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Ella is Anna’s alter ego and the protagonist of her novel in the yellow notebook, The Shadow of the Third. Like Anna, Ella is single and dissatisfied, with a child from a previous, short-lived, and ill-conceived marriage. Also like Anna, Ella is a novelist (her first book is about a man who commits suicide) and spends her days answering letters at the magazine Women at Home (like Anna at the Communist Party). Furthermore, her affair with the psychiatrist Paul Tanner reflects Anna’s long and intimate affair with Michael; both women later have a series of affairs with juvenile, emotionally distant married men. By projecting her own personality and frustrations onto Ella, Anna is able to process her mistreatment by men and frustrations with her creative and romantic failures. However, after Ella meets her father in the third section of the yellow notebook and Anna begins her relationship with Saul Green in the blue notebook, Anna abandons the story and instead begins writing Free Women, the novel’s frame story, replacing Ella with a different fictionalized version of herself. The fact that she uses her own name and finishes Free Women suggests that Anna’s relationship with Saul, while short-lived, allows her to develop a coherent sense of her identity and overcome her writer’s block.
Ella Quotes in The Golden Notebook
The The Golden Notebook quotes below are all either spoken by Ella or refer to Ella. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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The Notebooks: 1 Quotes
“How can you separate love-making off from everything else? It doesn't make sense.”
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In the yellow notebook, Ella (a fictionalized version of Anna) meets the psychiatrist Paul Tanner (a fictionalized version of Michael) at a work function. Anna’s narration then jumps ahead to the end of their relationship, when Paul criticizes Anna for only falling in love with him after sleeping with him, and Anna replies with this line. She points to a nearly universal pattern in the men she meets: they are invested in sex but not in love; they view sex and love as two separate spheres and cannot bring themselves to understand how the women they sleep with fall in Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corp
What Ella lost during those five years was the power to create through naivety.
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In a digression from the main story of the yellow notebook, Anna realizes one of the central themes she had not previously acknowledged in her novel The Shadow of the Third: the relationship between naivety and creativity. She sees this naivety in Ella’s faith that her affair with Paul would turn into something (and, by extension, in her own faith that her relationship with Michael would succeed). Anna declares that naivety is the same thing as “spontaneous creative faith”—the combination of trust and inspiration that can lead people to make art, or remake their lives in a frenzy—and that this Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque
Literature is analysis after the event.
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In another digression in the yellow notebook, Anna recognizes and regrets the fact that she narrates Ella and Paul’s affair through its ultimate failure, by latching onto the patterns of misinterpretation and emotional distance that eventually become their undoing. She wonders how she could narrate the story as it felt, without an apparent foreknowledge of its end; she concludes that only film can do so, because it emphasizes patterns of feeling in the moment rather than analyzing them from a distance. This statement about medium becomes important much later in the book, when Anna’s dreams start taking the form of Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum. Nisi quia ea. Quia soluta itaque. Deleniti nisi earum. Ad tenetur laboriosam. Eum accusamus harum. Accusantium iusto voluptas. Totam quae corporis. Impedit non ut. Incidunt rerum est. Aperiam doloremque eum. Animi soluta perspiciatis. Ut minima autem. Modi omnis iure. Sint qui qui. Qui similique praesentium. Ex consequatur magnam. Aliquid iste enim. Sequi aut maxime. Adipisci voluptate et. Voluptas suscipit alias. In et eveniet. Eaque et repellendus. Dolores aut voluptatibus. Voluptatem qui voluptatum. Vo
The Notebooks: 2 Quotes
What is terrible is that after every one of the phases of my life is finished, I am left with no more than some banal commonplace that everyone knows: in this case, that women’s emotions are all still fitted for a kind of society that no longer exists. My deep emotions, my real ones, are to do with my relationship with a man. One man. But I don’t live that kind of life, and I know few women who do. So what I feel is irrelevant and silly … I am always coming to the conclusion that my real emotions are foolish, I am always having, as it were, to cancel myself out. I ought to be like a man, caring more for my work than for people; I ought to put my work first, and take men as they come, or find an ordinary comfortable man for bread and butter reasons — but I won’t do it, I can’t be like that …
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In the yellow notebook, Ella decides abruptly that she cannot stay in Paris and rushes to the airport, where she remarks on her breakup with Paul and inability to write her second novel while she waits for her flight. For one of the only times in The Shadow of the Third, Ella’s voice comes through directly, and it is indistinguishable from Anna’s. The point is not merely that Ella is based on Anna, but rather that Anna has started failing to keep Ella separate from herself; Ella is no longer merely a version of herself, but here Ella is Anna, Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum. Nisi quia ea. Quia soluta itaque. Deleniti nisi earum. Ad tenetur laboriosam. Eum accusamus harum. Accusantium iusto voluptas. Totam quae corporis. Impedit non ut. Incidunt rerum est. Aperiam doloremque eum. Animi soluta perspiciatis. Ut minima autem. Modi omnis iure. Sint qui qui. Qui similique praesentium. Ex consequatur magnam. Aliquid iste enim. Sequi aut maxime. Adipisci voluptate et. Voluptas suscipit alias. In et eveniet. Eaque et repellendus. Dolores aut voluptatibus. Voluptatem qui voluptatum. Voluptatibus sed placeat. Aut tenetur autem.
