Summer Selections: Confidence and Cowardice
by Alice Rooney
The recurring themes of innocence and experience dominate the plot of Margaret Drabble’s The Millstone (1965). Her innocent, naïve protagonist, Rosamund Stacey, enters unwittingly into a journey towards motherhood after her first, and most likely her only, sexual encounter. Drabble’s conscientious use of the first person narrative voice allows the reader to experience the journey alongside Rosamund, and we are thus able to understand the societal and political pressures of bearing an illegitimate child in Britain during the mid-twentieth century. Innocence and experience are presented twofold in The Millstone: firstly, that the two are complete opposites; the dichotomy of these themes show Rosamund’s complete transformation after giving birth. Second, innocence and experience are synonymous; Rosamund merely moves from one realm of innocence to another, and her lived experience of motherhood plunges her further into another state of innocence. Although Rosamund is highly intellectual, her innocence in relation to motherhood, her upbringing, and her rejection of sexuality all contribute to the overarching sense of anxiety Drabble presents before and after the birth of her protagonist’s child.
The tension between innocence and experience in the novel is most obvious through the portrayal of Rosamund’s innocence in relation to motherhood. Rosamund undergoes a switch from being concerned with her career to learning and experiencing the bond between mother and daughter. Drabble establishes Rosamund’s obsession with her career and intellectual pursuits from the outset. It is not immediately apparent that the novel’s predominant concern is motherhood and pregnancy, for the first person narrative voice opens with ‘my career has always been marked by a strange mixture of confidence and cowardice: almost, one might say, made by it.’[i] Here it is unclear whether she is talking about her PhD, as Rosamund is university educated with an extensive vocabulary, or whether she is likening motherhood to a career. The ‘confidence and cowardice’ of her career suggests that Drabble’s narrator is highly self-aware, especially of her innocence. This exploits the idea of Rosamund as a reliable narrator, as put forth by Gérard Genette. Rosamund, as a narrator in telling her story of the journey into motherhood, takes on the process that Genette coins as the ‘second term’, in that ‘the narrator says only what a given character knows’, so the reader is alongside the narrator in the knowledge of the character.[ii] As she takes a highly analytical approach to towards motherhood and rejects the ‘ordinary’ emotional response, the reader is informed of Rosamund’s slightest observation, and the narrative voice remains constant. For instance, given the nature of the first person narrative, we are lead to believe that Rosamund’s version of events as gospel, for what she can recollect, she tells the reader. We are told about her first attempt at a sexual encounter with her partner, Hamish, that inevitably ended, and that she ‘can remember Hamish well enough: though I cannot now quite recollect the events of our parting.’[iii] We are therefore told only what Rosamund knows, therefore, Drabble exploits a narrative voice with a reliable narrator.
Marion Vlastos Libby in the article ‘Fate and Feminism in the Novels of Margaret Drabble’ explores the nature of Rosamund’s self-awareness and her resulting assertiveness. She argues that Rosamund is directive of her transformation into the experience of motherhood. Libby states that
in the mild atmosphere of Rosamund's basic acceptance of past influences and present occurrences, the occasional exertions of her will in the service of a selfhood deeper than any fate offer a particularly effective challenge to the deterministic assumptions of the book.[iv]
Considering Libby’s assertion of Rosamund’s ‘selfhood deeper than any fate’, it is clear that Rosamund’s headstrong behaviour steers the events of the novel. Drabble’s narrator, despite the overall appearance of naivety and ‘cowardice’, exerts herself in a way that forces herself to learn and experience motherhood.
