Escaping the Labyrinth of Deception: A Postcolonial Approach to ...

UNIVERSITE LIBRE DE BRUXELLES
FACULTE DE PHILOSOPHIE ET LETTRES
SECTION : LANGUES ET LITTERATURES MODERNES
Escaping the Labyrinth of Deception:
A Postcolonial Approach to Margaret Atwood’s Novels
Volume I
ANNEE ACADEMIQUE 2006-2007
Thèse présentée en vue de l’obtention du
grade de Docteur en Philosophie et
Lettres par Christel Kerskens.
Promoteur : Professeur M. Maufort

To Pascal.
To my parents and grandparents.

I would like to express my deepest
gratitude to Professor Maufort for his
enthusiasm, helpful corrections and
constant support.
I would also like to thank Professor
Bellarsi for her precious information on
ecocriticism, as well as Professor Tabah
and Professor Den Tandt for the
interesting doctoral seminars on alterity,
which I attended with great pleasure.
I also wish to express my gratitude to
Professor Delbaere, for introducing me to
Canadian Literature and especially to
Margaret Atwood’s work during my
undergraduate studies at the U.L.B.
My gratitude also goes to the U.L.B.
Centre for Canadian Studies, whose
financial help contributed to my research
stay in Toronto; to Professor Brydon;
whose friendly welcome and insightful
comments on postcolonialism have helped
me fulfil this project; to her colleagues
and students from the University of
Western Ontario, who welcomed me and
encouraged me; and to Luba Frastacky
and her colleagues from the Fischer
Library of Rare Books in Toronto, who
kindly assisted me in my research in the
Atwood Papers.
Finally, I also wish to thank all my
friends, especially Valérie Ledent, Cécile
Maertens, and Evelyne Haberfeld, and
colleagues, who made suggestions,
encouraged me, or showed interest
throughout my writing process.

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION: DECEPTION AS A POSTCOLONIAL
STRATEGY IN MARGARET ATWOOD’S NOVELS 1
General Introduction 1
1. Atwoodian Criticism, with a Special Focus on Deception 8
2. Deception : A Theoretical Framework 15
2.1. Historical and Cultural Background 15
2.2. Significant Postmodern Aspects of Deception 23
2.2.1. Historiographic Metafiction or Variations on the Concept of
Truth(s) 23
2.2.2. Atwood’s Metafictional Manipulation 26
2.3. Deception as a Postcolonial Process 28
2.3.1. Deception as Mimicry 28
2.3.2. Magic Realism and Deception 30
2.3.3. The Trickster Figure 33
2.3.4. Quest for Self / Quest for Hybridity? Getting Rid of One’s Masks 44
Chapter 1. The Edible Woman: A Case of Socially Induced
Deception 51
1. Metafictional Intertext and Irony 54
2. Marian’s Mimicry Mania 60
3. Making Sense of Magic Realist Moments 66
4. Marian and Duncan as Tricksters 75
5. Hints at Hybridity 85
6. Quest for a Lost Voice 87

Chapter 2. Surfacing : Deception as Survival Strategy 99
1. Parodic Rewriting 100
2. Deceptive Mimicry : A Case Study 106
3. Uncanny Apparitions 115
4. The Narrator and her Parents : Inherited Tricksterism 123
5. Animal Regression as Quest for Hybridity 133
6. Surfacing or the Story of a Single Woman’s Alterity 136
Chapter 3. Lady Oracle: Joan Foster as Trickster 148
1. Atwood’s Sense of Parody: The Heroine as Writer 149
2. Variations on Mimicry 157
3. Grotesque and Gothic Magic Realism 173
4. Parodies of Trickster Figures 185
5. From Multiple Personalities to Hybridity 195
6. Joan’s Personal and Professional Self-discovery 209
Chapter 4. Life Before Man, Bodily Harm, and The Handmaid’s
Tale: Atwood’s “Subversion” Trilogy 221
1. Three Novels of Subversion 221
1.1. Bodily Harm: Subversion on Foreign Ground 222
1.2. Life Before Man : Subversion and Ethnicity 224
1.3. The Handmaid’s Tale: Subversion vs. Propaganda 225
2. Subversion through Parody 226
2.1. Along the Yellow Brick Road: Atwood’s Parody of The Wizard of Oz. 227
2.2. Life as a Game Parody 230
2.3. Metafictional Comments and Parodic Reflections on Art and Reality 233

3. Three Forms of Subversive Deception 235
4. When Reality Verges on the Unreal 262
5. The Trickster as Embodiment of Subversion 271
6. Forms of Hybridity: The Ethnic, the Pathological, and the
Survivor 276
7. Atwood’s Deconstruction and Reconstruction of the Quest
Pattern 286
Chapter 5. Cat’s Eye and The Robber Bride : Female Tricksters at
Work 294
1. Parodic Twin Sisters and Fairy-Tale Deconstruction 296
2. Deception as a Means of Defence 304
3. Magic Realist Dreams and Incantations 314
4. Mature Tricksters 326
5. Hybridity of the Trickster Figure 334
6. Double Quests: Between Failure and Resurrection 345
Chapter 6. Deceptive Patterns in Alias Grace or the
Narrator as Quilter 354
1. Fictionalising Historical Documents 356
2. Grace’s Deceptive Mimicry 365
3. Deceptive Magic Realism 371
4. Two Trickster Figures: Grace Marks and Jeremiah the Peddler 376
5. Grace’s Quest for Hybridity 387
6. Quilting One’s Way Towards Self-Knowledge 397

Chapter 7. The Blind Assassin’s Criminal Deception 402
1. Atwood’s Metafictional Reflections 403
2. Three-Tiered Deception 408
3. Iris’s Disruptions of Reality 415
4. Are All Tricksters “Blind Assassins?” 418
5. Hybrid Sisters 425
6. A Three-Tiered Variation on the Quest Pattern 429
Chapter 8. Oryx and Crake: Hybridisation and Colonisation 435
1. Snowman: An Inverted Frankenstein or an Apocalyptic
Caliban? 437
2. The Dangers of Mimicry 444
3. Snowman’s Magic Realist Fantasies 451
4. Oryx, Crake, and Snowman: Three Aspects of Tricksterism 454
5. The Hybridity of the Colonised Subject 457
6. Atwood’s Ecological Stance 462
7. Snowman’s Quest for Humanity 465
CONCLUSION: EXPLORING THE LABYRINTH 473
BIBLIOGRAPHY 484
Appendix I 524
Appendix II 525
Appendix III 526
Appendix IV 527

If you like, you can play games with this
game. You can say: the murderer is the
writer, the detective is the reader, the
victim is the book. Or perhaps, the
murderer is the writer, the detective is the
critic and the victim is the reader. (…)
Just remember this, when the scream at
last has ended and you’ve turned on the
lights: by the rules of the game, I must
always lie.
Now: do you believe me?
Margaret Atwood, Murder in the Dark,
49-50.

INTRODUCTION:
DECEPTION AS A POSTCOLONIAL STRATEGY IN
MARGARET ATWOOD’S NOVELS
A poet, novelist, short-story writer, and author of numerous reviews and critical
essays, Margaret Atwood has become one of Canada’s major writers in recent decades. Born
in Ottawa in 1939, Atwood spent her childhood in-between the city and the bush, where her
father conducted scientific research. This might account for the deep respect for nature which
pervades Atwood’s work. In the 1960s, as an undergraduate student at Victoria College,
Toronto, Atwood witnessed a renewed interest in Canadian literature and culture. As a centre
for poetry, the University of Toronto, with its major figures, such as Jay Macpherson,
Northrop Frye, and E.J. Pratt operated a decisive influence on Atwood’s career. She started
writing poems, parodies, and reviews for the college newspaper, while attending and giving
readings at the local coffeehouses. She continued her studies at Harvard, devoting her interest
to Victorian literature and early American literature. She also worked on a Ph.D. degree, but
never completed her dissertation on H. Rider Haggard and the English metaphysical romance.
Atwood’s interest in the English tradition and the gothic romance, a genre she undeniably
parodies in her early novel Lady Oracle, possibly derives from this failed academic
endeavour. From her early poems and novels, Atwood’s career rapidly evolved towards
international recognition in the last three decades of the twentieth century. Her work has
become the subject of numerous academic publications and she has won several outstanding
awards.
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However, one might wonder what draws so many readers, all over the world, to
Atwood’s writings. I personally regard Atwood as an author who situates herself at the
crossroad between various traditions: the feminist, the nationalist, the postmodern, and, one
might argue, the postcolonial. Atwood’s repeated refusal to be classified as a member of a
particular tradition might well be attributed to the fact that she actually draws elements from
each of them. Indeed, whereas early novels such as The Edible Woman or Lady Oracle, and
most of her poetry collections, among which the famous Power Politics, display overt
feminist overtones, other works – Surfacing, to name but one – express Atwood’s defence of
Canadian culture and nature. Most critics have offered postmodern readings of Atwood,
focusing on her protagonists’ inner contradictions, as well as on her novels’ multiple layers
and lack of closure. More recently, however, scholars have devoted their attention to the
postcolonial implications of Atwood’s writings: preoccupied both by the situation of Canada
as a colony and by women’s empowerment, Atwood often thematically associates these
themes. She considers it the writer’s task to defend the colonised country’s cultural tradition.
Likewise, as a female writer, Atwood equally addresses the question of the female condition.
Other postcolonial themes often mentioned in relation to Atwood’s work comprise irony,
voice, and marginality. Atwood’s production strikes the reader with a balanced mixture of
parody and seriousness. She tackles difficult themes, such as war, often present in her
protagonists’ childhood reminiscences, or the power relationships between men and women.
Her writings challenge the conventions of literary genres and social dichotomies, providing a
rich intertextual layer of cross-cultural allusions.
In 1994, Atwood, on a lecture tour around the world, for the first time presented the
writer as a trickster-figure (Stein, Margaret Atwood Revisited, 6), a character known for its
tendency to cross boundaries and defy traditions. Atwood’s fondness for open endings, tricky
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language, dubious characters, and multiple interpretations, should therefore not surprise her
readers. Her powerful stories have engaged several debates, demonstrating her concern for
current world affairs. Atwood’s fictional universe is a cruel place, inhabited by duplicitous
individuals and ordinary monsters. While definitely keeping up with the developments of
contemporary society, Atwood continues to fascinate readers all over the world with her wit,
her playfulness with language, her exploration of the individual’s dilemma’s and her open, yet
somehow deceptive endings.
Deception can be regarded as a labyrinth created by the writer, in which the reader
might easily get lost, precisely because of the characters’ multiple personalities and of
Atwood’s own metafictional interventions. This study therefore concentrates on the
postcolonial concept of hybridity/deception to function as Ariadne’s thread, helping us to
escape the labyrinth, or, to a better, new understanding of Atwood’s fiction. I have chosen to
rely on the image of the labyrinth because it often recurs in Atwood’s novels. In her first
novel, The Edible Woman, Atwood makes use of this motif at significant moments. The
heroine, Marian, evokes the labyrinth every time she feels compelled to conform to social
norms. She mentions it when she visits her friend Clara – the embodiment of the perfect wife
– to describe the hospital corridors (134-135). Further, she alludes to the maze motif when she
escapes from Peter’s party, where she had to display the image of the happy bride-to-be (243).
