Socio-Political Consciousness in Margaret Drabble: A Study of The Millstone, The Ice Age, and The Radiant Way

Pages:26-28
Pallavi Arya (Department of English, F. C. College, Hisar, Haryana)

Writing way back in 1921,Virginia Woolf, describing Bennett, Wells, and Galsworthy as materialists, had regretted their inability for not capturing the soul of their characters. She said: “Whether we call it life or spirit, truth or reality, this, the essential thing, has moved off, or on, and refuses to be contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we provide “(11). Later, in 1960, David Daiches agreed with Woolf and invoked “inward vision” (7) as the thing to work for in the novel. However, he also argued that the English novel, right since its beginning, had functioned as a “public instrument” (1). Daiches had written his comprehensive book on English masters of the twentieth century in 1960.One year later, in 1961, Auden said:”To look for a lost collar button is not a true quest, to go in quest means to look for something of which one has as yet no experience; one can imagine what it will be like but whether one’s picture is true or false will be known only when one has found it”(81).