Drabble uses Rosamund to present society’s view on motherhood as a condition of womanhood. British society in the mid-twentieth century enforced a common assumption that the ‘ideal’ family was that of a married man and woman, with ‘two, three or four children’.[v] Angela Davis in Modern Motherhood puts forth the ideal family as ‘normality’, and that anything different is a deviation from the widely experienced idea of a family. Davis asserts that
The relationship between the ideals of the family presented in popular culture and the changing reality of people’s lived experience is a complex one. Dennis Dean believes that in the post-war desire for reconstruction “a strategy had been evolved to present the home and family as the agents of social cohesion in a world of chance. This was promoted in schools, cinemas and magazines.”[vi]
As Dennis Dean states in Davis’s text, the promotion of the ideal family in ‘schools, cinemas and magazines’ lead to the belief that women were supposed to marry and bear up to four children. In the narrative, it is established that Rosamund possesses a ‘suspicion’, ‘fear’ and ‘apprehensive terror of the very idea of sex.’[vii] Rosamund’s rejection of sexuality in the novel means that marriage and sex is not an option for her, therefore reinforcing the political issue of an illegitimate pregnancy. Drabble’s use of Rosamund as a headstrong protagonist is particularly clear the moment that Rosamund declares
My friends had babies. There was no reason why I shouldn’t have one either, it would serve me right, I thought, for having been born a woman in the first place. I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t a woman, could I, however much I might try from day to day to avoid the issue?[viii]
The complexity of Rosamund’s predicament is further established through the assertion that her ‘friends had babies’, and she acknowledges that ‘there was no reason why I shouldn’t have one either’. This shows that Rosamund acknowledges the constraints of the societal ideal of family that Davis depicts, but rejects the notion that she should be required to marry to do so. The inclusion of the question ‘I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t a woman?’ however, establishes Rosamund’s position on the subject of motherhood and womanhood. She naively attempts to ‘avoid the issue’ of being a woman, and therefore being expected to have a child. Drabble uses this question to establish the view that motherhood is a condition of womanhood, and that women belonging to 1960s society felt the pressure to bear a child. In the moment that she sees Octavia for the first time, the narrative states ‘I could not recall a single other instance in my life when I had felt what all other women feel.’[ix] The fact that Rosamund is unaware of her own desire for a baby further makes her experience of motherhood more significant, for this moment in the novel highlights the strikingly apparent transformation from innocence to experience.
This prevalent notion of motherhood being synonymous with womanhood is further explored in the 1978 article ‘Motherhood in the Novels of Margaret Drabble’. Ann Rayson provides insight into the self-defining experience of motherhood. Rayson argues that it is ‘central to a woman’s experience’ for it ‘gives her a purpose in life’.[x] During the scene in the novel in which Rosamund tells Joe she is pregnant, Joe asserts, despite Rosamund’s vehement objection accompanied ‘with incipient fury’, that ‘all women want babies. To give them a sense of purpose.’[xi] Here Drabble uses the character of Joe to enforce the reality of the female consciousness, for it echoes what is expected of the woman in 1960s society. Rayson continues to argue that despite Rosamund being ‘sexually frigid to a degree, she is, on the other hand, a natural for pregnancy, child- birth, and motherhood.’[xii] Drabble’s inclusion of a protagonist that is ‘sexually frigid’ and yet bears a child, invites the consideration of a psychoanalytical critique. The two seemingly opposite characteristics of frigidity and motherhood parallels to innocence and experience, but Rosamund’s sexual innocence seemingly remains unchanged by the novel’s conclusion.
A psychoanalytical standpoint in relation to The Millstone is explored further in Susan Spitzer’s article ‘Fantasy and Femaleness in Margaret Drabble’s “The Millstone”’. Spitzer’s critique argues that Drabble has created a protagonist that is unaware of even her own success in appearing in control of her sexuality. Drabble has Rosamund date two men simultaneously, to outwardly portray her imaginary sexual congress, as a way of ‘fitting in’ as a young single woman. In response to this unusual ‘dating system’, Spitzer argues
It is, even more than she knows, "an excellent system" she has invented, because everyone is happy, there are no messy sexual jealousies, and she can get on with her fantasy which requires that she deny her own sexuality almost entirely and focus in on that baby as the source of all fulfillment. The baby in this way can be seen to fulfill the traditional Freudian function of penis-substitute for the woman.[xiii]
Rosamund, however unaware she may appear, manages to provide herself with the experience of a loving relationship without ‘messy sexual jealousies’ that she feels may accompany it. Spitzer’s Freudian reading thus depicts a transformation in Rosamund from the need for sexual fulfilment from a male partner to the satisfaction of platonic love between a mother and daughter. Thereby providing an explanation for Rosamund’s movement from the realm of innocence to experience with regards to love and relationships. In the narrative, upon entering Lydia’s bedroom for the first time in the novel, Rosamund discovers that Lydia is in the process of writing a novel about a single mother. There are similarities between the fictional mother and Rosamund, and so she naturally assumes that Lydia is basing the plot around her life. Rosamund is pleased with how Lydia depicts her, ‘I flattered myself that I emerged rather well – independent, strong-willed, and very worldly and au fait with sexual problems.’[xiv] Here it is clear that Drabble is presenting the fictional Rosamund to contain the knowingness or ‘worldly’ experience that the actual Rosamund is attempting to portray. This is one of the only moments in the novel that Rosamund receives acknowledgement of the success of her system of sexual rejection, hence possessing more worldly experience than she realises. Libby acknowledges Spitzer’s Freudian critique of The Millstone, and argues that for Rosamund ‘the demands of humanitarian love do not create a conflict with personal love. The great conflict that Rosamund suffers lies within the context of her intense and very beautiful feeling for her baby Octavia.’[xv] Libby’s stance that Rosamund’s inner conflict is not as result of her inexperience with personal love shows the lack of tension between innocence and experience. Octavia is, as Spitzer and Libby argue, Rosamund’s only source of fulfilment, therefore her only experience of love. This loving experience that dominates the novel for the reader merely blends with the imaginary sexual experiences that Rosamund displays to other characters, which lessens the impact of her transformation into knowingness for the observer, for example, Lydia and Joe.
