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George Hounslow came into the hall and went straight over to Maryrose. She was still on her chair, supported by her gallants. They gave way in all directions as he approached. Suddenly something frightening happened. George’s approach to women was clumsy, overhumble, and he might even stammer. (But his stammer always sounded as if he were doing it on purpose.) Meanwhile his deep-set brown eyes would be fixed on the women with an almost bullying intentness. And yet his manner would remain humble, apologetic. Women got flustered or angry, or laughed nervously. He was a sensualist of course. I mean, a real sensualist, not a man who played the role of one, as so many do, for one reason or another. He was a man who really, very much, needed women. I say this because there aren’t many men left who do. I mean civilized men, the affectionate non-sexual men of our civilization. George needed a woman to submit to him, he needed a woman to be under his spell physically. And men can no longer dominate women in this way without feeling guilty about it. Or very few of them. When George looked at a woman he was imagining her as she would be when he had fucked her into insensibility. And he was afraid it would show in his eyes. I did not understand this then, I did not understand why I got confused when he looked at me. But I’ve met a few men like him since, all with the same clumsy impatient humility, and with the same hidden arrogant power.
George was standing below Maryrose who had her arms raised. Her shining hair was down over her shoulders, and she wore a sleeveless yellow dress. Her arms and legs were a smooth gold-brown. The airforce men were almost stupefied with her. And George, for a moment, had the same look of stunned immobility. George said something. She let her arms drop, stepped slowly down off the chair and now stood below him, looking up. He said something else. I remember the look on his face - chin poked forward aggressively, eyes intent, and a stupidly abased expression. Maryrose lifted her fist and jabbed it up at his face. As hard as she could - his face jerked back and he even staggered a step. Then, without looking at him, she climbed back on her chair and continued to hang garlands. Jimmy was smiling at George with an eager embarrassment, as if he were responsible for the blow. George came over to us, and he was again the willing clown, and Maryrose’s swains were back in their poses of helpless adoration.
‘Well,’ said Paul. ‘I’m very impressed. If Maryrose would hit me like that, I’d believe I was getting somewhere.’
But George’s eyes were full of tears. ‘I’m an idiot,’ he said. ‘A dolt. Why should a beautiful girl like Maryrose look at me at all?’
‘Why indeed?’ said Paul.
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About
The Golden Notebook is a collaboration between if:book London and Apt.
Principal funding by Arts Council England.
HarperCollins, the publisher of The Golden Notebook, digitized the book for us and generously gave permission to reproduce it here in its entirety at no cost.
Additional support from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and New York University
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Laura Kipnis November 17th, 2008 at 4:01 am
“When George looked at a woman he was imagining her as she would be when he had fucked her into insensibility…I did not understand this then, I did not understand why I got confused when he looked at me.”
This description of George is utterly fascinating, as so many of Lessing’s accounts of male-female sexuality are. There’s this primal quality to the way she describes him; she suggests that there’s a kind of primal attraction for women (certain women) to phallic sexuality, which she both naturalizes and undercuts at the same time. There’s also something deeply contradictory about this description in fact–George is both arrogant and humility-ridden; Anna observes his sexual power but isn’t immune from it…
The book is full of these oscillations: women observing male sexual power over them, commenting upon it, while still pinned in some desiring relation to it. Intellect doesn’t exactly set you free, sadly.
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Lenelle Moïse November 25th, 2008 at 12:26 am
“Why should a beautiful girl like Maryrose look at me at all?”
On UK p. 129 we find out that George enjoys affairs with “African women particularly.” This made me wince after reading, “George needed a woman to submit to him” on UK p. 126. How interesting that black women are classified as so readily sexually accessible to this bumbling wreck of a man when Maryrose and even Anna (despite her quiet lust) refuse him.
And George’s main African lover, Marie, the cook’s wife, is never physically described. We know all sorts of details about Maryrose’s appearance: she has long, shining hair and tanned arms. But the only word we have to conjure an image of Marie is “black.”
That his mistress is black seems to seal Anna’s perception of George’s sexual power. In these pages, “black” remains mysterious, illicit, hidden, unfortunate, obliging, taboo, disgusting, discardable yet–oddly– enviable.
Meanwhile, Maryrose, stays on her sad post-incest pedestal. Note their similar names: Maryrose vs. Marie. Fixed female archetypes, different sides of the same tired coin. The worshiped, white, unattainable virgin (a flower) vs. the debased, black, adulterous whore.
Ah, sexist racism.
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Helen Oyeyemi November 28th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Lenelle - I think George’s ability to take the black women around him as lovers is more to do with a colonial power dynamic than to do with symbolism of skin colour and connotations of sexuality attached to that (though of course this does feature). Maryrose and Anna are in George’s world - they are women, yes, but they stand with him as Brits and in relation to Marie, one of the colonized….different rules and a whole other code of exchange - each male-female exchange is demeaning in a vital way (based on assessments of the female’s sexual attractiveness), but still, different when it moves from exchanges between George and Maryrose to George and Marie. Who knows how willing Marie really is? I’m not talking physical coercion, but there are status and financial factors over and above those usual to male-female relationships of the time that could compel Marie to accept sexual advances from George when she otherwise wouldn’t have. Her mysteriousness/lack of detail could also be Lessing’s commentary on the absence of her true consent. After all, in contrast, women like Maryrose, who can express their will and their past, say their ‘no’s with some level of consequence, are afforded physical description. The way in which Marie would respond to George’s advances would be as much an acknowledgement of the prominence that the desire, any desire, of a colonial master would have in the society he’s, yes, penetrated, as it would to do with the rampant, mindless sensuality George might think he sees indicated by Marie’s skin. Ugh I hope I haven’t overthought this…
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Naomi Alderman November 29th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
“Her mysteriousness/lack of detail could also be Lessing’s commentary on the absence of her true consent.”
Now this raises a question. Marie is absent. Paul’s treatment of Jackson is chilling. Is this because Lessing is unconsciously communicating attitudes of colonial racism? Or because she’s subtly commenting on colonial racism?
I really don’t know the answer to this. The Lessing/Anna/Ella layers mean that the writer can always point to the character and say ‘it’s not me, it’s her’. And actually the character can point back to the writer and say ‘don’t blame me, blame my creator’ (like the way that Anna blames her own prior self for not remembering what she wants to remember).
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Lenelle Moïse December 8th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
But George doesn’t have anything to offer Marie financially. (”He had a wife and two sons and a daughter. He supported his wife’s parents and his own…in that little house…they were all permanently short of money, and miserable bickering went on about sixpences and shillings. Online p. 112). Surely Marie knows he can’t/won’t support her which is why “she was not making an issue of” the obviously biracial child who resulted from their glaring affair.
Suffice it to say, I don’t really trust our narrator Anna’s judgement (mostly because she doesn’t trust herself). She’s willing to–and to protect her pride, needs to–dismiss George’s relationship with Marie as evidence of the colonial power dynamic. She’s willing to cast Marie as a type of desperate, helpless prostitute in FRONTIERS OF WAR, a book she admits she isn’t proud of)…But what if Marie has more agency than Anna can conceive? Are all black woman in Marie’s situation completely powerless? Or is there room for subversion here?
Maybe I’m pushing it but: what if George and Marie are genuinely, albeit inconveniently, fond of each other? After all, as far as we know, she isn’t running off with other white guys. Just because Anna isn’t ready/willing to see Marie as a complex human being doesn’t mean George–by some miracle of his time–isn’t. After all, he calls her his mistress, “the proper title” he would use for any white woman he was having an affair with…Not that “mistress” is such a great title but you know what I mean.
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