Margaret Drabble’s Red Queen - An Attempt to Write across Cultures
Margaret Drabble’s Red Queen - An Attempt to Write across Cultures

Author(s): Irina Toma
Subject(s): Culture and social structure , British Literature, American Literature
Published by: Universitatea Petrol-Gaze din Ploieşti
Keywords: dialogism; postmodern fiction; dialogue of cultures; feminism;
Summary/Abstract: Focussing on the author’s assertion about “attempting to write across cultures”, the present paper aims at identifying those universal transcultural human characteristics that can be encountered both in the court memoirs of a Korean princess of more than two centuries ago and in the existential journey of a 20th century English academic. Drawing a rather obvious parallel between the destinies of two women situated so far apart from the historical, cultural and national point of view, Margaret Drabble has created a subtle intertwining of voices and motifs that transcends time and space, coming closer to the postmodern concept of Bahktin’s “dialogic novel”. Dialogism is present in the novel through the voices of many commentators and translators, all of whom have brought their own interpretations and imposed their personalities on the two heroines. Besides illustrating this postmodern concept, the novel unfolds against the constantly shifting dialogue of cultures, 18th century Korea versus 20thcentury Great Britain, without any of the two getting the better of the other. Taking into consideration the feminine/feminist approach dominating both the memoirs of the Crown Princess and the academic exploits of Babs Halliwell, the English lecturer, the paper aims at emphasizing those universal aspects lying at the core of all human beings, all over time and space, aspects that transcultural dialogue alone is likely to evince.

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