Finally, she utters her distress at being lost in a “labyrinth of words” (140), when she realises
that her attitude is determined by other people’s demands. Likewise, in Lady Oracle, the
labyrinthine setting becomes a metaphor for the heroine’s inner trouble. In a parody of gothic
romance, Atwood narrates how the heroine’s double finds answers to her identity questions at
the centre of the labyrinth (341). Surfacing presents the reader with another variation on the
labyrinth. This time, Atwood associates the maze with the wilderness (31), a frightening,
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gothic presence, surrounding and gradually suffocating the village. The protagonist
experiences her journey in the bush as a labyrinthine way to self-knowledge. While the image
disappears from Atwood’s subsequent novels, it significantly resurfaces in her recent Oryx
and Crake, to describe the compounds in which Snowman engages on his quest. The research
centres resemble huge labyrinths with dead-ends and lethal traps (217). In Atwood’s latest
novel, nature is no longer responsible for man’s entrapment. On the contrary, man has become
the victim of his own technological development. As I have mentioned, the labyrinth motif
pervades Atwood’s fiction in various disguises, endowed with different purposes. Yet, a
constant attitude consists in the protagonist’s desire to escape that labyrinth. That obstinate
wish for freedom echoes the writer’s attempt to elude any simple interpretation. Atwood often
describes escapist protagonists who seek to avoid social constraints, be it by becoming
marginal, ex-centric figure. I therefore consider the image of “escaping” the labyrinth as a
powerful metaphor for Atwood’s postcolonial message. I intend to demonstrate how the
deceptiveness of those characters gradually fades away in the course of the narrative, to reveal
a hybrid personality, made of personal expectations and social compromises.
Drawing on postcolonial theory, I shall examine frequently addressed postcolonial
themes in order to produce a new understanding of Margaret Atwood’s fiction. In relation to
the protagonists’ often noticed deceptiveness, I shall decipher their mimicry strategies, thus
examining how their deceptive attitude participates in the colonised subject’s struggle to find
his place. I shall also devote particular attention to occurrences of magic realist moments,
which, as I shall demonstrate, enable the character to briefly experience the coexistence of
two antagonist states of being, a situation which echoes the postcolonial theme of hybridity.
Still regarding “in-betweenness,” I intend to examine the extent to which Atwood’s characters
might be regarded as trickster-figures, i.e. messengers who can defy conventions and
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denounce empowerment. Finally, I shall also endeavour to prove that Atwood’s quest novels,
which have often been studied in a postmodern light, can be read from a postcolonial point of
view if one links the protagonists’ search for self-knowledge with an acknowledgement of
hybridity.
Deception is a much more complex phenomenon than is generally thought, one that
deserves to be examined in relation with recent developments in literary theory. I contend that
Margaret Atwood’s fiction will be understood in a new light through a careful examination of
her manipulative patterns of deception. Indeed, whereas deception has often been referred to
as a common motif in Atwood’s fiction, it has never so far been the subject of a full-scale
analysis throughout the author’s entire fictional output. Nor has it been studied in the light of
postcolonial theories. I personally consider the protagonists’ predominant use of deception as
a sign of their colonised state. Be it as a Canadian citizen suffering from an inferiority
complex, as a writer forced to stick to a precise genre, or as a woman struggling to conform to
social requirements, Atwood’s protagonist all undergo a form of disempowerment. I therefore
suggest that a postcolonial approach to Atwood’s work might enrich our understanding of the
author’s work. Indeed, it will bring to light several characteristics of Atwood’s fiction, which
situate her within the current development of postcolonial theory.
In order to establish a frame of analysis, I shall first define the notion of deception, and
second, determine which aspects of postmodernism and postcolonialism can be linked to this
phenomenon. Once these premises have been established, I shall delineate the relevant aspects
which my thesis will explore in depth. My study will involve a close reading of Atwood’s
fiction in order to examine the conscious and unconscious modes of deception, the characters’
need to create a false self and to resort to all kinds of disguises, and the postmodern and/or
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postcolonial interpretations which can be attributed to these kinds of behaviour. This study
will resort to character analysis, a form of literary criticism best suited to Atwood’s highly
developed portrayals. It will also use a combination of close-reading and postcolonial theory,
in the hope of achieving a different understanding of Atwood’s work. Indeed, in their focus on
hybridity, postcolonial theories offer new light on Atwood’s intricate and contradictory
characters. Canadian writer Robert Kroetsch sums up this complexity, linking it to deceptive
strategies when he writes:
In recent years the tension between this appearance of being just like someone else
and the demands of authenticity has become intolerable (…) In recent Canadian
fiction the major writers resolve the paradox (…) they uninvent the world. The most
conspicuous example is the novel Surfacing, by Margaret Atwood. (…) The heroine
must remove the false names that adhere to her experience. (…) The terror resides
not in her going insane, but in her going sane. (…) The truth is disguised, hidden.
(…) But underneath this layering, this concealing, is a woman that still recognizes
that something doesn’t fit. (Kroetsch 394-395)
Kroetsch concludes his analysis of Surfacing in stating that the heroine “has reached a state
wherein she might…give birth to her true identity” (Kroetsch 395). The presence of the modal
“might” leaves the ending of the novel open, as is often the case in postmodern fiction.
Further, it implies that the heroine will not necessarily find a compromise between her hybrid
self and that requested by patriarchal society. In postcolonial terms, she may as well remain
“the Other”, with an awareness of her difference. This study takes into account several
postcolonial notions such as mimicry, ambivalence, disavowal, subversion and hybridity,
while siting the female body as an equivalent of the deceptive, trickster-like postcolonial
“Other.”
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This postcolonial view of Atwood’s work concurs with earlier critical considerations
which generally identify Atwood as a feminist or typically Canadian writer. First, the female
condition in a patriarchal society is here regarded as strongly similar to that of the colonised
subject. Second, as a Canadian writer, albeit of European decent, Atwood has nevertheless
been confronted to and influenced by the rising Canadian postcolonial awareness. Therefore,
a postcolonial reading of Atwood’s work should not be considered a break away from critical
tradition, but a logical expansion of earlier critical approaches to the writer’s production.
When one considers the whole of Atwood’s novelistic production, one immediately
notices the discrepancies between her early novels and her recent, far more complex works.
Whereas Lady Oracle, for instance, reads as a highly comical and inspired comedy of
manners, other works, such as Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and the recent Oryx and
Crake display innumerable layers of possible interpretations. However, all the novels studied
in this work, present marked similarities: all their protagonists are liars; they engage on a
journey for self-knowledge; they suffer from their “otherness,” or resent society’s normative
tendencies. One might regard Atwood’s work as a constant reformulation of these themes.
Yet, as the writer grows in maturity, her work equally evolves towards a more complex
rendition of these topics. The simple lies performed by Atwood’s early heroine’s to maintain a
semblance of freedom give way to intricate, dark figures – such as Zenia, Cordelia, and Crake
–, trickster narrators (Iris Chase), or multiples personalities (Grace Marks). A simple, cyclical,
and open-ended quest pattern as in Surfacing develops into an intricate maze of intertwined
quest journey. Atwood repeats and multiplies the pattern at will: a double quest in Cat’s Eye,
a triple in The Robber Bride and The Blind Assassin. Nevertheless, the outcome of the quest
evolves too: Atwood’s early heroine’s Marian, the “Surfacer,” Joan, Lesje, Rennie, and even
the “Handmaid” do not present the reader with a definite answer as to the result of their inner
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journey. Later novels, such as Alias Grace, The Robber Bride, The Blind Assassin, and finally
Oryx and Crake, though remaining open-ended, offer a more positive and more definite
outcome, which I choose to interpret as an acknowledgement of their hybridity. Moreover, the
reader shall discover how Atwood’s tricksters also develop from sometimes caricatural
secondary characters, into powerful, multi-layered individuals.
1. Atwoodian Criticism, with a Special Focus on Deception
Due to the large amount of books and articles devoted to Margaret Atwood’s production since
the beginning of her career, it would be impossible to offer an exhaustive account of
Atwoodian criticism. Rather, I shall focus on some major trends, which have enriched my
own perception of Atwood’s work. In order to clarify this large number of influential
secondary sources, they will here be subdivided into categories: general collections of essays,
feminist criticism, psychological and narrative studies. Finally, I shall examine works offering
a postcolonial approach to Atwood’s work: first, a series of books and articles which directly
address the theme of deception in a broad sense (masks, disguises, deceptive characters and
author, dubious language, false selves, etc.), and second, those which opt for a specific
postcolonial reading of Atwood’s work.
To begin with, the seminal collection of essays The Art of Margaret Atwood,
published by Arnold and Cathy Davidson’s in 1981 contains Annis Pratt’s considerations on
Surfacing as an example of a rebirth journey and of a transformation novel, an aspect which I
associate to the heroine’s trickster-like qualities. Further, Atwood scholars will find a detailed
account of the critical work on Atwood published between 1962 and 1988 in McCombs’s
1991 Margaret Atwood. A Reference Guide. Finally, Karen F. Stein’s monograph, entitled
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Margaret Atwood Revisited (1999) offers the reader a comprehensive scope of Atwoodian
criticism up to its recent developments.
The feminist approaches to Atwood’s work have been numerous from the beginning of
her career. Only the most prominent ones will be mentioned here, such as Frank Davey’s
1984 study of Atwood’s work, Margaret Atwood. A Feminist Poetics. This book clearly opts
for a postmodern orientation, dealing with gender politics. This critical approach is interesting
for this study because it largely refers to the mask motif and to the theme of concealment,
which are both closely related to the deception phenomenon. Moreover, concerning Atwood’s
heroines in her early novels, Davey writes: “All four comic protagonists are liars. They tell
lies in their professional work, they lie and fantasize as narrators of the novels, they
fictionalize (...) their own lives to themselves” (Davey 65-66). Margaret Atwood’s Power,
published by Shannon Hengen in 1993, presents us with a daring feminist approach to
Atwood’s work and examines power relationships in her novels. Its attention to mirror images
in Atwood’s work is of great interest: given the heroines’ fragmented self, some of those
reflections will probably be highly deceptive. In the same year, Bouson-Brooks focuses on the
various aspects of Atwood’s rejection of patriarchy, in a collection entitled Brutal
Choreographies. The theme of resistance to patriarchal values is interesting from a
postcolonial point of view, because it is similar to the colonised subject’s resistance to the
dominant culture. The same can be said concerning Eleonora Rao’s book, Strategies for
Identity, which deals with generic boundaries, identity, interpretations of reality, and
deception (in Bodily Harm and The Edible Woman). Still in the feminist trend, Coral Ann
Howells’s book Margaret Atwood, in the “Modern Novelists Series,” is important as a whole
because it adopts a feminist reading without oversimplifying Atwood’s work, i.e. without
reducing it to a mere gender war. Moreover, it studies both early and later works, offering a
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detailed and yet very clear view of Atwood’s multiplicity, while demonstrating that feminist
criticism is not necessarily limited to Atwood’s early work.
