Reading the 20th Century discussion
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The Millstone
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The Millstone by Margaret Drabble (August 2023)
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Novelist Linda Grant and critic and editor Lucy Scholes return to Backlisted for a discussion of Margaret Drabble's third novel The Millstone, a book which has remained in print ever since it was first published in 1965, when Drabble was 26 years old; it was adapted for the screen by the author herself in 1969 as A Touch of Love, starring Sandy Dennis, Eleanor Bron and, making his film debut, Sir Ian McKellen. This story of a shy but determined young woman's decision to keep her baby and raise the child alone remains as relevant as ever. But The Millstone also speaks volumes of the era in which it was written, during which Margaret Drabble was a rising star in the literary firmament; and Andy, John, Linda and Lucy were delighted to have the opportunity to celebrate both novel and author, who is now 84.
https://www.backlisted.fm/episodes/19...
Well worth a listen it is too
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The Millstone – the crucial 1960s feminist novel
Margaret Drabble’s beautiful and momentous book is 50 years old. This poignant tale of once-virginal-then-pregnant Rosamund manages to be both radical and a paean to motherhood
Article from the Guardian (15 May 2015) by Tessa Hadley....
It’s 50 years since Margaret Drabble’s The Millstone was published. It’s a beautiful book – and a momentous one, I think. For my money, it’s the seminal 60s feminist novel that Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook is always supposed to be. For years I avoided reading The Millstone – I think I was reacting to an unconscious suggestion that came from its title, imagining it would be heavy and punishing. When I finally picked it up I was astonished how slim it was – and then, once I started, how deft and funny, how light on its feet, always one inventive step ahead of the reader. No one could accuse The Golden Notebook of those things.
Rest here...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
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Rosamund is an academic - I remember - and sleeps with one guy - bingo. Is determined to keep the baby - uses her intellect to disarm all the negs who think she is making a big mistake... Will start on Saturday...
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Love it 👏🏻
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The absent, self punishing parents leaving Rosamund to become "self sufficient". Even the flat is only available because of their guilt and discomfort
Rosamund herself, who is so inept, inexperienced, naive and unlucky, makes for a fabulous narrator. She's so disarmingly frank and open.
What a find.
I was expecting The L-Shaped Room but this is very different, so far anyway
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Still loving this one
page 54 - Yes - droll I think rather than funny - and the fun tone also seems to be a device to hide panic, fear, anxiety which would be much more the norm for an unwed pregnancy - early 60s.What I notice more this time round is the background info on her parents and her socialist upbringing - sent to a state school for example and it's affects on decisions she makes - tracking down a NHS clinic.
Just reading about her pupils - and how accurate this is - keen students are the most hopeless - I know as I've also taught - private students. All this v humdrum detail makes me like her v much...
And her constant true self-effacement - "I didn't know how to find a GP - I didn't know what to say to my students..."
And her honesty - I thought it better to tell Joe it wasn't Roger's etc - all matched with the same astute honest observance of how quickly both men will disappear from her life.
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When I was young, I used to be so good-natured. I used to see the best in everyone, to excuse all faults, to put all malice and shortcoming down to environment: in short, to take all blame upon myself. But for the child, I might have gone on like that forever and, who knows, I might have been the better and nicer for it in the kindness of my innocence. I repeat; not being blind, I saw faults but I excused them. Now I felt less and less like finding excuses. I still cringed politely and smiled when doors slammed in my face, but I felt resentment in my heart. For instance, when I was five months pregnant, though not admittedly in my winter coat looking it, I was sitting in a Tube train when two middle-aged women got on: there were no more seats so they stood in front of me, strap hanging, and proceeded to grumble, very pointedly, about the ill manners of the young. As I happened to be the youngest person in the compartment, I could not but take this personally. They clearly meant to be overheard, for they went on and on in refined, mean, grating tones: looking back, I can see that they were nuts, and sad ones at that, but what I felt as I listened to them was fury. I had been reared to stand for the elderly on public transport; and after a while I could bear it no longer, and I heaved myself to my feet and offered one of them my place. I made the gesture with extreme ill-feeling and indeed malice, but the woman took my seat without a word of thanks but with a tired, reproving pursing of the lips, and as I stood there it became clear that she did not notice my condition.
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"...droll I think rather than funny...
For sure. No laugh out loud moments but it is extremely well observed and is so obviously rooted in first hand experience
I like her very much too
"What I notice more this time round is the background info on her parents and her socialist upbringing - sent to a state school for example and it's affects on decisions she makes"
The social background is key in the early sections of the book - when she is awkward, diffident, and unsure of her place in the world
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Sometimes I wonder whether it is not my parents who 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. Life is not fair: this is the lesson that I took in with my Kellogg's cornflakes at our family home in Putney. It is unfair on every score and every count and in every particular, and those who, like my parents, attempt to level it out are doomed to failure. Though when I would say this to them, fierce, argumentative, tragic, over the cornflakes, driven almost to tears at times by their hopeless innocence and aspirations, they would smile peaceably and say, Yes, dear, nothing can be done about inequality of brains and beauty, but that's no reason why we shouldn't try to do something about economics, is it?
