Towards A Feminist Reading Of The Millstone

Margaret Drabble (1939- ) is now regarded as one of the most influential and prolific writers in contemporary English literature. She is the winner of the James Tait Black and the E. M. Forster awards. In 1980, she was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II. Although Drabble has gained the literary critics' spotlight and has a high reputation among readers all over the world, she is yet a new face to most of the Chinese.Drabble is best known for her depiction of life in Britain as well as her portrayal of women's issues in modern society. Under the influence of the feminist ideologies of the 1960s, Drabble consciously shows great concern for women's, especially intellectual women's fate and circumstances in a male-dominated society. She never ceases to write about women's worries and dilemmas, self-identity and self-fulfillment, suppressed status and promising future, in an effort to find an ideal way of life for contemporary women. Since her first novel A Summer Bird-Cage was published, Drabble has written about English women for four decades. She has recorded the conflicting sensibilities of the newly liberated, intellectual women in the course of their seeking their identity and place in the patriarchal world and expressed her sincere compliments on and great sympathy with them in her writing.The Millstone., Drabble's third story, published in 1965, is a story about a young academic and the issues she deals with in becoming an unmarried mother in the 1960s. The book brought Drabble the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize and was adapted as a film A Touch of Love for American audience in 1969. The protagonist Rosamund is a newly liberated woman. She is independent and successful in academics. Unexpectedly, after one and the only sexual experience, she turns out tobe pregnant and shoulders the responsibility of raising the baby alone. In the painstaking process of childbearing and rearing, Rosamund finds another world, in which she discovers her true self and the essence of maternity, and finally realizes her self-fulfillment.One of the most fundamental ideological components of the story is the portrayal of Rosamund's struggling with unmarried pregnancy within socio-cultural settings of male supremacy, and her perseverant pursuit of individuality, autonomy and self-realization by way of maternity. Based on feminist criticism, the thesis sets out to explore the protagonist Rosamund's female consciousness in The Millstone with the emphasis on analyzing her rebellious stance, self-reliance and competence as an unmarried mother in a patriarchal world. The thesis will also try to explore Rosamund's distressed and sentimental inner world in the course of her defiance against social preconception in an effort to disclose the predicament of intellectual women in a male-dominated world, and to call for more concern about women's situation.The thesis is structured as follows:The introduction gives an account of feminist criticism and Margaret Drabble's feminist thought. Chapter One analyses the protagonist Rosamund's female consciousness as manifested in her rebellious consciousness, self-reliance, and feminine competence in society. Chapter Two examines the transformation of Rosamund's female consciousness in the process of becoming a mother. From a rebellious and unworldly young scholar to a maturing mother, Rosamund undergoes a process of maturity and completes the most momentous changes in her life. Her maternal love for the baby, which is quite a new and different way to express her female consciousness, helps her find her real identity and accomplish her self-fulfillment. Chapter Three explores Rosamund's inner world. Rosamund's spiritual independence is based on herrepression of sexual desire and refusal to love; therefore, her feminist stance is doubtful. Chapter Four discusses Drabble's feminist writing from three aspects: her feminist subject, her creative method of subordinating male characters, and her narrative mode. Drabble daringly subverts the regulated roles of men a...