Debbie and Julie
"Debbie and Julie," a matter-of-fact fictional account of teenage pregnancy, opens Doris Lessing's 1989 collection of stories and sketches about London titled The Real Thing. This volume, written toward the end of Lessing's long, varied, and prolific career, represents a return to the realistic style with which she first gained her literary reputation in the 1950s and '60s. Though The Real Thing is not considered to be among Lessing's most significant works, critics have singled out' 'Debbie and Julie'' for praise as a well-crafted and emotionally wrenching example of Lessing's talent. The story touches on highly relevant issues, such as teen pregnancy, runaways, and parent-child relationships, and serves as an excellent introduction to Lessing's lengthy body of work.
The story opens with Julie, the protagonist, in labor and leaving the London apartment of Debbie, a prostitute who took her in when she ran away from home five months earlier. Throughout the dramatic events that follow—Julie's solitary delivery and abandonment of a baby girl and her return to the cold and conservative home of her parents—Julie thinks about all she has learned from her trusting and frank relationship with Debbie. Throughout her many experiments with fiction, Lessing has shown an abiding interest in how individuals—especially women and girls—cope psychologically and practically with society's labels, assumptions, and unwritten rules. Lessing portrays Julie's thought process in an understated, realistic style, using the teenager's harrowing experience to explore issues of intimacy, morality, and identity in a way that is both accessible and complex.
On October 22, 1919, Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in Persia (now Iran), where her parents, both British citizens, were living at the time. Her father, a disabled veteran of World War I, worked at a British bank there until moving the family, when Lessing was five, to colonial Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) with the hopes of getting rich on farming and panning for gold. However, the family continued to struggle financially. Of Lessing's African childhood, critic Mona Knapp writes in her critical study Doris Lessing, "Her solitary hours roughing it in the bush were an antidote to the maternal pressure to be dainty and ladylike. During these years, distaste for traditional feminine roles was instilled in young Doris Tayler—an aversion the later Doris Lessing will never lose.
"In Southern Rhodesia, Lessing was educated first at a convent school, then at an all-girl's school run by the government. She was an avid reader and an excellent student but dropped out of school at age thirteen, never to continue her formal education. Committed to writing, she began to publish short stories at age eighteen. When she was twenty, Lessing married Frank Wisdom, a much older man. They quickly had two children, then divorced four years later, in 1943. Her first novel, The Grass Is Singing (1950), is based closely upon the failed marriage. In the early 1940s, Lessing became involved in the Communist Party, with which she dissolved all ties a decade later.
In connection to her political activities, she met Gottfried Lessing. They were married from 1945 to 1949 and had one son. In 1949 Lessing left Africa and her family—including the two children from her first marriage— behind. She settled in London, which was to become her beloved adopted home. However, she drew on the scenes and settings of her colonial African childhood throughout her career as a writer. Her outspoken views on colonialism, racism, and feminism grew out of these formative early experiences. In cosmopolitan London, Lessing began life anew as a writer. Her debut novel, The Grass Is Singing, was met with strong critical praise. Lessing moved on to publish the five novels of her autobiographical "Children of Violence" series in less than a decade.
She followed with The Golden Notebook, published in 1962, an experimental narrative in diary form that became her best known work. While she earned her literary reputation on psychologically honest realism, Lessing's numerous novels of the 1970s and 1980s became more mystical. She also wrote a number of what she calls "inner space" science fiction novels, including her "Canopus in Argos" series. Lessing has continued to publish prolifically into her old age, moving freely from science fiction, nonfiction, and drama back to the autobiography and psychological realism of her roots. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors. Throughout her many works, Lessing has maintained an interest in ideology and the assumptions underlying people's most basic life choices.
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