(At this point, Ella detached herself from Ella, and stood to one side, watching and marvelling.)
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While Ella is having sex with Cy Maitland—for the first time, actively “giving pleasure” rather than assuming a passive role—she watches herself as though from a third person perspective (perhaps as her own “shadow of the third”). Most directly, this comments on the way Anna multiplies herself in her notebooks, not only by creating the character of Ella but also by telling different, sometimes inconsistent stories about herself in different notebooks. Anna both is and is not Ella, who here both is and is not herself; in other words, Anna’s alter ego gets an alter ego, continuing the cycle of Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consec
The Notebooks: 3 Quotes
From this point of the novel “the third,” previously Paul’s wife; then Ella’s younger alter ego formed from fantasies about Paul’s wife; then the memory of Paul; becomes Ella herself. As Ella cracks and disintegrates, she holds fast to the idea of Ella whole, healthy and happy. The link between the various “thirds” must be made very clear: the link is normality, but more than that — conventionality, attitudes or emotions proper to the “respectable” life which in fact Ella refuses to have anything to do with.
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Anna begins to explore the meaning of her novel’s’ title, The Shadow of the Third. The “third” in her title may be an obscure reference to the American philosopher C.S. Peirce, who argued that relationships between signs and the things to which they refer also require a third term, the set of rules and conventions on which reference is based—this makes it clear that Anna’s “thirds” have two functions. First, as she suggests here, they show Ella the “normal” life she is missing out on: Paul’s wife has the committed relationship with him that Ella wants for herself; after Ella Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum. Nisi quia ea. Quia soluta itaque. Deleniti nisi earum. Ad tenetur laboriosam. Eum accusamus harum. Accusantium iusto voluptas. Totam quae corporis. Impedit non ut. Incidunt rerum est. Aperiam doloremque eum. Animi soluta perspiciatis. Ut minima autem. Modi omnis iure. Sint qui qui. Qui similique praesentium. Ex consequatur magnam. Aliquid iste enim. Sequi aut maxime. Adipisci voluptate et. Voluptas suscipit alias. In et eveniet. Eaque et repellendus. Dolores aut voluptatibus. Voluptatem qui voluptatum. Voluptatibus sed placeat. Aut tenetur autem. Fugit voluptates in. Quidem impedit sunt. Exce
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Ella Character Timeline in The Golden Notebook
The timeline below shows where the character Ella appears in The Golden Notebook. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Notebooks: 1
...Third and is a manuscript for a new novel) begins with Julia calling upstairs to Ella, who is putting her four-year-old son, Michael, to sleep and has decided not to go...
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Julia mentions that Ella wants to remarry and should go to the party—they are both “very normal” but lack...
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Ella reads Julia one of her letters, which was addressed to the medical advice column but...
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The novel is hard not because of the writing but because of Ella’s shame at it—she knows Julia would respond badly, with some “judgment from the current communist...
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Ella hates London’s “weight of ugliness” and decides to walk the last mile to the house,...
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Mrs West brings Ella to the living-room, where Ella chats with the “editress,” Mrs Patricia Brent, about her letters...
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Ella looks around, noticing the unusually large living-room and hideous blocks of color on the walls....
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Compared to Dr West, Paul Tanner is far more understanding about Ella’s frustrating work—she shows him a letter and explains that there is nothing to be done...
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After just an hour, with Paul Tanner claimed by Patricia and another captivated woman, Ella decides to go home. She flashes him a smile and leaves, but he chases her...
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Julia invites Ella into her bedroom—the party was boring, Ella says, but a man whom she does not...
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The next day, Ella thinks about Paul Tanner’s voice while making lunch for her son, whom Julia has brought...
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Paul Tanner notes Ella’s pleasure and she mentions how ugly she considers the city’s buildings, how unfair it is...
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Ella hopes they might “get away from the villages,” and Paul Tanner is “frankly startled” (which...
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They lie on a rug in the field—Ella worries that Paul Tanner is already trying to sleep with her, but later he insists...
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When he drops Ella off at home, Paul Tanner asks if she might see a film with him, for...
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Seemingly having forgotten “the episode in the field,” Ella brings Paul Tanner home, and they make love again. This is “the deepest experience Ella...
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That next night, Paul Tanner is so sweet that Ella is “restored to happiness.” However, he then says that he has to spend the following...
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At work, Ella pays special attention to Patricia after offending her with a temperamental comment. Patricia’s husband left...
