Representations of women in Margaret Drabble's early fiction

Academic and non-academic criticism on Drabble's early work tends to focus on the author's explorations of the female experience in the modern world, including her awareness of the anxieties of female authorship, the problems of the modern female artist in relation to the "authentic" self, and to the feminine "constructs" of patriarchal literature, in short, the question of the "truth value" of fictive reality in rendering the female condition. These critics concern themselves with such themes as the ways in which modern society appears to offer emancipation and equality to women, without any really worthwhile context in which to cultivate these new freedoms--and which still, in reality, involve both injustice and violence to women's natures and sensibilities. However, although Margaret Drabble structures her early novels around feminine problems: the confinements of cultural conditioning, the difficulties of sexual intimacy and parenthood, and the question of professional survival, her treatment of these themes is not strictly or uncritically feminist. Through her representation of women, Drabble shows the ways in which injury to women's natures and talents.; These early novels might, in fact, be titled, "To be or not to be--a Feminist", as Drabble constantly directs the readers' attention to the characters' frequently debilitating, and certainly confusing attempt to reconcile the practical and moral implications of feminism to their own lives. From A Summer Bird-Cage to The Needle's Eye Drabble examines the tension that exists within women characters who strive for personal and professional development, but whose accomplishments are not wholly in sync with the "valid" markers of female autonomy as defined by certain schools of feminist thought. For example, through her depiction of Rosamund Stacey in The Millstone, Drabble illumines some of the dilemmas of the professional woman, including the often tyrannical assumption that the modern career woman must be "liberated" in all facets of her life, and particularly in her sexual ethos and practices. Although Drabble recognizes the historical limitations put on women, including the mandate for chastity, she also exposes some of the myths surrounding female oppression, especially such assumptions of certain feminist ideologies as "the female as victim" and "patriarchy as culprit."...