Girls are wonderful, Boys are terrible

Original Post Date: 2001-10-04  Posted By: Jan

From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 10/4/2001 2:50:47 PM
Girls are wonderful, Boys are terrible

I happened upon this long but very interesting piece regarding Doris Lessing,
a famous author, who comes from Zimbabwe. Doris was involved in communism and
all sorts of things. She says some things about communism as well as feminism
which I think is excellent food for thought. Of special interest to me are
her comments on the young women of today. I think she’s hitting the nail on
the head regarding feminism and the never-ending attacks on men and boys.
Jan

‘I have nothing in common with feminists’

From feminist icon to championing the male … Doris Lessing is no
stranger to controversy. On the eve of the publication of her 25th book, she
sets Barbara Ellen straight about men and motherhood

BARBARA ELLEN

The interesting thing about Doris Lessing is not that she’s not a feminist,
but how insistent she is that she’s not a feminist. Moreover, unlike fellow
novelist Fay Weldon, who seems to have effected something of a turnabout in
recent years, Lessing claims never to have embraced feminism in the first
place. A lapsed communist, yes (“The fools we were!”), but a feminist –
never. This, despite a vague feeling, courtesy of those, like me, who read
and enjoy her work, that, writing like she does (progressive, indomitable; a
true female chronicler), she must be. But no, Lessing is adamant about this,
still stoutly refusing to be claimed as a feminist icon whole decades after
her most famous work, The Golden Notebook, was widely hailed as one of the
great inflammatory emancipating texts of the 1970s.
In March this year, collecting the prestigious David Cohen prize honouring a
lifetime of excellence, Lessing even went so far as to renounce today’s women
as “smug, self-righteous” and far too quick to “denigrate” men. More recently
she was at it again, causing a major media stir at the Edinburgh book
festival, claiming that modern men were both “rubbished” and “cowed” by
women. “They can’t fight back,” said Lessing. “And it’s time they did.” Well,
right on, sister. “The thing is, I haven’t changed at all,” Lessing informs
me unapologetically, as we share a Diet Coke in her living room. “I’m not any
kind of traitor to the cause. I’ve always thought the same way. It’s just
that, like all obsessively political people, feminists tend to fasten on to
someone who they think is one of them. I am always being described as having
views that I’ve never had in my life.”

We talk on a humid afternoon, in the first-floor living room of Lessing’s
London home. It is situated near West Hampstead, in what Lessing says was one
of the very first commuter suburbs: “They converted them into flats and then
back into houses. They wasted space scandalously. I’m very pleased.” Her
manner is brisk, autocratic, occasionally rather tart, but, when I ask
Lessing if she is aware of her reputation for being intimidating, she
replies: “So I hear, but I think I’m a pussy cat!”

At 81, Lessing is also as sharp as a dentist’s needle. Which makes you wonder
a little about her recent outbursts. She managed to get up Jeanette
Winterson’s nose and fuel several days of newspaper editorials. Which doesn’t
exactly hurt when one happens to have a new novel hitting the stands. As
Lessing must know, after more than 50 years in the business, there’s nothing
like a bit of controversy to sell books.

Right this minute, though, she has to have her photograph taken. “You sit
there for now,” she says, indicating a low, saggy sofa next to some
bookshelves. The room is a homage to bohemian counterculture chic – a wall
hanging here, a wooden carving there, cat hairs everywhere (Lessing is a huge
lover of felines, and owns one called Yum Yum). When the photographer is
done, Lessing calls her a cab, then checks for its arrival, leaning against
the window frame for support. When it’s my turn to leave, we go through the
same routine. “I want to see if it’s there,” she says, slightly querulously,
clutching at the neckline of her dress. “Sometimes they just sit in the
street.” I only mention this because, during the long, hot afternoon, these
are the only two occasions I witness Lessing acting anything like her years.
She assesses her own mental age as “about five”.