Other critics focus on the psychological interpretation of Atwood’s fiction. The
earliest complete psychological study of Atwood is Sherrill Grace’s Violent Duality,
published in 1980, of interest for this study because of its numerous references to the
heroines’ duplicity, to the dubious aspect of language in her work and to Atwood’s frequent
use of parody, satire and irony. The latter can undoubtedly be regarded as a part of the
mimicry process in which Atwoodian heroines are involved. More recently, Sonia Mycak’s
study, entitled In Search of the Split Subject: Psychoanalysis, Phenomenology, and the Novels
of Margaret Atwood offers a useful reading of Atwood in terms of Lacanian theory and the
mimetic construction of reality. Yet, it fails to include Surfacing and The Handmaid’s Tale.
However, I contend that considering Atwood’s work through the lens of deception will enable
me to include the whole of her novelistic fiction.
Another critical option consists in analysing Margaret Atwood’s production in terms
of narrative techniques. In 1983, Sherrill Grace and Lorraine Weir edited a collection of
critical essays, Margaret Atwood: Language, Text, and System, of which the aim was to
discover a typical Atwoodian narrative system. Among those contributions, Hutcheon
examines the link between, on the one hand, the narrative structures of Atwood’s novels and,
on the other hand, the dichotomy between active and passive behaviour on the part of the
characters and readers. Another groundbreaking analysis of Atwood’s narrative technique is
Hilde Staels’s Margaret Atwood’s Novels: A Study of Narrative Discourse, which proves to
be both postmodern in its interest for the characters’ multiplicity and postcolonial in its
concern for irony and borderline situations, and will therefore influence this thesis.
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First, I wish to examine studies deeply with deception in a broad sense. In Beatrice
Mendez-Egle’s Margaret Atwood. Reflection and Reality (1986), three articles can be related
to this postcolonial study: first, Kathryn Van Spanckeren’s analysis of the role of magic in the
heroines’ transformation in three of Margaret Atwood’s early novels, because the
transformation theme relates to the trickster-motif; second, Susan Jaret McKinstry’s
exploration of Joan Foster’s fictional selves in Lady Oracle, because this character features a
whole range of deceptive alter-egos; and finally, Charlotte Walker Mendez’s study of the
deceptive aspect of language in Surfacing, interesting for its metafictional content: indeed,
one important theme in Surfacing is the unreliability of language, denounced through the
narrator’s lack of clarity and through the secondary characters’ frequent language games.
Deception being often transmitted through language, this aspect will be carefully examined.
VanSpanckeren and Castro’s book, Margaret Atwood. Vision and Forms (1988) features
several insightful articles, among which Arnold E. Davidson’s contribution on history in The
Handmaid’s Tale, which supports my examination of metafiction as one of the author’s
deceptive devices. Within Judith McCombs’s collection entitled Critical essays on Margaret
Atwood (1988), several articles and reviews mention Atwood’s use of parody and irony. One
might for instance consult Susan J. Rosowski’s “Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle: Fantasy
and the Modern Gothic Novel” (McCombs, 197-207), which reads the novel’s gothic parody
as a reversion of the traditional gothic romance. It situates the gothic “terror” in the heroine’s
gradual compliance with our “social mythology” (McCombs, 13). Further, Lucy M. Freibert’s
essay on “The Politics of Risks” in The Handmaid’s Tale reads the book as a multi-layered
satire that deconstructs Western male dominance (McCombs, 280-292). In addition, some
other articles – Josie P. Campbell’s, T.D. MacLulich’s, and Jane Lilienfeld’s – comment on
mythical transformations.
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Among the critics sustaining a postcolonial analysis of Atwood, Colin Nicholson’s
Margaret Atwood: Writing and Subjectivity, published in 1994, deserves special notice: for
the first time, a collection includes essays which explicitly offer postcolonial readings of
Atwood’s work. Several examples should be mentioned: Nicholson’s study of postcolonial
subjectivity in Atwood’s early poetry, which addresses themes such as ethnicity and the
opposition between political subordination and cultural survival; or McCombs’s analysis of
the theme of metamorphoses in The Circle Game. The collection further features Rao’s essay
on irony and contradictions in Lady Oracle and Evans’s comment on the different versions of
history in The Handmaid’s Tale, which should be related to historiographic metafiction. In the
same trend, Lorraine York’s collection of critical essays, Various Atwoods, contains Diana
Brydon’s brilliant postcolonial reading of Bodily Harm, which focuses on the protagonist’s
role as a tourist and on the parallel drawn between the Canadian situation and the situation of
the Caribbean islands which serve as a background to the novel. In the same collection,
Shannon Hengen’s analysis of Zenia’s foreignness in The Robber Bride hints at the ethnic
undertones of the novel. Wilson, Friedman and Hengen’s pedagogical approach to Atwood’s
The Handmaid’s Tale and other works shows some common points with this study. Indeed,
they deal with Atwood’s role as trickster, with her use of intertextuality, and with possible
psychoanalytical or postcolonial readings of her work. Yet, their approach remains limited to
a few novels, while this study intends to use deception as a pervasive feature, present in all of
Atwood’s novels. Reingard Nischik’s recent book, Margaret Atwood. Works and Impact
contains several essays which also use this new way of reading Atwood’s work, with peculiar
attention to gender transgression (Coral Ann Howells), narrative games (Barbara Rigney
Hill), intertext (Sharon R. Wilson), and reality reconstructions (Klaus Peter Müller).
Howells’s article deals with the way in which Atwood continuously experiments with gender
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oundaries and their ideological significance. Focusing on The Handmaid’s Tale, The Robber
Bride, Cat’s Eye, and Alias Grace, Howells shows how Atwood succeeds in recreating
various genres by means of duplicitous narrators, constantly challenging notions such as
femininity, identity, and gender. Barbara Rigney-Hill’s “Alias Atwood: Narrative Games and
Gender Politics,” addresses the latter theme, showing the complexity of Atwood’s
construction of the female character. She examines how language and narration determine
female stereotypes and how Atwood manages to move beyond those. Klaus Peter Müller’s
article deals with language and postcolonialism. He provides an approach to Atwood’s work
which focuses on the writer’s methodology and on notions such as truth and reality. Sharon R.
Wilson studies the mythic intertext in Atwood’s work, analysing mythological structures in
The Robber Bride and Alias Grace.
Recently, several articles devoted to the postcolonial aspects of Margaret Atwood’s
work have been published, of which three deserve particular attention. The first is Carol
Beran’s “The Canadian Mosaic: Functional Ethnicity in Margaret Atwood's Life before Man,”
which claims that a reading in terms of the characters’ ethnicity provides new insights into the
interpretation of the novel. Providing a close reading of the novel, Beran highlights significant
moments which identify the three protagonists as the embodiment of the “Other”, the
alienated individual. She further proves Atwood’s deliberate choice of expressing her
characters’ ethnicity, giving details on the novel’s manuscripts and on the writer’s preliminary
documentation.
Hilde Staels’s “Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale: Resistance Through
Narrating” further focuses on the heroine’s re-telling of her story as a form of resistance to
patriarchal values and on the irony of the ‘Historical Notes’. This study seeks to reinterpret
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the novel in the light of Hutcheon’ s theory of historiographic metafiction, which gives a very
important role to deceptive discourses of both the heroine and the Gileadean regime.
The third article, Margaret Rogerson’s “Reading the Patchworks in Alias Grace,”
examines the value of the novel’s quilt metaphor as an expression of the heroine’s denied
voice, which reminds us of the question inherent in postcolonial theory: “can the subaltern
speak?” In this novel, Grace’s expression takes place within a maze of deception and secrets.
Grace’s hybridity might well function as Ariadne’s thread, showing her the way out of this
labyrinth of lies.
Sharon R. Wilson’s Margaret Atwood’s Textual Assassinations, the latest book to date
about Margaret Atwood’s work (2003) will be used as a reference in this study because it
offers the latest analysis of the trickster motif in her output. The collection comprises, among
other articles, Reingard M. Nischik’s examination of intertextual and parodic elements in
Murder in the Dark. Nischik chooses to analyse some of Atwood’s cartoons, focusing on the
theme of “size.” She then studies the mechanics of satire and parody in terms of inversion of
conventional thought-patterns. Sharon R. Wilson offers a detailed analysis of the postmodern
and postcolonial aspects of Good Bones, including her insights into the trickster and survival
motifs. Wilson contends that Atwood uses goddess and trickster motifs in a consistent way
throughout her career, i.e. the Snake goddess or the Medusa, for instance. In a second, equally
interesting essay on Alias Grace, Wilson provides her interpretation of the novel’s quilting
metaphor. She argues that it is a feminist, postmodern, and postcolonial novel. She examines
the readers’ involvement in the construction of the narrative. Moreover, she produces details
which illustrate Atwood’s concern for class and genre. Mary Kirtz examines the link between
Cat’s Eye and Atwood’s comments on postcolonial Canadian identity. She also deals with
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Atwood’s reflections on the myth of the malevolent north (the Clarendon lectures) as a key to
the interpretation of Cat’s Eye. Coral Ann Howells provides us with a postcolonial reading of
The Robber Bride. She situates the novel within Atwood’s constant search for a “Canadian
identity.” Kathryn VanSpanckeren studies the trickster motif in Atwood’s recent poetry. She
examines the theme of death in Atwood’s recent Morning in the Burned House. Finally,
Karen Stein offers us a Gothic reading of The Blind Assassin, based on the central theme of
hiding and revealing. Stein explains how the narrator Iris Chase manages to resist gothic
codes and to escape passivity.
As can easily be concluded, each of these articles develops points which will be
further explored in my project. Yet, my perspective differs in its examination of both
Atwood’s earlier and later production. I shall draw conclusions on the theme of deception
based on a series of significant case studies, spanning Atwood’s entire career.
2. Deception: A Theoretical Framework
2.1. Historical and Cultural Background
In order to establish a theoretical model for the study of deception in a literary context, this
work will first examine some general definitions of deception, the way in which it is
perceived in society and its cultural connotations. Dariusz Galasinski’s The Language of
Deception (2000) provides interesting insights into the subject of deception. The author first
underlines the fact that deception is part of human communication and defines it as “a type of
manipulation (…) of truth and falsity utterances” (Galasinski ix). Yet, he admits that defining
15

deception has always been a problematic issue. Galasinski regards deception as intentional.
He defines a lie as an intentionally misleading statement. Yet, many utterances may be
deceptive, without the intervention of the criterion of truth or falsity. When deception takes
the form of omission, for instance, the deceiver does not say anything, but nevertheless
produces effective deceptive communication. Therefore, a more accurate definition of
deception is that based on the notion of false belief. Deception then takes place when the
speaker produces a message which intends to create a false belief. Galasinski’s definition of
deception reads as follows: “a communicative act that is intended to induce in the addressee a
particular belief by manipulating the truth and falsity of the information” (Galasinski 20).
While this definition of deception remains neutral, the most popular definition of this
phenomenon usually involves a series of negative connotations, such as an intentionally
dishonest purpose. 1 However, an analysis of deceptive behaviour in a literary context should
remain free of any pejorative judgement. Deception will here be analysed from a
psychological, social and literary point of view, not from an ethical point of view.
