Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
THE AMBIGUITIES OF FEMALE IDENTITY:
A READING OF THE NOVELS OF
MARGARET DRABBLE
Margaret Drabble, but lately celebrated as one of the leading
new women's novelists-the novelist, in particular, of maternity-has,
according to a recent interview, grown "fed up with women–
slightly." Her newest novel,
The Ice Age,
represents her explicit
attempt
to
free herself from the label of "woman's writer," and perhaps
from the constraints of female identity as well. Moving boldly into the
realm of general social commentary, with even a few dollops of John
Le Carre spy story thrown in for good measure,
The Ice Age
purports
to explore the present state of England through the experience of a
range of characters, especially that of its central figure, Anthony
Keating. The novel, however, constitutes far less of a break with
Drabble's previous preoccupations, attitudes, and style than might at
first glance appear. And it ends chillingly with a simple and total
condemnation of female experience: "Alison there is not leaving.
Alison can neither live nor die. Alison has Molly. Her life is beyond
imagining.
It
will not be imagined. Britain will recover, but not Alison
Murray." Alison Murray's prison consists in her love for her cerebral–
palsy-inflicted child. The prisons that confine men-Anthony in the
Wallachian labor camp, Len in Scratby Open Prison-promise
eventual release, sentences have a term, and confinement can serve to
structure an internal freedom, such as, in Anthony'S case, a belief in
God. The prisons that ensnare women offer no such possibilities.
Permanently bound
to
their own bodies, to their mothers and sisters,
to
their children, to their narcissism, women remain consigned to recur–
rence, reproduction, meaningless labor.
The Ice Age
has not estab–
lished Drabble's freedom from her earlier concerns; it has, however,
rendered explicit the increasingly harsh repudiation of female being
that has emerged through her rapid succession of novels. And her
recent interviews, which have endorsed the superwoman image-you
can do it all, sister, if you only mobilize enough will, determination,
courage, and grace-suggest the same willfully innocent denial of
