Escape

Hermione Lee talking to AB about Family and Friends (1985):

HL: The book begins with a quotation of Goethe. It suggests that rules of middle class family life create sanity but prevent creativity. Is that the premise on which the novel is based?

AB: Absolutely. I think if you obey the rules, which of course you're taught to do, and of course the rules seem very productive, and very praiseworthy and yet the rules are to do with forms of control which of course you must escape. And so quite a conflict is set up, quite early.