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vlctorian age has been ideallsed and glorified by male
novelists, female novellsts, even those who were not
themselves mothers, had a more realistic, if not an outrlght
pessimistic outlook on the business of motherhood It 1s
hard to flnd in the works of George Ellot or Elizabeth
Gaskell a slngle strong mother who influences her daughter's
life for good, a fact that 1s surely a refutation of the
slmpllstic and sentimental vlew of motherhood found rn many
male essayists and novellsts The novels of Jane Ausren,
Fanny Burney and the Brontes reveal a tradltlon of the
absent mother malnly because the herorne had to act
Independently for the plot to unfold Hence mothers in
nineteenth century fictlon are dead, absent, weak or In need
of help themselves
1.5.5 Of the Brltlsh novelists taken up for st~dy,
Margaret Drabble sees motherhood In posltive terms wnile
Doris Lessing deplcts the tenslons and conflicts arlslng out
of th1s role Often referred to as a 'cautious fernlnlst'.
Drabble In her flctlon deplcts woman In the role of a good
mother wlfe, who at the same tlme remalns true to herself
as a person In her llfe or flctlon, she does not advccate
a femlnlst overthrow of the patriarchal order whlch has
earned her the title of a llberal femlnlst Her novels. A
Summer Bird Cage, The Garrick Year. The Millstone, Jerusalem
the Golden, The Waterfall, The Needle'e Eye, The Realms of