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The Millstone
Margaret Drabble’s affecting novel is set in London during the 1960s. 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.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
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About the author
Margaret Drabble
159 books494 followersDame Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield in 1939 and was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. She is the author of eighteen novels including A Summer Bird-Cage, The Millstone, The Peppered Moth, The Red Queen, The Sea Lady and most recently, the highly acclaimed The Pure Gold Baby. She has also written biographies, screenplays and was the editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature. She was appointed CBE in 1980, and made DBE in the 2008 Honours list. She was also awarded the 2011 Golden PEN Award for a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature. She is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd.
Drabble famously has a long-running feud with her novelist sister, A.S. Byatt. The pair seldom see each other, and each does not read the books of the other.
Drabble famously has a long-running feud with her novelist sister, A.S. Byatt. The pair seldom see each other, and each does not read the books of the other.
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November 12, 2024
A “millstone around your neck”. It’s a common enough idiom, meaning a heavy burden weighing you down; inescapable, and probably self-inflicted. It comes from the Holy Bible, Matthew 18:6:
“But whoso shall offend one of these little ones who believe in me, it were better that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea”.
It is this quotation which Margaret Drabble said was the inspiration for the title of her third novel, The Millstone, originally published in 1965.
The novel speaks with the cultured voice of Rosamund Stacey, a well-brought-up and educated young Cambridge graduate, who is working on a PhD on Elizabethan sonnet sequences. Rosamund narrates the events following a one night stand, which has resulted in her becoming pregnant, a fact we are told at the beginning. Although she is unmarried, Rosamund decides to give birth to her child and raise it herself. The interest in the book lies in how Rosamund will set about this, how it may change her, and the varying attitudes she will encounter.
In 1965, or slightly earlier, this is an unusual position to take, and will not be an easy course for Rosamund. Although not quite of an age, I well remember the two or three girls in the mid-sixties at my single-sex grammar school, who became pregnant. Suddenly they were quiet and uncommunicative; no longer bothered about working. One sat at the back of the class, mumbling and singing to herself; another steadfastly looked downwards, and refused even to answer teachers’ questions, whereas I had not remembered her being particularly shy before. Whispering words on the grapevine were that they were pregnant, and sure enough, one day, one or other would disappear. Nothing was ever said. It was a disgrace, hushed up, and never to be mentioned. Nobody ever knew the details, although clearly these were underage girls.
This then was the climate in 1965, should your knowledge of the era be a bit hazy. Things were set to change. London was on the cusp of great social upheaval, for better or worse. The contraceptive pill had been introduced in the UK in 1961, but until 1967, it was for married women only. London was certainly not yet “swinging” or permissive at the time of this novel. Neither is Rosamund Stacey particularly outgoing, or interested in parties and a social life, and until this sexual experience she had been a virgin.
Rosamund is the daughter of liberal-minded, middle-class, socialist parents, who have gone abroad for a year on a philanthropic mission, allowing her to live rent-free in their spacious flat. This means that the small but intimate circle of friends whom Rosamund does have, tend to assume she is wealthier than she is. Rosamund is confident of both her qualities as a literary historian, writing her thesis on early English poetry, and also sure of her Fabian ideals. However, she is reluctant and shy when it comes to sex, calling herself a self-proclaimed Victorian. She is well aware that it would be easy for her to be laughed at, and thought old-fashioned or prudish, so she convinces her friends that she is carrying on with two men at the same time.
In actuality, she enjoys the company of her two male friends, each of whom assuming that she is sleeping with the other one. This means that neither of them presses her to have sex with him, and although she often stays overnight in a hotel with Hamish, feeling the daring frisson of signing in under a fictitious married name, the night is spent innocently in friendly companionship and academic discussion. Not only does Rosamund not ever have sex with Hamish when staying in a hotel, but she wears a curtain ring on her finger. She is very confused. Having read much about passion and love in her Elizabethan sonnets, she feels she should be experiencing this for herself.
Yet when it comes to signing the hotel register, she once automatically signed, in her “huge childish hand”, her own maiden name. Why such a gauche oversight? Is it Freudian? It has to be significant. She feels embarrassed at the disapproving attitude of the hotel staff; feels a “bleak apologetic despair”. But by signing her own name, she must have felt a determination to preserve that part of herself, rather than be represented by some fictitious “Mrs. Somebody-or-other”.
And why would she pretend to each of her two male friends that she is making love to the other one? The novel makes us ponder, and such gently comedic actions whilst preserving her virginity, seem oddly in tune with an Elizabethan theme, perhaps something which might have been explored by her favourite poets. Is her reluctance all in her mind? Is it a significant part of the world of the imagination, which Rosamund is caught up in? She seems determined to make her own destiny, but this time it is not of the poetic imagination but is for real, and from a female perspective. There is irony here, and one feels at some points that there are aspects of the writer herself spilling over into the character of Rosamund. We have a vague sensation that Rosamund is merging with the author herself; that this is some sort of authorial “confession”.
We see too, that Rosamund is a person who likes to make up her own mind about things, irrespective of social mores or peer pressure, but equally that she yearns to not appear “different”. The very first words of the book are:
“My career has always been marked by a very strange mixture of confidence and cowardice: almost, one might say, made by it.”
Rosamund half-heartedly attempts to induce a miscarriage, in time-honoured fashion by purchasing lots of drink and planning a hot bath, but in one absurdly comic scene she watches hopelessly as her friends guzzle all her booze, and the “hot bath” runs stone cold. She then decides to have the baby, as one of the women Bernard Shaw calls “women who want children but no husband”.
Her friends react well, and realising her reticence on the subject, do not ask who the father is. They naturally assume that it must be one of her two “lovers”.
However, everything about this new way of life is new to Rosamund. For the first time in her life she has to deal with the National Health Service, which is in its relatively early days and does not always run smoothly. Her parents may have been idealistic, but they were right about injustice. This novel provides a fascinating glimpse into the early years of the NHS, when women of all classes mingled together in doctors’ dingy waiting rooms. Before the dividing and splitting off into a private sector, it was far more all-embracing, and there was much expectation; a consciousness of submitting to something entirely new. Yet it was still a social experiment, and the divisions and hidden prejudices were still there.
Sometimes, it is said that exclusively female experiences, such as pregnancy and childbirth, serve to bond women of all ages, types and classes together; that it crosses the social divide. But does it really, or this wishful thinking – or even merely cant? In The Millstone a worn-down working-class mother in an antenatal clinic sees Rosamund, who is obviously pregnant, and asks her to hold her baby while she sees the doctor. Rosamund has never held a baby before, and is astonished at how heavy it is. It is also unpleasantly wet. But after a while, she begins to connect on another level with the sleeping infant:
“its small warmness, its wide soft cheeks, and above all its quiet, snuffly breathing. I held it tighter and closed my arms around it.”
Later, Rosamund is to see the woman again, drearily slogging along the street with her children. Rosamund is on her way to tea with college friends, and is acutely aware of the difference in station and opportunities between them. Yet she also remembers the weight of the baby in her arms, and wonders if this is a portent for her future.
Although we know how the novel will proceed, from the very beginning, each scenario is a little surprise. You cannot second guess Margaret Drabble; it is inventive and often embarrassingly funny. The novel is extremely well written, even though people often quote her sister, A.S. Byatt, as being the more literary of the two. Margaret Drabble perhaps tends to concentrate more on smaller groups, characterisation and individual relationships, but this is a novel about growth.
Another novel of around this time, and with a similar central subject is “The L-Shaped Room” by Lynne Reid Banks, which was written five years earlier. I remember enjoying this one very much. Perhaps I felt more sympathy for the main character; I was certainly more drawn to the individuals she shared a house with, all of whom seemed to have been unlucky in what life had dealt them so far.
For Rosamund’s voice, although totally convincing, is so reserved as to be quite alienating. A clever person, Rosamund thinks and speaks fluently, and her sentences are clear, but self-conscious. There is a stiff, contained feel to them; an awkwardness, which serves to distance her, rather than encouraging empathy. It is a excellent portrayal, and very authentic. Rosamund feels typical of an intelligent, young, upper middle-class English woman of that time.
For instance, in the very first paragraph of the book, Rosamund says, archly dissembling, that she can hardly remember the name of the boy she first spent the night with in a hotel. Then she reproaches herself straightaway for pretending:
“The name of the boy, if I remember rightly, was Hamish. I do remember rightly. I really must try not to be deprecating.”
We at once pick up that this is to be a kind of diary, that Rosamund is speaking to us, and trying her hardest to be unflinchingly honest, rather than conventionally polite, and attempting to speak candidly, against her careful social upbringing. The upper middle class habit of diffidence is overridden by a determination to tell the truth. She is at one and the same time inhibited, and inclined to confession. It is both touching and slightly comic; a very carefully drawn and nuanced portrayal.
The novel is relatively short, and in many ways quite minimalistic. Frequently the story flashes back and turns upon itself. These little fragments of background help us to fill in the details of the story.
We begin to understand Rosamund more, and why she is determined to find her own “self”. We see her parents’ earnest high-mindedness, with their moral principles, as inhibited and defined by their own class and time. They are driven to do good works, to have a purpose, as so many were, postwar. Yet despite their professed socialism, they have an expensive flat in the wealthy area of Marylebone. They view themselves as being kind, apologetic and assiduously deferential towards those less fortunate. With confused motives, they allow their cleaning lady to steal the silver – and of course, she despises them for it.
What is Rosamund’s view of her parents? Rosamund is reacting against this, with her enthusiasm for old poets and endless drifting. Yet she is inhabiting their space, by living in their flat while they are in “Africa” doing good works. Rosamund knows that she is treated differently, in a privileged way, because of her address, her apparent wealth, her cultured accent and her class – yet she too displays some hypocrisy. She accepts these advantages, because these make it possible to have adventures and freedom. For much of the novel she is still “playing” at life.
By the end it is clear that for Rosamund, her “adventure” is motherhood itself, and the journey; the freedom is to become a single parent without stigma. This by no means proves easy. For instance, the hospital ties a label to the end of her bed when she is giving birth, with with “U” for unmarried.
It is a new idea for the 1960s, and even possibly for a decade later, but for different reasons. As a solid second-wave feminist, I looked around at that time at the previous generations of females I knew; usually defined or even imprisoned by the trap of childbearing, and decided it was not for me. The moral issue seemed clear, especially when I studied the statistics on the human population explosion. I decided it would be far more important to concentrate on all forms of life on the planet, including both the humans already with us, and those yet to be born.
I did not read this novel then, but know that the me of that time would have baulked at the idea of this being a feminist novel. Yet new waves of the movement may alter our perceptions. In retrospect, sixty-odd years on, we can see that The Millstone is probably Margaret Drabble’s greatest feminist novel. Rosamund may have stumbled initially, and been unsure of herself, but by the end is being true to herself, and being fulfilled by the route she has chosen. It is a remarkable journey, sensitively expressed.
