Nora Stovel's Margaret Drabble:Symbolic Moralist (1989)and in Elizabeth Dipple's Iris Murdoch:Work for the Spirit(1982).Religious attitudes in the fiction have dominated both Dipple's book on Murdoch and Suguna Ramanathan's /ris Murdoch: Figures of Good(1990),as well as Valerie Grosvenor Myer's Margaret Drabble: Puritanism and Permissiveness(1974).Feminist responses to the fiction of these writers include Ellen Cronan Rose's The Novels of Margaret Drabble:Equivocal Figures(1980) and Deborah Johnson's /ris Murdoch (1987).Authorial voice is the focus of Joanne Creighton's Margaret Drabble(1985),David Gordon's Iris Murdoch's Fables of Unselfing(1995),and the only two full-length studies on Byatt that are available: Kathleen Coyne Kelly's A.S.Byatt(1996),part of the Twayne's English Author Series, and Richard Todd's A.S.Byatt(1997).The association of these writers with the tradition of realism in British fiction,and their more controversial relationship with postmodernism,have been examined in Frank Baldanza's Iris Murdoch(1974),in the two books on Byatt mentioned above,and in the section on Drabble in Patricia Waugh's Feminine Fictions:Revisiting the Postmodern(1989).Although many of these studies have explored theme in an incidental way,it has not been their focus as it is in this project.And no published book or article has so far compared the three authors. In Section One of the essay,which deals with family ties,Chapter One looks at the Grimms'tale"Hansel and Gretel"and its application in Byatt's novels Still Life (1985)and Babel Tower(1996),Drabble's novel The Waterfall(1969)and Murdoch's novel The Green Knighr(1993).The novels suggest,as does the fairy tale,that childhood is an ordeal,and that parents are often to blame for this.The use of"Hansel and Gretel"by these authors to illuminate anxieties about abandonment experienced by
child characters anticipates,in a way,the ambivalent relationship that adult characters in the novels have with isolation.What"Hansel and Gretel"implies about the"murderous resentment"sometimes occurring between children and parents is echoed by the experience of Frederica Potter and her son Leo in Byatt's two novels.Young mothers in novels by Drabble,such as Jane Gray in The Waterfall(1969),must undergo a painful examination of the extent to which they resemble and differ from their children,and "Hansel and Gretel"helps them in this regard.In each novel,it is implied that what characters learn in childhood about relationships will prepare them for the difficulties of adult entanglements.This is best illustrated by Murdoch's use of the Grimms'tale in The Green Knight,which describes teenager Harvey Blacket's efforts to free himself from his suffocating relationship with his mother in order that he might marry her friend Louise's daughter. Given the general consensus among scholars that"Cinderella"contributes to female acculturation by rewarding passivity with marriage,it comes as something of a surprise that Murdoch,Drabble and Byatt should draw upon the tale to describe characters searching for identity,without recommending either marriage or passivity (rather the opposite,in fact),and without even restricting the starring role to women. This is the subject of Chapter Two of this essay.These novels highlight a feature of "Cinderella"which tends to be overlooked by scholars in favour of its marriage plot:in each case,characters striving to distinguish themselves from their families without breaking that tie completely are compared to"Cinderella,"a tale showing a young woman alternately aided and impeded by family connections in her journey towards adulthood.Drabble uses "Cinderella"to illuminate the personal and professional
achievements of her character,Liz Headleand,in the trilogy consisting of The Radiant Way (1987),A Natural Curiosity (1989)and The Gates of /vory(1991),without downplaying her ambition or the failure of her two marriages.In fact,it is clear that Liz has sacrificed close relationships in order to achieve success in her career,something that makes her less than likable.In Murdoch's novel The /talian Girl(1964),the tale of "Cinderella"clarifies the experiences of a male character dominated by his mother,with Edmund Narraway filling not just the role of the prince,as one might expect,but also that of Cinderella.When Edmund marries his nursemaid at the end of the novel,perhaps simply replacing one mother figure with another,an irony is introduced into Murdoch's use of the fairy tale.Byatt's Frederica Potter,the protagonist of the trilogy,The Virgin in the Garden (1978),Still Life (1985)and Babel Tower (1996),is unaware of her resemblance to Cinderella until she has already married,at