The Freudianism behind Margaret Drabble's fatalism: Repetition compulsion and the attempt at resolution in her fiction

Margaret Drabble has been widely recognized both for her preoccupation with fate, luck and coincidence, and for her belated, "Victorian" vision. While other critics have constructed thorough studies of Drabble's philosophy of fatalism, they have not delved into the psychology behind the author's philosophy. What is not assessed in these previous texts is the ways in which the author's theories of psychological determinism effect her heroines' lives and, in many cases, are compatible with much of Freud and his successors' psychoanalytic thinking. The purpose of this study, then, is to build on other critics' discussions of Drabble's fatalism by investigating the ways in which her vision resembles the Freudian tradition, either in theory or outcome, despite the author's claim to the contrary.; In his 1914 essay "Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through," Freud observes that several of his analysands compulsively returned to unpleasant experiences from their early childhood and acted out these experiences repeatedly. Freud's theories attest to a psychological determinism; he believes that internal issues of one's childhood establish a person's life and that only through the difficult process of psychoanalysis can one change. However, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920); Freud himself conceded that, even for the normal person, repetition serves an impulse to work over in the mind an unpleasurable experience in order to master it. Drabble, by reiterating the same themes for decades, has exhibited her desire to resolve obsessive problems which are rooted in her own unhappy childhood: notably, her wish for more accessible parents and for a less rejecting older sister. We can discern how the author transfers her most ardent wishes into her fiction; each heroine feels the need to resolve her neurotic conflicts and troubled relationships with her family. Through the constant repetition of themes, the author discovers solutions--often "magical" ones--to help each character relieve her angst and live within her own limitations, if not analytically to solve her problems.