Writers often present us with characters who have always lived surrounded by lies,
because truth was simply too hard to bear for them. In the course of the story, these characters
often start out on a painful though fulfilling quest for truth. This quest constitutes the subject
of many a novel and has been examined by numerous philosophers, among whom the Greek
philosopher Aristotle in his Poetics, who says that what is convincing though impossible in
the drama must always be preferred to what is possible but unconvincing (Campbell 71).
Lying may thus be allowed, and even recommended, in literary creation. Modern writing has
1
For a more common definition of deception, I turned to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English,
which produces the following definitions : “Deception: the act of deceiving; something that deceives, a trick.”
“To deceive: to cause (someone) to accept as true or good what is false or bad, usu. for a dishonest purpose”
(Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 265).
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often chosen to support this idea, though it has also learned to play with the notion of truth in
a more subtle way. As mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers puts it: “Any fool can tell a lie, and
any fool can believe it; but the right method is to tell the truth in such a way that the
intelligent reader is seduced into telling the lie for himself” (Campbell 71). Moreover, French
philosopher Descartes considered that “Truth is obtained at the cost of a sacrifice. (…) The
search for Truth is a lonely enterprise, a solitary mission. It requires the exclusion of
possibilities, because the more possibilities there are, the less truth there is. Falsehood, error,
uncertainty, arise because the will is free” (Campbell 97), which implies that the notion of
truth and deception is relevant in a study dealing with quest novels, to which Atwood’s
undeniably belong.
Jeremy Campbell’s book The Liar’s Tale offers interesting insights into the history of
falsehood and into the significance of deception from a philosophical, psychological and
literary point of view. In his introduction, Campbell states the importance of deception in
psychoanalysis as follows: “Psychoanalysis was based on the idea that falsehood and illusion
are useful clues to understanding the mystery of human personality. Freud took with (…) a
pinch of salt what his patients told him under the heading of unvarnished fact, but he held the
view that lies are often more informative than literal truths. In an odd way, they are privileged
information” (Campbell 13). Hence the interest of a study of deception in character analysis.
Indeed, if falsehood and illusion are thought to reveal a lot about someone’s personality, it
justifies the critic’s interest for such a behaviour among literary characters.
Further, Campbell assesses the value of deception in a very similar way to that
adopted in this work. He defines the theme of his book as such: “for better or worse, lying,
untruth, is not an artificial, deviant, or dispensable feature of life. Nature engages in it,
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sometimes with remarkable ingenuity (…) life may be understood truthfully only in aesthetic
terms” (Campbell 14-15). Campbell thus regards deception as an everyday phenomenon. He
also stresses the fact that deception has not always suffered the bad repute which it enjoys
today and takes as an example Homer’s Odysseus, who uses many tricks and ruses in order to
defy death and fate. Campbell concludes on the Greek hero’s use of lies and disguises as
follows: “Lying suggests the liar has a superior intelligence, is a practical and ingenious
person, creating alternative versions of reality, as the poets do” (Campbell 44), confirming the
positive connotations of deception in Ancient Greece. Such positive interpretations should be
kept in mind when studying deception in relation to Atwood’s heroines, especially when those
make use of tricks, lies and disguises in order to insure their survival. Indeed, this illustrates
the concept of µητις, a well-known notion in Ancient Greek philosophy, which stands for the
Greek hero’s ability to use deception and cunning in order to survive. Reading Campbell’s
description of the concept, i.e. “the type of intelligence that is cunning and devious and
shrewd, that is adapted to the perilous jockeying for success in a highly competitive society,
using wiles and ruses when sheer brute force is on the other side” (Campbell 53), and further:
“Metis connotes flair, wisdom, subtlety, deception, resourcefulness, opportunism. (…) The
point is to be effective, and untruth can be of great assistance in this task, as also can magic,
hallucinogenics, frauds, feints, and illusions” (Campbell 53), one cannot help noticing the
similarities between the Greek hero’s behaviour and that of a trickster and of a twentieth-
century hero or heroine. Indeed, many of those have to resort to a series of deceptive tricks in
order to survive in a society in which they feel alienated. This comparison leads us to another
aspect of this study: regarding deception as a form of mimicry, i.e. as a subversive strategy in
a postcolonial context. This is the case, when, for instance, a character indulges in disguise or
concealment of his difference in order to fit in colonial or patriarchal society. Campbell
equally alludes to the hardships of social life and the necessity of deception when he writes:
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“the petty falsehoods people tell themselves and others every day fulfil a more mundane
purpose: to provide a buffer against the cruelties of existence which arise in even the most
democratic and enlightened societies” (Campbell 186). This study will thus subsequently
analyse the characters’ deceptive attitude towards society, and in some cases the manipulation
inherent in society itself. Yet there is more to the Greek concept of µητις , as Campbell
further mentions: “Most important, Odysseus is a master of tricky language, like Hermes the
trickster god linked to deceitful communication. He is an expert in the use of words to veil,
inveigle, and test. His disguises are accomplished, not only with costumes, but with language;
he weaves fictional biographies of himself as a protective maneuver” (Campbell 45). These
fictional biographies, invented by protagonists to protect themselves, are a trope in twentieth-
century fiction. Postmodern theory addresses the characters’ conscious use of language and
the author’s metafictional interventions. Moreover, we must not forget that deception, as
Margaret Atwood skilfully intimates in this work’s motto, has always been part of literary
production. As Campbell explains:
In the modernist novel, lies and liars proliferate, reflecting a deep suspicion of the value of
truth in its literal, public form. Obscurity becomes a trademark of modernist writing, a
device that obliterates the easy attunement between the mind of the author and that of the
reader and renders suspect the notion that truth is single or simple, that it can be
communicated at all through the suspect vehicle of language, or even that it is desirable to
do so (Campbell 13).
However, my study would rather link this notion to the postmodern idea that there is not one
single truth but many. Indeed, postmodern theory claims that there is not only one Truth, but a
multiplicity of voices and points of view which account for an equally multiple conception of
truth.
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When examining deception from a psychoanalytical point of view, the most obvious
instance that comes to mind is the false-self system as described by psychoanalyst Ronald D.
Laing in the 1960’s. In his book, The Divided Self, Laing claims that when faced with a
society in which he feels estranged, the individual’s only sane response is madness and the
creation of a false-self which aims at making normal life possible. A similar idea occurs in
social scientist Ervin Goffman’s theory that “in social situations the individual is a performer,
an actor playing a role in which he or she may or may not believe. The very word ‘person’
once meant a mask” (Campbell 265). Deception appears once again as a common
phenomenon. For the literary critic, it will be interesting to wonder how much the character
indulges into the creation of a false self, to notice all the different disguises, masks or false
identities he resorts to, and to pay special attention to the description of the character’s dreams
as revelations of his inner truths. Indeed, the part played by the unconscious in these kinds of
deception is most important, and though we cannot pretend that we know the inner thoughts
of a fictitious character, we can significantly study the way in which the author chooses to
give us hints about the character’s inner life, through descriptions of his or her thoughts and
behaviour. Earlier in the history of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud identified a series of
deceptive kinds of behaviour which enable the unconscious to express itself. Among those,
the types of behaviour which we immediately regard as deceptive are lying, wearing disguises
or using false names or identities. Yet, other kinds of behaviour may also prove to play a part
in the deceptive process, in as much as they reveal the fact that deception has taken place:
dreams, for instance, often express inner feelings which must remain hidden, as do slips of the
tongue, errors, or bungled actions. Lapses of memory too can mean that the person has
invented a different, socially more acceptable version of his/her life.
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Moreover, Freud’s theories are not the only ones which can help us understanding a
literary character. Jung, in his analysis of the trickster figure, offers us interesting insight into
the phenomenon of deception, as will be explained in a following section. Later, Jacques
Lacan equally professed the dubious value of truth in the treatment of the disordered psyche.
As Campbell states, Lacan “insists that truth discloses itself, not in plain propositions, but in
lies, mistakes, trickery, and tall stories” (Campbell 200). As far as the trickster character is
concerned, it has been associated with Lacan’s mirror stage, which recalls Mycak’s analysis
of Atwood’s work in Lacanian terms.
Finally, this section on the cultural value of deception can be concluded by examining
Atwood’s own comment on the subject and interest in deceptive games. Indeed, Atwood has
expressed her opinions on the subject of deception, and she sometimes plays games with her
readers which make her resemble a trickster figure.
In the passage from Murder in the Dark which has been chosen as a motto for this
study, Atwood concludes her description of the game which gives its title to the volume as
follows: “Just remember this, when the scream at last has ended and you’ve turned on the
lights: by the rules of the game, I must always lie” (Atwood, Murder in the Dark 49-50). In
that short prose piece, Atwood attributes the murderer’s role to the writer and thus highlights
the writer’s tendency to tell lies. The quotation can be interpreted as Atwood’s
acknowledgement of her own trickster-like qualities. Indeed, this aspect of her literary
personality is often reflected on by critics, who have called her a gorgon or a magician in
turns, often highlighting the trickery aspect of Atwood’s plots.
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The following quote is another significant example of Atwood’s deceptive nature.
Answering Geoff Handcock’s question on the truth-value of interviews, Atwood says that she
regards interviews as an art in themselves. She calls them fictitious and fictional. She then
adds that writers sometimes make up answers and emphasises the unreliability of memory.
Indeed, she says: “Any memory you have of writing is just that, a memory. Like all
memories, it’s usually a revision, not the unadulterated experience itself” (Handcock 113-
144). This quote is particularly relevant if we consider it in the light of historiographic
metafiction. Indeed, Atwood’s novels can be regarded as her way of making the readers aware
of a different aspect of reality.
In the interview with Handcock, Atwood goes even further, stating that writers
frequently conceal things to preserve their privacy, to keep their trade secrets or to fit literary
theories. Indeed, from what we read in Atwood’s numerous interviews, this can be interpreted
as the echo of Atwood’s vision of deception as being part of the writer’s work. Atwood’s
comments on writing in Negotiating with the Dead, her recent non-fiction book, reinforce this
idea. She discloses an episode from her childhood: “Around the age of seven I wrote a play.
The protagonist was a giant; the theme was crime and punishment; the crime was lying, as
befits a future novelist” (Atwood, Negotiating with the Dead 9). Such a comment from a
writer who is already well-known for playing tricks on her readers emphasises the deliberate
quality of Atwood’s deception.
I would even go further in emphasising Atwood’s own hybrid nature, which she
presents as characteristic of her role as a writer. In Negotiating with the Dead, she writes:
“Who was I then? My evil twin or slippery double, perhaps. I am after all a writer, so it would
follow as the day the night that I must have a slippery double (…) this other person – the one
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credited with authorship – is certainly not me. (…) I was endowed at birth with a double
identity” (Atwood, Negotiating with the Dead 36). Atwood’s description of her own double
nature reminds us of her heroines’ struggle with identity, which often causes them to act
deceptively. This double nature should therefore be regarded as a significant element in
Atwood’s characterisation and as a relevant sign of the heroine’s hybrid nature. These
quotations clearly demonstrate Atwood’s concern for deception, her belief that it is
intrinsically linked to her being a writer, and her acknowledgement that she would quite
readily deceive us as readers.
