Dissertations and Theses @ UNI
Availability
Open Access Thesis
Keywords
Drabble, Margaret, --1939---Middle ground;
Abstract
This thesis focuses on contemporary British writer Margaret Drabble's ninth and most recent novel, The Middle Ground, as novel and as metaphor. "The middle ground" is a metaphor for the British middle class, about whom Drabble mostly writes; for middle age, which she herself is entering, along with Kate Armstrong, protagonist of the novel; and for the style and stage of Drabble's own career. But, the "middle ground" is an equally apt, if less obvious, metaphor for the narrative which provides the nearly plotless story of The Middle Ground, the area of human relationships, mostly circling Kate. The middle ground is, however, only one layer of the whole ground, for Drabble has provided a subterranean level of awareness which makes more substantial much of what on the surface appears unrelated or insignificant, and which critics have pointed out is awkward in its structuring and transitions. She provides a major clue to the importance of this "underground" by referring the reader to Mary Douglas's Purity and Danger, which is an analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo, anthropological insights which are supportive of the underground themes and images. Also, Drabble has included an upper layer, or "higher ground," of the more elevated aspects of the human spirit. More than in any of her previous novels, she uses intimations of transcendence, moments, "leads," and partial knowledge, from literature and life and art. These aspects, which overlap and interpenetrate in the novel as in "real life," have beert separated in this thesis more for a literary analysis than for a philosophical or psychological one, though those dimensions are not entirely absent. My thesis is that these levels ultimately provide the dense and resonant pattern of The Middle Ground , and that Drabble has provided connections, if not ones immediately detected, between them. My proposal is that firmly rendered, if both slightly submerged and hovering above, is a subtle pattern with connections to a center, connections which contribute to an ever widening circle of meaning . My methodology is to explore each of the levels of the novel, as written, in chapters: the "underground," the "middle ground," and the "higher ground," and also Drabble's own new and experimental ground, her "viewing ground," or her recent perspective in translating moral observations about modern life into literature. In the examination of these four levels, some of the ways in which the levels touch are pointed out: the "thick clutter" of cross-references, the trivia, the "serious but hidden" connections, connections which have been detected in interrelationships, multiple layers of meaning , imagistic concentric circles and "networks." This thesis concludes as a defense of The Middle Ground, not as a great book--for it is obviously experimental, and likely transitional-- but as an ambitious attempt to "bring together" and to connect in largely intuitive ways a number of life elements.
Year of Submission
1982
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Department of English Language and Literature
First Advisor
Daniel J. Cahill
Second Advisor
Grace Ann Hovet
Third Advisor
John C. Downey
Date Original
1982
Object Description
1 PDF file (136 leaves)
Copyright
1982 Earlene Hamel Hawley
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Hawley, Earlene Hamel, "Interpretive Levels and Connections in Margaret Drabble’s the Middle Ground" (1982). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 2898.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/2898
Comments
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