Drabble has critically surveyed the condition of English society in the “Freeze” of the mid 70’s because of the economic repression. She highlights all aspects economic, social, moral, and political which brings a drastic change in British nation.

“The Ice Age” is the story of shifting of glory, pride, freedom, and power of English nation into paralysis, chill, suffocation, freeze, passiveness and inactiveness.

Malice and justice united, to persecute the once so prosperous, once so arrogant.


Alison, the mouth-piece of Drabble had rightly mentioned the shifting of the tragic fate of England as:


Powerless, teased, angry, impotent, the Old England muttered and protested and let itself be mocked. England was sliding and sinking in the ocean of economic depression.

Drabble delineates the social condition of British people in these words:

The flow of economic activity has ceased to flow. The ball of development had stop rolling. The game of musical chair was over.

In “The Ice Age” Margaret Drabble surveys this state of nation through detached but distressed Britons that are bewildered by their wayward adjustment with philanthropic instincts.

Anthony, the hero of the novel, represents the British nation in the icy grip of the “Freeze” of mid 70’s. Because of this slump, he shifts from a businessman to a bankrupt. He has become an inactive person with his heart attack.

He has started living under constant stress and strain. He makes himself confined in High Rook House. His life has reached a point of stand still. He has no morality, no region, no tradition to fall back upon in his crisis. The estate of private affairs of the individual is identified with the state of national affairs speaking of Anthony Keating’s affairs. Drabble says:


Because of this slump in business his friends Giles Peter and Len Wincobank also suffer losses. Len Wincobank is arrested for fraud and sentenced for four years. Alison Murray, the ex-stage actress and the mistress of Keating is shown worried because of the imprisonment of her daughter. She has to look after her mentally retarded daughter, Molly also. She has had a famous actress but now has shifted into a victimized woman who has to look after daughters for whom she leaves her profession, and who is worried about her decreasing beauty. Not only the hero, Keating and heroine Alison are worried, have dark and uncertain future, but all other characters are not at east mentally, emotionally. Kitty Friedmann is in state of mind because of her loss of foot and her husband in an I. R. A. terrorist attack Len Wincobank is in prison. Once he was a great property developer but now he is helpless in jail. Maureen Kirby, his girlfriend, has nothing to do now. Her relations are finished. Now she has no social circle.

There were, of course, a few perverse souls who enjoyed the prospect of a little austerity. They had been happiest during war, and had returned to a life happy. There were also the real poor, the old, the unemployed, the undesirable immigrants. But Drabble says about that not to think of them. Their reward will be in heaven. Finally, there was the small communion of saints who truly hoped that from this crisis would come a better sharing among the nations of the earth.

But thanks to the beneficial effect of this recession that Anthony's implicit misanthropy turns into philanthropy. His atheism turns into theism.

Social relations between the characters have also been taken on a new look.

Kitty shows more kindness to Alison on her unsuccessful return from Walachia and Derek Ashley has persuaded his mistress, Maureen, to marry him. The characters call on each other for philanthropic motive and lend moral support. Keating and Maureen visit the prison to see Len and give him a sense of togetherness in his grief. Keating goes to see his divorced wife Babs to lend her a helping hand. He visits his mother after a long spell only to share her grief at his father’s death.

Thus Drabble has identified the shifting of the individual affairs of the individuals with the shifting of the national affairs.