In a way it is a love story of sorts. The poignant could well have formed the heart of this novel, and in many novels it would. But this novel is not to do with passion and sexual appetites; nor with obsessive love. It is about motherhood. It is the act of becoming a mother, which takes Rosamund by storm forcing her life into one direction, and creating its own extremes. It deepens her life irrevocably, and there is no way back to the earlier Rosamund.
It is a love affair, yes, but between Rosamund and her baby daughter, Octavia. Looking at the cover, knowing what the novel will be about, the reader might automatically assume that the innocent, illegitimate baby will be the millstone. But it is not. Jesus Christ’s warning is that those who harm her will be punished is interpreted as the fiercely protective mother-love of Rosamund. Margaret Drabble later said in 2011, that maternity: “changes you into something fiercer than you were before.”
Motherhood, does change Rosamund substantially in many ways. Yet she remains dryly ironic, and knowing, well aware of her own cleverness in that slightly arrogant stance she takes:
“I do not wish to suggest,” Rosamund says, “that the irrational was taking its famed feminine grip upon me. My Elizabethan poets did not pale into significance in comparison with the thought of buying nappies. On the contrary, I found I was working extremely well at this time and with great concentration and clarity.”
Astute, controlled and contained writing, which never descends into the sentimental, this is a paean for motherhood, rather than anything else. For its time it is radical. Perhaps it describes a kind of virgin birth for the modern age.
“But whoso shall offend one of these little ones who believe in me, it were better that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea”.
It is this quotation which Margaret Drabble said was the inspiration for the title of her third novel, The Millstone, originally published in 1965.
The novel speaks with the cultured voice of Rosamund Stacey, a well-brought-up and educated young Cambridge graduate, who is working on a PhD on Elizabethan sonnet sequences. Rosamund narrates the events following a one night stand, which has resulted in her becoming pregnant, a fact we are told at the beginning. Although she is unmarried, Rosamund decides to give birth to her child and raise it herself. The interest in the book lies in how Rosamund will set about this, how it may change her, and the varying attitudes she will encounter.
In 1965, or slightly earlier, this is an unusual position to take, and will not be an easy course for Rosamund. Although not quite of an age, I well remember the two or three girls in the mid-sixties at my single-sex grammar school, who became pregnant. Suddenly they were quiet and uncommunicative; no longer bothered about working. One sat at the back of the class, mumbling and singing to herself; another steadfastly looked downwards, and refused even to answer teachers’ questions, whereas I had not remembered her being particularly shy before. Whispering words on the grapevine were that they were pregnant, and sure enough, one day, one or other would disappear. Nothing was ever said. It was a disgrace, hushed up, and never to be mentioned. Nobody ever knew the details, although clearly these were underage girls.
This then was the climate in 1965, should your knowledge of the era be a bit hazy. Things were set to change. London was on the cusp of great social upheaval, for better or worse. The contraceptive pill had been introduced in the UK in 1961, but until 1967, it was for married women only. London was certainly not yet “swinging” or permissive at the time of this novel. Neither is Rosamund Stacey particularly outgoing, or interested in parties and a social life, and until this sexual experience she had been a virgin.
Rosamund is the daughter of liberal-minded, middle-class, socialist parents, who have gone abroad for a year on a philanthropic mission, allowing her to live rent-free in their spacious flat. This means that the small but intimate circle of friends whom Rosamund does have, tend to assume she is wealthier than she is. Rosamund is confident of both her qualities as a literary historian, writing her thesis on early English poetry, and also sure of her Fabian ideals. However, she is reluctant and shy when it comes to sex, calling herself a self-proclaimed Victorian. She is well aware that it would be easy for her to be laughed at, and thought old-fashioned or prudish, so she convinces her friends that she is carrying on with two men at the same time.
In actuality, she enjoys the company of her two male friends, each of whom assuming that she is sleeping with the other one. This means that neither of them presses her to have sex with him, and although she often stays overnight in a hotel with Hamish, feeling the daring frisson of signing in under a fictitious married name, the night is spent innocently in friendly companionship and academic discussion. Not only does Rosamund not ever have sex with Hamish when staying in a hotel, but she wears a curtain ring on her finger. She is very confused. Having read much about passion and love in her Elizabethan sonnets, she feels she should be experiencing this for herself.
Yet when it comes to signing the hotel register, she once automatically signed, in her “huge childish hand”, her own maiden name. Why such a gauche oversight? Is it Freudian? It has to be significant. She feels embarrassed at the disapproving attitude of the hotel staff; feels a “bleak apologetic despair”. But by signing her own name, she must have felt a determination to preserve that part of herself, rather than be represented by some fictitious “Mrs. Somebody-or-other”.
And why would she pretend to each of her two male friends that she is making love to the other one? The novel makes us ponder, and such gently comedic actions whilst preserving her virginity, seem oddly in tune with an Elizabethan theme, perhaps something which might have been explored by her favourite poets. Is her reluctance all in her mind? Is it a significant part of the world of the imagination, which Rosamund is caught up in? She seems determined to make her own destiny, but this time it is not of the poetic imagination but is for real, and from a female perspective. There is irony here, and one feels at some points that there are aspects of the writer herself spilling over into the character of Rosamund. We have a vague sensation that Rosamund is merging with the author herself; that this is some sort of authorial “confession”.
We see too, that Rosamund is a person who likes to make up her own mind about things, irrespective of social mores or peer pressure, but equally that she yearns to not appear “different”. The very first words of the book are:
“My career has always been marked by a very strange mixture of confidence and cowardice: almost, one might say, made by it.”
Rosamund half-heartedly attempts to induce a miscarriage, in time-honoured fashion by purchasing lots of drink and planning a hot bath, but in one absurdly comic scene she watches hopelessly as her friends guzzle all her booze, and the “hot bath” runs stone cold. She then decides to have the baby, as one of the women Bernard Shaw calls “women who want children but no husband”.
Her friends react well, and realising her reticence on the subject, do not ask who the father is. They naturally assume that it must be one of her two “lovers”.
However, everything about this new way of life is new to Rosamund. For the first time in her life she has to deal with the National Health Service, which is in its relatively early days and does not always run smoothly. Her parents may have been idealistic, but they were right about injustice. This novel provides a fascinating glimpse into the early years of the NHS, when women of all classes mingled together in doctors’ dingy waiting rooms. Before the dividing and splitting off into a private sector, it was far more all-embracing, and there was much expectation; a consciousness of submitting to something entirely new. Yet it was still a social experiment, and the divisions and hidden prejudices were still there.
Sometimes, it is said that exclusively female experiences, such as pregnancy and childbirth, serve to bond women of all ages, types and classes together; that it crosses the social divide. But does it really, or this wishful thinking – or even merely cant? In The Millstone a worn-down working-class mother in an antenatal clinic sees Rosamund, who is obviously pregnant, and asks her to hold her baby while she sees the doctor. Rosamund has never held a baby before, and is astonished at how heavy it is. It is also unpleasantly wet. But after a while, she begins to connect on another level with the sleeping infant:
“its small warmness, its wide soft cheeks, and above all its quiet, snuffly breathing. I held it tighter and closed my arms around it.”
Later, Rosamund is to see the woman again, drearily slogging along the street with her children. Rosamund is on her way to tea with college friends, and is acutely aware of the difference in station and opportunities between them. Yet she also remembers the weight of the baby in her arms, and wonders if this is a portent for her future.
Although we know how the novel will proceed, from the very beginning, each scenario is a little surprise. You cannot second guess Margaret Drabble; it is inventive and often embarrassingly funny. The novel is extremely well written, even though people often quote her sister, A.S. Byatt, as being the more literary of the two. Margaret Drabble perhaps tends to concentrate more on smaller groups, characterisation and individual relationships, but this is a novel about growth.
Another novel of around this time, and with a similar central subject is “The L-Shaped Room” by Lynne Reid Banks, which was written five years earlier. I remember enjoying this one very much. Perhaps I felt more sympathy for the main character; I was certainly more drawn to the individuals she shared a house with, all of whom seemed to have been unlucky in what life had dealt them so far.
For Rosamund’s voice, although totally convincing, is so reserved as to be quite alienating. A clever person, Rosamund thinks and speaks fluently, and her sentences are clear, but self-conscious. There is a stiff, contained feel to them; an awkwardness, which serves to distance her, rather than encouraging empathy. It is a excellent portrayal, and very authentic. Rosamund feels typical of an intelligent, young, upper middle-class English woman of that time.
For instance, in the very first paragraph of the book, Rosamund says, archly dissembling, that she can hardly remember the name of the boy she first spent the night with in a hotel. Then she reproaches herself straightaway for pretending:
“The name of the boy, if I remember rightly, was Hamish. I do remember rightly. I really must try not to be deprecating.”
We at once pick up that this is to be a kind of diary, that Rosamund is speaking to us, and trying her hardest to be unflinchingly honest, rather than conventionally polite, and attempting to speak candidly, against her careful social upbringing. The upper middle class habit of diffidence is overridden by a determination to tell the truth. She is at one and the same time inhibited, and inclined to confession. It is both touching and slightly comic; a very carefully drawn and nuanced portrayal.
The novel is relatively short, and in many ways quite minimalistic. Frequently the story flashes back and turns upon itself. These little fragments of background help us to fill in the details of the story.
We begin to understand Rosamund more, and why she is determined to find her own “self”. We see her parents’ earnest high-mindedness, with their moral principles, as inhibited and defined by their own class and time. They are driven to do good works, to have a purpose, as so many were, postwar. Yet despite their professed socialism, they have an expensive flat in the wealthy area of Marylebone. They view themselves as being kind, apologetic and assiduously deferential towards those less fortunate. With confused motives, they allow their cleaning lady to steal the silver – and of course, she despises them for it.
What is Rosamund’s view of her parents? Rosamund is reacting against this, with her enthusiasm for old poets and endless drifting. Yet she is inhabiting their space, by living in their flat while they are in “Africa” doing good works. Rosamund knows that she is treated differently, in a privileged way, because of her address, her apparent wealth, her cultured accent and her class – yet she too displays some hypocrisy. She accepts these advantages, because these make it possible to have adventures and freedom. For much of the novel she is still “playing” at life.
By the end it is clear that for Rosamund, her “adventure” is motherhood itself, and the journey; the freedom is to become a single parent without stigma. This by no means proves easy. For instance, the hospital ties a label to the end of her bed when she is giving birth, with with “U” for unmarried.
It is a new idea for the 1960s, and even possibly for a decade later, but for different reasons. As a solid second-wave feminist, I looked around at that time at the previous generations of females I knew; usually defined or even imprisoned by the trap of childbearing, and decided it was not for me. The moral issue seemed clear, especially when I studied the statistics on the human population explosion. I decided it would be far more important to concentrate on all forms of life on the planet, including both the humans already with us, and those yet to be born.
