A Study Of Motherhood In Margaret Drabble’s Novel The Red Queen

Margaret Drabble(1939-) is one of the preeminent female writers in contemporary British literature. In her early writing, Margaret Drabble lays her emphasis on the articulate, intelligent and career-minded protagonists and on their familial relationships between husbands and wives, between sisters and between mothers and daughters. Nevertheless, in her the sixteenth novel, The Red Queen, Margaret Drabble’s viewpoint has been widened and expanded from these matters to the soul, the misfortune, the trans-cultural understanding, the interplay of fate and chance, and above all maternity. Maternity is a significant and unique experience for most females, which has a close relevance to females’ emotion and living surroundings. However, up to now, Margaret Drabble and her novels’ maternity have not received wide attention from scholars and critics at home and abroad. Therefore this thesis attempts to analyze the patriarchal kingdom and its influence on mother characters in The Red Queen with adoption of feminism, furthermore dwelling on the mother characters from the perspective of motherhood.Six parts constitute the main body of the thesis, with the first part as an introduction to Margaret Drabble and her works; brief introduction to the novel; research significance and thesis structure are also included. Chapter two refers to literature review both at home and abroad of the studies on her works and introduction to research foundation of the thesis. Chapter three mainly analyzes English female writers’ impact on Margaret Drabble’ thought of maternity. Chapter four presents the kingdom of males and their relationships with mother characters to expound the effect of patriarchy on maternity. Chapter five is the analysis of mother images in The Red Queen and thus to explore the helplessness, the re-awakening, the survival and responsibility from maternity and the different times but the same voice. Chapter six comes to the conclusion, which briefly makes a summary of Margaret Drabble’s maternal love theme in writing of The Red Queen.