The Middle Ground is considered by many critics to belong to a second phase of Margaret Drabble’s writings which has a social focus, differing from her five novels from the 1960s that have a subjective focus. The form is also a notable difference between the two groups of novels (Stovel, 56).
According to Rubenstein (139), the intrusive narrator who calls attention to the fictional aspect of the narrative is one of the signs of the tension between the mimetic plot and the narrative strategy of these novels, especially The Middle Ground. As pointed out by Bromberg, the novel was criticized by its “clumsy style and lack of evident form, as well as the proliferation of points of view and corresponding lack of character development” (464). Bromberg argues that it is necessary to question why Drabble chose this narrative strategy before condemning it, she believes that it makes the reader stop and take note while expressing the novel’s “profound uncertainty about conventional narrative strategy” (467). Another point that should be highlighted is that the narrative form resembles the internal turmoil of its characters, as Greene calls attention to, "Drabble suggests parallels between Kate's crisis and problems of narrative construction." (294)
In this paper I discuss how the narrative structure strategy used by Drabble in The Middle Ground resembles the inner turmoil faced by the characters, especially Kate, in their mid-life crises. As Rose argues, the way the characters deal with the “discovery that life is fragmented and inherently without pattern translate into alternative narrative strategies.” (80) This topic is relevant for the understanding of the complexity of the novel’s narrative when, at first glance, the readers could tend to side with the critics that point out its lack of form without considering that the form could be intentionally like this, fragments that replace conventional expectations for the “likelihoods of reality”. (Bromberg, 466)
The Middle Ground begins with a discussion between Kate Armstrong and her friend Hugo Mainwaring about what he termed her “mid-life crisis”. The narrator then interferes and speaks directly to the reader: “Here is an account of Kate’s past history, some, if not all, of which must have led her to wherever she now is” (17). Here the narrator indicates the idea that torments Kate during the present time in her life: that where her life is now should be explained by her past and predict her future, but she has difficult visualizing these links. As Greene remarks, Kate loses the connection between past and present (294): “the past no longer seems to make sense, for if it did, how would it have left her here, in this peculiarly draughty space?” (16) The narrative follows the same path and does not hold to a linear passage of time. Starting in the present moment of Kate’s life the narrator goes back and offers the reader a brief account of her life and then it returns to the point it had left and the novel begins: “And that is Kate’s history, up to date” (79); “ […] two new elements have entered Kate’s life. One is a new job. […] The other new element is the Iraqi.” (81-2) As discussed by Rose, these two new elements will have an important part in solving Kate’s mid-life crisis (71). According to Bromberg, the intrusion of the authorial voice destroys the illusion of an objective or dramatic point of view and it makes Kate seem more “real” to the reader in that she seems independent of the authorial voice (466-7).
From this moment on, the novel has a multiplication of perspectives, the narrator changes abruptly from Kate to other characters. According to Pickering, it is not only the points of view that change, "but other ways of representing reality" are introduced (481). These switches show how Kate is perceived differently by herself and each person in her life, including the narrator. The multiplicity is part of her past and her present, as Bromberg points out, and to know her we would have to know all these different perceptions (471-2). Another interesting aspect of the multiple perspectives is that, as stated by Bromberg, they “challenge the romantic individualism of the nineteenth century Bildungsroman, as well as subverting its narrative structures.” (8)
The narrator leaves Kate sitting on a bank near her old home and gives an account of Evelyn’s daily routine as a social worker. As Kate, her friend also reflects on her life and how she ended up where she is and she finds it “hard to know what kept her at it in this way.” (135) Both characters are trying to understand the ways of life and the meaning of everything they have been through and might yet face, they are trying to figure out the patterns of life and how they apply to themselves. These thoughts of Kate and Evelyn are reflected in the narrative strategy that asks if “any of the patterns of art can accurately reflect life” (8), as Bromberg asserts.
Another change of focalized by the narrator occurs and we are presented with Hugo’s own ruminations on his life and that of his friend Kate. Hugo is trying to write a book about the Middle East, but is having trouble and decides to write something else. He tries to write about himself, but his account of his own life does not have much of reality, as the narrator tells the reader “he has failed to convey much useful information about his own past history” (171). Hugo’s reflections on writing demonstrate a metafictional aspect of the novel. He gives up on his attempts of writing a novel because “life is too bizarre for fiction, these days” (171) and “the more I try to tell the truth, the worse I write” (161). Rose defends that his reasons show his limited conception of a novelist, that “life is too bizarre a subject for fiction if we demand that novels be well-written – that is, formally coherent” (77), which is the idea that the narrative structure of The Middle Ground challenges by its supposed lack of form.
