The Four-Gated City by Doris Lessing
"The Four-Gated City" by Doris Lessing is a novel that spans from 1950 to 1997, centering on the life of Martha Quest during her middle age. The title references biblical imagery, symbolizing the four types of houses that encapsulate the human-made world, reflecting the complexities and challenges of postwar London, which is portrayed as a place of violence and corruption. The narrative explores Martha's journey of self-discovery as she breaks free from societal constraints and embraces her true identity, moving from her public persona, Matty, to her inner self, Martha.
Martha's experiences include a significant relationship with Jack, which prompts her to confront her past and future, including a vision of her younger self and her potential future as a mother. As she navigates her new life, she takes on responsibilities in the household of an aristocratic novelist, Mark Coldridge, becoming a surrogate figure for his family. Throughout the story, Martha grapples with themes of mental balance and the impact of societal expectations on individual identity.
Her relationship with her mother and the inherited struggles from her upbringing lead her to seek psychological insight, culminating in profound realizations about herself and her surroundings. The novel concludes with Martha achieving a sense of self-integration while an appendix hints at a future plagued by nuclear catastrophe, suggesting a world transformed by the challenges of modernity and the emergence of developing nations. This complex exploration of identity, societal pressures, and existential questions invites readers to reflect on the nature of humanity in a fractured world.
The Four-Gated City by Doris Lessing
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1969
Type of work: Novel
The Work
The Four-Gated City covers the years 1950 through 1997, focusing centrally on Martha Quest’s middle-age years. The novel derives its title from the book of Revelation, but the title refers specifically to four types of houses that represent for Lessing the human-made world. Martha’s passing between the houses connects the gates of the houses in postwar London, which she depicts as violent and corrupt. It is little wonder that perfect sanity seems like insanity in such a world. The question of mental balance in an imbalanced world is one that Lessing undertakes in this novel.
Since Martha has severed all ties with the collectives that once had placed restrictions on her life, she now relinquishes her public self, Matty, and asserts her inner character, Martha. Soon after her arrival in London, she finds sexual communion with a man named Jack. During a critical sexual experience with him, she has a vision in which she sees the golden age of her youth on the veld and a picture of herself as a middle-aged woman living in a house filled with sad-faced children.
When financial necessity presses Martha to find a job, she accepts a position as secretary to an aristocratic English novelist, Mark Coldridge. Her duties expand as Mark’s eccentric family life becomes more complicated. Soon, Martha is running the entire household, which consists of Mark’s insane wife, Lynda, Mark’s troubled, orphaned nephew, Paul, and Mark’s own star-crossed son, Francis. Martha functions as a surrogate wife to Mark and as a surrogate mother for the two boys. When Mark’s nieces, Gwen and Jill, enter the picture, Martha also extends herself to them.
In a central scene in the book, Martha walks through the Coldridge house announcing dinner and daydreams that the house has no center. While suspended in this surrealistic state, she loses part of her memory and then realizes that, like the house, she does not have a center; there is nothing to hold the pieces of her life together. This experience is followed by news that Mrs. Quest is coming to London to see her. The impending visit causes Martha to panic and sends her back to the psychiatrist, who tells her that she has to work through her troubled bond with her mother.
In preparation for Mrs. Quest’s visit, Martha places herself mentally at the center of the Coldridge house. She becomes so attuned to members of the household that she can overhear what they are thinking. When Martha shares this information with Lynda, she learns that Lynda has the same sensitivity and that it was this ability that first caused society to label her insane. Martha wishes to learn more about Lynda’s insanity, which she now believes was induced by collectives in society. Through starvation and wakefulness, she descends with Lynda into the dark world of sound and begins to understand different psychic levels where people like Lynda can be trapped. Martha learns how to move through this frightening psychic world, developing resources that allow her to eradicate her guilty feelings about her mother.
At the end of the book, about the year 1965, Martha has put her life into focus, and she has reached a stage of self-integration. The futuristic appendix to the book takes the reader up to the year 1997 and charts events leading to some kind of nuclear holocaust. Survivors of the catastrophe are stranded in remote places, and the future of the world now seems to belong to the developing nations.
Bibliography
Bloom, Harold, ed. Doris Lessing. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003.
Draine, Betsy. Substance Under Pressure: Artistic Coherence and Evolving Forms in the Novels of Doris Lessing. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983.
Karl, Frederick. “The Four-Gaited Beast of the Apocalypse: Doris Lessing’s The Four-Gated City.” In Old Lines, New Forces: Essays on the Contemporary British Novel, edited by Robert K. Morris. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1976.
Klein, Carol. Doris Lessing: A Biography. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2000.
Lessing, Doris. A Small Personal Voice: Essays, Reviews, Interviews. Edited by Paul Schlueter. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974.
Martinson, Deborah. “Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook: ’An Exposed Position.’” In In the Presence of Audience: The Self in Diaries and Fiction. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2003.
Pickering, Jean. Understanding Doris Lessing. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990.
Rubenstein, Roberta. The Novelistic Vision of Doris Lessing: Breaking the Forms of Consciousness. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979.
Waterman, David F. Identity in Doris Lessing’s Space Fiction. Youngstown, N.Y.: Cambria Press, 2006.