The new book, The Sweetest Dream, could best be described as a saga for the
hippie generation. It spans decades and continents, bringing in the African
Aids epidemic. It is Lessing’s 25th novel. Or is it her 26th? It’s hard to
keep up with this most prolific of authors. As well as the novels, there’s
been a paper avalanche of non-fiction, poetry, opera and drama (she’s a huge
theatre buff). “I don’t know why I have to write,” says Lessing. “It’s just
something I have to do. If I don’t write for any length of time, I get very
irritable. If I had to stop, I would probably start wandering the streets,
telling myself stories out loud.” When I comment that she seems very driven,
Lessing gives me a wry smile. “I’ve worked hard all my life,” she says. “You
have to if you want to get things done. These days, there’s a lot of writing
talent around, but very few people seem prepared to stick at it.”

Of course, considering its size, the quality of Lessing’s oeuvre was bound to
vary. While, with her debut The Grass Is Singing, it’s as if holy literary
water is splashing into the Southern African dust and giving the characters
life, you could take or leave the eco-fable Mara and Dann, or any of the
titles from the gorily futuristic Canopus in Argos series. Along with The
Grass Is Singing, and The Good Terrorist, my personal favourite is The Fifth
Child, which tenderly tells the tale of Ben, a throwback cast adrift in the
modern world. When Lessing is in this kind of form, every line feels like she
is dipping her pen nib into some universal open wound. For me, The Sweetest
Dream doesn’t quite spark at this level, although it is hugely enjoyable and
interesting in its own right.

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What planet is Doris on? September 25, 2001

Arguably one of the most interesting things about the new book is the
author’s note at the beginning, where Lessing reveals she won’t be producing
a third volume of autobiography, covering the 1960s period, because of
“possible hurt to vulnerable people”. However, she says, this does not mean
that The Sweetest Dream is “novelised autobiography”. All of which refers to
the fact that one of the book’s central characters, Frances, plays “earth
mother” to a houseful of adolescent strays, just like Lessing did in the
1960s, and she doesn’t want the two to be confused. She is especially keen
for the identities of the real-life “strays” to be kept a secret. Is this out
of courtesy? “Not out of courtesy,” says Lessing, ever brisk. “But these
people are middle-aged, and some of them are very well known.” She considers
for a moment. “I just wouldn’t want to embarrass them. I couldn’t do it to
them. I certainly wouldn’t like it done to me.”

The big question is: why would Lessing want to spend the 1960s “mothering” a
bunch of adolescents, only one of whom (her teenage son Peter) was her true
responsibility? Lessing demurs when I describe Frances (and by association
herself) as “put upon”. “You say ‘put upon’, that’s how you see it, but maybe
she was enjoying it.”

However, by anyone’s reckoning, tending to the needs of neurotic teen hippies
doesn’t look like the best fun a successful 40-plus female novelist could
have. “Why not?” says Lessing, crisply. “I don’t see why one should exclude
the other. Do you know who also had a house like it – Penelope Mortimer. I
met her just before she died and she said that, looking back, it was the
happiest time of her life, because of all this enormous family that was
always changing. And, you know, it was extraordinary, a phenomenon of the
time. The tail end of communism really, but then, I happen to think that the
whole hippie ethos was a spin-off from communism.”

It isn’t Lessing’s mission to glorify the 1960s. “Swinging London?” she
scoffs. “I never saw it myself. It’s swinging much more now than it ever did
then. Everyone was always in bed by 10 o’clock!” Is she disheartened by the
fact that young people seem so much more politically apathetic these days?
“Oh no!” she cries. “It’s better than these great passionate crusading
movements. It’s better than everyone running around being communists and
such.” She continues more seriously: “People always glamourise the 1960s, but
there were lots of victims around, people in and out of mental hospitals and
so on. My personal diagnosis was that it was the influence of the wars –
1960s young people were war children, that’s why it was such a fraught time.
Then drugs arrived, not necessarily the best thing that ever happened to this
country.”

