Predicament of Young Intellectual Women -Feminist Reading of Drabbles First Three Novels By Dai Yuan Under the Supervision of Prof. Chen Bing A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts to the School of Foreign Studies Anhui University April 2008 I Acknowledgements I avail myself of this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to those who have offered me much needed help in the course of writing the thesis. I am first of all deeply indebted to my supervisor Prof. Chen Bing for his invaluable suggestions and unprecedented help. He has made detailed comments and suggestions on my draft version that were useful, encouraging and invaluable. Without his consistent help, concern and encouragement, the completion of the present thesis would have been impossible. Likewise, I extend my faithful thanks to all those respectable professors who have taught and helped me, including Prof. Chen Zhengfa, Prof. Hua Quankun, Prof. Hong Zengliu, Dr. Qi Tao and Prof. Zhu Yue, whose lectures and courses are enlightening and illuminating, an unfailing source of knowledge and inspiration in my study. Last but not the least, grateful acknowledgements are also made to the faculty of the School of Foreign Studies as well as my family. II Abstract In recent years, women studies have become hot all around the world and scholars have put the attention to those women in disadvantageous social status. However, the author of this paper finds that one group of women are neglected, that is the group of young intellectual women who have various predicaments in their lives, so the author decides to study the group in this paper. Few writers are concerned about the young intellectual womens lives like Margaret Drabble in her first three novels. Her first novel, The Summer Bird-Cage (1963) is mainly about the experience of a single intellectual woman, Sarah Bennet, the heroin who is just out of college. She has a marriage prospect but no career. The novel is around what she will do in her future life. The second novel, The Garrick Year, (1964) is the only one to focus entirely on the life of a married woman. The novel documents the process of her compromise with the patriarchal reality. Her next novel, The Millstone (1965) focuses mainly on life of an unmarried intellectual woman who experiences an unexpected pregnancy. It is about how Rosamund balances her biological function and artistic creation. As Drabbles first three novels include all types of lives of young intellectual women, this paper chooses them in order to study the group of modern young intellectual women to find out the factors leading to their various predicaments. Three major predicaments are discussed in this paper. First and the basic is about the biological predicament of intellectual women. In the present society, women prove to be mens equal in intelligence. However, they cannot get rid of the hindrance brought by their biological function. The characters in Drabbles first three novels are all those college-educated young women who have achieved their academic success. Though women in the novels are not inferior to men in intelligence and men cannot prevent them from receiving higher education, men fully use the social and ideological regulations to boost the submissive state of women on the one hand and to denigrate the ambition of women on the other side. As a result, men succeed and those married women in the novels depend on men, neglecting their own intelligence. Throughout history, women have been closely bounded with their biological function, which has been proved to hinder womens equality with men. Facing the biological function of maternity and endless devotion hereafter, intellectual women have their III own choices. They either take their responsibilities in a different degree; or never intend to implement the function. Intellectually, women have ability to have professions, but biological function hinders women, especially the married from implementing social performance. Thus, the social predicament of those intellectual women comes out. Men dominate the economy. The degradation in economy makes women to cater for mens need for survival. Unmarried women might still have chances to work, but married women usually have no opportunity to contact with the outside world. Men close all the social doors to women. Silently the housewives bear the feelings of isolation and loneliness. Besides, there is also psychological predicament of those intellectual women. They have received the education about the value of independence in their childhood. Now living in patriarchal society, which puts women in a subordinate position, they are still influenced by independence,so they either keep independent secretly in heart as most married women do; or act out in behavior as some single women do. Those unmarried women, especially those who have been deeply influenced by womens independence, try their utmost to