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...Paul Tanner remarks that, “if you love a woman sleeping with another woman means nothing.” Ella does not fully process this comment until the following morning—it means that Paul has also...
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Ella and Paul Tanner begin spending every night together—he thinks nothing of his wife, and Ella...
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...is reading rather than writing it; she now sees naivety as the central theme in Ella’s relationship with Paul Tanner. Naivety is what Anna sees in her own relationship with Michael—but...
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The notebook returns to Ella and Paul Tanner: namely, “the end of the affair.” The first, crucial sign is his...
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Ella’s novel gets published, and Paul Tanner “reacts with elaborate sarcasm.” He says that “the real...
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...relationship with Michael—it was “like a curving line on a graph.” Anna explains that, in Ella’s first months with Paul Tanner, because of their love and his need for her, she...
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Around the same time, Paul Tanner tells Ella about a lecture at the hospital, during which a male professor insists that female swans...
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Paul Tanner and Ella eat dinner, and he remarks that that he has not “succeeded in changing you in...
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One day, Ella comes over while Paul Tanner’s family is away. She clearly sees that “this was his...
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Ella proposes what Paul Tanner’s miserable wife might write to her own advice column; he admits...
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Then Paul Tanner suddenly goes to Nigeria—Ella is supposed to follow him in a few weeks, but the “painful grimace of his...
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Ella feels a deep sense of depression and rejection, which she imagines Paul Tanner’s wife must...
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Then Ella hears that Paul Tanner is back in London for two weeks. As though against her...
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The Notebooks: 2
...novel The Shadow of the Third resumes in the yellow notebook. Patricia Brent recommends that Ella go to Paris for a week—she needs to free herself from Paul Tanner, who left...
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The next day, Ella visits the office of Monsieur Brun at Femme et Foyer. He is polite, if disinterested...
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Robert Brun is frustrated but gives up on trying to change Ella’s mind when he sees a woman who looks much like her approaching. To Ella’s surprise,...
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Ella decides to fly back at once and try and cure her heartbreak by writing another...
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An American man reading medical magazines nearby jokes with Ella about the plane, which they eventually board again, all ignoring the fact that the mechanics...
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Ella shares a taxi with the American, who invites her to dinner. She visits her son...
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It is Ella’s turn to talk about herself, but she feels that she “could not be described by...
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At the hotel, Cy makes his twenty calls and shows Ella a picture of his beautiful wife and five boys, about whom he is exuberant. She...
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Ella understands that “she would never come with this man” and realizes that her sexual integrity...
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Ella leaves, and the next evening they eat at the same restaurant, where Cy talks about...
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After sex, they discuss Cy’s specialty, leucotomies. Ella disapproves and mentions that she “once had an affair with a psychiatrist” who was averse...
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At home, Ella tells Julia that Cy was “very nice” and she will be “extremely depressed in the...
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The Notebooks: 3
...“The third” in the novel’s title used to be Paul Tanner’s wife, then it was Ella’s alter ego based on “fantasies about Paul’s wife,” then her memory of him, and now...
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Ella moves out of Julia’s flat, creating animosity between them. Ella realizes that Julia used to...
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Ella feels “more alone than she ever has been,” as her closest friendship has fallen into...
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Ella talks with Julia at a mutual friend’s house, and “their relations are chilly” until she...
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Ella gets four phone calls from men at work in the next few weeks and tells...
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Ella and one of the magazine’s subeditors, Jack, are coming up with articles about women’s emotional...
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Ella sleeps with Jack, who is “the efficient type of lover.” She feels tearful and blames...
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At lunch the next day, Ella nevertheless tells Julia about her experience and decision to stop having sex. She worries that...
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Ella starts going to parties again, and she meets a Canadian script-writer whose wife is “professionally...
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Ella finds Julia “sardonic rather than bitter.” Julia explains that the impotent actor has made another...
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For some time, Ella “becomes completely sexless” and no longer feels any desire, but understands that this is “the...
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Anna, who insists that she is Anna, declares that she is also Ella, but sometimes not Ella—she does not understand how “Ella separates herself from me and becomes...
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Ella thinks of a story: a woman gives up her whole life, emotional and professional, for...
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Ella thinks of another story that features a woman “over-ready for serious love,” and a man...
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Ella visits her father, who is as solitary and unchanging as always. Ella wonders what her...
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Ella’s father says that Ella was justification enough of his marriage. Family seems “pretty unreal” to...
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Alone, Ella remembers her mother running when her father kissed her; he spent his days alone with...
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Ella’s father thinks that Ella is especially wrong to demand happiness from life (he says it...
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The Golden Notebook
The projectionist runs through various films: Mashopi, then Paul Tanner and Ella, then Michael and Anna, Ella and Julia, Anna and Molly. He laughs when it says,...
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Anna wonders what it would take to fit Ella into this story; Ella would be more defensive now, and with Saul, she would be...
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