2.2. Significant Postmodern Aspects of Deception
2.2.1. Historiographic Metafiction or Variations on the Concept of Truth(s)
This analysis of deception in Atwood’s work relies on Linda Hutcheon’s postmodern concept
of the historiographic metafiction for several reasons. First of all, because this novelistic form
is particularly likely to present deceptive authorial intervention. Moreover, as a Canadian,
Hutcheon has logically devoted much of her attention to Canadian writers, and has applied her
theories to Margaret Atwood’s writings (Hutcheon, The Canadian Postmodern 138-159). In A
Poetics of Postmodernism, Hutcheon describes historiographic metafiction as follows: “those
well-known and popular novels which are both intensively self-reflexive and yet
paradoxically also lay claim to historical events and personages” (Hutcheon, A Poetics of
Postmodernism 5). This very concept aptly describes one of Atwood’s most popular novels,
i.e. Alias Grace, which is based on a true story and contains numerous references to historical
facts and documents, while presenting these in quite a singular way.
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Hutcheon distinguishes several typical traits of historiographic metafiction. First of all,
historiographic metafiction is obsessed with “the linking of ‘fictitious’ to ‘mendacious’ stories
(or histories)” (Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism 108): fact and fiction are often
intertwined. Second, it shows a typical postmodern interest for the multiplicity of truth: truth
is a very relative concept, which largely depends on place and culture; it is therefore diverse
and elusive (Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism 108). Historiographic metafiction
consequently “plays upon the truth and lies of the historical record” (Hutcheon, A Poetics of
Postmodernism 114). This implies that the author of a historiographic metafictional novel
deliberately falsifies or omits some historical facts in order to compensate for historical
forgetfulness or errors. Historical facts are incorporated, but not necessarily assimilated.
Rather, they appear as seen through the lens of parody or irony, which Hutcheon identifies in
The Canadian Postmodern as forms of “formal and ideological critique in feminism and
Canadian fiction alike” (Hutcheon, The Canadian Postmodern 7). Hutcheon significantly
chooses Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale as a typical example of parody. Umberto
Eco expresses the same idea : “The postmodern reply to the modern consists in recognising
that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, (…)
must be revisited, but with irony, not innocently” (quoted in : Hutcheon, A Poetics of
Postmodernism 90). Moreover, parody functions as an important element of postcolonial
writing as well. In my analysis, I shall therefore devote much attention to the study of the
intertextuality which characterises many of Atwood’s works. Third, historiographic
metafiction confronts the literary to the historical, featuring the encounter of fictitious and
historical characters or resorting to intertextuality (Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism
108), which enables the writer to rewrite the past in a new context (Hutcheon, A Poetics of
Postmodernism 118). The idea particularly fits my postcolonial claim, since this rewriting
can be regarded as a way of giving the colonised subject his own voice, enabling him to give
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his own version of the facts. Fourth, historiographic metafiction “espouses a postmodern
ideology of plurality and recognition of difference” (Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism
114). In this, it echoes the postcolonial concern for the ex-centric position of the “Other”.
Indeed, as Hutcheon states, postmodern narratives often equally adhere “not to what fits the
master narrative, but instead, to the ex—centric, the marginal, the borderline – all those things
that threaten the (illusory but comforting) security of the centered, totalizing, masterly
discourses of our culture” (Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism 86). As far as narrative
techniques are concerned, Hutcheon distinguishes two modes of narration which characterise
historiographic metafiction, i.e. either multiple points of view or an overtly controlling
narrator who, nevertheless, lacks any clear vision of the past (Hutcheon, A Poetics of
Postmodernism 117). Indeed, these novels often feature an obvious instability of point of
view, because of a deliberately manipulative, deceptive narrator or a story narrated by
multiple voices (Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism 160). Finally, historiographic
metafiction shows “overt (and political) concern for its reception, for its reader” (Hutcheon, A
Poetics of Postmodernism 115), an interest which may be rooted in its desire to make readers
aware of the existence of received versions of historical facts.
The relation of historiographic metafiction to the notion of multiple truth is of primary
interest because the multifaceted postmodern conception of truth enables the writer to
introduce the Other’s version of truth as a valid alternative to the coloniser’s view. Indeed,
those in power generally dismiss the Other’s view of history.
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2.2.2. Atwood’s Metafictional Manipulation
To Linda Hutcheon, metafiction is characterised by its “subversion of the stability of point of
view” (Hutcheon, “Subject in/of/to History and His Story” 80). She further links this
subversion to the disintegration of patriarchal hierarchies (Hutcheon, “Subject in/of/to History
and His Story” 83), an aspect which makes the notion interesting in this postcolonial-oriented
analysis.
In the chapter entitled “Process, Product, and Politics: The Postmodernism of
Margaret Atwood,” Linda Hutcheon, in The Canadian Postmodern, focuses on postmodern
aspects of Atwood’s early production. In Atwood’s work, Hutcheon situates the postmodern
paradox in the vision of art as, on the one hand, a dynamic creative process, and, on the other
hand, a static product (Hutcheon, The Canadian Postmodern 138). Hutcheon then produces an
analysis of Atwood’s first novel, The Edible Woman, which illustrates this aspect, i.e. she
offers a metafictional reading of the novel, which she sums up by drawing a parallel between
the tensions between mind and body in The Edible Woman and the postmodern contradictions
between the written product and the act of writing (Hutcheon, The Canadian Postmodern
143). Concerning Surfacing, Hutcheon emphasises the “illusionist’s ability” of language to
indicate process within product, which she exemplifies by means of the novel’s title, with its
dynamic present-participle. Atwood’s next novel, Lady Oracle, epitomises the concept of
self-reflexive metafiction. Indeed, if we consider the novel as self-parodic, we can regard Joan
Foster’s multiple identities as an ironic inversion of Surfacing’s nameless narrator and the
Royal Porcupine’s liking for dead animals as a parody of the chapter on animals in Survival
(Hutcheon, The Canadian Postmodern 145). All the same, in Life Before Man, which, at first
reading, seems to be a realistic novel, metafictional comment is introduced in Lesje’s desire to
26

e pregnant, which parallels the dynamic creative process of writing (Hutcheon, The
Canadian Postmodern 148). Hutcheon concludes her analysis of Atwood’s early novels by
stressing the imaginative quality of her characters (Hutcheon, The Canadian Postmodern
152), a necessary quality to become an effective deceiver. The characters’ various versions of
reality and their role in a postcolonial interpretation of Margaret Atwood’s fiction will thus
constitute the main concern of this study.
Beside establishing the metafictional quality of Atwood’s work, my study also closely
links the notion of fantasy to the idea of deception. Still following Hutcheon’s thought, the
reader must keep in mind that fantasy, a necessary quality to being an effective deceiver,
involves responsibility for what has been created. This awareness of responsibility can then be
interpreted as an important step in the Other’s discovery of his own voice.
As to the link between metafiction and deception, it will be established by focusing on
three aspects of Atwood’s metafiction : first, Atwood’s comments on or hints at the narrator’s
unreliability, second, Atwood’s sequences on the nature of the writing process, which often
draw our attention to the fictional and/or tricky aspect of fiction, and third, Atwood’s parodic
intent, aiming at illustrating her function as a writer, which involves creating a world that
appears realistic, and yet, functions as a fictional product.
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2.3. Deception as a Postcolonial Process
2.3.1. Deception as Mimicry
One cannot deny the feminist overtones of Atwood’s novels, which often present us with a
heroine’s process of individuation, or, in other words, with her quest for selfhood. These
novels logically allude to patriarchal domination and social oppression. My point here is to
establish a parallel between feminism and postcolonialism and to examine Atwood’s work on
these premises, as well as in the light of the postcolonial concept of mimicry. Indeed, both
patriarchy and colonialism can be regarded as the exertion of power, of domination imposed
on subjects who are then regarded as subordinate. Patriarchal society imposes on women the
same submissive role as that inflicted by colonisers on colonised subjects. Therefore, the
parallel between feminism and postcolonialism will be emphasised, considering them ways of
opposing similar kinds of dominant behaviour, as is stated in Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin’s
Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies (101). Since Atwood has often been regarded as a
“feminist” writer, this study will demonstrate that the feminist overtones in her work function
as a metaphor for the Canadian subject’s subaltern position.
Further drawing on postcolonialism, this study will show that deception can be
regarded as a form of mimicry. Indeed, the concept of mimicry is based on the colonised
subject’s ambivalent attempt at resembling the coloniser, without ever succeeding to do so.
Adopting colonial cultural values then results in a mere reproduction, which proves deceptive
and dangerous because of its lack of a core (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, Key Concepts in
Post-Colonial Studies 139): the colonised subject cannot exist as a copy of the coloniser. The
female character in Atwood’s fiction remains equally trapped in an ambivalent position: in
28

order to find her place in patriarchal society, she resorts to several modes of deception to
produce a copy of what society wishes her to be. The failure of this kind of socially induced
behaviour then leads to her introspective quest towards her hybrid self, which she must
eventually acknowledge as the only viable version of herself.
Homi K. Bhabha’s refers to Lacan when he defines mimicry as a form of camouflage
(Bhabha 90), which can be regarded as a deceptive strategy. Bhabha symptomatically
mentions ‘camouflage’, a word which Atwood often uses in her descriptions of deceptive
characters. Moreover, by referring to Lacan, Bhabha clearly emphasises the link between his
theory and psychoanalysis. Like Bhabha, my notion of mimicry clearly involves a deceptive
aspect, which basically requires from a colonial subject that he/she resemble someone he/she
is not and will never be. This notion is based on a paradox, for, as Jenny Sharpe puts it: “The
mimic man is a contradictory figure who simultaneously reinforces colonial authority and
disturbs it” (Sharpe 99). Mimicry is thus deceptive by nature, since it merely produces a
resemblance, a copy. Moreover, it does not result in a discovery of harmony, rather in an ever
elusive, unbalanced, conflictual position vis-à-vis the patriarchal or colonised society. This
strategy is thus very close to that of female characters who adopt a false personality in order
to survive in a world based on the patriarchal values which they do not share: in adopting
society’s values, even within a process of deception, they somehow become what society
wants them to be, while they secretly and sometimes unconsciously keep longing to reveal
their hybrid nature.
Indeed, in such male-oriented societies, female heroines display the quality of
“otherness”. Women often occupy a marginal, ex-centric position, once they refuse to comply
with patriarchal values commonly agreed on in society. Women are often relegated to the
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position of “Other” and experience trouble in finding their own voice. This concept of voice is
a common point between feminist and postcolonial studies, a theory which is also alluded to
by Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin in The Empire Writes Back (174-175).
In Atwood’s fiction, independent single women thus function as “the Other,” with all
its stereotypical connotations. Their only way to fit into that society is to pretend to adopt its
values. Yet, they soon come to realise that this deceptive way of life cannot last and a
traumatic experience often brings them to engage on a quest for their hybrid identity. Indeed,
the heroine’s recurrent deceptive behaviour at the beginning of the story commonly evolves
into a search for selfhood, made necessary because, as is the case for mimicry, while a
fragmented hybrid female character may temporarily display a false-self system, it eventually
turns out to be not quite the same as acknowledging her hybridity and its consequences.
