An Identity of One’s Own: Feminist Ideology and Identity Crisis of an Academic Woman in a Postmodern Feminist Fiction

Abstract

Why academic women struggle to find an identity of their own in “the genderization of science” (Keller, 1984, 78)? Is it because they still “face stereotyping, gendered barriers, exclusion, mobbing, discounting and discrediting in the patriarchal domain of science”? (Buran, 2020). This paper close-reads the interface between feminist ideology and biology that Margaret Drabble develops in her The Millstone (1965), which tells the transition from traditional ideal women to women in crisis in Post-War Britain. This postmodern feminist fiction reconstructs an alternative woman protagonist, Rosamund Stacey, liberated in all facets of life for whom marriage is not the goal but her academic career, as she prefers to remain a single mother without depending on a husband. The aim of this article is to explore how Drabble portrays an academic woman’s selfjourney towards a sense of fragmented identity crises of social, familial, professional, and maternal. This is achieved by exploring Rosamund’s quest to find her feminist ideology and true identity flying from body constraints and socially assigned female roles.