Did she indulge? “I took pot like everyone else,” she says. “And I inhaled,
certainly. But it didn’t suit me, it doesn’t suit some people. I also took
mescaline once. Interesting, but I wouldn’t do it again. I’m too much of a
coward. A friend of mine took it, and she spent a whole year seeing heads
roll off shoulders, and blood everywhere. A whole year!” Lessing shudders
theatrically. “Just the thought scares me. If you take these drugs, you’re
not in control. And I’ve always needed to be in control.”

Lessing grew up on a failing farm in Rhodesia (as Zimbabwe was then called).
Her father was a war amputee and “a dreamer”. Her mother was an efficient
woman with whom Lessing could never get on. “I think of her a lot now,” she
says. “The trouble is, pity is such a patronising emotion, but I’m so sorry
for her. She should never have left England – her idea of bliss was to have
been a banker’s wife in Richmond. As it was, she had the most terrible life.
I often think what a good job she made of a very poor hand.”

Lessing hated Rhodesia, too. Nonconformist, and an avid reader, she grew up
at odds with accepted race protocol, what was known in local terms as being a
“kaffir lover”. Marrying Frank Wisdom at 19 was her attempt to buckle down
and “behave conventionally”. “I did conventional things rather well,
actually,” she says, smiling grimly. “This is what women did. But then I
walked out. I couldn’t bear it.”

The man she walked out to was Gottfried Lessing, a hard-line communist whom
she’d met among Rhodesian intellectuals. Despite having a son, Peter,
together, the couple were incompatible, which didn’t matter, because it was a
“political marriage” to save Gottfried from being sent to an internment camp.
(Lessing went on to have real love affairs, though never married again.) A
buffoonish version of Gottfried appears in The Sweetest Dream, in the guise
of Johnny, Frances’s ex. “Men like Johnny are historical figures now, but
they were very much around back then,” says Lessing. “When reproached for not
paying alimony, or not seeing the kids, it would be: ‘Only the revolution
counts, private matters are not important.'” She laughs heartily. “As excuses
go, this was probably the most wonderful one.” Gottfried’s enduring legacy
was to put Lessing off communism for good: “I was married to a 100% communist
and, believe me, that cured you fast!”

When she left Wisdom, Lessing also walked out on her two small children, John
and Jean, a chapter of her life she loathes discussing. It certainly receives
short shrift in the two volumes of her autobiography, Under My Skin and
Walking in the Shade. Lessing sighs. “The truth is,” she says, “people are
angry because I didn’t go on at length about how terrible I was to walk out
on my children. What I should have done is written 10 pages, saying: ‘Oh, how
could I have done such a thing, I’m so awful and wicked?’ and then they would
have loved it. On the contrary, I’m very proud of myself that I had the guts
to do it. I’ve always said that if I hadn’t left that life, if I hadn’t
escaped from the intolerable boredom of colonial circles, I’d have cracked
up, become an alcoholic. And I’m glad that I had the bloody common sense to
see that.” And now Lessing shakes her head wearily. “I don’t really see the
point of all this breast beating, but I know it’s part of what we admire in
this culture. It’s the equivalent of Roman circuses.”

Lessing was reconciled with all her children eventually. Peter (a farmer) no
longer lives with Lessing, but is still around. John, also a farmer, died a
few years ago of a heart attack. Daughter Joan spent her career teaching poor
African children. “She’s a remarkable woman, I very much admire her,” says
Lessing, then clams up, clearly keen to leave the thorny subject of her
children behind. Nevertheless, there are undeniable ironies here: the woman
who walks out on two of her own children, then ends up earth-mothering a
houseful of other people’s children. And, of course, there’s the fact that
the very section of society who could be relied upon to support Lessing in
her decision to leave her young family, the very group most likely to point
out that men do the same thing all the time without censure, are the same
people she has so publicly professed to deplore and despise. In a word –
feminists.