Referring to the title of my thesis, I would conclude in asserting the existence of a parallel
between the workings of mimicry in a colonial subject and the deceptive process experienced
by female heroines in patriarchal cultures, both of these processes leading to an awareness of
the heroine’s hybridity. The acknowledging of her hybrid quality would then function as
Ariadne’s thread and enable the heroine to escape her labyrinth of deception.
2.3.2. Magic Realism and Deception
Magic realism particularly helps to clarify Atwood’s work, because of this aesthetic mode’s
reliance on the motif of the double. Indeed, Margaret Atwood’s work swarms with images of
doubles and twins, which give it a definite postmodern quality by virtue of the multiplicity of
voices which the doubles bring forth. This analysis echoes Wendy B. Faris’s theories on
magic realism (Faris 163-164). Faris explains the various characteristics of magic realism and
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its postmodern aspect, of which the metafictional aspect (Faris 175) proves of great interest.
She then mentions the postmodern recurrence of the metamorphosis motif (Faris 178), which
can easily be associated to deceptive characters’ frequent use of disguises of various kinds.
Indeed, characters often resort to disguise when they opt for a personality or physical
appearance which is tolerated by society. In using disguise, the ex-centric character mimics
the aspect of the dominant class without ever becoming part of it. When this disguise turns out
to create a grotesque, unreal kind of character, it acquires a magic realist quality, one of the
utmost interest for this study.
Further, magic realism is interesting from a postcolonial point of view because of its
“in-between” quality: magic realist moments take place on the edge of reality, when among
realistic events a supernatural, inexplicable phenomenon suddenly occurs. Reality turns out to
be deceptive as the reader gets a glimpse of its hidden aspects. In Faris and Zamora’s
collection of essays on magic realism, Rawdon Wilson highlights the hybrid quality of magic
realism and clearly links it to the idea of deception when he writes: “one world may lie hidden
within another. (…) The hybrid construction emerges from a secret, always already contained
within, forming an occulted and latent dimension of the surface world” (Faris 225). Magic
realism thus encourages deception on the writer’s part, and provides the characters with a
typically postcolonial hybridity.
The most interesting aspect of magic realism lies in its subversive potential. Indeed, by
allowing the supernatural to enter the real, magic realism simultaneously calls for an
acceptance of what is “other” or “marginal”. Hence Jeanne Delbaere-Garant’s conclusion in
her article “Variations on Magic Realism”, in which she writes that one of the functions of
magic realism may be “to destabilise culturally constructed notions of identity and gender by
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showing that, like all human constructs, they are, in fact, projections of individual fantasies”
(Delbaere-Garant 260). Delbaere coins the terms “psychic,” “mythic,” and “grotesque
realism” in order to help situate magic realist moments (250). She defines these categories as
follows: she calls “psychic realism” that “particular sort of magic realism generated from
inside the psyche” (251). Further, she identifies “mythic realism” as magic images “borrowed
from the physical environment itself, instead of being projected from the characters’ psyches”
(253). Delbaere proposes to call “grotesque realism” “a combination of North American tall
tale, Latin American baroque, and Bakhtinian ‘carnivalesque’” (256). She suggests using the
term “grotesque realism” for “any sort of hyperbolic distortion that creates a sense of
strangeness through the confusion or interpenetration of different realms like
animate/inanimate or human/animal” (256). I regard this latter definition as highly relevant in
relation to this study’s development of the theme of hybridity. Moreover, one should keep in
mind that scholars often describe the trickster-figure itself as a character in between the
human and the animal worlds (256). This definition introduces distorted elements which
parody reality and denounce the norms commonly accepted by society. As such, these
grotesque, deceptive elements acquire a postcolonial value which is of primary interest for the
interpretation of Atwood’s novels. These grotesque events further possess a deceptive quality
because the reader experiences them as unexpected and tricky. Therefore, Delbaere identifies
another function of magic realism, i.e. “to stress the distinction between trickery and reality,
invention and creation” (260). Potentially subversive and/or deceptive qualities of magic
realist moments should therefore receive particular attention. For the sake of convenience, I
shall borrow Delbaere’s classification, using the terms “psychic,” “mythic,” and “grotesque”
magic realism, adding the word “magic” to refer to surreal moments within Atwood’s realist
narratives. In the course of my analysis, I shall also introduce a new notion, that of “gothic
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magic realism,” which, in my view, is more appropriate to Atwood’s fiction. One might
regard it as a combination of two forms of the previously cited forms of realism.
Richard Todd’s contribution to Faris and Zamora’s collection goes even further,
starting with: “Narrators of magic realism play confidence tricks on their readers. (…) An
exemplary expression of the confidence trick leading to the subversion of the natural order of
things is to be found in the alternative historiography that in various ways outrageously
transgresses the ‘given facts’ of history” (Todd 305). Indeed, the tricks which authors can
play with history are also part of a deceptive process, which should be analysed in relation
with the above described concept of “historiographic metafiction.” Stephen Slemon expresses
the same idea: he examines magic realism in a postcolonial perspective, emphasising its re-
visioning process and its reconstruction of history (Slemon 415). As Brydon and Tiffin claim
in Decolonizing Fiction, “postcolonial texts have always been ‘conscious’ of their own
fictionality” (Brydon, Tiffin 147). The author’s metafictional comments on history and
potential deception should therefore be taken into account. In his conclusion, Richard Todd
first alludes to the narrator “as the trickster or the tricked” (Todd 325), a topic which will be
dealt with in the next section.
2.3.3. The Trickster Figure
The figure of the trickster can be studied in relation to Bakhtin’s definition of three trickster-
like characters which populate literature from very early on, namely, the rogue, the clown and
the fool. In his essay entitled “Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel”, Bakhtin
examines the functions of these popular figures. The common point between them is that each
of them creates his own special world, his chronotope. Their other characteristic is that they
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must be grasped in terms of their metaphorical significance. Indeed, as Bakhtin writes, “one
cannot take them literally, because they are not what they seem (…) Essential to these three
figures is a distinctive feature that is as well a privilege – the right to be ‘other’ in this world”
(Bakhtin 158). Bakhtin thus clearly links the deceptive aspect to the quality of otherness. He
further identifies these characters as those who will expose social conventions, hypocrisy and
falsehood. They all three bear an inner contradiction: they both create and denounce
deceptions, the latter thanks to their mask, which allows them to express themselves freely.
They somehow make way for a double-voiced discourse, i.e. for the introduction of the
author’s intention within novelistic discourse. The fool’s function, for instance, is to highlight
the world’s falsity by demonstrating his own incomprehension of it. The rogue inflicts
deception upon liars. Finally, the clown turns out to be a mixture of both : he is a rogue who
wears the mask of a fool in order to be able to distort and unmask social conventions (Bakhtin
404-405). Bakhtin then alludes to the symbolical and parodic value of these characters and
mentions the cyclical pattern of these narratives, another common point with traditional
trickster stories.
In order to be able to recognise trickster figures when they appear in Atwood’s
fiction, one can first examine some of the numerous definitions of the trickster figure. The
trickster has been described by Carl Jung in The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
as a transforming character, as a shape-shifter. Jung identifies the trickster as an archetype, i.e.
an archaic, primordial type. Indeed, archetypes are “universal images that have existed since
the remotest times” (Jung 5) and which are part of our collective unconscious. In his essay
“On the Psychology of the Trickster-Figure”, he defines the trickster as follows : “a
‘psychogolem’, an archetypal psychic structure of extreme antiquity (…) a faithful reflection
of an absolutely undifferentiated human consciousness, corresponding to a psyche that has
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hardly left the animal level” (Jung 260). If the trickster constitutes such a basic element of
human consciousness, it must be present in many literary works, and even more so in
Canadian works, since the trickster figure has remained very popular among the Native
population of Canada. Northrop Frye, Atwood’s renowned professor, supports this idea when
he defines the trickster as “a symbol, usually an image, which recurs often enough in
literature to be recognizable as an element of one’s literary experience as a whole” (Frye 365).
The trickster must therefore be regarded as one of the literary embodiments of deception to be
looked for in Atwood’s novels.
Jung further identifies several other characteristics of the trickster figure. The first
distinguishing quality consists in the trickster’s talent as a shape-shifter. Significantly, many
of Atwood’s characters are famous for transforming at will and featuring different selves.
Jung further mentions the trickster’s fondness for sly jokes, and his dual nature, half animal,
half divine, a comment which stresses the trickster’s marginal, liminal quality and makes it an
interesting figure in a postcolonial context as representation of the “Other”.
When emphasising the trickster’s archaic quality and his animal-like stage of
psychological development, Jung associates the American Indian trickster figure with several
other occurrences in Europe: the medieval devil, the alchemical figure of Mercurius, fairy-tale
characters, witches, the folkloric simpleton or a carnival figure. He even links the trickster’s
traditional bawdy jokes and rogueries to current student folklore. To Jung, Trickster is a
phantom who haunts medieval theatrical farces, carnival feasts and magic rites. It is a
memory-image, which finds its roots in man’s primitive and barbarous consciousness. Jung
compares the trickster phenomenon to that of the split personality, and sees the trickster as an
emanation, not on the individual level, but rather on the collective one: it can bring out the
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est or the worst in a human being. Jung sums this up as follows: “The trickster is a primitive
‘cosmic’ being of divine-animal nature, on the one hand superior to man because of his
superhuman qualities, and on the other hand inferior to him because of his unreason and
unconsciousness” (Jung 264). He then explains the persistence of the trickster in modern
times by its being a parallel to the individual shadow, referring to an earlier, darker, more
primitive stage of consciousness. Tricksters’ occurrences in Atwood’s work therefore
constitute significant moments, revealing important elements for the interpretation of the
novels.
Other writers have highlighted the trickster’s multiple identities. The religious
historian Mircea Eliade gives a rather similar description of the trickster, focusing on its
deceitful nature, and drawing largely on the North American Indian Coyote stories. For
Eliade, Coyote is the prototype of the trickster and he describes him as follows:
His personality is ambivalent and his role equivocal. (…) he is also a transformer and a
culture hero. (…) he succeeds not heroically, but by cunning or fraud. And it is always by
stratagem or dissimulation that he delivers mankind from his monstrous cannibal
adversaries. He parodies and caricatures shamanistic or priestly rituals. (…) he proves to be
a personage difficult to define, both intelligent and stupid, near the gods by his
‘primordiality’ and his powers, but even nearer men by his gluttonous hunger, his
exorbitant sexuality, and his amorality (Eliade 190)
Eliade’s emphasis on the trickster’s sense of parody reminds us of the postmodern parodic
undertones of historiographic metafiction, and is directly connected with the subversive
postcolonial notion of mimicry.
For Jeanne Rosier Smith, author of a study of tricksters in American ethnic literature,
the trickster once again appears as a transformer: “Tricksters – the ubiquitous shape-shifters
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who dwell on borders, at crossroads, and between worlds – are the world’s oldest, and newest,
creations” (Rosier Smith 1). She further underlines the multicultural aspect of the trickster
figure, a trait which makes it an interesting character in a postcolonial-oriented analysis. She
calls the trickster an “interpreter”, a “master of border and exchange” (Rosier Smith xiii).
