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Books Like The Millstone
Novels Like The Millstone
Margaret Drabble's The Millstone is one of the defining novels of postwar British women's fiction — Rosamund Stacey's fierce independence in the face of an unplanned pregnancy, told with dry comedy and psychological precision. These 8 novels share its portrait of an intelligent woman navigating a social world not designed for her, its dry wit, and its unflinching account of what it costs to make unconventional choices.
- 1Buy
The Waterfall
by Margaret Drabble
Jane Gray, a poet, and her love affair with her cousin's husband — the natural companion to The Millstone in Drabble's work; shares its portrait of a particular kind of English intellectual woman whose emotional life is in painful conflict with her rational self-understanding, and its interest in the experience of sexuality and desire from a woman's perspective
- 2Buy
The Women's Room
by Marilyn French
Mira Ward's marriage, breakdown, and recovery in 1950s and 1960s suburban America — French's 1977 novel is the transatlantic counterpart to The Millstone: where Drabble's Rosamund faces her unplanned pregnancy with dry English wit, French's Mira confronts the full political apparatus of American domestic life with rage and exhilaration; both novels are about what it costs a woman to live on her own terms
- 3Buy
Excellent Women
by Barbara Pym
Mildred Lathbury, a clergyman's daughter in postwar London, and the people she observes and helps with patient irony — Pym's finest novel shares The Millstone's dry comedy, its portrait of an intelligent woman navigating a social world that underestimates her, and its first-person voice of brilliant self-deprecation; written a decade before The Millstone but sharing its fundamental refusal to be sentimental about being a single woman in mid-century England
- 4Buy
The Bell Jar
by Sylvia Plath
Esther Greenwood's breakdown and recovery in 1950s America — Plath's autobiographical novel shares The Millstone's portrait of a gifted young woman whose intelligence and ambition put her in conflict with the social expectations of her time; where Rosamund's response is ironic detachment and fierce independence, Esther's is collapse and reconstruction, but both novels are about the cost of refusing to fit the female mold
- 5Buy
Disobedience
by Naomi Alderman
Ronit Krushka, an Orthodox Jewish woman who left London for New York, returning for her father's funeral and the complicated desires his death uncovers — Alderman's debut shares The Millstone's portrait of an intelligent woman whose desires put her outside the respectable social world she came from, and its dry comedy about the gap between what a person wants and what their community expects
- 6Buy
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
by Muriel Spark
Miss Jean Brodie and her 'crème de la crème' at the Marcia Blaine School in Edinburgh — Spark's novel shares The Millstone's portrait of an exceptional woman navigating a world that has no adequate category for her, its dry, precise prose, and its interest in the way that female intelligence expresses itself when its conventional outlets are blocked
- 7Buy
Lolly Willowes
by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Laura Willowes escaping from her London family to the country — and making a pact with the devil — Warner's 1926 novel is an earlier version of the same story The Millstone tells: a single woman refusing the subordinate role that family and society have prepared for her, finding a way to live on her own terms even when those terms are eccentric; the supernatural twist is the wit's most extreme expression
- 8Buy
Mrs Bridge
by Evan S. Connell
India Bridge's life in Kansas City across a series of brief, precise vignettes — Connell's novel is the American version of the same subject The Millstone addresses, but from the opposite angle: where Rosamund refuses the conventional female life, India Bridge is wholly absorbed by it; the portrait of a woman who has made all the conventional choices is, in Connell's hands, as revelatory about the cost of compliance as Drabble's portrait of defiance
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