• feminism
• motherhood
• Margaret Drabble
• Margaret Atwood
• Doris Lessing
• english literature

In rebuffing the standardized role women had traditionally been assigned as wives and mothers, second-wave feminism condemned the patriarchal institution of motherhood as an oppressive condition that relegated women to the domestic sphere. Encouraging female emancipation from male control, the feminist activists of the second half of the twentieth century advocated the rejection of such a constraint by promoting the notions of sexual freedom and economic independence. By establishing a dialogue with feminist debates, the present dissertation deals with three different novels concerning the experience of motherhood, that is, Margaret Drabble’s The Millstone (1965), Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing (1972), and Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child (1988). Neither surrendering to a patriarchal concept of motherhood, nor rejecting motherhood altogether, the three female protagonists welcome such an experience as an entirely feminine process, capable of leading to their self-realization. By tacitly or implicitly following feminist ideological principles, they embrace a type of motherhood which causes patriarchal influence to be dismantled and female individuality to be celebrated.