num_pages: 447
description: "A totally modern work. Martha Quest is, above all, ironically percieved by the author in whose hands irony is an instrument of compassion." —  New Republic An unconventional woman trapped in a conventional marriage, Martha Quest struggles to maintain her dignity and her sanity through the misunderstandings, frustrations, infidelities, and degrading violence of a failing marriage. Finally, she must make the heartbreaking choice of whether to sacrifice her child as she turns her back on marriage and security. A Proper Marriage is the second novel in Doris Lessing's classic Children of Violence series of novels, each a masterpiece on its own right, and, taken together, an incisive and all-encompassing vision of our world in the twentieth century.
language: English
title: A Proper Marriage
titlecomplete: A Proper Marriage
genres: Fiction, 20th Century, Classics, British Literature, Nobel Prize, Zimbabwe, Africa, Feminism, Literature, Novels
ratings_count: 1148
series: Children of Violence
publisher: Harper Perennial