fulfillment for all women. It is also a chronicle of left-wing concerns connected to class and labor in the mid-20th century, since Martha becomes involved with activists who support the Communist Party. And since the novel opens in Africa, where Martha’s parents have a farm established through colonialism by a European power, the story also embraces issues of race conflict and cultural clash.

Lessing’s series encapsulates the key struggles of the 20th century, but she also projects a new direction for the human race, hypothesizing that a shared or collective consciousness will be the next advance we must make—the next adaptation we must acquire. Starting from actual historical issues, she uses her fiction to articulate an evolutionary direction that would solve the problems of class, race, and gender by allowing human beings to transcend the limitations of individual perceptions of the material world, achieving a higher awareness through thought-powered psychic unity.

Bibliography
Fishburn, Katherine. The Unexpected Universe of Doris Lessing: A Study in Narrative Technique. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985.
Rose, Ellen Cronan. The Tree Outside the Window: Doris Lessing’s Children of Violence. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1976.
Rubenstein, Roberta. The Novelistic Vision of Doris Lessing: Breaking the Forms of Consciousness. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979.
Sprague, Claire, and Virginia Tiger, eds. Critical Essays on Doris Lessing. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

Tags: 20th century fiction, A Proper Marriage, A Ripple from the Storm, Analysis of Doris Lessing’s Children of Violence, apocalyptic narrative, Bildungsroman, Children of Violence series, class struggle in literature, collective consciousness, colonialism in fiction, communist activism, consciousness in fiction, Doris Lessing, Doris Lessing criticism, Doris Lessing’s Children of Violence, feminist literature, Feminist Novels, gender in literature, Historical Fiction, Landlocked, leftist fiction, literary feminism, Martha Quest, modern British literature, narrative evolution, political satire, post-war literature, psychological realism, race conflict in literature, roman-fleuve, Science Fiction, The Four-Gated City, women writers