which point,instead of a stepmother,Frederica's husband Nigel figures as her oppressor,and escaping marriage, rather than entering into it,furnishes the climax of her tale.Unfortunately,Frederica's experience with Nigel seems to have caused her to lose interest in romance. In Section Two of this essay,which deals with love affairs,Chapter Three examines risky romantic unions in fairy tales and in the works of these three authors, while Chapter Four looks at romances in Murdoch's novels alone.The most common interpretation of the many variants of animal-bridegroom tales-wherein a prince,made a beast by enchantment,is returned to his human form by the love of a woman-is that they show how we might be made over by love.The dangers to the woman implicit in this process are the subject of Chapter Three.Animal-bridegroom tales collected by the Grimms include"The Singing.Springing Lark"(the most similar to the better-known
French tale of“Beauty and the Beast,.”but with a lion in place of a“beast'"),“The Frog King,or Iron Heinrich,""Hans My Hedgehog,"and"Snow White and Rose Red"(where the bridegroom is a bear).Murdoch's The Green Knight(1993)uses animal-bridegroom tales to propose that love and marriage can dramatically change a person.In the novel, “beastly'”men marry“innocent lambs'”and the results seem to please everyone. However,some of the romantic unions celebrated at the end of The Green Knight show poor judgment,introducing an ambivalence into Murdoch's use of fairy tales in the novel.The risks involved in love affairs,rather than their positive results,dominate Byatt's Still Life(1985)and Babel Tower(1996),the second and third novels of her Frederica Potter series.In the novels,Frederica looks back on her failed marriage to the violent Nigel Reiver and considers her degree of responsibility for what happened in their relationship.Her conclusions are illuminated by comparisons to"Bluebeard,"which critics have suggested is connected to animal-bridegroom tales,along with the Grimms' "The Robber Bridegroom."In Drabble's novel The Waterfall(1969),animal-bridegroom tales contribute to the story of a shy woman seemingly transformed by a physical relationship with her cousin's husband.By the novel's end,the risks that Jane Gray has taken in love have revived her ability to write.Drabble's description of the relationship is charged with ambivalence,however,since the love affair with James initially threatens to overwhelm Jane,and then,finally,seems of minor importance compared to her writing. Throughout Murdoch's novels,there is a recurring sequence wherein one person discovers another asleep,and falls in love with them,or feels an existing love confirmed. The scenes are strangely similar:typically,the room is dimly lit,the sleeper's hair is
spread on the pillow and one arm is flung outwards.The onlooker is typically seized by powerful emotions.The ancient story of the sleeping princess awakened by a kiss-the Grimms call her"Briar Rose"-has invited a range of interpretations.For Murdoch, however,the most obvious interpretation is the most powerful:the tale points out the difficult way to true love.This is the subject of Chapter Four of this essay.In Murdoch's Bruno's Dream(1969),The Black Prince(1973),The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974),The Good Apprentice(1985)and The Green Knight(1993),romances beginning with a sequence like this subseqently fail -the result,in some cases,of the lovers idealizing each other,and in others,of their intruding too much into each other's consciousness.In A Severed Head(1961)and Jackson's Dilemma(1995),relationships that have these problems at the start are salvaged by the characters when they realize the mistakes they have made.In Murdoch's world,loving someone requires surrendering myths about them,but also giving up the temptation to scrutinize them too closely.This means that characters in her novels sometimes get involved without knowing the other person very well at all,a fact which troubles her use of fairy tales that find resolution to characters'problems in happy marriages. Section Three of this essay,focusing on community,explores characters'efforts to establish their own identity,at a point in their lives when they have already encountered and dealt with the difficulties of family and romantic ties.In Chapter Five, the psychoanalytic interpretation of animal-bridegroom tales is explored,wherein beasts represent divergent aspects of the protagonist's psyche with which he or she must come to terms in order to successfully undergo the process of individuation.The tales might also illustrate one aspect in particular of that process of individuation-the conflict that