Indeed, in a postcolonial perspective, this character challenges the ideas commonly prescribed
by society. He is a paradoxical character who allows different voices to express themselves at
a time, and in so doing, he creates a space of expression for the Other, the ex-centric, the
hybrid self. Rosier-Smith further sees the trickster as a symbol of survival, a folk hero and a
creator of new worlds. As such, the character appeals to women writers because it challenges
existing patriarchal values. For Rosier Smith, the world’s interest in the trickster comes from
his role as survivor and transformer (Rosier Smith 3). He establishes the connection between
self and culture (Rosier Smith 4). She then chooses to underline some aspects of the trickster,
such as its liminality and its “ ‘betwixt and between’ state of transition and change that is a
source of myth in all cultures” (Rosier Smith 7). This, of course, reminds us of Bhabha’s
notion of “in-betweenness”. Tricksters are constantly on the threshold of culture. They are
free to break taboos and show a fabulous talent for escape and survival. They sometimes
shock us because Western thought does not usually associate goodness and deception, but it is
by transgressing such boundaries that the trickster becomes able to define culture. Rosier
Smith also symptomatically notices that “Tricksters appear at moments of identity crisis”
(Rosier Smith 9), a phenomenon which is of primary interest for my study, which will
precisely focus on a heroine’s identity crises. It would then be interesting to determine,
whether at one point of those crises, a trickster-like figure is present to assist the heroine in
her quest or to show her the way. Moreover, Rosier Smith also mentions the trickster’s
influence on narrative techniques. Indeed, of trickster figures she says: “They reinvent
narrative form. (…) A parodist, joker, liar, con-artist, and storyteller, the trickster fabricates
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elievable illusions with words.” And further: “The narrative forms share certain distinctive
features : breaks, disruptions, loose ends, and multiple voices or perspectives” (Rosier Smith
11). Special attention should therefore be devoted to that kind of formal details because these
could be clues to the possible presence of a trickster-like narrator. As has been done at the
beginning of this section, Rosier Smith connects the trickster to Bakhtin’s parodic roles of
fool, clown and rogue. She also quotes Diane Price Herndl who notices the “striking
similarities between Bakhtin’s theories of novelistic discourse and theories of a feminine
language (…). Both describe a multivoiced or polyphonic resistance to hierarchies and
laughter at authority” (Rosier Smith 13). Atwood having often been called a feminist writer,
this study will logically pay attention to her characters who defy patriarchal authority by
means of deceptive strategies. Additionally, Jeanne Rosier-Smith emphasises the postmodern
quality of the trickster figure, alluding to its multiple aspect of identity (Rosier Smith 17).
Finally, the author highlights the fact that writers can become tricksters themselves (Rosier
Smith 21), an affirmation used by several critics concerning Margaret Atwood, as will be
explained below.
Suzanne Evertsen Lundquist equally takes Jung’s transformation archetype and turns
the trickster into an important figure in the process of individuation (Lundquist). Her
dissertation on the academic impact of trickster studies offers a slightly different insight. She
analyses the significance of the trickster as Jungian archetype, as explained previously, the
mythic undertones of the trickster in Native American narratives and its value as a life symbol
(Lundquist). She also develops the deconstructing aspect of trickster as the one who “exposes
what has been marginalized in Western thought. (…) Trickster is continually deconstructing
ideologies and calling attention to foolish human behavior” (Lundquist), a characteristic
which makes the trickster an all the more interesting figure in postcolonial theory. To express
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it in Lundquist’s words: the trickster element “is deconstructive in purpose and healing in
effect” (Lundquist). The figure reveals what has been concealed and therefore functions as an
important element of the initiation process, such as that undergone by Atwood’s heroines.
Landay mentions the origin of the term trickster used by Daniel Brinton in a 1868
study of “the contradictory figure in Native American tales and myth, who is both fooler and
fooled, heroic and base” (Landay 2). And she adds: “In general trickster figures are
representations of liminality, duality, subversions, and irony”, a definition which perfectly fits
postcolonial thought, because it emphasises the ex-centric position of the colonised subject, as
well as the parodic and subversive intent of the mimicry process. Lori Landay’s work on
twentieth-century popular female trickster figures in the United States casts yet another light
on the subject. Landay starts out from the character of Sheherazade, whom she identifies as
the prototype of the specific female trickster, “a tightrope walker, poised ironically in the
liminal space ‘betwixt and between’ night and day, life and death, victim and survivor,
concubine and wife” (Landay 1). From the start she also makes a distinction between male
and female trickster, contrary to most authors, who recognise in the trickster an ambivalent
creature, now male, now female. According to Landay, female tricksters either resort to covert
strategies of influence (like Sheherazade telling her various tales to stay alive) or to overt
strategies of action (like Batman’s Catwoman who acquires revenge and justice through
transformation). Both characters demonstrate their ability to survive in a hostile patriarchal
world. Moreover, women in mainstream American culture are often evaluated in terms of
appearance, costume, and behaviour and are attributed a series of typically female roles, all of
them being potentially mere deceptions. Landay further alludes to the duality of the female
trickster, as a character whose duality is reflected in her split consciousness. This aspect of the
trickster theory is very important as regards the numerous articles devoted to doubles, twins
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and split personalities in Atwood’s fiction. Indeed, the frequent occurrences of doubles and
twins is an important component of Atwood’s deception process and the presence of an alter-
ego for the heroine or the heroine’s allusion to her split personality will therefore be studied at
length. Lori Landay also mentions the role of women in advertising which makes frequent use
of trickster tactics such as “deception, impersonation, disguise, duplicity, and subversion”
(Landay 11). Like the other writers, she points to the trickster’s transgression of social
conventions when she writes: “Often, female tricksters behave as shadow figures who break
the rules and call attention to possibilities outside gender roles and ideals” (Landay 12). Yet
she places this subversive attitude within the context of cultural definitions of femininity. She
then goes on examining the different kinds of trickster figures before starting out on her own
evaluation of the female trickster figure in twentieth-century America, identifying three major
types of female trickster. The first one is the madcap, a funny, unconventional, eccentric and
individual figure who takes part in the world but does not follow the dominant ideology
(Landay 37). Landay significantly mentions that this kind of woman is neither a victim nor a
passive outsider. The second type is the con woman, not a comic character this time, but one
who can manipulate her appearance to grant her confidence. The third type, the screwball, lies
between the manipulative con-woman and the impulsive madcap, in that she recognises her
ex-centric position, refuses marginalisation and manipulates social conventions. These three
types significantly remind us of Bakhtin’s previously mentioned analysis of three trickster-
like characters, namely, the fool (the comic one), the rogue (the evil deceiver), and the clown,
which features characteristics of both types. Landay’s conclusion is of particular interest
because it draws on Margaret Atwood’s theory of the Four Basic Victim Positions, as exposed
in her critical work Survival, to explain the female trickster’s function, i.e. to allow the
heroine to become a creative non-victim (Landay 218).
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Among the numerous articles and books about trickster figures, the article entitled
“Semiosis, Marginal Signs and Trickster” by C.W. Spinks Jr. provides interesting insights
into the trickster’s marginal condition. Spinks first establishes the trickster’s ancient presence
and mythic value. He further regards the trickster as being partly a culture hero, partly a
shaman. As a culture hero, he takes risks and brings about social and psychological
development. As a shaman, he acts as a visionary character who has access to wisdom and to
other states of consciousness. Most appealing is Spinks’s idea of the trickster as “pure
ambivalence; he is always the border creature who plays at the margins of self, symbol and
culture.” He “allows the very process of transformation (…), as the basic driver of cultural
change” (Spinks 177). The portrait of the trickster as a marginal character allows us to
associate the naturally deceptive trickster figure with the marginal, decentered aspect of
postcolonial writing. Trickster, the deceiver, the marginal, the ex-centric thus functions as an
ideal postcolonial hero, a marginal joker, who challenges the boundaries established by
culture. “He both exercises and exorcises the negation of the Cultural Other” (Spinks 178).
This last sentence brings Trickster very close to the definition of hybridity, a concept which
will be explained in the next section of this study. Indeed, the trickster personality most likely
appears in situations when the heroine is about to discover her hybrid quality. Spinks
concludes: “So Trickster is also a constant reminder of the marginality and liminality of our
personal experience” (Spinks 179). Spinks also relates the trickster’s function to the Jungian
process of individuation when he writes : “He allows one to meet, understand, grapple with
and control the Shadow and unthought of the culture” (Spinks 178). Indeed, the only way of
dealing with one’s limitations involves becoming conscious of them and exploring them in a
counter-discourse, a reversal of hierarchies, as Spinks states (Spinks 183). Trickster then
functions as the spirit of disorder, as a paradoxical figure because he both embodies the Other
and the human being in general. As a narrative element, the trickster belongs to the realm of
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the picaresque, resorting to comic inversion or evolutionary literary patterns (quest novels,
Bildungsroman, or transformation novels) (Spinks 185). But through their emphasis on
‘otherness’, trickster narratives also denounce the power exerted by dominant societies. They
further show a self-reflexiveness which connects them to the postmodern and to Lacanian
psychology, as Spinks explains:
The mirror stage of Lacan is parallel to the self-reflexiveness of both Trickster and his
narratives. Also the Lacanian self in the mirror stage is a great deal like the Idiot Savant of
Trickster; his ability to con and manipulate both animals and fellow human beings, in a way
that is so transparent to the audience, is a kind of rhetorical genius which is parallel to the
discovery processes of Trickster (Spinks 194).
This aspect of the trickster will receive prominent attention in this study. Indeed, the
occurrence of the trickster figure in Atwood’s fictional worlds could be regarded as a
necessary stage in the heroine’s awareness of her hybrid self. Indeed, this study proposes to
interpret the familiar concept of Lacanian mirror stage as the moment when the “Other”
becomes aware of his mimicry, of the way in which he diverges from the dominant model and
of the necessity for him to admit his hybridity.
As to the meaning of the trickster figure in anthropology, Claude Lévi-Strauss
provides an interpretation of the trickster as mediator between opposites (Lévi-Strauss 248-
250). Lévi-Strauss regards the trickster as a character of the utmost importance in myth
because its function is to reconcile opposites, to resolve the insoluble conflict between life and
death. His double nature – half human half divine – reconciles heaven and earth. A similar
idea has been expressed by Lacan who equates the trickster with a saviour figure. Lévi-
Strauss thus emphasises the trickster’s hybrid nature: in Amerindian stories, the trickster is
originally a carrion eater, halfway between the herbivore and the predator, mediating between
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life and death. The trickster is therefore an ambiguous character, featuring a double form in
some myths. This latter characteristic should dominate a study devoted to Margaret Atwood,
because the double recurs as a motif in her work.