The dichotomy of innocence and experience is also explored through Drabble’s portrayal of Rosamund’s upbringing. Drabble establishes Rosamund’s parents as ‘middle class socialists’, and states that ‘they had drummed the idea of self-reliance into me so thoroughly that I believed dependence to be a fatal sin.’[xvi] Despite the belief that ‘dependence’ is a ‘fatal sin’, Rosamund acknowledges that her and Octavia develop a mutual dependence on one another, for it is natural that a child depends on her mother. However, Rosamund lets go of her youthful naivety, and is no longer fully self-reliant. In the narrative, Rosamund states ‘as I grow older, I find myself changing a little. Partly it is because, with Octavia, I cannot inflict all hardship on myself alone: what I take for myself, she gets too.’[xvii] She becomes unafraid to object to the strict, somewhat contradictory rules set by her parents whilst growing up. Yoshiko Enomoto comments on Rosamund’s growth as a character, stating that
through the experience of pregnancy and motherhood, Rosamund becomes aware of not only herself but also the reality of the outside world. She comes to question the so-called "good sense" and social norms represented by her parents, brother and sister and she resists conformist social pressures.[xviii]
Critiques of Rosamund’s growth from innocence to experience vary greatly. Some take on Enomoto’s stance that Rosamund gains the confidence to break the rules of social convention through experiencing motherhood and the love for her child. Other stances, such as Pamela Bromberg’s in ‘The Development of Narrative Technique in Margaret Drabble’s Novels’, believe that ‘we see no way for Rosamund to break out of the patterns set in her childhood.’[xix] The transformation from innocence to experience therefore, may not be as striking as Enomoto assures.
We must also consider The Millstone with regards to the synonymous nature of innocence and experience. Rosamund, at times, appears not to have learned from having a child, motherhood plunging her further into innocence. The first person narrative becomes unreliable, as readers cannot count purely on the contradictory nature of her explanations of sexual innocence. Rosamund’s intelligence is focused on intellectual facts and close literary analysis: her social and political understanding of sex is limited and she is therefore unable to learn from her misgivings. Through her increasing innocence through the lived experience of being a mother, her reactions are, at times, childish. She knowingly rejects any hint of a growing attraction as she is scared of a relationship, so she instead acts spitefully and makes excuses for her actions.
Upon closer analysis, it is clear that in some instances, Drabble’s narrator appears less knowledgeable than the character. Using Genette’s ‘third term’, where ‘the narrator says less than the character knows’, the narrative becomes skewed towards Rosamund’s ‘objective’ view.[xx] This means that the full story remains unknown, as the narrator chooses to reveal only certain points in the story. Bromberg further comments on the issues surrounding Drabble’s narrator, stating
the novel's very tightness makes evident the philosophical problem inherent in its form. Rosamund's solipsistic first-person narrative creates uncertainty about authorical distance, preventing the reader from reliably evaluating the teller and the tale.[xxi]
If Rosamund’s narrative is, as Bromberg states, ‘preventing the reader from reliably evaluating the teller and the tale’, we must assume an objective view of the narrative. That Rosamund may not have undergone a transformation from innocence to experience, at least in the philosophical sense, for the rejection and suppression of emotive feeling is a key indicator of Rosamund’s unreliability as a narrator.