I did not read this novel then, but know that the me of that time would have baulked at the idea of this being a feminist novel. Yet new waves of the movement may alter our perceptions. In retrospect, sixty-odd years on, we can see that The Millstone is probably Margaret Drabble’s greatest feminist novel. Rosamund may have stumbled initially, and been unsure of herself, but by the end is being true to herself, and being fulfilled by the route she has chosen. It is a remarkable journey, sensitively expressed.
In a way it is a love story of sorts. The poignant could well have formed the heart of this novel, and in many novels it would. But this novel is not to do with passion and sexual appetites; nor with obsessive love. It is about motherhood. It is the act of becoming a mother, which takes Rosamund by storm forcing her life into one direction, and creating its own extremes. It deepens her life irrevocably, and there is no way back to the earlier Rosamund.
It is a love affair, yes, but between Rosamund and her baby daughter, Octavia. Looking at the cover, knowing what the novel will be about, the reader might automatically assume that the innocent, illegitimate baby will be the millstone. But it is not. Jesus Christ’s warning is that those who harm her will be punished is interpreted as the fiercely protective mother-love of Rosamund. Margaret Drabble later said in 2011, that maternity: “changes you into something fiercer than you were before.”
Motherhood, does change Rosamund substantially in many ways. Yet she remains dryly ironic, and knowing, well aware of her own cleverness in that slightly arrogant stance she takes:
“I do not wish to suggest,” Rosamund says, “that the irrational was taking its famed feminine grip upon me. My Elizabethan poets did not pale into significance in comparison with the thought of buying nappies. On the contrary, I found I was working extremely well at this time and with great concentration and clarity.”
Astute, controlled and contained writing, which never descends into the sentimental, this is a paean for motherhood, rather than anything else. For its time it is radical. Perhaps it describes a kind of virgin birth for the modern age.
May 21, 2019
Seen as a crucial novel on feminism and motherhood during the British 60s, The Millstone is told in the first-person by Rosamund Stacey, a well brought up Londoner, and well educated daughter of middle-class socialists. She is working on a PhD at the start of the novel and her sentences reflect her brainbox: intelligent, fluent, and meaningful, but there’s also a shy stiffness in them, too. She was once told that sex is a very terrible thing, and after all her problems with the subject, Rosamund does finally allow one man to make love to her, just the once. Once is seen as enough.
Rosamund’s inhibition, her virgin-ness, isn’t because she doesn’t like the sensations of sex: it’s rather an excess of self-consciousness and self-doubt, part of the class penalty she pays for her flat in Marylebone and the principled parents and the good education. And after an unsatisfactory one night fumble with the charming George, an announcer at the BBC, she becomes pregnant, but never tells him that she’s pregnant, and decides she will have the baby, on her own. Rosamund is headstrong, and believes it's her job to provide for her baby whatever it takes. She is a world away from the bone idle teens of today who get knocked up to live the life of riley on benefits without a care in the world for their children.
To be an unmarried mother in the 60s was not just embarrassing, it was also seen in wider society as dishonourable. Rosamund's sister remonstrates she cannot inflict the slur of illegitimacy on a child. It’s totally unwise. She must give up the baby for adoption. But Rosamund digs her heels in. Insulated by her class and her brilliance she will go ahead and have the child. We follow Rosamund through pregnancy, and the early days of being a mother with her baby girl Octavia. She also got to sail through labour in next to no time, so can count herself lucky. I've been told countless times by the mothers in my family that men are wimps, compared with what women have to go through giving birth.
The novel unfolds with elegant minimalism and clever out-of-sequence turns; the little scenes and the fragments of background happenings are the stepping stones that carry the reader across the river of the story. Essentially this is a novel about maternal love. Rosamund has the means to earn a living and the respect of others. But above all she has her daughter, and no one can interfere with that. Rosamund’s adventure is pregnancy and motherhood, and her freedom is the option, new and still tentative in the 1960s, to become a single parent without stigma. The novel can also be seen as a fascinating record of those still-early years of the NHS, when women of all classes mingled about in dingy waiting rooms, feeling like being part of a social experiment.
I found this a wonderfully written and warming book, and was really touched by Rosamund's plight; as she deals with the consequences of becoming pregnant, her agonies and pressures about whether to self-abort, and her progress through the screwball maze of the NHS. A nice fitting ending as well.
Rosamund’s inhibition, her virgin-ness, isn’t because she doesn’t like the sensations of sex: it’s rather an excess of self-consciousness and self-doubt, part of the class penalty she pays for her flat in Marylebone and the principled parents and the good education. And after an unsatisfactory one night fumble with the charming George, an announcer at the BBC, she becomes pregnant, but never tells him that she’s pregnant, and decides she will have the baby, on her own. Rosamund is headstrong, and believes it's her job to provide for her baby whatever it takes. She is a world away from the bone idle teens of today who get knocked up to live the life of riley on benefits without a care in the world for their children.
To be an unmarried mother in the 60s was not just embarrassing, it was also seen in wider society as dishonourable. Rosamund's sister remonstrates she cannot inflict the slur of illegitimacy on a child. It’s totally unwise. She must give up the baby for adoption. But Rosamund digs her heels in. Insulated by her class and her brilliance she will go ahead and have the child. We follow Rosamund through pregnancy, and the early days of being a mother with her baby girl Octavia. She also got to sail through labour in next to no time, so can count herself lucky. I've been told countless times by the mothers in my family that men are wimps, compared with what women have to go through giving birth.
The novel unfolds with elegant minimalism and clever out-of-sequence turns; the little scenes and the fragments of background happenings are the stepping stones that carry the reader across the river of the story. Essentially this is a novel about maternal love. Rosamund has the means to earn a living and the respect of others. But above all she has her daughter, and no one can interfere with that. Rosamund’s adventure is pregnancy and motherhood, and her freedom is the option, new and still tentative in the 1960s, to become a single parent without stigma. The novel can also be seen as a fascinating record of those still-early years of the NHS, when women of all classes mingled about in dingy waiting rooms, feeling like being part of a social experiment.
I found this a wonderfully written and warming book, and was really touched by Rosamund's plight; as she deals with the consequences of becoming pregnant, her agonies and pressures about whether to self-abort, and her progress through the screwball maze of the NHS. A nice fitting ending as well.
May 27, 2020
This is the story of a young academic in the mid 1960s who finds herself accidentally pregnant, and single.
I first read this covertly in my early teens, having been shocked to find it on my (very conservative) mother's shelves. I remember being very moved by it, though too naive and inexperienced to relate to much of it. Nearly 30 years and one (planned) child later, I found it an excellent piece of writing, albeit for somewhat different reasons.
Times may have changed in terms of the social acceptability of single parenthood, but it all rings very true for its time and many of her feelings around the time of the birth are pretty universal.
It is a good mix of funny, thoughtful and sad, and avoids moralising, sentimentality or tidy plotting.
It is interesting to compare it with Lynne Reid Banks' The L Shaped Room, which is a similar situation, written and set at roughly the same time (my review HERE) and also McEwan's On Chesil Beach (my review HERE), which is a very different story, but which also features a woman struggling with sexual intimacy, against the zeitgeist of the "swinging" 60s.
I first read this covertly in my early teens, having been shocked to find it on my (very conservative) mother's shelves. I remember being very moved by it, though too naive and inexperienced to relate to much of it. Nearly 30 years and one (planned) child later, I found it an excellent piece of writing, albeit for somewhat different reasons.
Times may have changed in terms of the social acceptability of single parenthood, but it all rings very true for its time and many of her feelings around the time of the birth are pretty universal.
It is a good mix of funny, thoughtful and sad, and avoids moralising, sentimentality or tidy plotting.
It is interesting to compare it with Lynne Reid Banks' The L Shaped Room, which is a similar situation, written and set at roughly the same time (my review HERE) and also McEwan's On Chesil Beach (my review HERE), which is a very different story, but which also features a woman struggling with sexual intimacy, against the zeitgeist of the "swinging" 60s.
September 19, 2019
I have wanted to read this for years, but was alwasys hoping that one day I would find it in a library to save me buying it. When I discovered that King's College's library had fiction (!) this was one of the first books I found - and how glad I was!
This was a fantastic read. Funny, full of despair and utterly relatable, the story follows young, unmarried academic Rosamund Stacey, who lives alone in her parents' apartment while they spend time abroad. She is in the middle of writing her thesis, when a one night stand with a close friend results in unplanned pregnancy. The book follows her the time counting down the pregnancy, whilst trying desperately to keep the news from the father of the child as well as her parents, as well as coping with the stigma surrounding her being unmarried and choosing to keep a baby. I love Rosamund as a character, I find her incredibly brave and self confident in her decisions, and I found myself agreeing with her choices and metaphorically cheering her on through most of the story. I also love that early on in the book, Rosamund convinces her small friendship circle that she is sleeping with 2 men at once, when in fact she is sleeping with neither, and as both the men believe she is sleeping with the other man, neither of them pressure her into sleeping with them.
Drabble has such a great way of writing, I can't wait to read my next book by her.
This was a fantastic read. Funny, full of despair and utterly relatable, the story follows young, unmarried academic Rosamund Stacey, who lives alone in her parents' apartment while they spend time abroad. She is in the middle of writing her thesis, when a one night stand with a close friend results in unplanned pregnancy. The book follows her the time counting down the pregnancy, whilst trying desperately to keep the news from the father of the child as well as her parents, as well as coping with the stigma surrounding her being unmarried and choosing to keep a baby. I love Rosamund as a character, I find her incredibly brave and self confident in her decisions, and I found myself agreeing with her choices and metaphorically cheering her on through most of the story. I also love that early on in the book, Rosamund convinces her small friendship circle that she is sleeping with 2 men at once, when in fact she is sleeping with neither, and as both the men believe she is sleeping with the other man, neither of them pressure her into sleeping with them.
Drabble has such a great way of writing, I can't wait to read my next book by her.
January 8, 2018
For a book written as long ago as 1965 this story of an intelligent single woman who finds herself pregnant is surprisingly modern and sympathetic, with a refreshing lack of traditional moralising. Its heroine Rosamund has an academic background similar to Drabble's and is cushioned by being able to live rent free in her travelling parents' London flat.
In the first half of the book she drifts into a decision to keep the baby, and there is plenty of humour in the caricatured reactions of everyone she meets. She conveniently acquires a flatmate in Lydia, an aspiring novelist who is discovered to be writing about her which allows a slightly metafictional layer to be developed.
In the second half of the book the baby Octavia is born and Rosamund finds redemption in unexpected ways (none of which involve the various men she is involved with).
I found this book interesting and very enjoyable - particularly so soon after reading her latest one The Dark Flood Rises last month.
