Diving into the wreck: The feminist novel of self-discovery (Doris Lessing, Zimbabwe, Erica Jong, Kate Millett, May Sarton, Margaret Drabble)

This dissertation concerns a number of writings generated by the feminist movement of the 1970s, concentrating primarily on the quasi-autobiographical "liberation novel" of the period. The first chapter serves as a general introduction to the feminist novel, with particular attention to the reception of novels by Doris Lessing and Erica Jong. I focus on these writers as a way of understanding popular ideas about the feminist novel, ideas which have proved crippling to serious study. This chapter also explores some of the genuinely innovative aspects of the feminist novel, its links to the feminist movement, and its reworking of traditional female themes such as marriage and motherhood.; The next section of the dissertation attempts to put the feminist novel, which nearly always borrows an autobiographical structure, into context by an extended discussion of autobiographical theory, with particular emphasis on a female autobiographical tradition. I then examine autobiographies by Kate Millett and May Sarton as representing the more experimental end of feminist writings from the seventies, especially in their treatment of sexuality.; The final chapter is devoted to a sustained look at the writings and career of Margaret Drabble, as a particularly distinguished novelist working within the genre of the feminist novel. The progression of Drabble's writings is traced alongside that of the feminist literary movement in general, the way her writing both participates in and, especially in its later moments, willfully divurges from this movement. I use this chapter to consider the significance of the feminist novel for later women writers.