The synonymous nature of innocence and experience can again be explored in relation to motherhood and pregnancy. In this instance however, Drabble focuses the narrative onto one specific aspect of pregnancy: the changing female body. From the outset, Drabble clarifies Rosamund’s attitude towards her body as being secondary to the mind. Her intellectual analysis and organisation does not seem to apply to her body, as when the thought of pregnancy first occurs to Rosamund, we are told ‘I got out my diary and started feverishly checking on dates, which was difficult as I never make a note of anything, let alone trivial things like the inner workings of my guts.’[xxii] Until this moment, Rosamund appears to be very much in control of her inexperience of sexuality, as she compares herself to Hester Pryn in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. She acknowledges that ‘I walked around with a scarlet letter embroidered upon my bosom, visible enough in the end, but the A stood for Abstinence, not for Adultery’.[xxiii] Here Rosamund appears to have embraced her abstinence, as she believed that it is one of her defining characteristics, as it is ‘visible enough in the end.’ However visible this metaphorical ‘scarlet letter’ may appear to Rosamund, the act of sexual intercourse without birth control results in a visible impact to the body. Drabble relates this to a ‘crime’, as Rosamund’s careless behaviour leads to what she believes as the ‘Victorian penalty’.[xxiv] Here she reinforces her old fashioned and traditional moral sentiments, as the ‘Victorian penalty’ relates here to the Victorian idea of the ‘fallen woman’: the unmarried bearer of a child. Libby also comments on Rosamund’s naïve acceptance of her criminal ‘accident’, as she argues
What is disturbing is not the fact that Rosamund bears an illegitimate child but the implications behind her passive acceptance of this accidental but not improbable result of sexual intercourse without birth-control.[xxv]
It can be argued, therefore, that Rosamund possesses an acute naivety towards her own female body: the ‘inner workings’ of her ‘guts’ are trivial and unimportant, despite her emphasis on upholding traditional, Victorian moral values of abstinence.
Spitzer attributes Rosamund’s naivety towards her body as a result of a lack of female identity. She argues that Rosamund, despite her intellectual maturity, remains immature towards the idea of ‘womanhood’, stating that in regarding
mature womanhood (as witnessed here by the capacity for child-bearing) enviously and at the same time with disdain - babies being a punishment visited on women for their "crime," i.e., being born women - Rosamund betrays the essential ambivalence of her attitude with respect to her own female identity.[xxvi]
The notion of ‘ambivalence’ towards female identity relates to Spitzer’s earlier psychoanalytical critique. Spitzer’s view that Rosamund’s child fulfils the role of the ‘penis substitute for the woman’ can also be applied here. In rejecting but simultaneously admiring mature womanhood, Rosamund’s Freudian wishes to remain a child to remain closer to the mother come to the forefront of the novel here. Throughout Rosamund’s pregnancy, the narrative focuses purely on the changing bodies of other women, readers get little to no evidence of Rosamund’s experiences in relation to her body. This both further emphasises the protagonist’s attitude that her own bodily responses are ‘trivial’; but also, that the pregnant woman’s body somewhat disgusts her. In the narrative, Rosamund attends hospital visits and notices the varying levels of pregnancy in other women, she notices ‘their conditions varied from the invisible to the grossly inflated. As at the doctor’s, I was reduced almost to tears by the variety of human misery that presented itself.’[xxvii] Rosamund’s sadness at the ‘grossly inflated’ bodies of the other pregnant women is a prime example of Spitzer’s view that Rosamund betrays her ambivalence towards the female identity. She is innocent and naïve towards the natural physical change that occurs during pregnancy, and is therefore shocked by it. After giving birth, Rosamund is pleased to declare in the narrative that ‘the muscles of my belly snapped back into place without a mark, but some of the women looked as big as they had looked before.’[xxviii] Drabble places significance on Rosamund’s body returning to its previous thin and somewhat childlike state. She no longer feels let down by her body, as it naturally satisfied her unconscious wishes to reject her newfound womanhood. This shows Rosamund’s lack of knowingness about the female body and female identity. In this way, Drabble posts questions about the tension between Rosamund’s journey from innocence to experience. For in the respect of female identity, her actions tell us that the experience of pregnancy fails to educate Rosamund enough to create a shift in her attitudes towards the self.