In the first half of the book she drifts into a decision to keep the baby, and there is plenty of humour in the caricatured reactions of everyone she meets. She conveniently acquires a flatmate in Lydia, an aspiring novelist who is discovered to be writing about her which allows a slightly metafictional layer to be developed.
In the second half of the book the baby Octavia is born and Rosamund finds redemption in unexpected ways (none of which involve the various men she is involved with).
I found this book interesting and very enjoyable - particularly so soon after reading her latest one The Dark Flood Rises last month.
Read
July 18, 2022By chance I found myself in a bookshop, flicking through a copy of Margaret Drabble's The Middle Ground, I am sure that I have read this, I wondered to myself aloud, but I don't recognise a word of it. Later I looked on Goodreads and saw my review, which proved to me that I had read it.
I can't imagine the same problem occurring with The Millstone, which appears to be almost a conventional novel.
Perhaps you have heard the expression deus ex machina from the days in theatre when the crises in a play would be solved by a God being lowered onto the stage and sorting everything out. This novel is rather similar except the God is constantly on the stage, no sooner does the wispiest cloud promising a future downpour of problems appear on the horizon, than the narrative God makes it disappear. Like I said almost a conventional novel.
The subject matter of the book is young woman circa 1965 in London finds that she is pregnant after having sex for the first time, with a man who she thought was gay . There is no morning after pill, abortion is still illegal, she has no job...but as I said every would be problem dissolves, mostly because if we together with the main character were going to check her privilege, then in the immortal words of the film "Jaws", we would have to say, 'we're gonna need a bigger clipboard".
In the introduction the development of this novel is charmingly described as from millstone to milestone, but because of the main character's privileges the novel makes, I feel, a strong argument in favour of birth control, stringent sex education, and a legal right to abortion; as exceptionally few women would ever be in the main character's situation in which despite having no job, income, or partner, having an unplanned child is not a disaster, but just an experience.
One consequence of the low risk quality of this novel for me was to making reading an extra dreamy mellow experience, at the same time it thrusts attention back on the self effacing main character. If I had had the energy, then I might have read the novel a second time to examine every time that she mentions nature, nurture, habit, or upbringing. As I had the feeling that there was a contradictory or perhaps ironic edge to what she said.
Her upbringing and the nature & nurture element is a major, if submerged, theme it is lightly handled - I laughed about a quasi-boyfriend that she has - a young conservative accountant - precisely the kind of person that her parents brought her up to disapprove of, indirectly as in the History Man you see why the Conservative party won so many UK elections - voting Labour is always remarkable as though the party had barely two dozen regular voters in the entire country.
I can't imagine the same problem occurring with The Millstone, which appears to be almost a conventional novel.
Perhaps you have heard the expression deus ex machina from the days in theatre when the crises in a play would be solved by a God being lowered onto the stage and sorting everything out. This novel is rather similar except the God is constantly on the stage, no sooner does the wispiest cloud promising a future downpour of problems appear on the horizon, than the narrative God makes it disappear. Like I said almost a conventional novel.
The subject matter of the book is young woman circa 1965 in London finds that she is pregnant after having sex for the first time, with a man who she thought was gay . There is no morning after pill, abortion is still illegal, she has no job...but as I said every would be problem dissolves, mostly because if we together with the main character were going to check her privilege, then in the immortal words of the film "Jaws", we would have to say, 'we're gonna need a bigger clipboard".
In the introduction the development of this novel is charmingly described as from millstone to milestone, but because of the main character's privileges the novel makes, I feel, a strong argument in favour of birth control, stringent sex education, and a legal right to abortion; as exceptionally few women would ever be in the main character's situation in which despite having no job, income, or partner, having an unplanned child is not a disaster, but just an experience.
One consequence of the low risk quality of this novel for me was to making reading an extra dreamy mellow experience, at the same time it thrusts attention back on the self effacing main character. If I had had the energy, then I might have read the novel a second time to examine every time that she mentions nature, nurture, habit, or upbringing. As I had the feeling that there was a contradictory or perhaps ironic edge to what she said.
Her upbringing and the nature & nurture element is a major, if submerged, theme it is lightly handled - I laughed about a quasi-boyfriend that she has - a young conservative accountant - precisely the kind of person that her parents brought her up to disapprove of, indirectly as in the History Man you see why the Conservative party won so many UK elections - voting Labour is always remarkable as though the party had barely two dozen regular voters in the entire country.
August 3, 2023
I lost my review - written yesterday. This is version 2!
About 50 odd years ago my parents' house had this edition of The Millstone - it's a book that has drifted through my visual field since I was 7? I read it for the first time in my twenties.
What struck this time around - was that the baby was just too good to be true. Rosamund put her to sleep in the evening and she slept the night through. R was free to carry on with her PhD, sleep, entertain, whatever, clean the flat etc.
I would guess Drabble had a friend who was a single parent, in London in the 60s. The hospital trauma that Rosamund suffers through, however, is real enough - a stiff matron and her acolytes refuse her entrance to see the baby after a serious operation. Rosamund has a melt down and gains access. This incident leads to a conversation with another mother, the only other present in the hospital at the same time. Rosamund is concerned for the many babies and small children who must do without any parental presence. They suffer in silence, withdrawn; sometimes they are alone for many weeks as they recover or don't from operations and treatments.
It's a short novel but manages to cover in remarkable depth a whole survey of 1960s attitudes, institutions, economic means, social divisions, and more. The other mother reassures Rosamund that this hospital is the best in the country and that her child is in good hands, in spite of the restrictive visiting practises.
As I said in yesterday's review the developments/the story no longer holds my interest, what does hold my attention is how this writer, pulls her material together. The hospital incident strikes me as remarkably vivid and is most likely based on a real event in Drabble's life. For sure, she was a mother with a sick child enduring the practises of the relatively new National Health Service.
The plot, however does demonstrate that Drabble's primary intent is to prove/insist that Women can manage without male support. This theory I felt required some careful manipulation of the basics. Rosamund's story is not your average unwed mother in 1960s, U.K. Rosamund for example has upper middle-class, academic parents with Socialist leanings - their absence provides her with a flat, rent free, in central London, and their sympathetic absence for a further year gives her a chance to establish her career. PhD finished she has the added benefits of job security, rising income, flexible hours and further opportunities. Our narrator does mention that she wouldn't advise single parent-hood for those without her advantages - but she's such a self-deprecating, hard-working and stoic individual - she's readily forgiven - her advantages.
The other element holding my interest - is the revealing process of reading a book across several decades of my own life - discovering how I have changed. I remember wanting George and Rosamund to reunite. This time around, I was completely with Drabble as she disposes of George - who through no choice of his own has been kept in the dark. Rosamund has fulfilled her destiny which was to show she could deal with the consequences of a decision made by herself.
Ok - I've run my thoughts dry on this book - it's good, remarkable in fact that it was written when the author was a mere 25 years old. Me - at 25 - I was an idiot, clueless. I've been through the mill myself, but fortunately I've had plenty of good books to keep me company. 5 stars because Drabble wrote something quite remarkable for 1965.
About 50 odd years ago my parents' house had this edition of The Millstone - it's a book that has drifted through my visual field since I was 7? I read it for the first time in my twenties.
What struck this time around - was that the baby was just too good to be true. Rosamund put her to sleep in the evening and she slept the night through. R was free to carry on with her PhD, sleep, entertain, whatever, clean the flat etc.
I would guess Drabble had a friend who was a single parent, in London in the 60s. The hospital trauma that Rosamund suffers through, however, is real enough - a stiff matron and her acolytes refuse her entrance to see the baby after a serious operation. Rosamund has a melt down and gains access. This incident leads to a conversation with another mother, the only other present in the hospital at the same time. Rosamund is concerned for the many babies and small children who must do without any parental presence. They suffer in silence, withdrawn; sometimes they are alone for many weeks as they recover or don't from operations and treatments.
It's a short novel but manages to cover in remarkable depth a whole survey of 1960s attitudes, institutions, economic means, social divisions, and more. The other mother reassures Rosamund that this hospital is the best in the country and that her child is in good hands, in spite of the restrictive visiting practises.
As I said in yesterday's review the developments/the story no longer holds my interest, what does hold my attention is how this writer, pulls her material together. The hospital incident strikes me as remarkably vivid and is most likely based on a real event in Drabble's life. For sure, she was a mother with a sick child enduring the practises of the relatively new National Health Service.
The plot, however does demonstrate that Drabble's primary intent is to prove/insist that Women can manage without male support. This theory I felt required some careful manipulation of the basics. Rosamund's story is not your average unwed mother in 1960s, U.K. Rosamund for example has upper middle-class, academic parents with Socialist leanings - their absence provides her with a flat, rent free, in central London, and their sympathetic absence for a further year gives her a chance to establish her career. PhD finished she has the added benefits of job security, rising income, flexible hours and further opportunities. Our narrator does mention that she wouldn't advise single parent-hood for those without her advantages - but she's such a self-deprecating, hard-working and stoic individual - she's readily forgiven - her advantages.
The other element holding my interest - is the revealing process of reading a book across several decades of my own life - discovering how I have changed. I remember wanting George and Rosamund to reunite. This time around, I was completely with Drabble as she disposes of George - who through no choice of his own has been kept in the dark. Rosamund has fulfilled her destiny which was to show she could deal with the consequences of a decision made by herself.
Ok - I've run my thoughts dry on this book - it's good, remarkable in fact that it was written when the author was a mere 25 years old. Me - at 25 - I was an idiot, clueless. I've been through the mill myself, but fortunately I've had plenty of good books to keep me company. 5 stars because Drabble wrote something quite remarkable for 1965.
February 14, 2024
Rosamund Stacey, a socially conscious, academically-inclined girl of the 1960s, finds herself pregnant after her only sexual encounter. The story that emerges is primarily one of how she deals with the unexpected circumstances into which she is thrown, her own feelings and those of the society around her. Having lived through the times, and in fact been close to an illegitimate birth, I can attest that the attitudes of both the mother and the public were quite different than anything you would see today. But attitudes were also on the change, and this book focuses on both the mores of the past and the choices of the present.
In that light, I think this book only succeeds because the girl in question is an upper-middle class woman. Drabble recognizes this, in fact she makes a point of stating how differently Rosamund is treated because she has a “suitable” address and a well-known father. A woman of any lower class would not have had the option to do what Rosamund does. That might, actually, be one of the themes Drabble is confronting.
The book is an easy read, almost like having a conversation with the narrator. The following excerpt is a good example of the overall style in which the book is written. The narrator is flippant but revealing, the subjects are serious but the tone is light and often humorous.
I suppose I taught because of my social conscience. I was continually aware that my life was too pleasant by half, spent as it was in the gratification of my own curiosity and of my peculiar aesthetic appetite. I have nothing against original research into minor authors, but I am my parents’ daughter, struggle against it though I may, and I was born with the notion that one ought to do something, preferably something unpleasant, for others. So I taught.
