An Existentialist Feminist Interpretation Of Margaret Drabble's The Millstone, The Waterfall And The Needle's Eye

The focus of this thesis is laid on the analysis of three novels of Margaret Drabble's early works, The Millstone, The Waterfall and The Needle's Eye, in the light of Simone de Beauvoir's existentialist feminist theories. Under the influence of the feminist ideologies of the 1960s, especially that of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, Margaret Drabble consciously shows in her early novels great concerns for women's situation in a patriarchal society.These three novels can be considered as a trilogy, as the protagonists are all women faced with the predicaments of being an autonomous and transcendent subject, and yet trapped by the snares of patriarchal institutions. Through the trilogy, Drabble attempts to prove the possibilities for women to reach their real transcendences and balances between career and motherhood, between sexual love and independence, between natural self and internalized religious mandates.The thesis is structured as follows:Chapter one takes a brief review of Margaret Drabble and her works, with particular attention to those three novels concerned. Chapter two gives an account of de Beauvoir's existentialist feminist theories, followed by its influence on Drabble and her own feminist ideology. Chapter three analyses the predicament of the protagonist of The Millstone, who is so afraid of becoming the "Other" that she retains her independence at the expense of her denial of love for man, and explores her transcendence of balance between self-reliance and maternity. Chapter four discusses the predicament of the protagonist of The Waterfall, who is confined passively as the "Other" in the feminine roles of a wife and mother, and presents her transcendence of living autonomously on the boundary of the patriarchal institution of family. Chapter five examines the predicament of the protagonist of The Needle's Eye, who is defined as the "Other" by the hypostatized God, and celebrates her transcendence of exorcizing the hypostatized God, accepting her nature and living independently on the boundary of the patriarchal religion. Through an existentialist feminist interpretation of the trilogy, the thesis concludes that greatly influenced by de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, Drabble has been exploring its implications in the trilogy. Yet, in contrast to de Beauvoir's pessimistic view for a woman to be an autonomous and transcendent subject, Drabble is more optimistic. She believes that women can refuse to be defined by those roles patriarchy has assigned them, even within the patriarchal institution itself, and regard themselves as whole, authentic, fully existent human beings.