The theme of motherhood in general, also betrays Rosamund in her apparent journey from innocence to experience in the novel. Before the birth of Octavia, emphasis is placed on practicality and routine, with anything that disrupts the routine being instantly rejected. Rosamund underestimates the lived experience of motherhood and naively states ‘I saw no reason why my proposed career of thesis, assistant lectureship, lectureship and so on should be interrupted’.[xxix] Throughout the narrative, Rosamund believes that she can continue with her life exactly as she had previously, and that no impact would be made with a child. In Drabble’s narrative during a shopping trip, Rosamund unintentionally bumps into Clare, her brother’s wife. She does however, intentionally cause Clare discomfort by not mentioning her pregnancy in the conversation, even though it is now obvious. The conversation turns to cleaning, ‘“If there’s one thing I can’t stand,” [Clare] said with a violent shudder, “it’s dirty clothes. Don’t you agree?” The remark had astonished me, as I hardly spared the question a thought till that moment.’[xxx] It is clear here that Rosamund is unfamiliar with the domestic routine, as Clare’s question ‘astonished’ her. A similar moment after Rosamund gives birth however, shows that Rosamund has at least considered Clare’s question, even though at the time, she rejected it completely, ‘Things about life with a baby drove me into frenzies of weeping several times a week, and not only having milk on my clean jerseys.’[xxxi] Her routine is disturbed, and Rosamund is no longer astonished by the apparent pettiness of Clare’s remark. Further in the novel, when visiting Octavia in hospital, Rosamund is refused entry to the ward in which Octavia is being kept. The sister offers her the explanation that ‘it is of no practical use to visit such a young child, she will settle much more happily if she doesn’t see you.’[xxxii] In response to this ‘practical’ explanation, Rosamund explodes into fits of anger – or hysteria, as it is called – due to being disallowed access to her daughter. It is clear here that Rosamund agrees only with practicality on her own terms. In this instance, childlike pettiness takes hold of her and she reacts badly to being told that she cannot see Octavia, which shows little acceptance or growth as a result of the experience of motherhood.
Drabble deploys the synonymy between innocence and experience in relation to Rosamund’s upbringing. Rosamund herself seems, at first glance, to learn from the contradictory nature of her parents’ ‘extraordinary blend of socialist principle and middle class scruple’ in the narrative.[xxxiii] She finds herself constantly questioning whether they 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.’[xxxiv] However, despite her acknowledgement towards the fact that her upbringing may have contributed to her attitude of sexual indifference, she makes no assertive decision to change it. Libby also comments on this aspect of Rosamund’s thought process in the novel, stating that although Rosamund ‘sees her parents' emphasis on justice to the detriment of love as a possible cause for her sexual indifference, she lacks any commensurate belief in working through and thus minimizing the effects of this conditioning.’[xxxv] For example, Rosamund assumes that her sister, Beatrice, would be supportive or ‘sympathetic’ of her newfound pregnancy, as Beatrice ‘had always sung to [her] the praises of motherhood and domesticity’.[xxxvi] There is also little evidence to suggest that Beatrice is similar to Rosamund in the way that she sees the world in terms of ‘justice, guilt and innocence’, even though they had both been bought up with the same principles. In the narrative, Beatrice’s letter to Rosamund expresses her worry and anger towards Rosamund, for both keeping the pregnancy a secret for so long, and for considering keeping the child. The resulting guilt that Beatrice attempts to instil into Rosamund has the opposite effect: ‘her letter did in fact serve one purpose: it revealed to me the depth of my determination to keep the baby.’[xxxvii] It is clear from this passage that Rosamund abandons the ‘conditioning’ of her upbringing, for feelings of determination emerge, rather than the guilt she has supposedly been told to feel. This means that Drabble presents an increasing complexity regarding Rosamund’s character, for she is willing to let go of the initial guilt she feels for falling pregnant, but simultaneously rejects the guilt and indifference she feels in relation to sex.
Finally, The Millstone’s portrayal of innocence and experience as synonymous emerges further through Rosamund’s relationship with George. In the events leading up to their first and only sexual encounter, the narrative establishes George as ‘effeminate’ and ‘camp’, and although the idea is never outwardly expressed, Rosamund assumes George’s homosexuality.[xxxviii] It is therefore, even more confusing that George’s compliments towards Rosamund lead to the suggestion of a sexual attraction between them. Rosamund dismisses this by ensuring that George ‘must be one of those bisexual people’.[xxxix] The protagonist’s sexual indifference is clear, for Rosamund is knowingly rejecting any advances by telling herself and the reader that George must not be attracted to her. After the birth of Octavia towards the novel’s conclusion, George and Rosamund meet for the second time in a pharmacy on Christmas Eve. She invites him to her apartment where he unknowingly meets his daughter. Rosamund expresses her loving attraction to him inside of her head,
words kept forming inside my head, into phrases like I love you, George, don’t leave me, George. I wondered what would happen if I let one of them out into the air. I wondered how much damage it would do.[xl]
It is clear here that Rosamund may have developed a sexual attraction towards George, but dismisses it immediately out of fear. The ‘damage’ a confession of love may do for Rosamund is seemingly worth letting go permanently of George, who she sends on his way after a brief drink. Bromberg concurs that Rosamund may not have undergone the transformation from innocence to experience in relation to sex, stating ‘at the end of the novel, we have no evidence that Rosamund will ever change, that she will ever be able to open up her frightened ego to another autonomous adult.’[xli] Rosamund, therefore, is hypocritical and contradictory in her reaction to different elements of her life. She dismisses her true feelings for George out of fear, but is simultaneously headstrong and directive of her own personal assurance that she is a successful single mother amidst an unforgiving society.
