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ness and range, including The Golden
Notebook (1962), the early feminist
manifesto (though it was never intended
as such); the semi-autobiographical
quintet, Children of Violence;
and the five volumes of futuristic
space fiction, Canopus in Argos:
Archives' Lessing anticipates the question.
Her reply: "Self-defense." In
other words, "Biographies are being
written." Now, at age 75, she wants to
put forward her own record of her
past. Curiously, though, she provides
little guidance to those she says are
trying to match up elements and
themes in her fiction with scenes from
her "real" life. Besides, she writes, "It
was with Landlocked [1970] that I left
[autobiographical fiction] behind." Instead,
she offers a recreation of her
early life in "an Africa that no longer
exists."
Lessing's account begins with her
birth in 1919 to British parents living
in Persia, continues through her childhood
and young adulthood on a farm
in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe),
and ends in her thirtieth year, just
after she sells The Grass Is Singing to a
London publisher and departs for
England. By relying on what she describes
as "the strict use of memory,"
Lessing makes amply clear that she is
no more beholden to the factual, empirical
approach now than she was as a
girl who instinctively "knew the
[racial] colour bar was wrong but had
no facts or figures to back it up."
Under My Skin is less an introspective
foray into the author's youth than a
moving and imaginative chronicle of
childhood—that lengthy "tactile and
sensuous subjective experience," as
Lessing calls it.
So how did Tigger evolve into
"Doris Lessing" How did the "busy
hardworking girl, ready to conform,
anxious to be liked, wanting a best
friend," become a visionary writer A
partial answer may lie in the enthusiasms
that seem to lift off the pages of
this memoir: the "dreamy repetitive
reading" and other intellectual excursions
that are as compelling and vibrant
now as they must have been
some 50 years ago. Reading Tales From
Shakespeare, D.H. Lawrence, biographies,
and children's classics is likened
to "sucking toffee." What surprises in
this memoir is the loathing and pity
she felt for the person who presided
over this largely home-based educa-
ONTHE ISSUES WINTER 1995
tion, and who regularly mail-ordered
boxes of books from London: her
mother. Though Lessing acknowledges
her mother's "genius for teaching
small children," she repeatedly shows
her contempt for this sadly constrained,
frustrated woman "whose life
did not permit her to use her talents."
This unresolved relationship may
offer some insight into why Lessing
became socially engaged at such an
early age, and why she was able to
abandon her husband and two toddlers
when she joined the Communists
in her early 20s. About this
breach, she isn't too forthcoming,
though perhaps a more generous account
will follow in volume two.
Nonetheless, she does say she believed
"one day [my children] would thank
me for it." She and her fellow Communists,
after all, would eventually
save the world: "There would be no
race prejudice, oppression of women,
exploitation of labour—no snobbishness
or contempt for others... Paradise,
then, was on the world's agenda... [We
had] the same mind-set as my parents,
who believed they represented God's
will, working by agency of the British
Empire, for the good of the world."
Joan Didion once characterized
Lessing as a writer "with an arrogantly
bad ear for dialogue" and a "leaden
disregard for even the simplest
rhythms of language." The stylist exemplaire
may well have spoken the
truth—one that won't be challenged
by Under My Skin. Solely "writing
well" has never been Lessing's point.
As a visionary, moral writer, she has
dazzled readers for decades not with
elegant prose and pyrotechnical language
but by "objectifying [her] mental
battles, embodying ideas in people."
In this memoir, she refers to
physicists as "the adventurers of our
time," and wistfully wonders how she
might have fared had she become a
scientist.Yet she has been on an equally
courageous quest to understand the
world into which she was born. With
the evidence of this latest book, she
hasn't given up her search nor stopped
taking grateful readers with her. •
Jeanne Schinto is the author of a collection
of stories and a novel. Her latest work, a
nonfiction book about life and work in the
old textile mill city of Lawrence, Massachusetts,
will be published by Knopf in
1995.
Athene Series
A CLASSIC IN WOMEN'S HEALTH—
Reissued with a New Foreword and Introduction
MEN WHO CONTROL
WOMEN'S HEALTH
The Miseducation of
Obstetrician-Gynecologists
Diana Scully
"Diana Scully's intimate look at the apprenticeship
ofob/gyns—an apprenticeship during which
women must often sacrifice parts of their bodies
to the doctor's training needs—will shock and infuriate
women and dismay the physicians whose
secrets now are revealed. (Scully's] gripping, devastating
book will swell the ranks of the Women's
Health Movement." —Gena Corea, Author,
The Hidden Malpractice
1994 / 304 pp. / Paper, $18.95
A CLASSIC IN FEMINIST THEORY—
Reissued with a New Introduction on Transgender
THE TRANSSEXUAL EMPIRE
The Making of the She-Male
Janice G. Raymond
"Ostensibly, the'transexors'. .. are curing a
disease... actually they engage in the... shaping
and controlling of 'masculine' and feminine'
behavior. Raymond's development and
documentation of this thesis is flawless. Her
book is an important achievement."
—Thomas Szasz, NY limes Book Review
1994 / 264 pp. / Paper, $17.95
SURVIVING THE
DALKON SHIELD IUD
Women v. the Pharmaceutical
Industry
Karen M. Hicks
In 1985, the A. H. Robins Co. filed for bankruptcy
protection from the growing number of
lawsuits involving the Damon Shield IUD it had
manufactured in the early 1970s.
Thus book chronicles the development of a
contemporary women's social protest movement
that arose in response to Robins' legal
efforts to minimize its financial accountability
to the women injured by its product.
1994 / 208 pp. / Paper, $16.95 / Cloth, $37.00
MAKING VIOLENCE SEXY
Feminist Views on Pornography
Diana E. H. Russell, Editor
This is a collection of feminist articles, including
testimonies by survivors of pornography,
that together make a convincing case
for the view that pornography (as distinct
from erotica) causes harm to women, including
acts of violence.
1993 / 320 pp. / Paper, $19.95 / Cloth, $46.00
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