This study, originally published in 1990, assesses a shift in the presentation of self-consciousness in two pairs of novels by Doris Lessing and Carmen Martin Gaite: 1) Lessing's The Summer Before the Dark (1973) and Martin Gaite's Retahilas (1974) and 2) Lessing's The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) and Martin Gaite's The Back Room (1978). Three major structural divisions facilitate examining implications of the novels for 1) feminism 2) literary narrative and 3) the lives of people-at-large.