I was surprised by how relevant the story felt despite the changes there have been since it was written. I am somewhat of a romantic, I suppose, for I believe children, wanted or unwanted, change lives.
In that light, I think this book only succeeds because the girl in question is an upper-middle class woman. Drabble recognizes this, in fact she makes a point of stating how differently Rosamund is treated because she has a “suitable” address and a well-known father. A woman of any lower class would not have had the option to do what Rosamund does. That might, actually, be one of the themes Drabble is confronting.
The book is an easy read, almost like having a conversation with the narrator. The following excerpt is a good example of the overall style in which the book is written. The narrator is flippant but revealing, the subjects are serious but the tone is light and often humorous.
I suppose I taught because of my social conscience. I was continually aware that my life was too pleasant by half, spent as it was in the gratification of my own curiosity and of my peculiar aesthetic appetite. I have nothing against original research into minor authors, but I am my parents’ daughter, struggle against it though I may, and I was born with the notion that one ought to do something, preferably something unpleasant, for others. So I taught.
I was surprised by how relevant the story felt despite the changes there have been since it was written. I am somewhat of a romantic, I suppose, for I believe children, wanted or unwanted, change lives.
September 4, 2018
This was just an ok read for me; I found it very dated, although can imagine that it raised a few eyebrows in its day.
August 6, 2023
Rosamund Stacey gets pregnant after having sex just the once and decides to keep her baby. This book is from 1965 so there’s lots of interesting social observations and I found it a mostly enjoyable read. It didn’t really work for me though because clearly if you wanted to be an independent woman at this time it helps to be middle to upper middle class living in your parents posh flat that you don’t have to pay rent for and work in academia so you can work from home and be able to afford a nanny and have mostly an eccentric group of friends who don’t look down their noses at you. (Rosamund also admits that if she was in any other social class she wouldn’t have made the same choices). She also has a really healthy pregnancy and easy birth, she doesn’t get pregnancy brain fog and continues to write her thesis so for me it lacked a basis in reality. The blurb suggests that this is a feminist classic but really that’s if feminism is only for nice middle class women.
February 8, 2022
This was my third Margaret Drabble novel. I am reading her in order of publication.
Her early novels were written and published in that creaky time just before feminism really took hold and they capture the confusion women were going through as we began to try for some change. Rosamund is a scholarly writer working on her PhD in literature. She is capable and competent, perhaps even brilliant at what she does. She is also skittish about sex, to the point where she dates two different men and has each convinced that she is sleeping with the other, though she sleeps with neither.
Then in one of those moments, she finally does lose her virginity and at once becomes pregnant. She decides not to tell the man but to keep the baby. Drabble writes with humor and sympathy about all Rosamund goes through after her decision. Never once does she downplay the emotional and mental turmoil but weaves it in so convincingly with the otherwise confident and competent character of Rosamund.
I loved it.
Her early novels were written and published in that creaky time just before feminism really took hold and they capture the confusion women were going through as we began to try for some change. Rosamund is a scholarly writer working on her PhD in literature. She is capable and competent, perhaps even brilliant at what she does. She is also skittish about sex, to the point where she dates two different men and has each convinced that she is sleeping with the other, though she sleeps with neither.
Then in one of those moments, she finally does lose her virginity and at once becomes pregnant. She decides not to tell the man but to keep the baby. Drabble writes with humor and sympathy about all Rosamund goes through after her decision. Never once does she downplay the emotional and mental turmoil but weaves it in so convincingly with the otherwise confident and competent character of Rosamund.
I loved it.
December 5, 2020
The Goodreads description provides most of the plot of this short novel. I freely admit that I find it annoying when publishers think we want to know everything about a novel. If we did, would we bother reading it? Well, I did, not knowing I'd already been told most of what I would ever know about Rosamund Stacey.
Well, not exactly *everything*. While it gives us an overview of the entire novel - and I won'd kid about that - Drabble puts us close to Rosamund by writing the novel in the first person. Indecision, worry and hope are all there for us.
For me, the reason to read Margaret Drabble is her excellent characterizations and her prose. I say that having read only one other novel, The Witch of Exmoor, so I might be overstating. But both of them have me looking forward to another. This is a solid 4-stars.
Well, not exactly *everything*. While it gives us an overview of the entire novel - and I won'd kid about that - Drabble puts us close to Rosamund by writing the novel in the first person. Indecision, worry and hope are all there for us.
For me, the reason to read Margaret Drabble is her excellent characterizations and her prose. I say that having read only one other novel, The Witch of Exmoor, so I might be overstating. But both of them have me looking forward to another. This is a solid 4-stars.
September 6, 2023
I unintentionally picked this up at a glorious secondhand bookshop that I am a regular customer at. I will admit that it was the vintage style cover that reeled me into buying it, and not so much the blurb. I haven't finished drabble's book disappointed, but I didn't entirely love it.
This was a fairly short read, and I'd say if fully immersed it could be read in one sitting. This took me a little longer as I've been reading other books simultaneously. The book is just a long story with no chapters, which is different to what I am used to.
While parts of this book were interesting, especially as Drabble touches on taboo subjects such as mothers who were having sex before marriage, or having a child before marriage which back in the day, was obviously quite a scandal, I thought other parts were unnecessary. Such as for instance, the way in which fat people were described. It made for rather uneasy reading, and it definitely wasn't needed.
Overall though, this was an easy read with done interesting points, but I'm not sure it's worth £3.00.
This was a fairly short read, and I'd say if fully immersed it could be read in one sitting. This took me a little longer as I've been reading other books simultaneously. The book is just a long story with no chapters, which is different to what I am used to.
While parts of this book were interesting, especially as Drabble touches on taboo subjects such as mothers who were having sex before marriage, or having a child before marriage which back in the day, was obviously quite a scandal, I thought other parts were unnecessary. Such as for instance, the way in which fat people were described. It made for rather uneasy reading, and it definitely wasn't needed.
Overall though, this was an easy read with done interesting points, but I'm not sure it's worth £3.00.
April 26, 2019
“My career has always been marked by a strange mixture of confidence and cowardice: almost, one might say, made by it.”Rosamund Stacey is an unmarried, academically brilliant young woman living rent-free in her parent’s spacious London apartment while they are away in Africa. She has come of age on the cusp of the sexual revolution when the capital is about to morph into ‘Swinging London’ and sex is almost de rigueur for a modern city girl of her class and generation. Nevertheless, in that typically hypocritical British way, illegitimacy continues to be taboo.
She feels in many ways out of step with her fashionable and literary friends because she is (secretly) still a virgin. While she thoroughly enjoys socialising, drinking and ‘going-out’ with young men, she is in some ways determinedly asexual, content to allow each of her two ‘boyfriends’ to think she’s sleeping with the other. One must, of course, remember, it is 1965 and the contraceptive pill is available only to married women – a situation that continues until 1967 (the same year in which abortion is legalized) – so accidental pregnancies are an ever-present risk. Rosamund’s refusal to yield to sex is then understandable and probably not as unusual as she thinks.
After a single sexual encounter with George, a shy, gentle, possibly gay announcer for BBC Radio, Rosamund falls pregnant. They are, however, both diffident and deeply unsure characters – indeed, people in general aren’t as emotionally articulate as they are nowadays. She has been raised never to inconvenience others and never to make a fuss. She therefore does not inform George of his paternity but chooses to stay away from him throughout her pregnancy. Where she differs most drastically from other middle-class, well brought-up young Englishwomen of her era is in making a conscious decision to keep the baby. She elects to combine single parenthood with having an academic career.
Drabble has always maintained this book is about motherhood and isn’t political, but The Millstone has nevertheless come to be regarded as a seminal 1960s feminist novel. During the writing of the narrative she was expecting her third child and large chunks of the story are based on her own experience of learning to navigate the system (GPs surgeries, clinics, NHS maternity wards etc.). I was particularly fascinated by the chapters relating to pregnancy and birth in Britain during this period having often heard my own mother discuss the subject from a personal perspective (I too was born in 1965).
Unlike so many of the unmarried mothers she meets, Rosamund has financial padding: she’s not rich but she certainly isn’t impoverished. She sees poorer women having a far worse time than herself and she comes to understand that she has been born into a privileged world. She does, though, feel rather shocked when the letter U (for Unmarried) is placed at the foot of her hospital bed.
She names her daughter Octavia and finds in her an unconditional love, the like of which she has never known. So, when her baby requires life-saving heart surgery and Rosamund is barred from the hospital by an officious matron who informs her it will be a fortnight before she will be permitted to visit her child, she turns from a dumbly obedient young lady into a screaming, howling madwoman. Here I will leave the plot in order not to spoil the story for those planning to read the book.
Written in the first-person, this poignant, minimalistic tale is about class positioning, accepted codes of behaviour and being a single woman bringing up a child in a still highly priggish England. Unlike the Kitchen Sink Dramas of this period, often written by and about ‘angry young men’, Drabble’s novel is social realism from a woman’s viewpoint. Though it could be described as a bleak tale of missed opportunities, it is also a funny, astute, extraordinarily beautiful, if understated, paean to motherhood.
The Millstone is a peculiarly British novel of its time that continues to captivate readers of all generations, and I was unsurprised to learn that it has never been out of print since it was first published 54 years ago.
You can read more of my reviews and other literary features at Book Jotter.
September 18, 2023
An engaging, short novel about Rosamund Stacey, a young independent academic woman who lives comfortably in an inner London apartment owned by her parents. It’s the 1960s. Rosamund has two male friends that she regularly goes out with, never having sex with either. Then the inexperienced Rosamund falls pregnant after a one night sexual encounter with George, a man she likes and has had a congenial relationship with in the past. After some misgivings, she decides to have the baby and not tell George, the father. This brave and difficult decision changes Rosamund in ways no one, least of all her, expect.
Another very enjoyable, satisfying Margaret Drabble novel.
This book was first published in 1965.
Another very enjoyable, satisfying Margaret Drabble novel.
This book was first published in 1965.
July 24, 2021
So this has been on my to-read for a while and I'm so glad I finally stuck it on top. Rosemund is such a great, complex, character. Her internal monologue shows exactly how her insecurities are covered by her brave behavior. She has great insight and commentary. I don't want to say more other than it is a quick, compelling read with beautiful turns of phrase.
Favorite quotes below:
"I did not realize the dreadful facts of life. I did not know that a pattern forms before we are aware of it, and that what we think we make becomes a rigid prison making us. In ignorance and innocence I built my own confines, and by the time I was old enough to know what I had done, there was no longer time to undo it."
"he had a crudeness of judgement that appealed to me, as it was not ignorant, but merely impatient and unimpressed."
"Thinking that he probably wanted to go, I did not quite know whether I ought to suggest that he might stay, for once I had suggested it, kindness and chivalry might have kept him against his will."
"The threat of fatality removed, the conditions of life at once resumed their old significance."
