Proper Marriage (Children of Violence) (original 1964; edition 2001)

I managed to pick up book 2 in a series of 5. Never mind. I don't know if I missed anything essential from the first book - characters did seem to appear without much in the way of background or introduction but that might just have been the way it was written. I wasn't hopelessly at sea. I liked the book but felt it was too much of one episode in a series and didn't stand very clearly by itself. It also seemed a bit disjointed at times. Not really sure whether to go on and read book 3, or to go back and read book 1. But I'll probably read one or the other.

The time and place is Rhodesia of the 1940's in the early stages of Rhodesia becoming involved in World War II.

I am struck by how constrained the characters are from saying what they really want to say and acting as they really want to act, or even associating with or marrying who they want to associate with and marry. At the end of book 1 Martha drifted into a marriage, and now she is acting in the marriage the way she believes she should, which in large part means not acting like her mother, the complaining female.

Martha Quest is a character who is very intellectual, as is the narrator, who seems to be a version of Martha somewhat in the future, but she doesn't seem able to do is to simply ask herself what it is that she wants. Once I was involved in this exercise in a kind of self-actualizing group. One person keeps asking: what do you want. The other person responds with whatever comes into their head. It goes on for quite some time, and does in fact finally result in you getting a pretty clear idea of what you want. I recommend it to Martha, in the series of dialogues that I tend to have in my head with characters in novels that I read.

Martha always has a sense that she is meant for something, and that something is different from being in a marriage and having a child. She doesn't really know what it is, but seems to feel closer to it when she is involved with socialist study groups, although, at the same time, she sees that little action is taken. In the Rhodesia of the 1940's Martha is one of a distinct minority who believe that black Africans are equal to whites. While she believes this, at the same time the unequal world is the one in which she is comfortable, used to, there would be something disquieting about a change in that status quo. This is probably nearly always so to some extent even of the most well-intentioned person, and part of Lessing's honesty that she presents it so, instead of showing Martha totally as we (or I) might want her to be. It's probably also so that most of us have a sense of destiny without knowing what the destiny is.

The one thing she feels strongly about his her daughter, Caroline. While she feels tenderness for her daughter, she feels so strongly that parents ruin their children, so it is possible for her to feel the way to save Caroline would be to leave her.

So this book is a second stage of Martha's becoming. And while I am impatient and disagree with her choices, even parts of the final one when she seems to be getting back on her own path at last, still I am interested in learning what she is becoming. There is always a kind of irony and even humor in how she is looking over her own shoulder, which is maybe what allows me to like this character in the end. ( )

Volume two of the Children of Violence series, about the life of Martha Quest. Set in Rhodesia at the beginning of WWII. Martha has married Douglas, who remains one of the boys and continues to work for the (Civil) Service. She's living in a big suburban house, scrimping on the present to pay for their retirement, becoming more and more unhappy but not at all sorry for herself. ( )

Second book in the "Children of Violence" series. Martha regrets getting married right after her wedding to Douglas. She feels trapped and depressed. The second world war is around the corner. The young local men go away to either train for the war or participate and fresh pale englishmen from the air force come to town. I can't wait to read the next book. So many issues are touched upon... ( )

Lessing proves a rather personal story (quick marriage, quick child, quick divorce) can be given a more universal meaning. Although the society she describes no longer exists -colonial africa, rhodesia - the story was convincing for me. Her marriage was based on an illusion, she uses another illusion - communism - as a way of escape. She might gain something of it: the start of a more mature personality. ( )