Word: dalloway
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...such vindication. For Lessing, the Coldridge townhouse is an elaborate metaphorical conceit--at its base, in its cellar, it house Linda, Mark's mad wife. In another novel produced during another time, Linda would have probably been left to her solitary fate--most probably, like Septimus in Mrs. Dalloway, Linda would have simply destroyed herself. At best, she could only hope to remain locked up for life, half-mad, in a Gothic tower. But, in this novel, Linda is treated as a prophet as she conducts Martha through the looking glass into another, better world...
...LESSING, those that society has labelled mad are actually those super-perceptive, rare individuals whose natural telepathic and extrasensory powers have not atrophied. Martha, in her role as a letter-day Mrs. Dalloway peering into the crevice that separates two eras, discovers that she shares certain affinities with Linda. From that point, it is not long before Martha is voluntarily undergoing harrowing experiments in order to determine the limits of her consciousness. As the novel closes, she is stranded off the Scottish coast, England having been decimated by poison gas and radioactivity. She has also become a member...