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A review by raulbime
Martha Quest by Doris Lessing
4.0
A Portrait of Settler Colonial Life in The Twentieth Century
Martha Quest, the protagonist of this book, is a young white woman coming of age in a deeply and violently racist and very anti-semitic African British colonial society south of the equator. The story starts in the period before the second world war, during the Spanish civil war, and ends during Hitler's invasion of Bohemia. Living on a farm, with her British family of impoverished farmers parented by a father constantly reliving his first world war experiences and a controlling mother, Martha spends her days reading books and daydreaming. While Martha detests the racist conditions and reacts against her parents with rebellious comments that align with her leftist position, she's helpless to the society she finds herself in. The native Black population has been dispossessed, segregated, and repressed by use of the colonial police state; their only relationship to the settlers being one of master-servant, they are treated inhumanely with hostility, suspicion or as sources of amusement. Reading books provided by the Cohen brothers who are her Jewish friends, Martha continues developing the political stances that sharpen her sense of injustice. All the while she feels stifled by the relationship with her parents, particularly her mother, who insists on a maintenance of the status quo which has the British at the top, then the Afrikaans, then the Jewish, and finally the Black native population at the bottom. When a job opportunity arrives that provides Martha the opportunity of escape to the city, she leaves her farm life but soon finds herself entrapped in yet another society with its own conventions not so different from the one she's escaped.
This book provides an interesting look into settler life. All those social rules, some more pronounced than others, that go into the build up of a society. While she had done that before with [b:The Grass Is Singing|130115|The Grass Is Singing|Doris Lessing|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1358325519l/130115._SY75_.jpg|1401383], her debut novel, there's more detail of the societal structures furnished in this book. Also interesting here is the pull a society has on an individual despite detesting what it stands for. For instance that Martha participates in the institutions she abhors, keeps company with people who share racist and anti-semitic views, and her search for individual freedom and fun clash with her views leaving her annoyed and guilty.
This book was published in 1952 and during this time; the British Empire despite losing India still existed; the first apartheid laws were being passed in South Africa; American schools weren't desegrated yet, and the racist structures that exist today were more pronounced and more blatant in their violence. With this historical backdrop, the story of the political and individual development of a young white woman, exploring her leftist ideas and sexual awakening probably wasn't the most popular of narratives then. To add to that fact that Lessing took parts of her own life in creating the story makes it even more fascinating. The reader is so immersed in the time and place and in Martha's head, that at times I forgot this was a third-person narrative and wasn't in first-person.
Martha Quest, the protagonist of this book, is a young white woman coming of age in a deeply and violently racist and very anti-semitic African British colonial society south of the equator. The story starts in the period before the second world war, during the Spanish civil war, and ends during Hitler's invasion of Bohemia. Living on a farm, with her British family of impoverished farmers parented by a father constantly reliving his first world war experiences and a controlling mother, Martha spends her days reading books and daydreaming. While Martha detests the racist conditions and reacts against her parents with rebellious comments that align with her leftist position, she's helpless to the society she finds herself in. The native Black population has been dispossessed, segregated, and repressed by use of the colonial police state; their only relationship to the settlers being one of master-servant, they are treated inhumanely with hostility, suspicion or as sources of amusement. Reading books provided by the Cohen brothers who are her Jewish friends, Martha continues developing the political stances that sharpen her sense of injustice. All the while she feels stifled by the relationship with her parents, particularly her mother, who insists on a maintenance of the status quo which has the British at the top, then the Afrikaans, then the Jewish, and finally the Black native population at the bottom. When a job opportunity arrives that provides Martha the opportunity of escape to the city, she leaves her farm life but soon finds herself entrapped in yet another society with its own conventions not so different from the one she's escaped.
This book provides an interesting look into settler life. All those social rules, some more pronounced than others, that go into the build up of a society. While she had done that before with [b:The Grass Is Singing|130115|The Grass Is Singing|Doris Lessing|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1358325519l/130115._SY75_.jpg|1401383], her debut novel, there's more detail of the societal structures furnished in this book. Also interesting here is the pull a society has on an individual despite detesting what it stands for. For instance that Martha participates in the institutions she abhors, keeps company with people who share racist and anti-semitic views, and her search for individual freedom and fun clash with her views leaving her annoyed and guilty.
This book was published in 1952 and during this time; the British Empire despite losing India still existed; the first apartheid laws were being passed in South Africa; American schools weren't desegrated yet, and the racist structures that exist today were more pronounced and more blatant in their violence. With this historical backdrop, the story of the political and individual development of a young white woman, exploring her leftist ideas and sexual awakening probably wasn't the most popular of narratives then. To add to that fact that Lessing took parts of her own life in creating the story makes it even more fascinating. The reader is so immersed in the time and place and in Martha's head, that at times I forgot this was a third-person narrative and wasn't in first-person.