Martha Quest by Doris Lessing
"Martha Quest" is the inaugural novel in Doris Lessing's "Children of Violence" series, set in the years 1934 to 1938. The story follows Martha Quest, a young woman grappling with the disquiet of her adolescent years amid the political and social turbulence of a world emerging from one war and on the brink of another. As an astute observer, Martha feels disconnected from both the grand historical events and the trivialities of everyday life, leading her to seek solace in literature. Her discontent drives her to leave her rural community for the fictional city of Zambesia, South Africa, where she navigates complex relationships and a quest for self-identity.
Martha's journey is marked by her attempts to find fulfillment through romantic entanglements, including her relationship with a Jewish musician named Adolph, which is influenced by her awareness of societal prejudices. As she becomes involved with a group of carefree young adults, the backdrop of impending war and societal pressures culminates in her hasty marriage to Douglas, a civil servant. Despite marrying without love, Martha grapples with conflicting emotions and the realization that her choices may not lead to the happiness she seeks. The novel concludes with her struggle to reconcile her feelings, hinting at the uncertainty of her future. "Martha Quest" serves as a poignant exploration of identity, societal constraints, and the complexities of love and desire.
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Martha Quest by Doris Lessing
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1952
Type of work: Novel
The Work
Martha Quest, the first book in the Children of Violence series, covers the years 1934 to 1938. The central character of the novel, Martha Quest, experiences an adolescence of disquiet, troubled by the turbulence of a world recently rocked by one world war and fast approaching a second. She is an intelligent observer of a world that seems to have gone awry. She feels at odds both with the awesome history of human beings acting in large collectives and with the reality of their petty pursuits in smaller social arenas.
From the time that Martha Quest notices discrepancies between the words people speak and their behaviors, she begins to feel displaced and unhappy. To allay despair, Martha turns to literature for ideas and spiritual support, usually borrowing books from two young Jewish intellectuals living in town. As she uses great books to structure her theory of the world, she is compelled to face the grim realities of her own life:
She was adolescent, and therefore bound to be unhappy; British and therefore uneasy and defensive; in the fourth decade of the twentieth century, and therefore inescapably beset with problems of race and class; female, and obliged to repudiate the shackled women of the past.
Hoping to escape her current misery and dismal prospect for her future, fifteen-year-old Martha decides to leave her provincial rural community and live in the nearby fictional city, Zambesia, South Africa.
Although Martha is learning to fear biological and historical entrapment, she ironically decides that her salvation has to include sexual relations with a man. Martha’s search for self-expression and fulfillment through a romantic liaison leads her to make several unfortunate choices. Finally, she allows a Jewish musician, Adolph (Dolly, for short), to enter her life and become her first sexual partner. Martha chooses to have relations with Dolly not because she feels real passion for him but because the anti-Semitism directed toward him makes him seem more worthy than he actually is.
During the first two years of Martha’s independent life, she becomes a regular with a loosely knit gang of irresponsible white semiadults from a variety of national backgrounds. Her time is divided between work and sundowner parties at local restaurants.
As the winds of World War II gather, Martha enters into a relationship with Douglas, a civil servant who is several years her senior. War fever causes a wave of marriages and pregnancies among Martha’s contemporaries, and nineteen-year-old Martha is influenced by the tide, as well. She, like her friends, is carried along in a rush to the altar. Despite the fact that she does not love Douglas, Martha decides to legitimize her relationship; they marry. Martha is puzzled by her madness:
It was as if half a dozen entirely different people inhabited her body, and they violently disliked each other, bound together by only one thing, a strong pulse of longing; anonymous, impersonal, formless, like water.
The novel ends with Martha trying to persuade herself that what she feels overall for Douglas could pass for love, not merely sexual desire. Yet a nagging, unvoiced conviction makes her understand that this marriage will not last.
Bibliography
Bloom, Harold, ed. Doris Lessing. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003.
Draine, Betsy. Substance Under Pressure: Artistic Coherence and Evolving Forms in the Novels of Doris Lessing. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983.
Karl, Frederick. “The Four-Gaited Beast of the Apocalypse: Doris Lessing’s The Four-Gated City.” In Old Lines, New Forces: Essays on the Contemporary British Novel, edited by Robert K. Morris. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1976.
Klein, Carol. Doris Lessing: A Biography. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2000.
Lessing, Doris. A Small Personal Voice: Essays, Reviews, Interviews. Edited by Paul Schlueter. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974.
Martinson, Deborah. “Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook: ’An Exposed Position.’” In In the Presence of Audience: The Self in Diaries and Fiction. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2003.
Pickering, Jean. Understanding Doris Lessing. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990.
Rubenstein, Roberta. The Novelistic Vision of Doris Lessing: Breaking the Forms of Consciousness. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979.
Waterman, David F. Identity in Doris Lessing’s Space Fiction. Youngstown, N.Y.: Cambria Press, 2006.