Strategies for Identity: The Fiction of Margaret Atwood (original) (raw)
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American Studies, 2004, vol. XXI, Warsaw, 2004
In 1979 Elaine Showalter, one of the most influential feminist scholars of literature, wrote that "critics are beginning to agree that when we look at women writers collectively we can see an imaginative continuum, the recurrence of certain patterns, themes, problems, and images from generation to generation" (4). Margaret Atwood clearly belongs to this continuum. She not only takes an active part in creating the female tradition, but also comments on it in her works, many of which are playful meta-texts of feminine genres (notably, as I will argue, the tradition of the female gothic). On one levelthe realist one -Atwood is simply preoccupied with women as characters. The main subject of her fiction is
Ph.D. proposal An intertextual postmodern reading of female characters in Margaret Atwood's work
My research will be an intertextual comparative reading of Margaret Atwood's work linked to postmodern theory and mainly focused on female characters. Intertextual references are present all over Margaret Atwood's work both as direct quotations and citation of other texts (for example the memoir of Susanna Moodie in Alias Grace or Science Fiction and Romance in The Blind Assassin) and as a more subtle dialogue with previous and contemporary works. In my PhD I intend to explore the different levels of interetextual connections with a specific reference to the female protagonists in some of Margaret Atwood's work. As M. Gilbert and S. Gubar state in The Mad Woman in the Attic, there is a necessary duplicity women develop to survive in a male world, where oppressive patriarchal rules restrain her to the margins of society and relegate her to secondary roles. At the same time a dichotomy of angel and monster, saint and prostitute, mother and lover, is created in literary texts, which had been mostly written by men till 19 th century in western culture, to support and empower the predominant male culture. What emerges in Gilbert and Gubar's study is pushed beyond the boundaries in Margaret Atwood's work. In a postmodern world she plays ironically with previous models and stereotypes, presenting the scenery of Romance, for example, but revealing at the same time its artificial, illusory side, and reaffirming its necessity at the same time. As Umberto Eco says, the past can't be totally destroyed (as it would mean silence: the blank page), it needs to be revisited with irony and without innocence. According to Julia Kristeva, in an intertextual approach the poetic word becomes transgressive and polyvalent, mediates with the past and creates new models. In this constant dialogue between texts, past ideas are abolished and reaffirmed creating ambivalence that challenges past writings and reinterprets their message. This is exactly what Margaret Atwood develops in her work, an intertextual postmodern approach that challenges the past and reaffirms it at the same time, suggesting different, ambivalent interpretations. I intend intertextuality as the dialogue between texts that happens through explicit references to other literary and non literary texts (quotations, calque, plagiarism, pastiche and translation), allusions and more subtle implied references (assumptions or implications that can vaguely refer to the 'world of texts'). This provokes a rupture with past models and discourses but also reaffirms them using irony and parody, according to the postmodern theory. This ambivalence aims to point out the arbitrary and artificial cultural construction of our models and discourses (against the theory of essentialism) and implies the possibility of change. At the same time, being complicit to previous models, postmodern intertextuality does not efface them completely, it is not a total revolution but a subtle internal criticism that may or may not modify the status quo. The postmodern era is intertextual as the 'grand narratives' cannot represent reality anymore; because of the continuous rapid change experienced, everything is in flux and flexibility is required. The acknowledgment of this ephemerality, ambivalence and flexibility leads to
Female Body and Sexual Politics in Margaret Atwood's Selected Novels
International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, 2015
Margaret Atwood is the most prominent Canadian writer. Her feminist ideology is clearly obvious in her novels. She overtly illustrates her feminism view in human rights equality and freedom of choice. Atwood's works are consisted of the fundamental freedom and human rights. In general, her fictions truly portray the women's rights that are equal to men's rights. Social constructions of gender are attacked by Atwood's novels. Her stories represent the silence and sexual discrimination in female characters. She is not only looking for annihilating of the gender system i.e. women's subjugation, but look at men and women at the same level in society. Female bodies in Atwood's point of view have been captured in patriarchal societies. Female protagonists in the selected novels explain noticeable symbols of bodily nervousness. Female characters are mostly used as objects in Atwood's stories. Women are considered as a tool or toy, as if they have no feelings, op...
Feministic Approach with Reference of Margaret Atwood ’ s
2012
The present paper tries to focus on Feminism in the novels of Margaret Atwood. The paper deals with the introduction includes the background of the Canadian Novel and the themes of Margaret Atwood`s novels. It illustrates paradoxes of human life with special attention on feministic approach then it gives the conclusion of the work. This paper asserts that the Feminism is closely related to journey into the interior. There are two options for all, first is to live in an ostrich like world of make belief and second is walking into the room to face the reality. While the first would be well comfortable, convenient approach, the second would compel one to revise one’s believes and attitudes. Atwood is interested in the second option and looks for the truth, being convinced that nothing else will do justice to the present situation. The paper focuses on status of the women in the family and the role of women outside the world.
Atwood’s Female Writing: A Reading of “This is a Photograph of Me”
During the twentieth century, women poets who were immensely influenced by the most revolutionary aspects of modernism, gave rise to what French feminists called 'écriture feminine' as a desired way of writing differently. In feminist writings emphasis seems to be more on how women are oppressed in the society as well as their anxieties about their bodies. Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) the Canadian nationalist poetess is a prominent figure concerned with the need for a new language to explore relations between subjects and society, the power relations that define one's identity as well as the inadequacy of phallocentric discourse. What is also noteworthy in Atwood's writings is the rewriting of images and myths born by the patriarchal society and Western civilization. This study is an attempt to shed light on the ways Atwood pursues French feminists with emphasis on female body and language to show the poetess's exploration of female identity in her less-referred-to poem "This is a Photograph of Me." The writers have tried to show Atwood's tackling identity and restriction through the act of rewriting such established images as light and water.
Atwood’s the Edible Woman: A Saga of Identity Crisis
2015
Accepted on: 29/01/2015 ABSTRACT This paper attempts to examine the dilemma of Canadian women who oscillate between conventional social code meant for women and their selfidentity. Edible woman showcases myriad feministic issues like subjugation of women, male hegemony, disagreement with feminine roles, women: commodity and consumerism. Margaret Atwood highlights through her novels the pathetic facet of Canadian women who are trapped in framed roles which suggest them a conventional code of conduct. They experience an irrevocable loss of self-identity. The adamantine rigidity of the patriarchy, which advocates feminine traits and secondary position of women in society, pushes women to an abysmal thralldom.