A Freudian Reading Of Margaret Drabble's The Millstone

Margaret Drabble is a famous English novelist in the contemporary literary field. The first period of her novels concentrates on the women's life and environments. Later her novels pay more attention to the politics, society and the like. After her third novel The Millstone is published, it receives great backwash and wins the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. To The Millstone, some critics admire the heroine Rosamund's maternity, which makes her return to the real world. Others argue the feminist thought of Rosamund in the patriarchal world. This thesis attempts to use Freudian personality theory to explain the unconscious motivation of the main character Rosamund and the conflicts of the id, ego and superego in her inner world, in order to explore the personality of Rosamund and know more about her.This thesis mainly contains three parts. The first part is an introduction mainly to present Margaret Drabble and her novels, literature review, research motivation and the organization of the thesis. The second part, which is divided into three chapters, gives an in-depth analysis of The Millstone in light of the Freudian theory. Chapter one briefly reviews Freud's psychoanalytic theory, which includes the basic constructs, and the feasibility of Freud's psychoanalytic theory. Chapter two illustrates the conflicts within Rosamund's id, ego and superego, showing the unbalanced personality of Rosamund. Chapter three tries to analyze Rosamund's unconscious quest for a balanced personality during the three periods: the pregnancy, the childbirth and the motherhood. The last part reveals that the heroine Rosamond goes out of self-isolation and changes from a split self to an integrated self after pregnancy. It is easier to understand the internal conflicts and psychological changes of Rosamund in The Millstone by applying Freudian theory. In a sense, this thesis also provides a new perspective for the interpretation of this novel.