DIANA TRILLING
515
of herself "that h er present raging sexua l hunger was not for sex, but
was fed by a ll the emo tional hungers o f her life. That when she loved
aga in ... [she would be a woman] whose sexuality would ebb and fl ow
in response to hi s. A woman's sexuality is, so to speak, conta ined by a
man, if he is a rea l man.... " A few years la ter in the hi story of sex ual
politics Mrs. Less ing would have been read out of the Pa rty for th a t
passage! Or again , in 1962 women had still not h ad their sexual
ana tomy so authoritatively di agrammed fo r them by Doctors Masters
and Johnson : in
Th e Golden No tebook
Mrs. Lessing can write a scene
in a hosp ita l lecture room where the ma le lecturer starts to apply to the
human fema le the results o f hi s study of the so le source of orgasm in
the fema le ostri ch; fift y women doctors walk out of the room in bored
impa ti ence with such a limita ti on on their experi ence o f sexual love.
But by 1973 we see Mrs. Less ing yield to the dehumani zing influences
of a more absolutist sexu al decade; libera ti onist ideology has taken over
from intelligence. The h eroine o f
Summer Before the Dark
of 1973 is a
woman of middl e age who, after a lifetime of devoti on to a fond but
unfa ithful husband and
to
four children now grown and scattering,
suddenl y fee ls she must learn what she is other than as wife and
mother-what she is as a
person,
whi ch is to impl y tha t personhood is
what is left after wifehood and mo therhood have been thoroughl y
expunged from us. But I do no t mean to mock the life situat ion with
whi ch Doris Less ing faces her heroine Ka te. Ka te's cri sis o f feeling is
rea l eno ugh . " I look a t things," Ka te says, "everything, my whole life
since 1 was a girl-and 1 seem to myself like a raving luna ti c. Love, and
duty, and being in love and no t being in love, and lov ing, and
behav ing we ll and you should and you shouldn't and you o ught and
you o ughtn ' L It's a disease." Can an yone, reading such compl aint, fail
to sha re it?
It
is the common lot-our common lo t in civiliza ti on , the
lot o f men and women both . The burdens o f confo rma bl e life are very
heavy for an yone of imag ina ti on . The tempta tion
to
shuck th em off
and run away is powerful indeed and people have been known
to
take
considerabl e ri sk in order to be released, or try to be released, from them
if o nl y tempora ril y. But who is to say tha t it is acceptance of th e
condition s of life tha t is the di sease and tha t the refusal of conditions is
an ass urance of health or even of unhea lth y happ iness?
In
Mrs.
Less ing's novel, th e hero ine frees herself of famil y, home, ambiti on ,
respectab ility, responsibility. Ka te is unfettered of even th e most
rudimentary des ire to pl ease. But we can see no promise of h appin ess
for her. Vagrant , without bounda ri es or purchase in life, if she
continues as she is go ing a t th e end o f the story she can onl y become
