Review - Margaret Drabble: The Millstone

Margaret Drabble:
The Millstone (4*)

Another from the Penguin Decades series – novels that helped shape modern Britain – although my copy is a different edition.

It was first published in 1965 and set in the ‘Swinging Sixties’ when, we are led to believe, sexual liberation was well on the way, at least in London. Rosamund, the protagonist, becomes pregnant after a one-night stand, her one and only sexual experience. Being apparently confident and independent she chooses to have and raise the baby, a girl. She keeps the father’s identity secret from her small circle of friends, and from the father too, and they all admire her determination. 

Well, I don’t know about London, but in my part of Yorkshire, in 1965, it would have been outrageous. Any young woman who got pregnant out of wedlock, no matter how independently minded, would have had a very difficult time indeed. I think of a pretty girl at school whose boyfriend, as rumour had it, was unable to resist her comely body, lovely dark hair and earthy name, or maybe her, his. It was whispered, and then yelled with thoughtless hilarity around town, that they had tried to use a rain mate* as a home-made contraceptive. More home making soon followed. No G.C.E. ‘A’ Levels for her. They were shotgunned together and moved away. Had they stayed around, she would for ever have been known as Mrs. Rain Mate.

In the book, Rosamund is the well-educated daughter of socialist, academic parents, living alone in their large apartment while they are abroad. She is also an academic herself (yes, another one), completing a Ph.D. thesis on Elizabethan sonnets. She narrates her story in intelligent, self-possessed sentences with the word “I” appearing perhaps twenty times on every page. At first I had reservations about this, but it reflects her character. It also betrays her shyness and uncertainties. She is not as confident and independent as she pretends. She is diffident with friends, cannot confide feeling, things are left unsaid and commitments unmade. It is very clever writing.

Yet, Rosamund is capable enough to muddle her way through nineteen-sixties NHS waiting rooms and hospitals, and encounters with other mothers across the class divide. She knows she is treated with more respect because of her address and appearance, but knows how to get what she wants when she isn’t. Although the baby changes her life and her outlook, she still completes her thesis and is offered an academic post.

The millstone of the title is not, as one might first think, the baby. The reference is biblical, to Matthew 18:6: it is less distressing to drown with a millstone round one’s neck than to suffer the consequences of hurting a little one (my interpretation). Rosamund would have found it unbearable not to have the baby and bring it up herself. In essence, the novel celebrates maternity and motherhood, although not in any sentimental way. Rosamund retains her academic detachment throughout – none of the “beauty’s rose might never die” stuff of her Elizabethan sonnets. Even so, it is unlikely I would have been persuaded to read it as a teenager when it first came out.

* rain mate: a foldable, waterproof head covering worn mainly by women, usually made from thin, transparent plastic film.

Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Previous book reviews