Abstract
This paper is a brief discussion of the life and career of modern British author Margaret Drabble. Her childhood relationships with her mother and siblings, education, marriage and children as well as her career and writing style are surveyed. Her relationships with her mother and sisters are discussed in relationship to her writing and the relevance they have had on her career.

From the Paper
"British author Margaret Drabble has written numerous well-loved novels in the last 66 years of her life. She has won awards for her outstanding writing, and has been internationally recognized as a writer and critic. More than just "women's novels," Drabble's work focuses on interpersonal dynamics and relationships that are drawn from her own experiences of life and work. Much of Drabble's work is especially related to her femininity and experiences as a woman, especially those of wife, daughter and mother. As she herself said, "I suppose I am obsessed by the woman's role as mother and I think perhaps my mother very heavily influenced me, not always in a very happy way". The realism of these common themes in her books is extremely interesting to other women."

Tags:drabble, life, career

Abstract
This paper explains that Margaret Drabble's short story "Voyage to Cythera" is about a protagonist, Helen, whose love of travel borders on the obsessive. The author relates the story and points out the messages within the Drabble's work. The paper concludes that Helen comes to realize that she seeks a voyage beyond the commonplace.

From the Paper
'Margaret Drabble's short story, 'A Voyage to Cythera', was initially published by Mademoiselle magazine in 1967. The title of the story references to Cythera, the Greek Island upon which Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, lived in Greek lore; thus the title indeed relates a trip to the home of love. "A Voyage to Cythera", then, relates the tale of Helen - a seasoned traveler - who seeks in her journeys love or some understanding thereof. As previously referenced, Helen, is the protagonist of the story, and Drabble's tale is related from Helen's viewpoint. Initially, the reader is provided with background regarding Helen's travels and her feelings toward travel."

Tags:voyage, cythera, review

Abstract
The paper examines the role of violence against women in a male-dominated society whether it happens to be domestic or otherwise. The paper proposes an examination of the impact this violence has on the psyches of Drabble's characters, and how it shaped and distorted their personalities and their relationships with those around them.

From the Paper
"My proposal will focus on the underlying causes of behavior involving the protagonists of a variety of different novels by the English author Margaret Drabble. It will begin with an extensive examination of the backgrounds of characters like Bessie Bawtry, Drabble's slatternly heroine of "The Peppered Moth". Specifically I would like to examine why her character has affected such a sour and bothersome demeanor toward virtually every one she knows over time. In the paper, my hypothesis will be that her upbringing in what Christina Schwartz, in her review of the book, calls "the filthy Yorkshire coal-mining valley where her family has...""

Tags:violence, feminism, poverty

Abstract
This paper examines how, in contrast to feminist protagonists that preceded her in literature, the heroine of Margaret Drabble's "The Millstone" comes to embody an intellectual and physical form of feminine competence in society. It looks at how, ultimately, Rosamund's pregnancy does not prove a hindrance to her work and how she discredits female stereotypes related to pregnancy through her simultaneous embodiment of maternity and intellectual development. It shows how Drabble incarnates Rosamund as a completely emancipated woman, a paradigm of the new generation, and embodies her own ideal conception of the modern woman, a woman complete in mind and body.

From the Paper
"Drabble perhaps deliberately begins with her protagonist in a world where illegitimate birth is a stigma, even to those who do not flout the conventions of normal female intellectual development, such as Rosamund. Rosamund's attitude towards her own physicality is similar to Sue Brideshead or the Early Modern idea of femininity as being an either or proposition for women "as a kind of modification of the angel of the hearth" Victorian ideal, women were constructed in such an idea as being either of the flesh, or of aspiring in an asexual fashion to a male consciousness."

Tags:rosamund, victorian, england, femininity

Abstract
This paper examines how, in contrast to feminist protagonists that preceded her in literature, the heroine of Margaret Drabbles "The Millstone" comes to embody an intellectual and physical form of feminine competence in society. It looks at how, ultimately, Rosamund's pregnancy does not prove a hindrance to her work and how she discredits female stereotypes related to pregnancy through her simultaneous embodiment of maternity and intellectual development. It also shows how her work gives her societal approval at the same time she is receiving physical and sexual satisfaction from her role as a mother and a sexual being.

From the Paper
"However, after weathering graduation and assuming graduate study, Rosamund becomes pregnant. Now, as the result of what was casual action, resulting partly because she was treating her body "like a man" woman, how can Rosamund still achieve feminine competence in a society that denies this concept? How can Rosamund liberate one's self from such constructed notions of the female self, as they are attached to the female body, particularly if one possesses a body deemed to be female in this society and achieve a sense of social and personal competence? Also, what occurs when a body enters into a state of maternity? How can a mother be competent?"

Tags:pregnancy, female, stereotypes, sexuality