An Examination of Female Protagonists in Anita Brookner Novels

The twentieth century was an age in which fiction became a recognized and an extremely popular genre in English literature. An interesting feature in the field of post-war British fiction was the advent of more and more women writers into the field. Feminist writing was one of the most interesting divisions in fiction. Women writers like Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark, Doris Lessing, Margaret Drabble, Anita Brookner and P. D. James were some of the well-known novelists of the post-war modern Britain. Humour, politics and experimentation were found in the works of these women writers. Though the themes and styles differed most of the women writers emphasised the importance of the subconscious and its mysterious workings. Anita Brookner, the Booker Prize winning novelist has portrayed the lives of women in relation to their careers and relationships.

Anita Brookner was born in London of Polish- Jewish parents on 16 July 1928. She attended King's College in London before obtaining her Ph.D in art history from the Courteuld Institute of Art. She was the first woman to be named the Slaude Professor of Fine Arts at Cambridge University. Before she started writing novels she had published a large number of books on the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century art, especially on French painting. Her highly acclaimed works of art criticism include those on French painters Jean-Antoine Watteau, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and Jacques-Louis David. Though she was a renowned author on art history she started writing novels only much later in life. Most of her novels which she began to write annually from 1980 portray the lives of intelligent and affluent women, who are "in search of relationships or on the verge of extricating themsel...

... middle of paper ...

...he novel fulfils a particular function if it's written by a woman for other women" (Kenyon, page 23). Therefore the fiction of Anita Brookner, the post-war British writer show modern women in a struggle between idealism and reality.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kenyon, Olga. Women Writers Talk: Interviews with 10 Women Writers. London: Lennard Publishing, 1989.

Miller, E. Jane, ed. Who's Who in Contemporary Women's Writing. London: Routledge, 2001.

Schlueter, Paul, and Jane Schlueter, eds. An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. London: Garland Publishing Inc,1998.

Shattock, Joanne. The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers. London: Oxford, 1994.

Smith, Jules. "Anita Brookner."7 Feb 2004. < www.contemporary writers.com >.

Stevenson, Randall. The British Novel since the Thirties: An Introduction.

London: B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1986.