But whoso shall offend one of these little ones who believe in me, it were better that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea
(Matthew 18:6)
The Millstone, a novel which was published by British author Margaret Drabble in 1965, tells the story of a young female academic who becomes pregnant and decides to keep the child and raiser her on her own. The plot is set at the very beginning of the sexual revolution: society has become progressive enough for her to contemplate becoming a single mother, but not yet so accepting that she can do so without facing significant judgment from those around her. The story feels rather commonplace for a contemporary audience: although there are certainly material difficulties for a woman who wishes to raise a child on her own, the idea itself does not strike us as outrageous or morally doubtful. Yet at the time the story was judged as sufficiently novel and worthy of interest to justify it being adapted to the screen, with the 1969 film A Touch of Love (the trailer announces the story of a young woman who “does it her way… or not at all”). Drabble’s novel is rarely mentioned among the canon of narratives that depict the issue of motherhood and its impact on women’s creativity; one, I would suggest, because it predates by several decades the “boom of motherhood memoirs” which took place in the early 2000s, and two, because it offers a very original take on the matter.