The Golden Notebook: Free Women: 1 Summary & Analysis

“The two women were alone in the London flat,” and Anna tells Molly that “everything’s cracking up.” Molly reports that Richard is about to visit, probably to chat about “another crisis with Marion.” In the past, Anna left whenever Richard was coming, for they did not like each other—but Molly now insists that “he rather likes you,” or at least that “he’s committed to liking me, on principle.” Anna remarks that people see them as “practically interchangeable,” and Molly wonders how her friend hadn’t realized this earlier. But, in reality, they are quite different: Molly is the “worldly-wise” one, while Anna is the one with “a superiority of talent.”

Molly suggests that, despite their differences, people tend to see them as the same because they are both unmarried. Anna angrily remarks that they are “free women,” defined by the world in terms of their relationships with men. Molly suggests that they define others in the same way and decides that they are “a completely new type of woman.” “There’s nothing new under the sun,” Anna responds in the German accent of their psychoanalyst, Mrs Marks. They call Mrs Marks “Mother Sugar” because of her “traditional, rooted, conservative” mindset.

Anna insists she cannot go back to Mrs Marks, with “all that damned art all over the place,” but Molly wonders if this might explain why Anna had not written anything at all during Molly’s yearlong absence. Anna is “throw[ing] that talent away,” Molly insists. They both want to get married, although Molly thinks it would be wrong for Anna, who asks for a beer—Marion had been coming over to Anna’s for beer, in fact, and Molly wants to know the whole story, and especially whether Richard had been coming over, too.

Both the children of 1920s intellectuals, Richard and Molly had been married for a few months, years ago, and had one son, Tommy. Richard then remarried Marion and had three boys, and later they all became friends. During Molly’s absence, Richard came to visit Anna to ask about Tommy’s brooding—in fact, he came “about five or six times,” Anna reports, and Molly grows furious. But he and Marion came of their own accord, Anna insists, simply because “we seem to play the same role for people.” There is a much longer story, but she cannot tell it yet. She does mention that Marion has been drinking.

Molly is “tallish” and “big-boned,” but looks “slight, and even boyish” because of her clever fashion sense—she loves playing different characters in different social contexts. But Anna is happy being her “small, thin, dark, brittle” self, although she is shy and tends to take a back seat to Molly in public. Increasingly, though, Anna has begun taking the lead in their private friendship. Yet Molly thrives on arguments, which devastates Anna. They know from Mother Sugar “that they were both ‘insecure’ and ‘unrooted,’” but Anna had started taking this as a point of pride—although now she worries she was deeply “scared of being alone in what I feel.”

Out of the first-floor window, Anna and Molly watch the milkman unload his bottles with his son, who has recently won a scholarship, securing a place in the middle class—the milkman is “one of those bloody working class tories,” Molly explains, and criticizes her own son for not “see[ing] his way forward.” Indeed, Tommy has spent the last three days sitting on his bed, thinking. Anna and Molly smile in envy at how the milkman and his son appear to work with a “perfect understanding,” but Anna says they should be comfortable with the consequences of raising their children alone. Molly runs outside to buy strawberries from a cart-man; after a brief argument about the price, she invites him inside, but he refuses; Anna tells Molly that she “hurt his feelings,” but Molly shrugs it off, and they have the strawberries with cream and red wine.

Richard comes to the door; Molly tosses down the key and he comes in, overdressed in sports clothes as always (even though he never plays sports). He remarks on Anna’s presence and asks about Tommy, criticizing Molly’s lack of discipline with him. There is an awkward pause, and the narrator summarizes Molly and Richard’s history: while both were protesting the emerging Spanish dictatorship in 1935, Molly housed Richard after his family threw him out because of his political leanings and decision to become a writer. After a couple years, Richard disavowed leftist politics and met Marion, winning back the respect of his family, who then sent him to “a job in the city.” Molly had tried her hand at dance, journalism, cultural work in the communist party, and acting, before accepting that “she was essentially a dilettante” and taking pride in her refusal to accept “a safe marriage.”

