Restless Female Ambition in Selected Autobiographical novels of Rebecca West

Abstract

Rebecca West (1892-1983) uses the image of her restless, brave, female ambition as a sign of her heroine’s desire to suppress what is forbidden. West through her autobiographical writings, emphasizes on forbidden issues as a disguise for her personal state. All fears, sufferings of her heroines are representations of West’s own sufferings and this is revealed through certain depressed situations in her texts, exemplified in Adela, the heroine of West’s incomplete work The Sentinel, Ellen Melville of The Judge (1922), and later Rose Aubrey of The Fountain Overflows (1956). In her literary works, West experiences losses when she lived with his beloved H.G. Wells, for ten years outside the scope of marriage and had a son who turned to be against her for not fulfilling the role of a mother. She experiments through her outrageousness because of the loss she sensed of her father and family’s passion, then the negligence of her beloved led her aiming at explorations towards creating an image of a new kind of woman. Confessing agonies is important for freeing herself from such repressing, restless situations. After an abstract and introduction, the research paper is concerned first with a methodology presenting an analysis of West’s problems, losses and miseries, including women’s (mothers’), restless ambitions, then discussing The Fountain Overflows, followed by main conclusions then a list of references.