Favorite quotes below:
"I did not realize the dreadful facts of life. I did not know that a pattern forms before we are aware of it, and that what we think we make becomes a rigid prison making us. In ignorance and innocence I built my own confines, and by the time I was old enough to know what I had done, there was no longer time to undo it."
"he had a crudeness of judgement that appealed to me, as it was not ignorant, but merely impatient and unimpressed."
"Thinking that he probably wanted to go, I did not quite know whether I ought to suggest that he might stay, for once I had suggested it, kindness and chivalry might have kept him against his will."
"The threat of fatality removed, the conditions of life at once resumed their old significance."
May 13, 2008
i think this book should be much more popular than it is. wonderful narrative voice, and a character i adore. real problems dealt with unassuming composure and courage. i love this -- i kept thinking, "yes! i know EXACTLY what you mean!" as i read it. highly recommended.
December 15, 2020
A veces caigo en el error de pensar que el humor es una cosa generacional y que sólo tiene que ver con las vivencias y el entorno. Y entonces llega una novelita de 1965 y desmonta toda mi absurda teoría.
"La piedra de moler" es una MODERNEZ divertidísima, ligera y profunda, que con la excusa de contar la historia de una joven doctoranda que queda embaraza, nos habla de la comunicación entre las personas, de las ambiciones individuales, de la ruptura de las normas preestablecidas y de lidiar con el destino que se nos va presentando.
Me ha encantado esta novela tanto en un sentido literario como antropológico y social, ya que me ha dado a conocer a una autora, Margaret Drabble, fascinante de quién no puedo parar de leer asuntos sobre su interesantísima (y inglesísima) vida.
Por cierto, me parece reseñable la naturalidad y la modernez con la que se trata la presencia de un personaje gay en una novela con medio siglo.
"La piedra de moler" es una MODERNEZ divertidísima, ligera y profunda, que con la excusa de contar la historia de una joven doctoranda que queda embaraza, nos habla de la comunicación entre las personas, de las ambiciones individuales, de la ruptura de las normas preestablecidas y de lidiar con el destino que se nos va presentando.
Me ha encantado esta novela tanto en un sentido literario como antropológico y social, ya que me ha dado a conocer a una autora, Margaret Drabble, fascinante de quién no puedo parar de leer asuntos sobre su interesantísima (y inglesísima) vida.
Por cierto, me parece reseñable la naturalidad y la modernez con la que se trata la presencia de un personaje gay en una novela con medio siglo.
May 5, 2021
Dios!! Me ha encantado!!!! Gracias Kansas!! Excepcional ! No es el momento para comentar , lo siento, tengo que digerir ! Vaya pedazo de escritora y vaya personajes !!!!
Y ahora què leo?????!!!🙄🙄🙄😱😱
Y ahora què leo?????!!!🙄🙄🙄😱😱
May 15, 2018
For my full review: http://girlwithherheadinabook.co.uk/2...
My main awareness of Margaret Drabble has always been that she is the sister of A.S. Byatt, who wrote Possession, one of my very favourite books, and that the pair of them have had some sort of long-running feud which may or may not have been over-cooked by the 'gossip columns' but that either way, they do not read each other's books. I am doubtful that it is out of any misplaced loyalty to Byatt that I have avoided Drabble's fiction for so long but with one thing and another, reading The Millstone did feel slightly overdue. I remember half-listening to the BBC Radio 4 adaptation a good number of years ago but although I was aware of the basic plot outline, I was not expecting this odd little novel of middle-class guilt and liberal neurosis. Now fifty years old, The Millstone feels almost like a relic, of this time where society was not quite ready for the swinging sixties but was slowing cutting loose from more conservative mores. The tale of Rosamund's baby feels close at hand but is quite the vintage piece.
Rosamund Stacey is a young Cambridge graduate who is studying towards her thesis and playing at being promiscuous without ever doing the deed; by seeing two men at once, she manages to avoid sleeping with either. Nervous of physical relations, she is nevertheless caught off guard by George from the BBC and a very brief encounter leaves her unexpectedly pregnant. Despite rather uncertainly trying to induce a miscarriage via the medium of gin and a hot bath (her friends drink the gin, the bath goes cold), Rosamund decides to keep her child and not to tell George. There are obvious parallels here to The L-Shaped Room and also On Chesil Beach when it comes to sexuality - in 1960s Britain, Rosamund has become a fallen woman, an unwed mother - the latter labelled noted when she gives birth by the large U marked at the end of the bed. But while Rosamund quickly comes to love her daughter, who she names after Octavia Hill, more trouble is around the corner when the child falls ill.
The title obviously refers to the baby Octavia, whose existence will of course be seen by others as the millstone around her mother's neck. The initial reference comes from the Gospel of Matthew, 'But whoso shall offend one of these little ones who believe in me, it were better that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea'. I could not help but find it rather trope-ish for a woman to fall pregnant as a result of only one sexual encounter - am I supposed to pity Rosamund due to her one lapse while another young woman in the same situation but with a lengthier sexual history might be said to have brought the trouble down on her own head? The episode between her and George had a poignancy, with neither quite having the confidence or courage to state what they actually wanted. Throughout the novel, Rosamund hears George's voice on the radio, considers calling him, feels even a gratitude towards him for bringing him her daughter but her love for Octavia supersedes anything she might have ever felt for him.
Drabble has stated that the novel was intended to represent how motherhood 'turns you into something fiercer' and this does seem true for Rosamund, whose diffidence and uncertainty mark her as an unlikely heroine. From a middle-class and socialist family, she is ridden with liberal guilt; along with her siblings, she was put through state school, encouraged to love the NHS and not to over-burden it, her parents even insisted on befriending their cleaning-lady and feigning unawareness when she stole the silver, despising them for their weakness. Rosamund is well aware that she is in an acutely fortunate situation, as with her parents are away in Africa, they have allowed her to stay in their spacious London flat rent free, leaving Rosamund crippled with embarrassment that her friends assume incorrectly that she is rich. Further guilt is aroused by the fact that her thesis is focused on Elizabethan poets, and she repeatedly notes that 'the Elizabethans, except for Shakespeare, are something of a luxury subject, unlike nineteenth century novelists or prolific Augustan poets'. Good-looking, intelligent and comfortably off, Rosamund feels simply terrible for the advantages which nature has given her, and so burdens herself with lack-lustre students who she under-charges as a mis-guided attempt to assuage her guilt. It's hard to avoid feeling a sort of impatience with Rosamund since she clearly does care about what is going around her but her passivity makes it seem as though she is allowing her life to happen to her rather than vice versa.
Assuring the reader repeatedly that she had not been ill in years and had had no idea how to go about approaching medical services, Rosamund shuns Harley Street like a good socialist and flings herself upon the mercies of the NHS. Her sister writes anxious instructions that the child should be adopted and then as little seen of it as possible. Rosamund is hurt but renewed in her determination. Other relatives are quietly shunned. A friend kindly informs her that she can still work for the BBC as the regulations allow unmarried mothers as long as they have no more than two offspring. The NHS staff politely refer to her at all times as Mrs Stacey, but make observations about her which are noted as Not To Be Seen By Patient. Rosamund looks around at those waiting with her and feels grateful for her clothes and address which mark out her privilege, not wishing to be one of them. Yet still, there is Rosamund's wordless terror when Octavia is diagnosed with a serious heart condition - if her adored child dies, there will be those who will tell her that it is a blessing. Desperate for her child's survival, horrified that Octavia seems to be paying for her mother's sin, Rosamund returns once more to the NHS for help. Writing from a time when the NHS was still, if not in its infancy at the very least in its adolescence, I felt a far greater awareness and gratitude at what it affords than is appreciated today. Yet still, there are antiquated notions still in operation in this fledgling service and a true dystopian horror as the ward sister refuses to allow Rosamund access to her child, since mothers only upset the children and this cannot be considered for another couple of weeks. We have come a long way.
The Millstone is less about the consequences of sexual liberation (indeed, Rosamund never really achieves this) and it seems to be more about the primacy of motherhood. The love affair is not between Rosamund and George but rather between Rosamund and her baby Octavia. After all the uncertainty around the men in her life, Rosamund is taken aback that her daughter is so fond of her, that Octavia clearly prefers her to all other candidates. The blank horror of being separated from her sends her into a wild hysteria and even when her acquaintance with a doctor is able to gain her access to her child, Rosamund remains plagued with guilt about all of the other mothers separated from their children by the whim of the hospital staff. Her encounter with another mother who has successfully gained entry to the hospital is salutary, with the other woman kindly but firmly advising her to consider her own child and her own life before she frets away about other people. Recognising that this fellow-parent speaks from necessity rather than the 'brisk, Tory contempt, or a businesslike, blinkered air of proud realism' which Rosamund has spent her life trying to avoid, her perspective shifts. That being said, The Millstone is one of the few novels that can be truly said to have changed legislation, with rules being shifted around hospital visiting times for children. No woman should ever have to scream blue murder to have access to her sick child.
Still, the novel is not directly criticising the seeking of social justice and is liberal rather than anything else. It captures more the difficulties of a life of perfect principle, of the impossibility of pleasing everyone and also how much easier life can be when one stops fatalising one's every move. Having been an outsider for so long, plagued by anxieties about how others must look at her and judge her privilege, suddenly Rosamund can even feel a kinship with these other women in the waiting room. She reaches out to her cross-looking neighbours who are suddenly very understanding. Rosamund does not compromise her ambition, she does not compromise her self or her principles but her life becomes more of deeds than ideas. The Millstone concerns itself heavily with morality with Rosamund preoccupied by her social conscience but by the end of the novel, there is a greater feeling of lightness and casting down of burdens as she begins to see that that people are far more ready to be sympathetic than she had thought. Was the millstone perhaps not her baby daughter and rather the insecurities, assumptions and anxieties which she had hung around her own neck?
My main awareness of Margaret Drabble has always been that she is the sister of A.S. Byatt, who wrote Possession, one of my very favourite books, and that the pair of them have had some sort of long-running feud which may or may not have been over-cooked by the 'gossip columns' but that either way, they do not read each other's books. I am doubtful that it is out of any misplaced loyalty to Byatt that I have avoided Drabble's fiction for so long but with one thing and another, reading The Millstone did feel slightly overdue. I remember half-listening to the BBC Radio 4 adaptation a good number of years ago but although I was aware of the basic plot outline, I was not expecting this odd little novel of middle-class guilt and liberal neurosis. Now fifty years old, The Millstone feels almost like a relic, of this time where society was not quite ready for the swinging sixties but was slowing cutting loose from more conservative mores. The tale of Rosamund's baby feels close at hand but is quite the vintage piece.
