The narrative mode in the novel “Jerusalem the golden” by Margaret Drabble

Abstract

The article studies the narrative strategies in English women’s novels of the second half of the 20th century. The research is based on the novel “Jerusalem the Golden” by Margaret Drabble (1967). The scientific novelty of this study is explained by the research methodology. We study the main principles and techniques in the transformation of the established canons in English women’s realistic novel. Our analysis of the ideological, thematic, structural, semantic and compositional levels of the text through the prism of the dialogical relationship between the author and the reader helps to identify the organization of the inner world of the text. It allows us to explore Margaret Drabble’s contribution to the development of intellectual prose by women writers in the 1960–1970s. The article pays attention to the importance of changing the points of view, the significance of the home topos in understanding the problems raised in the novel, and interprets the figurative structure of the text. The study revealed that this novel was a turning point in the writer’s work. Despite the fact that Margaret Drabble still relies on the traditions common in Victorian prose at the ideological level, the writer has started to rethink the genre strategies inherent in the English realistic novel inputing into her artistic work the techniques that will become characteristic features of postmodern prose. In the work “My Golden Jerusalem” the author appeals to the reader in the communication chain “author-text-reader” in solving the problem of “being and seeming”, using a woman’s fate as an example.