This essay aims to demonstrate that Margaret Drabble, inspired by her literary knowledge of Shakespeare and Woolf, has constructed her novel The Witch of Exmoor on the two famous literary meals in Timon of Athens and To the Lighthouse. Parallels will be illuminated in the light of intertextuality, along with the symbolic significance of the meal, where this image is linked to Drabble's conception of social and individual order/disorder, but also used as an opening out to a higher realm.

The first chapter will deal with the dinner scene in To the Lighthouse, and its relevance for the intertextual meal in The Witch of Exmoor. Structural influences from Woolf will also be discussed. In the second chapter the feast in Timon of Athens will be treated in the same way. Finally the third chapter will delve a little deeper into the meaning of Drabble's symbolism, focusing on a passage entitled Envoi in one version of The Witch of Exmoor. Questions to be asked are: What does the author wish to illustrate with her symbols? In which sense does the use of intertextual meals enhance the symbol/metaphor? Is the message meant to be clear to the reader? If not, what's to be won by obscurity?