Rosamund Stacey is a young Cambridge graduate who is studying towards her thesis and playing at being promiscuous without ever doing the deed; by seeing two men at once, she manages to avoid sleeping with either. Nervous of physical relations, she is nevertheless caught off guard by George from the BBC and a very brief encounter leaves her unexpectedly pregnant. Despite rather uncertainly trying to induce a miscarriage via the medium of gin and a hot bath (her friends drink the gin, the bath goes cold), Rosamund decides to keep her child and not to tell George. There are obvious parallels here to The L-Shaped Room and also On Chesil Beach when it comes to sexuality - in 1960s Britain, Rosamund has become a fallen woman, an unwed mother - the latter labelled noted when she gives birth by the large U marked at the end of the bed. But while Rosamund quickly comes to love her daughter, who she names after Octavia Hill, more trouble is around the corner when the child falls ill.
The title obviously refers to the baby Octavia, whose existence will of course be seen by others as the millstone around her mother's neck. The initial reference comes from the Gospel of Matthew, 'But whoso shall offend one of these little ones who believe in me, it were better that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea'. I could not help but find it rather trope-ish for a woman to fall pregnant as a result of only one sexual encounter - am I supposed to pity Rosamund due to her one lapse while another young woman in the same situation but with a lengthier sexual history might be said to have brought the trouble down on her own head? The episode between her and George had a poignancy, with neither quite having the confidence or courage to state what they actually wanted. Throughout the novel, Rosamund hears George's voice on the radio, considers calling him, feels even a gratitude towards him for bringing him her daughter but her love for Octavia supersedes anything she might have ever felt for him.
Drabble has stated that the novel was intended to represent how motherhood 'turns you into something fiercer' and this does seem true for Rosamund, whose diffidence and uncertainty mark her as an unlikely heroine. From a middle-class and socialist family, she is ridden with liberal guilt; along with her siblings, she was put through state school, encouraged to love the NHS and not to over-burden it, her parents even insisted on befriending their cleaning-lady and feigning unawareness when she stole the silver, despising them for their weakness. Rosamund is well aware that she is in an acutely fortunate situation, as with her parents are away in Africa, they have allowed her to stay in their spacious London flat rent free, leaving Rosamund crippled with embarrassment that her friends assume incorrectly that she is rich. Further guilt is aroused by the fact that her thesis is focused on Elizabethan poets, and she repeatedly notes that 'the Elizabethans, except for Shakespeare, are something of a luxury subject, unlike nineteenth century novelists or prolific Augustan poets'. Good-looking, intelligent and comfortably off, Rosamund feels simply terrible for the advantages which nature has given her, and so burdens herself with lack-lustre students who she under-charges as a mis-guided attempt to assuage her guilt. It's hard to avoid feeling a sort of impatience with Rosamund since she clearly does care about what is going around her but her passivity makes it seem as though she is allowing her life to happen to her rather than vice versa.
Assuring the reader repeatedly that she had not been ill in years and had had no idea how to go about approaching medical services, Rosamund shuns Harley Street like a good socialist and flings herself upon the mercies of the NHS. Her sister writes anxious instructions that the child should be adopted and then as little seen of it as possible. Rosamund is hurt but renewed in her determination. Other relatives are quietly shunned. A friend kindly informs her that she can still work for the BBC as the regulations allow unmarried mothers as long as they have no more than two offspring. The NHS staff politely refer to her at all times as Mrs Stacey, but make observations about her which are noted as Not To Be Seen By Patient. Rosamund looks around at those waiting with her and feels grateful for her clothes and address which mark out her privilege, not wishing to be one of them. Yet still, there is Rosamund's wordless terror when Octavia is diagnosed with a serious heart condition - if her adored child dies, there will be those who will tell her that it is a blessing. Desperate for her child's survival, horrified that Octavia seems to be paying for her mother's sin, Rosamund returns once more to the NHS for help. Writing from a time when the NHS was still, if not in its infancy at the very least in its adolescence, I felt a far greater awareness and gratitude at what it affords than is appreciated today. Yet still, there are antiquated notions still in operation in this fledgling service and a true dystopian horror as the ward sister refuses to allow Rosamund access to her child, since mothers only upset the children and this cannot be considered for another couple of weeks. We have come a long way.
The Millstone is less about the consequences of sexual liberation (indeed, Rosamund never really achieves this) and it seems to be more about the primacy of motherhood. The love affair is not between Rosamund and George but rather between Rosamund and her baby Octavia. After all the uncertainty around the men in her life, Rosamund is taken aback that her daughter is so fond of her, that Octavia clearly prefers her to all other candidates. The blank horror of being separated from her sends her into a wild hysteria and even when her acquaintance with a doctor is able to gain her access to her child, Rosamund remains plagued with guilt about all of the other mothers separated from their children by the whim of the hospital staff. Her encounter with another mother who has successfully gained entry to the hospital is salutary, with the other woman kindly but firmly advising her to consider her own child and her own life before she frets away about other people. Recognising that this fellow-parent speaks from necessity rather than the 'brisk, Tory contempt, or a businesslike, blinkered air of proud realism' which Rosamund has spent her life trying to avoid, her perspective shifts. That being said, The Millstone is one of the few novels that can be truly said to have changed legislation, with rules being shifted around hospital visiting times for children. No woman should ever have to scream blue murder to have access to her sick child.
Still, the novel is not directly criticising the seeking of social justice and is liberal rather than anything else. It captures more the difficulties of a life of perfect principle, of the impossibility of pleasing everyone and also how much easier life can be when one stops fatalising one's every move. Having been an outsider for so long, plagued by anxieties about how others must look at her and judge her privilege, suddenly Rosamund can even feel a kinship with these other women in the waiting room. She reaches out to her cross-looking neighbours who are suddenly very understanding. Rosamund does not compromise her ambition, she does not compromise her self or her principles but her life becomes more of deeds than ideas. The Millstone concerns itself heavily with morality with Rosamund preoccupied by her social conscience but by the end of the novel, there is a greater feeling of lightness and casting down of burdens as she begins to see that that people are far more ready to be sympathetic than she had thought. Was the millstone perhaps not her baby daughter and rather the insecurities, assumptions and anxieties which she had hung around her own neck?
September 12, 2023
When I first read came across The Millstone fifteen years ago, I managed to get around the terrifying 1960s Penguin cover because the narrator of this novel shares a first name with me, and it was the first time I'd encountered a Rosamund in literature, aside from a horse called Fat Rosamund in a primary school book. But how lucky I was -- how lucky anyone is -- to pick up The Millstone! First published in 1965, The Millstone is narrated by Rosamund Stacey, an academic, working towards her doctoral thesis in Elizabethan poetry, who has very little interest in sex. She expects to remain a virgin, but spends one evening with fey, camp George, an announcer for the BBC, and decides to try sleeping with him. She is appalled and disbelieving when she discovers herself to be pregnant. Abortion is not legal, but she does her best to get rid of the foetus, though she doesn't try very hard. Knowing she will have inevitably a baby forces Rosamund to find an inner resilience she had not dreamed she possessed, and in the wake of others' disapproval, to force herself through birth and caring for a newborn. Even if none of these subjects are of particular interest to you, the reader, the strength and humour of Rosamund's first-person narration, and the way she examines the many obstacles in her path, are compelling. It is a subtle and clever portrait of a woman faced with an impossible situation, and also a ruthless examination of class privilege, sexism, and what it really means to be independent. Both of its time and continually relevant.
February 26, 2024
3.75 ⭐️ One of the best examples of literary fiction I have ever read.
Topic-wise, I can see how this was revolutionary in 60s women’s & feminist writing and can appreciate it for that but at the same time I can’t overlook the subtle discrimination of so many groups of people in this book. Also the way the birth of Rosamund’s baby magically took only 5 minuted and the muscles of her belly “snapped back into place” immediately... like ok.
So, judging from a 60s pov I can see how this would be a 5/5 for the intimate and taboo topics it talks about but from my personal pov it’s nothing special, though this simply makes me appreciate how far we’ve come.
The writing was good but, for such a personal topic, Rosamund’s emotions were weirdly rationalised most of the time rather than just displayed like actual emotions (which would have fit the theme, tone and topic so much better imo) which put me off at times. I didn’t like the ending and thought the book was leading up to a different ending but I guess that’s just my own misinterpretation.
Overall though, I liked this book; it was clever and also quite funny in between and I enjoyed reading it.
Topic-wise, I can see how this was revolutionary in 60s women’s & feminist writing and can appreciate it for that but at the same time I can’t overlook the subtle discrimination of so many groups of people in this book. Also the way the birth of Rosamund’s baby magically took only 5 minuted and the muscles of her belly “snapped back into place” immediately... like ok.
So, judging from a 60s pov I can see how this would be a 5/5 for the intimate and taboo topics it talks about but from my personal pov it’s nothing special, though this simply makes me appreciate how far we’ve come.
The writing was good but, for such a personal topic, Rosamund’s emotions were weirdly rationalised most of the time rather than just displayed like actual emotions (which would have fit the theme, tone and topic so much better imo) which put me off at times. I didn’t like the ending and thought the book was leading up to a different ending but I guess that’s just my own misinterpretation.
Overall though, I liked this book; it was clever and also quite funny in between and I enjoyed reading it.
March 20, 2015
London in the early 1960s is a place where casual sex is becoming acceptable, but having a child out of wedlock is not. Twenty-six year old scholar and doctoral student Rosamund Stacey is dating two men whose company she enjoys, but she’s really not interested in getting physical with either one. She more interested in Elizabethan poets and her academic career. Then a chance meeting with a likable radio announcer leads to an invitation to her flat, and after her first and only sexual encounter she finds herself pregnant. In keeping with her independent values and her “strange mixture of confidence and cowardice,” she decides to have the child and not tell the father about her pregnancy.
Told in the first person, Rosamund’s pregnancy and first year of motherhood is a tale of an intelligent young woman making her way in the world that’s worthy of Jane Austen. Like Austen’s heroines, Rosamund is comfortably middle class, but unlike them she is not surrounded by family. Her parents are in Africa teaching, and she is alone in their home in London with only friends and casual acquaintances around her. She is, by temperament and design, a loner, but after the birth of her daughter Octavia she finds herself overwhelmed by maternal love with all its tender devotion and obsessive worry. This tension is a fire that Drabble stokes right up to the final pages of the novel. Like Austen’s, Drabble’s domestic fiction sharply reflects the society, its foibles and inequalities, in which it is set. Rosamund is aware that her social position has allowed her to make the choice to have child and career that would not be possible for others with less means and social connections.
Told in the first person, Rosamund’s pregnancy and first year of motherhood is a tale of an intelligent young woman making her way in the world that’s worthy of Jane Austen. Like Austen’s heroines, Rosamund is comfortably middle class, but unlike them she is not surrounded by family. Her parents are in Africa teaching, and she is alone in their home in London with only friends and casual acquaintances around her. She is, by temperament and design, a loner, but after the birth of her daughter Octavia she finds herself overwhelmed by maternal love with all its tender devotion and obsessive worry. This tension is a fire that Drabble stokes right up to the final pages of the novel. Like Austen’s, Drabble’s domestic fiction sharply reflects the society, its foibles and inequalities, in which it is set. Rosamund is aware that her social position has allowed her to make the choice to have child and career that would not be possible for others with less means and social connections.