Molly and Richard still argue about Tommy—especially after she left him at home for a year while she traveled around Europe. Anna says she supports Molly’s decision to give Tommy space to grow, and Richard backs off slightly, but still laments Tommy’s refusal to accept any of the help he offers. Molly has no objections, but notes that Tommy “knows all kinds” of people while Richard’s children are destined to remain in the “little fishpond of the upper class.” Anna tries to quell the argument, suggests that Tommy might hear them, and even threatens to leave as Molly accuses Richard of being anti-Semitic.

Anna did get Molly and Richard to agree that he should give Tommy a job in “one of your things,” but Molly insists that Tommy would have to agree to it, and implies that he wouldn’t—Richard interjects, complaining that Tommy has “been surrounded half his life with communists,” many of whom have left or are leaving the party. The argument swiftly turns to politics, as Richard and Molly deride one another’s lifestyles (she is admittedly broke, but he is an “empty and stupid” businessman). Anna and Molly agree that Richard should find Tommy “something constructive” to do.

Richard calls Anna and Molly “extraordinarily naïve” and they joke about his business—Anna has learned he is much more of a bigshot than they had thought, but Molly scarcely cares. They are “a couple of savages,” he retorts, “ignorant as monkeys about economics,” which he thinks they are wrong to despise—but they do not despise economics, they imply, they despise him. Richard furiously tells Anna that, despite “the privilege of getting to know you better,” he still has little sense that she knows what she wanted; she replies that he perhaps dislikes how she knows exactly what she wanted, and “when to refuse.” This confirms Molly’s suspicions, but she appreciates Anna’s rudeness.

Molly asks about Marion—Anna reveals that Marion, too, had visited her, but Richard has nothing to say. Anna and Molly lament how Richard “makes [Marion] feel stupid,” and how he started cheating on her as soon as she had their first child, thirteen years before—he had originally come to Molly, who refused him, but still found “a succession of girls ever since, and Marion has known about them all.” However, when Marion found another man for herself, Richard “got all moral, rampaging like an Old Testament prophet” and then tried to seduce Marion until she gave up her other man for him. Once he won Marion over, Richard promptly lost interest in her again and went back to having flings with his secretaries.

Anna reveals that Richard visited to ask whether he should “send Marion away to some home or something,” because her drinking was affecting the children. He implores Molly to talk to Marion, to do “anything” to “stop her drinking,” and Molly wonders why he does not do something himself. He took Marion to Italy, he remarked, and admittedly she didn’t drink, but only because of their “bargain—I won’t drink if you don’t look at girls.” With her “watching me like a jailor,” Richard “couldn’t get a hard on” during or after the trip, and now their efforts at politeness are undercut by suspicion. All the marriages he has seen have failed, he insists, and Anna and Molly have no right to judge from “the sidelines.” His difficulty getting an erection is an emotional problem, they insist, not a purely “physical” one. “You should have loved her,” Anna declares.

Returning to their original topic of conversation, Richard suggests that Tommy stay with him and Marion, and then Tommy walks in, takes some strawberries, and asks, “And how is Marion?” He has been listening, and in fact he had coffee with Marion the previous day, when “she seemed in a pretty bad way.” He looks like his father, but holds his anger and stubbornness inside instead of wearing it on his face. He sometimes tells his mother it was “bad luck” to have her personality and his father’s looks, rather than the other way around. Everyone falls silent and watches Tommy eat his berries—Anna feels that he is bullying them and is soon convinced that he listened to the whole conversation through the door.

Of course, Tommy has been listening, and he summarily turns down the offer of a job with his father. He cannot “live like them” and asks why his mother would suddenly think he should after bringing him up “to believe in certain things.” He “wouldn’t mind being like” Molly and Anna, even though they are often “in such a mess.” At least they are not defined by what they do; they are “several things,” and flexible people, whereas Richard could “never be different.” They are all unhappy, but Anna and Molly are “much happier than my father. Let alone Marion.” Anna mentions “how judged you make us feel,” but Tommy affirms that he would “rather be a failure, like you, than succeed and all that sort of thing. But I’m not saying I’m choosing failure.” He knows “what I don’t want, but not what I do want.”

