FEMINIST IDEOLOGY OF AN ACADEMIC WOMAN IN MARGARET DRABBLE’S THE MILLSTONE
FEMINIST IDEOLOGY OF AN ACADEMIC WOMAN IN MARGARET DRABBLE’S THE MILLSTONE

Summary/Abstract: The common assumption is that the modern professional woman is liberated in all facets of life and this female liberation includes sexual emancipation as well. However, pregnancy of an unmarried woman is still regarded as odd and sin in modern day. Margaret Drabble in her The Millstone forms her female bildungsroman around the female experience in the modern world by exploring her feminist heroine Rosamund Stacey’s quest to find and define her female ideology and identity without reference to men in all aspects: professional, social, familial and maternal. Her situation between her academic life and her pregnancy splits her into two; between her personal (femininity, motherhood) and intellectual self. The reason of this split is that society still holds different gender expectations for men and women particularly in academic and familial fields although feminists achieved many social advances. Consequently, the aim of this study is to examine whether an academic modern woman can fulfill her female identity under the pressure of patriarchal ideology.

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