Margaret Drabble

Margaret Drabble is primarily known as an English novelist, but is also a critic and biographer.

Her first novel, A Summer Birdcage (1963), was quickly followed by the publication of The Garrick Year (1964). This latter text uses the setting of the theatre, but also examines the workings of a marriage, and this has become a common theme in her fiction.

As the winner of the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, her third novel The Millstone (1965) marks the beginning of her acceptance, in terms of awards, by the literary world. Its first sentence encapsulates the psychology of Rosamund, the first person narrator: ‘My career has always been marked by a strange mixture of confidence and cowardice: almost, one might say, made by it.’ She is an unmarried mother in England in the mid 1960s and the novel traces her experiences of pregnancy and early motherhood. This work typically relies upon intelligent humour and looks at a kind of Englishness that is stereotypically, yet recognisably, middle class. Rosamund’s reticence, and her fear of offending others, is connected to her social position and liberal upbringing. Although this novel is of its era in that it attempts to challenge taboos such as illegitimacy, Rosamund’s characterisation also suggests that the ‘swinging Sixties’ were a myth for many. Her lack of desire for sex is explained as being related to her, ‘being at heart a Victorian’ and her pregnancy is, ‘the Victorian penalty’.

Jerusalem the Golden (1967), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction), was followed by The Waterfall (1969). The switch between first and third person throughout The Waterfall emphasises the anxiety of the central protagonist, Jane Gray. Jane’s detachment from her parents as a child and her later fear of intimacy alternates with her love for her cousin’s husband as an adult. The shift between the personal ‘I’ and impersonal ‘she’ evokes her emotional difficulties expertly. The sense of being adrift from others is also captured in the descriptions of her time at university: ‘ … I was always so afraid of being unable to return emotion that I never dared to arouse it.’ There is a constant re-negotiation of her irrational fears throughout the novel and this is mirrored in the shift in voices.

Joyce Carol Oates’ review of Drabble’s next novel, The Needle’s Eye (1972), is complimentary and offers a useful overview of some of her earlier work: ‘Each of Margaret Drabble’s novels has been an extraordinary leap forward: from the well-written, entertaining, but not disturbing The Garrick Year, to the moral ambiguities of The Millstone, to the rather strange, disturbing Jerusalem the Golden and its remorseless ‘survivor’, to the half-mad narrative of The Waterfall. Though I have admired Miss Drabble’s writing for years, I will admit that nothing she has written in the past quite prepared me for the depth and richness of The Needle’s Eye’ (The New York Times, 11 June 1972). 

The Realms of Gold (1975), The Ice Age (1977) and The Middle Ground (1980), were followed by the trilogy The Radiant Way (1987), A Natural Curiosity (1989) and The Gates of Ivory (1991). This trilogy is connected by the lives and relationships of three female friends who first meet at Cambridge.

Drabble’s prolific writing continued into the 1990s with The Witch of Exmoor (1996), and this was followed by The Peppered Moth (2001). In general terms, The Peppered Moth is a fictional account of four generations of women. The main setting is South Yorkshire, in a town called Breaseborough, and the impact of education and high expectations on Bessie Bawtry and her family in the early twentieth century is portrayed as filtering down the generations. The peppered moth of the title is a clue to the novel’s focus on heredity and surviving (or not) by adaptation.

It is not until the Afterword, however, that the reader learns that Drabble has at least partially drawn on her mother for this largely unsympathetic portrayal of Bessie. Bessie becomes embittered by the restrictions imposed on her in early to mid 20th-century England. Because of her gender and class position, she is limited in her options despite studying at Cambridge and this is seen to infect her relations with her husband and children. The examination of antagonistic mother/daughter relationships recurs in many of Drabble’s novels, as does an interest in the problems that arise when a woman has been educated to higher education standard, so this is not the first occasion that autobiographical material has been used in her fiction. In this instance, though, the autobiographical connection is made obvious for the reader.

Drabble continues to write novels prolifically as is evidenced by the publication of The Seven Sisters (2002), The Red Queen (2004), which is set in 18th-century Korea and the present, and The Sea Lady (2006).

As well as writing numerous works of fiction, she is also a highly regarded biographer of Arnold Bennett (1974) and Angus Wilson (1995). In addition, she has also edited the informative and academically respected The Oxford Companion to English Literature (in 1985 and 2000, with the fifth and sixth editions respectively).

In conclusion, Drabble’s fictions may be read as her own particular chronicles of 20th-century England. Her contribution to contemporary English literature has been commended with various literary awards and a CBE in 1980. More often than not, her novels are, on the surface, gentle investigations into the thoughts and emotions of female middle-class Englishness. It should also be remembered that her prose is incisive and often cutting in its humour and insights. Furthermore, her characters are made recognisable because of the unflinching way that she reveals certain uncomfortable truths. Selfishness, insecurity and loneliness are often returned to, as is the difficulty of finding happiness in relationships.

For an in-depth critical overview see Margaret Drabble by Glenda Leeming (Northcote House, 2003: Writers and their Work Series).

Dr Julie Ellam, 2007

'I sometimes ask myself whether I enjoy writing. The answer is yes, but a qualified yes. I only enjoy it when it's going well. Starting a new book is always hard work, and work that moreover for months feels pointless (why bother? why not do something else?) or ill-directed (why this subject? why not something more global, more domestic, less domestic?): I walk around, looking for plot, structure, characters, images, trying not to repeat or imitate or listen too much to the wrong voices. This is a dreary time, comfortless, irritable, unsatisfying. When the book begins to move, everything changes, and everything I see or hear or read seems to be part of, to contribute to the new pattern. This is exciting. It's the only time when I forget time. Past the half way mark, a novel almost writes itself. Events beget events, characters insist on seeing one another again, and I just sit and transcribe. I get quite cheerful and communicative. A strange process ...'