Woman's Quest for Survival: Margret Drabble's The Millstone

Abstract

This study deals with The Millstone (1965) which is a dramatic depiction of a single mother heroine in a classic predicament. This novel is considered as representative of the age in which it was written. The primary theme is her intense preoccupation with questions of fatalism and will. The work also involves, both explicitly and implicitly, feminist concerns. Because the central protagonist is a woman and the society in which she lives is depicted, accurately, as deeply patriarchal and class-bound, the problem of the individual's capacity for self-determination is inevitably tied to the feminist perspective.