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I’m loving this novel. It’s the opposite of a misery memoir. A joy memoir? Or joy novel?
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I fell asleep because woken up way too early - effing BOOM Festival - about 10 km from us..... back to Rosamund ...most of the early ones are like this ...
Nigeyb wrote: "I’m doing a rare thing for me. Just lolling about on the sofa until I finish this. I’m loving it, and it is raining 🌧️"Yep, here too, a very Hancock's Half-Hour kind of Saturday.
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I’ve finished now
What a fab little novel.
Three out of three for this new series of Backlisted: Drabble was preceded by Trollope and Hammett 🙌🏻
I've passed the above section and yes it gets me ... The clash between what we know instinctively and what we have to learn - to fit in - how to be nice children. I felt like I had a lot of that growing up. The sort of conflict where you wanted to beat up your younger brother because he's just blurbed some top secrets - and I'm admonished because nice girls don't kick their brothers in the shin - meanwhile no-one is bothered about the crass betrayal my brother had indulged. That's the sort of thing Drabble is defining here - children instinctively have a sense of right and wrong - which does not fit into the class distinctions or set of manners as defined by adults. Ditto the episode with the two boys who eat the ducks' bread.
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I think I may have read this in the 1970s but if so don't remember it. I know I read Georgy Girl by Margaret Forster then and am possibly getting muddled up.
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Here's the others in the Decades series...
https://www.penguin.co.uk/series/DEC/...
Great news that you have a copy 🫶🏻
Will you be reading it soon?
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.c...That's the copy we had at home - probably my mother's book - published 1968 - Penguin Mass marketing - I was born in 1967!
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I like it though
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"I used to like those old Penguins, but now the type in them seems to have become strangely small... ;)"
🤠
Magnifying glass ahoy
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I think an accurate and curious and sympathetic observer of the people around her - NHS clinic. She holds the woman's baby - and observes her carrying the child later - while waiting for the small boy.
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I'm finished - it didn't stand up to a third reading - my mind wandered in reference to plot - but it did allow me to focus on non- essentials. I liked all the details reference her parents - how Dr Protheroe (old famaily friend) has informed them of Rosamund's baby plus difficulties and R's father writes to say they will spend the next year in India. R of course understands their decision to not 'bother her' - this concept of not interfering, bending over backwards to accommodate another person's values and decisions - the social aspect of her parents and its influence on her - all of this I found v interesting.Rosamund herself says - I hated to bother anyone ever - for anything - and one of the unexpected developments of having Octavia is that she must ask other people for help. This is so true to my own experience - it is impossible to be the only carer and provider for your infant no matter how much you would like that to be so... and surprisingly - for Rosamund at least other people/her neighbours are more than willing to help her.
I also loved the ending. Which contrasts radically with my previous feelings about the ending. I felt totally that she has proved - more than proved she is capable of managing the consequences of her decisions on her own. Rosamund of course - defers to her privileged position - that she has the use of her parents' flat - central London, no rent - and that she has a career - at which she is good and can foresee no problems or interruptions to that career development - There's a v nice paragraph where she says - something like - I don't recommend this decision - of single parenthood - unless you have the particular advantages that I have - but it does not come across in any crass way. We know R works hard ... she works hard at being self-sufficient. And as she says she was brought up to be self-denying - she herself wonders often about this particular moral value and its worth.
So plot aside - which I felt to some extent - was manufactured to present a liberated position for women - in the 60s. I would guess that one of Drabble's friends - attempted single parent-hood - I have a feeling it was not Drabble who underwent the rigours of Rosamund's experience.
I would really like to do the three-part The Radiant Way - it's somewhat dated but I think v reflective of the Women's Movement 70s/80s - and Drabble the academic - always infuses her plot lines with political, social and moral commentary - and this of course is really my focus of interest - nowadays.
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Reading the 20th Century
Books mentioned in this topic
The Radiant Way (other topics)Georgy Girl (other topics)
The L-Shaped Room (other topics)
The Millstone (other topics)
The Millstone (other topics)
Authors mentioned in this topic
Margaret Forster (other topics)Margaret Drabble (other topics)
The Millstone (1965)
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Margaret Drabble
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The blurb...
Winner of John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, The Millstone is a radical celebration of the mother-child relationship. It is the Swinging Sixties, and Rosamund Stacey is young and inexperienced at a time when sexual liberation is well on its way. She conceals her ignorance beneath a show of independence, and becomes pregnant as a result of a one-night stand. Although single parenthood is still not socially acceptable, she chooses to have the baby rather than to seek an illegal abortion, and finds her life transformed by motherhood.