The Essence of Humanity
--comments on The Diary of Jane Somers
 
Gladly, I make it through the first part of the book, The Diary of a Good Neighbor. As I read the book, complex feelings arise, sometimes I immerse in the warmly story which moves me deeply, while others only resulted with annoyance and depression, especially when I was in bad mood. It’s because of the writing style of the author, which is narrated by first person, named Jane Somers, which makes readers fully involved in the process of plot. As for the second part, if the Old could……, it’s a pity that I haven’t yet spent time on it, or I’ll catch more from this book.
The book’s writer is Doris Lessing, who is well known for her various writing styles. This time, she chooses to finish writing this book in the style of keeping diaries. It’s said that Lessing just want to make jokes on readers to see whether her changeable writing styles can be recognized by others, so her aliases Jane Somers. Whatever her works being published, there will be a profound repercussion or argument, the same to The Diary of Jane Somers.
Without reservation, I applaud the care Lessing takes to describe old age and it’s implications for both of the individual and society, this book takes time to get it through, for it doesn’t really have a discernible plot. I also find the main character to be on the annoying side. I think the most important reason for me to feel sick about some squalor plot describing Jane’s friends and relatives is that I’m not enough old, I haven’t get touch with those opposite side in the society. Looking through the eyes of such an ignorant girl like me, this book may not have much value, but I can faintly realize Lessing’s concerning about old people and showing sympathy for this old widow, there is also a tight bond called friendship between them.
Women are out of enchantment when they become old, what they need to do is to turn an optimistic attitude toward life when they have retired because of aging. Maudie Fowler represents the increasing number of elderly who becomes old, poor and lives alone. So they need to befriend with someone to set up their confidence to face with the problems meet in their remaining lives. The old need society’s support, what they need is to enjoy the happiness and live a piece life. Maudie Fowler, an old lady of over ninety whom suffers from poverty and loneliness. Before Jane comes across with her, she has to manage life all by herself, maybe there are a lot of problems she has to deal with, until Jane comes into her life, her dark world is lightened by this good neighbor’s solicitude.
To some degrees, it represents a social phenomenon that the old are abandoned by society at Lessing’s time. It’s an impassioned protest against the way our society treats the old. When I read the book, general appearance of a picture appears before my eyes, a kindhearted mother has been working all her life to support her family but end up with sorrowful unhappiness, casted aside by her son. Unpleasant feelings always occur when I come across these words describing the loneliness and hardness of Maudie, they make me feel sick. I don’t want to dwell on how I hate endless introspection in novels, or maybe it’s the success of this work. It’s the written as a first-person, diary-like narrative that makes us fully understand the dirty, tumbled-down life of Maudie Fowler, causing our resonance for these needy souls.
At the beginning of this book, we can see a classical and cautious, conservative and careful, impeccably turned-out editor of a trendy London magazine, Janna. However successful in her career, she seems to pay little attention to her family. She tends to have no sentiment for her husband, Freddie. And in her diaries, I can hardly find the word “husband”; it takes a lot of time for me to make sure Janna’s relationship with Freddie. When Freddie suffers from cancer and is sent into hospital, although Jane goes every day, she only sits there with a smile. She doesn’t have the sense that she’s going to lose her husband! I have the experience of losing an important people in my life, what I can think of is hoping something I can do to help even at the price of losing my own life. On the contrary, Janna is quite indifference, although she finds that she is missing her husband so such after he dies, Janna still pays little attention to her mother’s illness. She can’t stand physical awfulness. She is a crazy writer who cares more about her work rather than her family. She has no child, and rarely communicating with her husband, we can say that she is apathetic in emotion and lives a boring single life till old.
The situation begins to change when Jane Somers meet Maudie Fowler in the street. Her husband and her mother’s death makes her thinking a lot, she wants to behave like a human being, she wants to know what is called emotions, she decides to learn something else. She sees an advertisement in the paper,” Would you like to be friend an old person?” And then Jane is in the chemist’s and this happens. She sees this old lady passing the pavement, takes one step, then paused, examined the pavement then another step. It totally touches Janna who always rushes along the pavement everyday, usually fly along. They are living two extremely different lives. This makes Janna thinks a lot, and makes me think more. The story becomes so visual that I find it’s unable for me to put it down. I am eager to know how Janna will behave when she finds the difference between the different lives they live.
When Janna is allowed to come to Maudie’s house, the awful smell makes her heart and stomach sick. Janna is appalled by the living condition of the poverty and loneliness of many old people, particularly working-class women like Maudie. I can hardly imagine what feelings possessed by Janna, disgusted? Sympathized? or complaining? Nevertheless, Janna begins her new life with this old woman. But how far would she go to help a stranger? Will she quit helping one day because of her busy work? What problems they will come across with? All these doubts drive me to go on reading.
With the development of their friendship, Janna offers to wash for Maudie. We can imagine that it’s not an easy work for adult to wash body for another adult, especially for Janna, such a successful woman, to wash body for Maudie, who is full of pride and dignity. Both of them feel shameful when Janna washes the most important parts of the body. Although some of the words in Janna’s diary make me feel disgusting, I really think highly of Jane’s courage and persistence to do such an unpleasant work, she’s indeed a good neighbor. We can see a warming scene when Jane takes care of the old, she’s becoming conscious of caring about others rather than ignoring him or her. The deepest thankfulness comes into my mind. Janna starts to introspect herself, about what she really cares about, her life has been working since she is nineteen, and always for the magazine, she has taken it for granted, she doesn’t regard it as life. Sometimes she works too late and don’t spend time with Maudie, she feels guilty and always trying to make it up. Sometimes it makes Maudie angry but immediately, Maudie becomes happy again. Maybe it’s the strength of friendship that makes them interact with each other, understand each other and forgive the mistakes made by each other.