The instrumental nature of the two themes of innocence and experience highlight the complexity of Rosamund as a protagonist in Margaret Drabble’s The Millstone. We are, at times, treated to elements of a headstrong, intellectual feminist that purposefully directs her own path into motherhood. At others, Rosamund is strikingly indifferent, passive and contradictory in her actions. The predominant elements of Rosamund’s upbringing, her view of motherhood and pregnancy, and her attitudes towards love and sex, all deploy the themes of innocence and experience. Although there are components of questionable hypocrisy surrounding Rosamund’s journey, Drabble’s novel presents an intricate and honest portrayal of the realities of being a single parent in the mid-twentieth century.
References
[i] Margaret Drabble, The Millstone (London: Penguin Books, 2010) p. 1
[ii] Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980) pp. 188-189
[iii] Drabble, p. 3
[iv] Marion Vlastos Libby, ‘Fate and Feminism in the Novels of Margaret Drabble’, Contemporary Literature, 16 (1975), 175-192 http://www.jstor.org/ [accessed: 28/03/2017] p. 180
[v] Angela Davis, Modern Motherhood (Oxford, United Kingdom: Manchester University Press, 2014) p. 177
[vi] Davis, p. 178
[vii] Drabble, p. 13
[viii] Drabble, p. 12
[ix] Drabble, p. 99
[x] Ann Rayson, ‘Motherhood in the Novels of Margaret Drabble’, Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, 3 (1978), 43-46 http://www.jstor.org/ [accessed: 31/03/2017] p. 46
[xi] Drabble, p. 13
[xii] Rayson, p. 46
[xiii] Susan Spitzer, ‘Fantasy and Femaleness in Margaret Drabble’s “The Millstone”’, NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 11 (1978), 227-245 http://www.jstor.org/ [accessed: 28/03/2017] p. 236
[xiv] Drabble, p. 89
[xv] Libby, p. 182
[xvi] Drabble, p. 5
[xvii] Drabble, p. 140
[xviii] Yoshiko Enomoto, ‘The Reality of Pregnancy and Motherhood for Women: Tsushima Yuko's "Choji" and Margaret Drabble's "The Millstone"’, Comparative Literature Studies, 35 (1998), 116-124 http://www.jstor.org/ [accessed: 31/03/2017] p. 118
[xix] Pamela S. Bromberg, ‘The Development of Narrative Technique in Margaret Drabble’s Novels’, The Journal of Narrative Technique, 16 (1986), 179-191 http://www.jstor.org/ [accessed 31/03/2017] p. 182
[xx] Genette, pp. 188-189
[xxi] Bromberg, p. 180
[xxii] Drabble, p. 29
[xxiii] Drabble, p. 14
[xxiv] Drabble, p. 14
[xxv] Libby, p. 180
[xxvi] Spitzer, p. 233
[xxvii] Drabble, p. 52
[xxviii] Drabble, p. 105
[xxix] Drabble, p. 45
[xxx] Drabble, p. 77
[xxxi] Drabble, p. 111
[xxxii] Drabble, pp. 124-125
[xxxiii] Drabble, p. 23
[xxxiv] Drabble, p. 79
[xxxv] Libby, p. 181
[xxxvi] Drabble, p. 71
[xxxvii] Drabble, p. 75
[xxxviii] Drabble, p. 16
[xxxix] Drabble, p. 27
[xl] Drabble, p. 165
[xli] Bromberg, p. 181
Summer Selections is a FalWriting series bringing you a variety of writing produced this academic year by Falmouth students. It's a vibrant and diverse selection of work covering text forms from experimental poetry to forensic literary analysis, from gothic short stories to critical dissertations. This year the selection is guest edited by third year student Jess Hawes.