Martha Quest

1952, 1970 New American Library edition
Doris Lessing
Martha Quest
Original price $4.95, purchase price $1.95
Worn paperback with broken spine
B-

This is the first book in Lessing's Children of Violence series and tells of Martha's late adolescence, from 15 to 19, in the years just before World War II.  As such, it makes an interesting follow-up to Anne Frank's diary, although the setting is Southern Rhodesia rather than Holland.  Like Anne, Martha is an idealist, but she's much more easily discouraged, despite facing less hardship.  Anne even in her attic hideaway is a more active figure.  Martha drifts, deciding by not deciding, whether it's going to university, getting a job, losing her virginity, or getting married.

This book is based on Lessing's life, although I don't know to what degree.  Lessing also grew up in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, but she was born in Persia, now Iran.  Even by 1952, the world of her teens had changed irrevocably, and just listing the places shows what a period piece this is.  And yet, Lessing is the first of the authors I'm rereading that is still alive.  In fact, in 2007 she became at 87 the oldest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

I found this early work of hers painful to reread, both because of the pains of her coming of age, and of the reminder of how I first read it in my idealistic early 20s.  Like the slightly younger heroine, I read authors in a random fashion, sometimes because they were mentioned by other writers.  My book collection today is a legacy of that eclectic self-education.  But now I'm in my mid 40s, and I want to issue maternal warnings to Martha.

Another painful aspect of the novel is the racism.  This is not the racism of Kingsblood Royal or Passing, where bigots are subhuman.  What's scary here is how "normal" the bigotry is, how the bigots think that their prejudice is reasonable and even friendly.  A scene late in the novel has the wedding-goers chasing after the bridal couple in cars, delayed only for a moment when they knock down a black man.  They're like the upper-class people who hit a cat in Howards End, thinking that their money can solve everything.  (The cat died, the man lives, but he's clearly injured.)  When Martha's mother accuses a servant of stealing an item she misplaced, she insists that he's a thief anyway.  It's darkly funny, but she's not exaggerated as Uncle Matthew is in the Mitford novels.  Mrs. Quest is all too real and believable.  This book is both universal and very specific to its time and place.

Not only geography and politics have changed in 60 years.  There were three pop-cultural moments that took me out of the book.  One is Martha asking in regards to her mother, "What's love got to do with it?"  Earlier, she says something is as ridiculous as a beetle singing.  And the name of Martha's brother?  Jonathan Quest.