You’ve got to hand it to the octogenarian: Lessing’s opinions about the
“rubbishing of males” appear to have snagged the zeitgeist in a way that
Zadie Smith could only dream of. Does she really believe that modern men get
such a raw deal? “Yes, it’s become absolutely automatic,” she cries. “If it
was some polemical crusade, it might be something, but it’s like young women
have got 10 minutes to spare, so they may as well spend it rubbishing men.
It’s part of the culture now. There’s an unconscious bias in our society:
girls are wonderful; boys are terrible. And to be a boy, or young man,
growing up, having to listen to all this, it must be painful.”

Granted, nothing is assured for men anymore, but is anything assured for
anybody? “Well, no,” concedes Lessing. “It isn’t assured for women either.
But I think that children respond to what is expected of them, and all boys
are hearing now is that everything about them is terrible. And men, boys,
whatever, are just expected to take it.”

Of course, Lessing is entitled to her opinion, just as the likes of Fay
Weldon and Joan Bakewell are entitled to the same opinion whenever the topic
pops up. (“Maybe we agree because we all have sons,” points out Lessing.)

However, are we really to believe that Lessing has achieved all she has,
lived all that life, more often than not trampling on the very bunions of
convention, without a shred of feminist feeling in her being? “Yes,” says
Lessing. “They would have liked to have me as a feminist icon, after The
Golden Notebook, but I wouldn’t. I always disliked it all so much.” Which is
true enough – Lessing has always viewed 1962’s female odyssey, The Golden
Notebook, as a partial “failure” because it was widely perceived to be a
feminist tract, when that was not the intention. Indeed, it’s a minor mystery
as to why Lessing’s remarks at Edinburgh caused such a furore, given that she
has been making side-swipes at the “sisterhood” for years.

“I have nothing in common with feminists because of their inflexibility,” she
commented in 1994. “They never seem to think that one might like men, or
enjoy them.” To me, she adds: “The problem is that certain women, polemical,
highly verbalised women, only notice men when they are not behaving well.
They don’t notice men if they behave well, because of course, only women
behave well.” All generalised tosh, of course, and I wonder why Lessing
bothers to say such things, whether in fact her whole stance might be a huge
joke. It isn’t of course, and we just end up bickering amiably back and forth
– Lessing making silly, dated references to fishes and bicycles, me bearing
an increasing resemblance to Viz comic’s Millie Tant.

“You’re in a fortress, you know that,” Lessing rebukes me at one point, her
eyes twinkling. “Everything you say describes something that’s defensive,
repelling men, these wicked creatures.” They’re not wicked, I grumble, they
just like to think they are. And Lessing gives me one of her grim little
smirks, and growls softly: “Don’t change, don’t ever change.”

The interview is over. It is time for Lessing to order me a cab, and stand at
the window, looking her age for only the second time that day. Before that
happens, Lessing tells me excitedly about the prestigious Spanish prize she
is to receive in October. “I’m delighted,” she says. “I love Spain. This is
Spain for you – I got a letter from the king and queen, the crown prince and
the mayor, congratulating me. Can you imagine Elizabeth R even noticing if
somebody got a prize for literature? No, only the racehorses.” She laughs.
“I’m going to be given the prize by the crown prince, curtsy, make a speech,
and have a lovely time.” I tell her I can’t imagine her curtsying to anyone,
even if he is a crown prince. “We will curtsy to each other,” she replies
mock-solemnly.

Lessing also kindly finds me a copy of the sequel to The Fifth Child,
entitled Ben in the World. “Poor Ben, poor, poor Ben, I do feel so sorry for
him,” she says, scribbling an inscription on the inside cover. When her back
is turned, I look at it eagerly. It says: “Best wishes, Doris Lessing.” Which
is a shame. I would have preferred something slightly more personal, possibly
along the lines of: “You’re a screwed-up feminist bore, leave my home at
once, and never return, love Doris.” When finally the cab arrives, I race
down to the street, so that Doris Lessing doesn’t have to tire herself out
waiting for me to leave. When I look back up at the window, she has already
gone.

The Mail&Guardian, October 4, 2001.

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