Tommy suggests that he might become a writer, but does not have Anna’s “complicated ideas” about it. He thinks her problem is either her loneliness—her fear of exposing her beliefs about the world—or else contempt. She complains about politicians who lie but writes whole books in secret. She is pained and ultimately admits that she does not want to spread her “awful feeling of disgust, of futility.” Even though she laments how socialists “wouldn’t take moral responsibility” anymore, Tommy insists that Anna would not, either. Anna jokes that spreading her negative emotions might be irresponsible, and Tommy gives up. He insists he would “like to go on doing nothing for a month or two,” and Richard leaves, promising to “drop in one of these days.” Tommy returns to his room, leaving Anna and Molly alone.

“It seems a lot of things have been going on while I was away,” starts Molly. Anna explains that she is not having a mere “artistic problem,” but that her notebooks are full of “chaos.” Molly asks why Anna cannot write just another novel—she is angry that Anna can “fritter [herself] away” like so many others. Anna mentions a painter who declared he would “never paint again […] because the world is so chaotic art is irrelevant.” Molly asks what Anna might do when the money from her first novel runs out—pained at the difficulty of every conversation, Anna admits that she might need to get a job.

Molly asks about the last year, which Anna admits was full of “complicated living,” including a near-affair with Richard—he brought her to a tedious, terrifying dinner with other businesspeople and their “popsies.” Afterward, she thought, “he’s no worse than some of the morons I’ve slept with,” feeling “that awkward moral exhaustion, what the hell does it matter?” Richard noticed, got up, and declared that he had to go home—three times, for he expected her to beg him to stay. She simply bid him goodnight, and he insulted her looks—of course, he would have complemented them had she invited him to bed. He reminded her that he was “a very virile man,” but she called him “an awful bore” and sent him off. Laughing, Molly goes to the kitchen—Anna follows her, and they turn to gossip.

“Everything’s the same,” Anna insists in the white kitchen, “crammed with order” and covered in steam from the roast in the oven. Molly remarks that England is “worse than usual,” so utterly boring, that she wants to leave again at once. The men in England are stuck-up and self-conscious, unlike in Europe, where life is easier—Anna suggests that they just know England better, with all its faults, and wonders whether she should even stay for lunch, which would mean subjecting herself to a day-long “what’s-wrong-with-men session” that would still end in “a sudden resentment, a rancor—because after all, our real loyalties are always to men, and not to women…”

They decide to skip over “the comrades,” except for a choice few, who wrote three nearly identical, angry letters complaining about Anna’s criticism of the Soviets, on three separate occasions. Many Party members have quit—Molly scarcely cares about politics anymore, either. They chat briefly about the Americans in London, Tom Mathlong, and Molly’s old friend De Silva, who went home to Ceylon, left his wife there, and returned to London (although “Anna found herself unable to tell what had happened” when she met him).

Molly also asks about Anna herself—she had a visit from Michael, with whom she had broken up three years prior after living together for five years. He made a joke about their friend Dick deciding whether to bring his mistress with him to Ghana, before awkwardly remembering that Anna had been his own mistress. Anna asks whether “we made a mistake” by letting their marriages, relationships, and political commitments fail, then just saying, “we made a mistake, too bad.” But she wonders whether “things can happen to us so bad that we don’t ever get over them?” Anna and Molly never admit failure, but “it might be better for us if we did.” Molly brushes her off, saying “this is simply because of Michael,” and Anna decides to head home.

Anna walks back to her five-room flat, where Michael persuaded her to live (instead of with Molly). She rents a room to two students (one has since moved out) and leaves one for her daughter Janet, who is in school. She and Michael occupied two more, until he left and she moved into the living room. She still makes irregular income from her best-selling novel Frontiers of War. “This was the framework of Anna’s life,” but she is only truly “herself” when she is alone in her room, which had books, papers, and typewriter piled around the bed, and her four notebooks in the drawer, which (after closing the curtains) she lays atop her trestle table and gazes upon from above.