On Women's Self-fulfillment In Margaret Drabble's Three Novels

With the development of Feminist Movement,the new intellectual women have inevitably encountered some new predicaments and problems,which are quite different from what the old-time women encountered many years ago.After three waves of Feminist Movements,women certainly obtained their rights and status both within the family and in the society.However,they have to face up with the new situations and cope with new problems.As an intellectual woman and the renowned contemporary English female novelist,Margaret Drabble pays her attention to the living situation of the new intellectual women.Many of her novels are about intellectual women who are living in this modern dilemma.She describes some young girls who newly entered college,and some others who just graduated from college and come into the society;and she also deals with middle-aged women who meet the problems of their marriage and their career.This thesis chooses her three typical novels,A Summer Bird-Cage,Jerusalem the Golden and The Radiant Way as the source materials for the analysis of intellectual women's different dilemmas and their self-fulfillment from different levels.That is,family relationship,gender relationship and women's self-fulfillment and self-realization in the society.By employing Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs,this thesis studies the importance and the necessities of women's fulfillment in family relationship,gender relationship and social relationship.Then,by adopting American Feminist thinker Betty Friedan's theory of women's self-realization in Feminine Mystique,this thesis analyzes the importance of women's self-fulfillment in the society,especially women's special contribution to the society.Through the researches of all those problems and predicaments in the contemporary intellectual women's life,the progresses of their self-fulfillment have been discovered.At first,they shake off the bondage of their original family and then build a nuclear family of their own,and at last,they fulfill and realize themselves fully in the society.They have finally found that they could not truly realize themselves until they could redress the balance and reconcile with all the relationships.