Margaret Drabble’s Novels: The Narrative of Identity

Margaret Drabble’s Novels: The Narrative of Identity examines women’s lives and how women endeavour to affect alternatives on traditional gender roles. Drabble is one of the most important novelists to deal with the question of women’s subjectivity. As a responsible social being she has made use of literary articulation in discovering the quintessence of women’s freedom. The development of her narrative technique from first person to alternating narration followed by an omniscient narrator projects her own maturity and growth as a woman and a writer in exploring the female aesthetics. Margaret Drabble’s novels project her concern on issues that are diverse: woman’s entrapment, her needs, reproductive freedom, motherhood, fulfillment, sexual violation, health and contemporary society- a socially realistic perspective. Thus the novels provide a cohesive frame work for current issues that have influenced and continue to influence women’s lives and the society at large. This book is an insightful reading for those interested in studying the problem of the sensitive and disillusioned modern woman in search of her space and the choices she makes. Drabble’s achievement lies in her protagonists search for identity in their lived experience which opens up the possibility for alterity in women’s lives. These possibilities claim human wholeness for them.