The narrator then gives an amplified account of Hugo’s history, but, as pointed out by Rose, even this involved an attempt to find a pattern in life, but “if life is not clearly patterned, how is the novelist to tell the truth about it […]?” (78). According to Bromberg, in this section of the novel, Drabble “makes explicit that the organizing subject in The Middle Ground is the problem of finding patterns for art that do not distort or oversimplify reality” (471), as the narrator of the novel acknowledges writing is “the art of selection. The art of omission.” (180)
Hugo concludes that writing is such a difficult exercise because “everything has too much history” and a pattern in life is slow to emerge because the past is too dense and the future has not yet thinned out, there are too many cross-references and hidden connections (182); He sees now that “modern life is in some mysterious way too fragmented” (182). The narrative is also fragmented in the constant changes of perspective and the frequent intrusions of the narrator speaking directly to the reader and giving her/his opinion about the characters. As Bromberg argues, Drabble “presents the reader with a scenario of the novelist in search of truth, no longer certain what to include and what to leave out, baffled by endlessly multiplying perspectives" and that "no single perspective [...] can encompass an ever changing, multiplying truth." (473)
The two new elements that enter Kate’s life when the novel begins are linked to each other and her perception of herself and the patterns that she has been seeking to visualize in her life’s history. When Mujid appears in her life, Kate tells herself and her friends that he “is the next stage in my education” (87) because she believes that everything in her life has to be connected somehow. As Rose points out, “Kate, who sees her life as moving through a sequence of ‘phases’, charts her development through a progression of mentors” (71) that are represented by Hunt, her ex-husband Stuart and his family, her lover Ted, and Mujid who she believes to be her last opportunity to “some interesting discovery about human nature.” (87) According to Rose, Kate’s view of Mujid changes to a more realistic one because of the realizations she encounters through the other new element in her life, her new job. (73)
Kate’s new job of producing a television program leads her to re-visit her past where she is surprised to find “no revelations […] just memories” (116). She interviews many women that are connected to her past in Romley and as she discusses with her producer, Gabriel Denham, about the editing of these interviews she points out to him that they “fell into no recognizable patter, and that it was unfair to try to force them into a general statement about Woman Today” (213). Her perception of the interviews’ lack of pattern and the tragedy that happens to Evelyn finally teaches her that life has no predetermined patterns and she is able to release herself from “the grip of the representative. Henceforth she would represent nothing but herself.” (224-5) Kate concludes that “she’d spent enough time looking for patterns and trends” (225) and that she has had enough because it would get her nowhere, she feels reconciled with the idea of a “shapeless diversity” (225) now. Bromberg notes that when "she and the reader least expect it, her [Kate's] crisis dissipates as she accepts and embraces plurality and uncertainty." (475) Pickering concludes that this “shapeless diversity” is a comment on the narrative strategy in that the narrator uses various representational methods, be it description or direct quotation, in her/his effort to “establish the facts of the case, to seek out the story”. (482)
The planned party at the end of the novel will unite an immense variety of personalities that represents Kate’s own diverse identity that she finally accepts. As pointed out by Greene, nothing has really changed from the beginning of the novel to the end, only Kate’s perspective is different (314). Kate looks around her family and friends assembled in her small house and she feels “a sense of immense calm, strength, centrality, as though she were indeed the centre of a circle […] a moving circle” (268).
The narrative strategy of The Middle Ground is a fragmented collection of facts, points of views, memories and discoveries that are aligned to the characters’ doubts in their mid-life crises and subsequent understanding of the “shapelessness” of life and the impossibility of defining it in expected patterns. The novel ends without a final conclusion, Kate is sitting in her bed pondering what to wear to the party and what will happen from now on. She has only the certainty that “anything is possible, it is all undecided” and “unplanned” (270). The narrative strategy itself represents this idea of multiple possibilities by refusing to give a closing end to the story. As the characters conclude that no patterns are to be found in life and no future can be predicted, the narrative leaves the reader with a cliffhanger that stands for all the possible endings for the novel.
Bibliography
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