ABSTRACT
A combination of breakdown and interest in mysticism finally delivers the vision that they all, not just the characters in the novel, everyone in England, in the world, are children of violence, acted upon by wave after wave of forces no one can control. One can only escape from the violent impulses by plugging on to creative forces, developing new, mystical skills. The first thing to say about the sequence is that it is strongly autobiographical. In two ways: it is close to the ‘events’, the pattern, of Doris Lessing’s own life; and the way Martha’s vision of life evolves roughly corresponds to Lessing’s own evolution. There is nothing wrong nor even unusual of course about novels being so strongly autobiographical. Martha’s voyage has its own sullen, uncompromising logic. She goes from the complex mineral-vegetable-animal-and- human ‘life’ of the mud house on the kopje to the anonymous shell of London flats.