August 14, 2009
I bought this principally because the author's the half-sister of A.S.Byatt (who is utterly wonderful) and I'd come across their work being compared, and it was priced at 30p. But it was utter sop. Unconvincing woman academic gets pregnant (the only time she has sex, ever), then finds complete fulfilment in her baby.. She could at least get some geeky stuff about Elizabethan poetry in, but no, we stick to baby adoration... Perhaps some of Margaret D's stuff is better - I'm pretty sure she was OBE'd before her sister, and thought well of critically?
December 22, 2016
Novela feminista sobre una madre soltera en el Londres de la liberación sexual y el pop de los 60. El delicado y complejo retrato psicológico que Drabble emprende a partir de su personaje le sirve para reivindicar la libertad de la mujer a partir de elementos que ahora pueden parecer paradójicos como cierta frigidez sexual, una maternidad no buscada o una posición social acomodada. La prosa de la autora es de una fluidez poco habitual.
May 27, 2019
3.5 stars. Surprisingly enough I liked this book quite a lot, considering the way I eventually gave up on Drabble’s other work The Witch of Exmoor, whose tedium and the pomposity of whose narrator I could not bear. Glad I did not give up on my goal of finishing at least a Drabble because The Millstone was a satisfying read – witty, moving and rather profound.
Read
May 31, 2015The book was OK, but I didn't like the heroine much. The sort of person you wouldn't want to be friends with in real life.
August 8, 2023
Margaret Drabble has the misfortune of not only being the sister of an even more acclaimed author, A.S. Byatt, who won the Booker Prize with the excellent “Possession” – and with whom she has a distant relationship – but also of being a feminist ahead of her time but not far enough ahead of her time to be “rescued”. The reason I say “ahead of her time” is that when she wrote this, in 1965, feminist novels were mostly in their infancy and soon tended to be more strident (in my opinion), victimizing women and heaping all the blame on men and a male-dominated society. (I won’t deny that these accusations were mostly true…) Drabble’s feminism is more in tune with the mood today of self-empowerment, which owes a lot to those feminists of earlier days; while men could be seen as the oppressors back then, in this book they become irrelevant to a woman’s self-determination. (I am sure that many women will disagree with my assessment but I’m sure that no one can dispute that a lot has changed in 60 years; “you’ve come a long way, baby”, since Virginia Slims sold you a more feminine form of cancer!)
The protagonist, Rosamund, a Cambridge graduate writing her thesis, has an accidental encounter with a BBC newsreader which results in her becoming pregnant. Before this, she never gave much attention to anything out of her academic field, 18th-century (or 19th, I can’t remember) English poetry; she had her chaste flirtations but protected herself by convincing each that she was involved with another man of their acquaintance, and never really thought about an after-thesis life. However, her pregnancy changes that and forces her to make some determinations. One thing that protects her is that she is from a privileged situation so money is not a consideration; obviously whether in that time or this time, empowerment requires financing. She has the economic freedom to visit the library to research and write her thesis but in spite of this liberty, she still has to live in a society where single motherhood was not looked on well, especially in her economic class; everyone expects that she’ll either visit a doctor to have a procedure to “eliminate the problem” or at the least give the baby up for adoption. A lot of strong hints and expectations are thrown her way but she is either oblivious or impervious to all the voices around her. The baby is hers and so is her life. This leads to a nail-biting final chapter. (I read this book with my wife, who loved it as much as I did, in spite of the nail situation.)
This book is not all drama, although there are some things that affected me greatly; it’s more amusing as Rosamund wades further and further into taking charge of her life, and that of her baby. Everything is cast in a humorous light, from maternity to the National Health Service to the indifference and/or raised eyebrows of her acquaintances, one of whom, Lydia, sees a particular advantage for herself in all this while being a tremendous help. (According to Wikipedia, it was also adapted into a 1969 film, something I didn’t know: in the UK, “A Touch of Love”, in the USA, “Thank You Very Much.”) I really liked this book and look forward to reading more as I have a fondness for British women writers from this time, for reasons even I can’t explain. My wife has also read “A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman” which is a collection of short stories of middle-aged women with problems, mostly with their partners, and I hope to get to that soon. Meanwhile, I can look back on this book and recommend it.
The protagonist, Rosamund, a Cambridge graduate writing her thesis, has an accidental encounter with a BBC newsreader which results in her becoming pregnant. Before this, she never gave much attention to anything out of her academic field, 18th-century (or 19th, I can’t remember) English poetry; she had her chaste flirtations but protected herself by convincing each that she was involved with another man of their acquaintance, and never really thought about an after-thesis life. However, her pregnancy changes that and forces her to make some determinations. One thing that protects her is that she is from a privileged situation so money is not a consideration; obviously whether in that time or this time, empowerment requires financing. She has the economic freedom to visit the library to research and write her thesis but in spite of this liberty, she still has to live in a society where single motherhood was not looked on well, especially in her economic class; everyone expects that she’ll either visit a doctor to have a procedure to “eliminate the problem” or at the least give the baby up for adoption. A lot of strong hints and expectations are thrown her way but she is either oblivious or impervious to all the voices around her. The baby is hers and so is her life. This leads to a nail-biting final chapter. (I read this book with my wife, who loved it as much as I did, in spite of the nail situation.)
This book is not all drama, although there are some things that affected me greatly; it’s more amusing as Rosamund wades further and further into taking charge of her life, and that of her baby. Everything is cast in a humorous light, from maternity to the National Health Service to the indifference and/or raised eyebrows of her acquaintances, one of whom, Lydia, sees a particular advantage for herself in all this while being a tremendous help. (According to Wikipedia, it was also adapted into a 1969 film, something I didn’t know: in the UK, “A Touch of Love”, in the USA, “Thank You Very Much.”) I really liked this book and look forward to reading more as I have a fondness for British women writers from this time, for reasons even I can’t explain. My wife has also read “A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman” which is a collection of short stories of middle-aged women with problems, mostly with their partners, and I hope to get to that soon. Meanwhile, I can look back on this book and recommend it.
November 18, 2012
This is one of those books where the subject matter (female scholar has unplanned pregnancy and decides to keep the baby) is of little interest to me, yet I could not stop reading. I found the writing really enthralling, and Drabble's tone was exactly in my literary wheelhouse. Was so perfectly wry and British, I loved the dry humor and loved the narrator's voice; for that alone I couldn't help but keep reading, not because I couldn't bear to not find out how the story resolved itself, but simply because I was so amused by Rosamund's inner monologue. She wasn't a flawless heroine by any means (far from it), but I found her really engaging and appreciated her candor.
Also, even though the plot wasn't one that inherently interests me, I did think it was made more interesting given that the unplanned pregnancy was also tackled out of wedlock, which was still super dicey in the 1960s when the novel was first published. Interesting to see how we have progressed, but to read the story through that lens and the additional challenges faced by women in that situation made the story even more enjoyable. Nice slice of history and one of the more unabashedly enjoyable reads I have encountered in a long while.
[As an aside, I have mixed feelings about the motherhood storyline and am unclear about what Drabble was trying to say about the importance of children to women... but rather than be overly pessimistic, I will err on the side of cautious optimism and choose to believe she was merely suggesting that it was possible for women to be both mothers and career-oriented without having to pick one over the other. I hope she wasn't suggesting that even those of us who feel little to no desire to have children will find ourselves unknowingly unfulfilled lest we do, but I allow that such an interpretation of the text is possible.)
Also, even though the plot wasn't one that inherently interests me, I did think it was made more interesting given that the unplanned pregnancy was also tackled out of wedlock, which was still super dicey in the 1960s when the novel was first published. Interesting to see how we have progressed, but to read the story through that lens and the additional challenges faced by women in that situation made the story even more enjoyable. Nice slice of history and one of the more unabashedly enjoyable reads I have encountered in a long while.
[As an aside, I have mixed feelings about the motherhood storyline and am unclear about what Drabble was trying to say about the importance of children to women... but rather than be overly pessimistic, I will err on the side of cautious optimism and choose to believe she was merely suggesting that it was possible for women to be both mothers and career-oriented without having to pick one over the other. I hope she wasn't suggesting that even those of us who feel little to no desire to have children will find ourselves unknowingly unfulfilled lest we do, but I allow that such an interpretation of the text is possible.)
November 21, 2022
1.5 stars for this one.
Rosamund Stacey is at heart a Victorian. So, while other girls, in terms of men, are going where angels fear to tread, she is cautious. Until one day, she abandons all caution and falls pregnant after a one night stand.
She isn't a very creative girl, although she is University educated, enjoys literature and research from an analytical point of view. I see her as the anchor in her group of arty, writer friends. Although, as is the case with analytical people, she finds it hard to be alone. So, when her parents travel overseas and leave her with no money, aside from their early twentieth century apartment, she enjoys having her friends over to stay with her for company. As with all middle class families, she is raised to be self-reliant, although, initially when her parents first depart, this frightens her.
I have to say that it was impossible for me to get in and under her characters, because I suspected that it was Drabble's experiences at university and life that she was passing off as fiction. Nothing wrong with that, per say. Write what you know. But make sure that you get your own voice out of the way.
I haven't finished this, I got two thirds through, and then she went into overboard details about her pregnancy, giving birth and how it is to raise a child.
There were a few notable sentences of interest to me in terms of finding myself through other characters. Sentences about previously being innocent and kind to everyone, then realising that she needed to voice her dislike sometimes. But other than that, this wasn't a very good story.
Rosamund Stacey is at heart a Victorian. So, while other girls, in terms of men, are going where angels fear to tread, she is cautious. Until one day, she abandons all caution and falls pregnant after a one night stand.
She isn't a very creative girl, although she is University educated, enjoys literature and research from an analytical point of view. I see her as the anchor in her group of arty, writer friends. Although, as is the case with analytical people, she finds it hard to be alone. So, when her parents travel overseas and leave her with no money, aside from their early twentieth century apartment, she enjoys having her friends over to stay with her for company. As with all middle class families, she is raised to be self-reliant, although, initially when her parents first depart, this frightens her.
I have to say that it was impossible for me to get in and under her characters, because I suspected that it was Drabble's experiences at university and life that she was passing off as fiction. Nothing wrong with that, per say. Write what you know. But make sure that you get your own voice out of the way.
I haven't finished this, I got two thirds through, and then she went into overboard details about her pregnancy, giving birth and how it is to raise a child.
There were a few notable sentences of interest to me in terms of finding myself through other characters. Sentences about previously being innocent and kind to everyone, then realising that she needed to voice her dislike sometimes. But other than that, this wasn't a very good story.
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