MARGARET DRABBLE’S “THE MILLSTONE” ANALYSIS 1

Social privilege, feminism and sexual independence in Margaret Drabble’s “The Millstone”.
COMPLUTENSE UNIVERSITY OF MADRID

FACULTY OF PHILOLOGY
DEGREE IN ENGLISH STUDIES
INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY TEXTS IN ENGLISH – GROUP A
PROFESSOR: MARGARITA ARDANAZ MORÁN
MARGARET DRABBLE’S “THE MILLSTONE” ANALYSIS 2
Social privilege, feminism and sexual independence in Margaret Drabble’s “The Millstone”.

Brief synopsis and context

Margaret Drabble’s third novel, The Millstone, revolves around its central character,

Rosamund Stacey, a doctoral student who is researching 16th century English poetry while living

in her parents grand London flat, who are away for a couple of years in Africa. Rosamund,

unlike most of her women friends, is still a virgin. Then, one evening, she finds herself having

sex with a kind, gentle, quite possibly gay BBC radio announcer called George. Although it

happened once, Rosamund gets pregnant and suddenly faces a thicket of decisions. She debates

whether she should have an abortion or continue with the pregnancy and have the child adopted.

She also finds herself in the predicament of seeking advice, since Drabble depicts Rosamund as a

very diffident person who hates asking anyone for help, especially George. As stated, The

Millstone deals with the topic of abortion, which was decriminalized only two years after the

publication of the novel in 1965, [CITATION Abo67 \y \l 3082 ] and it also shows the reader the

inner workings of the British National Health Service of the time. Around the same time,

Drabble’s fellow writer, Nell Dunn, also explored the topic of abortions with backstreet

abortionists in a collection of short stories called Up the Junction, however, from the point of

view of women who went for illegal abortions because they had nothing and could not raise their

children in hard circumstances.

Social privilege in 1965 Britain

An aspect in Drabble’s style is the clever observations she makes on society, which many

consider to be “borne out of her admiration for Victorian fiction.” [ CITATION All11 \l 3082 ]

Indeed, the first-person narrative of a relatively privileged young woman with the means to

support herself and her child and remain autonomous makes it easier to explore other themes in

the book such as feminine sexuality, abortion, and the inadequacies of the National Health

Service. Whether it was the author’s intention or nor, one point worth noting would be following

a woman in more straightened circumstances regardless of the momentous time at which the
MARGARET DRABBLE’S “THE MILLSTONE” ANALYSIS 3
book was written. In the story, it is evident how Rosamund is made aware through pregnancy of

the predicament of women who are not in her position; she sits in the waiting room of the

maternity clinic and sees women who are having hard lives, as she realizes that although she is in

an awkward position, she remains privileged. Therefore, she is protected by her class and by a

certain confidence she has of being articulate; she knows that, when pushed, she can fight for her

rights.

Feminism and sexual independence in The Millstone

The feminist ideal is debated in The Millstone, both overtly and covertly. Rosamund

describes her mother as “a great feminist” who brought her up “to be equal.” [CITATION

Dra65 \p 20 \t \l 3082 ] The fact that it is she who narrates the events in first person also

reinforces the idea of being autonomous enough to deal with the consequences of an unexpected

pregnancy. Similarly, the author tells a story of pregnancy and single motherhood from a

woman's point of view and sees men’s participation in the story almost as incidental. However,

when plunging inside Rosamund’s life, we can see that, despite being a well-educated,

independent, and measured woman, she may not consider herself as a feminist heroin, she even

summarizes her life in the opening lines as a “mixture of confidence and cowardice.”

[CITATION Dra65 \p 3 \n \y \t \l 3082 ] Consequently, it could be argued that Rosamund was

not a feminist at all, she may have, after all, been the product of her upbringing as it is gleaned

from the way she describes her parents: “Sometimes I wonder whether it is not my parents who

are to blame, totally to blame, for my inability to see anything in human terms of like and dislike,

love and hate: but only in terms of justice, guilt and innocence”. [CITATION Dra65 \p 61 \n

\y \t \l 3082 ]

The rearing Rosamund had completely conditioned her sense of individualism as well, to

the point of making her too self-aware of her own sexuality. She is, in a way, quite determined to

be asexual. Not only does she have sex once with George, but she has two previous boyfriends

who were both in play in order that each one should think the other one is having sex with her.
MARGARET DRABBLE’S “THE MILLSTONE” ANALYSIS 4
Rosamund is nervous about sex although people were very open about sexual activity at the time

– it was the swinging sixties – if you slept with a man, you might get pregnant, the pill could

only be prescribed to married women and birth control was extremely haphazard, so there was

much more reason not to sleep with other people. [ CITATION Dom06 \l 3082 ]

However, there is absolutely no reason, as far as any clue is given by Drabble, to suppose

that Rosamund goes on being asexual. She is very young still, and when the novel ends, she has

got her baby, Octavia. Even though she has had one sexual experience, no one is to say she will

not have sex later in her life and enjoy it thoroughly. After all, she loved having sex with George,

as she puts it right after their encounter: “So I said nothing, but sat there for a moment more,

feeling the weight of his hand upon my head, hot and warm and enclosing, like being all of me

held in it, and feeling that there was no way to stay there in this momentary illusory safety.”

[CITATION Dra65 \p 22 \t \l 3082 ] Here, Rosamund was hinting at the idea that sex was not

bad; instead, it was the inability to relinquish the emotional independence her parents instilled so

forcefully in her what made Rosamund “very miserable.” [CITATION Dra65 \p 12 \n \y \t \l

3082 ]

Conclusions

Although Margaret Drabble did not have a political feminist agenda with The Millstone

[CITATION Dra18 \t \l 3082 ], it is undeniable that The Millstone has had an unequivocal

impact on her readership, even decades after its publication [CITATION Had18 \l 3082 ]. The

novel has resonated strongly in the minds of many women until this day. Even as a childless

male myself, the novel reveals experiences that neither I have nor will I ever experience. As if it

were a chronicle, the novel ingeniously offers some invaluable insight of the privileges middle-

class women had in the sixties, as well as the journey of confronting a judgmental society as a

single mother.
MARGARET DRABBLE’S “THE MILLSTONE” ANALYSIS 5
References

Abortion Act 1967. Section 1, 87 (Parliament of the United Kingdom October 27, 1967).

Allardice, L. (2011, June 17). A life in writing: Margaret Drabble. Retrieved from The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2011/jun/17/life-writing-margaret-drabble-

interview

Drabble, M. (1965). The Millstone. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

MARGARET DRABBLE’S “THE MILLSTONE” ANALYSIS 6