“The golden notebook” as trauma narrative

This paper aims to read Doris Lessing’s “The golden notebook” as a literary experiment, which struggles to find meaning amid fragmented narratives. Aiming to reflect the structure of the experience of mental breakdown, the novel is abundant with literary strategies meant to enhance the understanding of the Real (in Lacanian sense) experience of the main protagonist. Ultimately, all of the stylistic endeavours are doomed to failure, and the experience which cannot be directly communicated surfaces as traumatic: it escapes both chronology and understanding; it renders the protagonist helpless against reality, which she perceives as full of violence. The reason behind the breakdown is elusive, yet it seems to be grounded in historical reality of the twentieth century. Through its inability to convey a message in a conventional novelistic form, “The golden notebook” emerges as a witness to the traumatic nature of human experience of the modern era.