Apart from Maudie, another person called Joyce also occurs in Jane’s life. Joyce is her workmates, also suffers problems from her family and going to divorce with her husband. As Joyce’s friend, Jane makes her efforts to give Joyce suggestions, but don’t dare to take the responsibility of making the decision for them to divorce. In Jane’s eyes, work is the most important thing in her life; it does not matter much to divorce if Joyce and her husband can’t solve the problem of leaving for America or staying for her job. Joyce is such a person can’t make up decisions and is confused, she can do nothing but ends up with excessive drinking. Jane’s friendship with Joyce is another one different from that with Maudie. No man can be happy without a friend, nor be sure of his friend till he is unhappy. Joyce is always unhappy, she calls on Jane when she faces problems; she is selfish, she divides pain into two parts, which makes Jane be in bad mood most of the time. But they are workmates, Jane can’t finish the job all by herself in the office, she needs Joyce. It’s the base of their friendship, not steady enough.
As time goes by, Maudie becomes older and older. She also gets a cancer, she wakes inside a black smothering weight, she can’t breathe, can’t move. This time, all her mind is filled with Janna. How she wish Janna will come and help her, or take her home to be taken care of. Though she is more prefer to stay in her own house. She can’t manage herself and her bowl is out of control. Lonely, dirty and poor image of Maudie comes in my mind. Jane, however, is busy doing her work. Maudie blesses to the God, hoping Jane to come, then she will approve all her request, she will let Jane drive, sitting in the rose garden, crooning with delight. But who knows? Immediately, it changes my mind and influences forever the way I look at older people. Sometimes the old seem to be rude to us and reject our support, which are all because that they are not feeling safety; they think it may show weakness in our adults’ minds. However, they are really lonely and need our attentive caring. The author’s painstaking description is so moving that I can’t help considering. It reminds me of the coming bad old days of myself, and I strongly suggest the importance of friends, with this dreadful social sickness, the one who remains behind you is the true friend, who deserves your remember.
In Maudie’s opinion, Janna has become the only person she wants to get along with. When Jane told her to have a nurse at home, all of them are refused by Maudie and being treated badly. Maudie says she doesn’t want to be washed by a nurse, who is black, too young, too old, white, and with hard hands or cold hands—who is not Janna. Yes, Janna has become part of Maudie’s life, she realizes her importance in someone’s life and has the eagerness to help others rather than ignorance.
When Jane takes Maudie to visit her sister, she is not so friendly to Maudie. The old is not so welcomed by her relatives, I can’t understand why she should be treated like that. They are born with a same mother, why their relationships become cold and detached because of distance? Her family members’ attitude towards Maudie is more serious than others. Jane loves Maudie, she couldn’t bear it when she sits beside. Jane can spend all afternoon staying with her. We can say that Maudie has an important status in Janna’s heart. Sometimes Maudie is troublesome, which drives Janna crazy that she curses Maudie to die. “Oh God, if only Maudie would die, if only she would.” But of cause she knows that it is quite wrong. Janna’s fury after Maudie’s death—“I’m so angry, I would die of it”, she says—is an expression of moral outrage at the failure of our civilization to care for the old.
With simple and understandable phrases, the author offers a highly suggestive exploration of the aging procession; the author offers a highly suggestive exploration of the aging process and its complex relations with identity, the body and decay, and abjection. People like Maudie, perhaps the hope for them to live in their process of aging, is that they know they have the ability to live alone. Maudie hates being treated as a little girl; she is so full of pride and dignity that she refuses any forms of home help. She is afraid of being sent to the hospital. In the eyes of the old, hospital is such a terrible place that most people end their lives in it. As a result, they will try their best to avoid stepping into the place where filled with horrible dream. Actually, it’s their illness that makes them come to the end of their lives, we human beings will not have eternal lives. But what’s the reason makes Maudie so frightened with hospital. We can obviously find that, it’s the lacking of social loving towards the old people. In Maudie’s last few years when she becomes old, she must has suffered despising, spurning and detesting because of her dirty, fierce and angry figure. It’s a social phenomenon in England in the 20th century, but what is presented in China. In China, old people always stay with their grandsons and live happy lives. However, in the western countries, parents live alone after their children grown up and become adults. Children don’t have the responsibility to support their parents. Such makes the relationship between people result with ignorance and indifference. We do say that some groups of people don’t have the willing to support their parents in China, and it indeed create series of problems in society; however, the optimistic influence to the society is undeniable. Let’s return to the realistic settings of the novel, though Janna has a horror of commitment and unpleasant scenes, she grows spiritually while caring for this aged homeless woman she meet on the street. Maudie’s miserable experiences shocks Janna a lot, she begins to look back the amount of days she has get through, she learns how to befriends with others and knows the true meaning of friendship. Englishmen seem to be growing conservative, Janna doesn’t express her love to Maudie with words bur through actual action. A friend may well be reckoned the master piece of nature, their emotions are revealed smoothly in Jane’s diaries.
This book might be one I would appreciate more if I am older. However, I don’t think I will read it again when I becomes older for things she describes are so subtle and annoying. As far as I can reach is having the understanding of the friendship between Maudie and Janna, and sense the social situation where the old are being looked down upon. The meticulously writing of the person’s inner world makes me fully observe through the lens of personal experience. The author has the ability to distill the essence of personalities and character, bring them into focus so that you feel like you are inhabited their skins while you read. Hope that that some kind of social welfare assistance will be doled out to those people, giving the maximum number of people a maximum chance for happiness, no matter in Doris Lessing’s time or at present. So we can enjoy the essence of humanity and live in a harmonious society.