Finally, after having examined various definitions of the trickster, I choose to draw on
Lewis Hyde’s book, entitled Trickster Makes This World, in order to clarify my depiction of
the Atwoodian trickster. Among the numerous characteristics of the trickster-figure as
described in Hyde’s work, I personally focus on seven features which are common to all
Atwoodian tricksters: a voracious appetite, a need to travel, a talent for creative lying, a liking
for disguise, a carnivalesque spirit of exuberance, a social position as outsider, and a role of
cultural mediation. In each of Atwood’s novels, the reader encounters a figure who epitomises
one or several of those features. Zenia, in The Robber Bride, for instance, possesses all these
qualities: she displays a voracious sexual appetite which leads her to steal her friends’
husbands; her past – be it true or not – is made of errands in several countries; she deceives
the other women with astonishing ease, changing identity and appearance at will; she is an ex-
centric character who both shocks society and remains on the edge of it; yet, she is also the
catalyst who brings about the other characters’ reflection on their own life. Other convincing
trickster characters are Joan Foster in Lady Oracle, Grace Marks, Cordelia and Elaine in Cat’s
Eye, or Laura Chase in The Blind Assassin. Atwood’s own review of Hyde’s book 2 provides
us with an explanation for the importance of the trickster in her own work. Atwood calls the
trickster an “ambiguous” character. She quotes Hyde who says that “trickster is among other
things the gatekeeper who opens the door into the next world,” which, Atwood adds, is “the
2 Atwood “Masterpiece Theater” (Atwood Papers, Collection 335, Box 123, File 11:5).
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underworld or the world of the imagination, or – in real-life terms – the unobtainable, the
denied, the forbidden: other cultures, other nations, other forms of sexuality, other classes and
races.” I contend that the importance of the trickster-figure in Atwood’s fiction lies in its
propensity to open horizons, to transgress boundaries. Atwood calls the trickster “the opener
of dreams, of roads, and of new possibilities” (Masterpiece Theater). As such, the trickster-
character creates a world in which the hybrid colonial subject might find his place. Atwood’s
heroines are mostly women in search of their place in society, women whose desires and
hopes counteract patriarchal values. The sudden appearance of the trickster in their life, or the
gradual discovery of their own trickster-like qualities, enables them to acknowledge their
hybrid self, to find, at least for a moment, their place in society, while preserving their
singularities.
2.3.4. Quest for Self / Quest for Hybridity? Getting Rid of One’s Masks
The concept of the heroine’s journey towards self-discovery is a trope in Atwoodian criticism.
While many studies of Atwood’s fiction have examined the various stages of the protagonist’s
progress towards selfhood, none has devoted attention to the role of deception in this process.
Studies so far handle the protagonist’s severe fragmentation, 3 her alter-egos, 4 the way she
deals with parental figures, 5 or her epiphanies. 6 Some, as mentioned before, deal with the
heroine’s deceptive strategies, but none regard this deception as an integrated part of the quest
3 For an analysis of the protagonists’ fragmentation, see Sonia Mycak’s phenomenological interpretation of
Atwood’s novels in In Search of the Split Subject : Psychoanalysis, Phenomenology, and the Novels of Margaret
Atwood.
4 See Nora Foster-Stovel’s ECW essay “Reflections on Mirror Images : Double and Identity in the Novels of
Margaret Atwood.” and Shannon Hengen’s book, Margaret Atwood’s Power.
5 See Sherrill Grace’s article “In Search of Demeter : The Lost Silent Mother in Surfacing.” in VanSpanckeren
and Castro’s Margaret Atwood : Vision and Forms. See also Shannon Hengen’s article in Literature and
Psychology, “ ‘Your Father the Thunder, Your Mother the Rain’ : Lacan and Atwood.” and Sue Thomas’ article
in ARIEL, “Mythic Reconception and the Mother/Daughter Relationship in Margaret Atwood’s ‘Surfacing’.”
6 See Ildiko de Papp-Carrington’s ECW essay, “Another Symbolic Descent.” and Carol Christ’s book Diving
Deep and Surfacing : Women Writers on Spiritual Quest.
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process. This study argues that deceptive behaviour constitutes a necessary stage in the
heroine’s journey towards a discovery of her hybrid self.
This analysis of the quest pattern in Atwood’s fiction will be based on Annis Pratt’s
study of the quest pattern in Archetypal Patterns in Women’s Fictions. Indeed, Pratt develops
a quest pattern which is exclusively female and which is considered in accordance with the
long tradition situating Atwood in feminist criticism. She clearly identifies a series of novels
as dealing with transformation, a category of primary importance in this study, transformation
ability being one of the most largely acknowledged qualities of the trickster figure. Since an
aspect of my thesis clearly involves the identification of trickster figures among Atwood’s
heroines and secondary characters, this analysis chooses to rely on the theory about quest
patterns which defines the novels as the expressions of a transformation archetype.
In her chapter entitled, “Novels of Rebirth and Transformation,” Pratt distinguishes
five stages in the woman’s journey : first, splitting off from family, husbands, lovers, i.e. from
society; second, the green world guide or token, where the heroine is helped to cross a
threshold by an ordinary event, object or person, that is suddenly given epiphanic
significance. It is at this point in the story that this study will examine the intervention of
trickster-like secondary characters, who will function as guides or catalysts in the heroine’s
search for her inner self. The third stage introduces the green-world lover, who may also be a
trickster figure. He often features animal-like qualities and helps the heroine at a difficult
stage of her discovery journey without imposing social constraints on her. In the fourth stage,
the heroine confronts parental figures, often in the form of memories. And finally, the fifth
stage brings about the heroine’s plunge into the unconscious. Concerning this last stage, while
this study agrees with Pratt’s identification of woman as Other, it is not satisfied with her
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description of the result of the journey for self-knowledge as one creating “transformed,
androgynous, powerful human personalities out of socially devalued beings” (Pratt 137-143).
This analysis rather considers the quest as a confirmation of the heroine’s otherness, not as a
resolution of her conflictual relationship with society.
Yet, another critical approach appeared to me as being of great importance to my
topic, i.e. Molly Hite’s study of feminist narrative strategies in her book The Other Side of the
Story. When reading the title, we can already notice that Hite establishes the link between
female narratives and the quality of “otherness”, a theme clearly articulated by Hite in her
introduction. She considers female violations of conventions deliberate experiments designed
to “articulate an ‘other side’ to the dominant stories of a given culture” (Hite 3). Hite thus
states that the issue of “otherness” and its relation to the existing culture has been central in
the works of many twentieth-century female writers. As an illustration of this concept, Hite
proceeds by analysing several works by female writers, among which Margaret Atwood’s
Lady Oracle (Hite 127-167). Analysing the novel, Hite highlights the heroine’s inability to
distinguish between dream, fantasy, fiction, hallucination, on the one hand, and reality, on the
other, thereby emphasising the negative influence of male characters who “ignore, reduce, or
rewrite her life to fit more socially sanctioned stories” (Hite 129). This seems to me one of the
main reasons why Joan Foster is such an effective liar: fantasy dominates her construction of
self so that she cannot live without it. This clearly establishes the link between the heroine’s
almost pathological need to deceive, and her social position as “Other”. As to narrative
techniques, Hite highlights the writer’s wish to make a parallel between the heroine’s false
selves and the narrative structure, underlining the novel’s metafictional character when she
writes:
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This construction of the story requires the reader to pull the novel together by identifying
and separating out the false portions : by assigning parts of the narrative to the ‘real’
fictional world, parts to the ‘fictions’ imbedded within the fiction, and parts to uncontrolled
aspects of Joan’s imagination – as Joan’s dreams, hallucinations, or fantasies-out-of-control
(Hite 130).
This clearly introduces Atwood’s own quality as a deceiver who tricks her readers into
reconstructing the story as she wants. Hite further establishes the link with postcolonial
theories, by concluding that contemporary feminist narratives are experimental and political,
and that they are characterised by parodies, mimicries, and subversions (Hite 167), but she
fails to explore these theories fully.
As to the link between the quest for selfhood and deception, we come to realise that
each of Atwood’s heroines starts out as a deceiver who will progressively have to remove her
disguises and put off her masks to be able to discover her hybrid quality. Deception, in this
case, can be viewed as the protagonist’s protection against social constraints. Feeling unable
to cope with social demands, the character’s solution is to pretend that she fits in, until her
situation becomes totally uncontrollable. She then has to abandon her deceiver’s personality
and engage on a quest for selfhood. The heroine is a character looking for a version of herself,
which incorporates part of the requirements of life in a patriarchal society, in a word, a hybrid
self, i.e., neither her former deceptive personality, nor the totally socially adapted self,
because this latter remains impossible to obtain, considering the heroine’s state of ‘otherness’.
Yet, hybridity does not solve the character’s identity crisis by creating a mixture of what the
woman was before and what she wishes to become. Being a hybrid, the individual remains
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split, torn between two visions of life. 7 As such, hybridity is thus not the aim of the
individual’s process of individuation, but a significant moment, when the person’s difference,
dislocation, alienation is recognised and may – or not – be built upon. Hybridity is also
defined by Bhabha as “the name for the strategic reversal of the process of domination
through disavowal (that is, the production of discriminatory identities that secure the ‘pure’
and original identity of authority)” (Bhabha 112). This notion of disavowal also encourages us
to keep in mind that deception may also be exerted by society itself, and not necessarily by
the Other. The author’s portrayal of deceptive social behaviour therefore also deserves careful
analysis, because the individual is not the only one involved in deception, which makes
deception and hybridity both appear as paradoxical phenomena. Indeed, hybridity is
intrinsically paradoxical too: it is impossible for a character to display a hybrid quality at
every moment of his life, because his “otherness” is pervasive and tends to show when he
least expects it. Yet, at times, the character equally features a strong though momentary
feeling of balance, which results from the temporary acknowledgement of his hybridity. The
elusiveness of hybridity hampers the positive outcome of Atwood’s quests. Moreover, these
quests must neither be oriented towards a discovery of Truth, because as I have shown in the
part devoted to postmodernism, there is no single Truth, rather fleeting, temporary moments
of in-betweenness. This reminds us of Jeanne Delbaere-Garant’s comment on the epiphanic
value of magic realist moments. Indeed, she defines those events as: “a postmodernist
equivalent to the epiphanic moments of the modernists” (Delbaere 261). Such magic realist
7 Or as Homi K. Bhabha puts it : “Hybridity has no such perspective of depth or truth to provide: it is not a third
term that resolves the tension between two cultures, (…), in a dialectical play of ‘recognition’. The displacement
from symbol to sign creates a crisis for any concept of authority based on a system of recognition: colonial
specularity, doubly inscribed, does not produce a mirror where the self apprehends itself; it is always the split
screen of the self and its doubling, the hybrid” (Bhabha, Location, 113-114).
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moments can be regarded as hybrid because they happen when reality and fantasy
momentarily merge. Indeed, magic realism consists in the coexistence of otherwise
irreconcilable elements and is by definition momentary: suddenly two elements which in
reality cannot possibly exist at the same time are put together, creating a moment of fantasy,
during which everything is possible, including the reconciliation of opposites. Those hybrid
moments of magic realism then allow the character to have some insight into his/her own
hybridity and to survive (one of Atwood’s major recurring themes), at least for a while. These
moments often provide readers with uncertainties, multi-layered plots, open endings and
sometimes, but not always, temporary positive outcomes.
This study thus proposes to determine the importance of deception in the
psychological portrayal of Atwood’s characters, while examining the postcolonial
implications of the narrator’s unreliability. In the same context, it will also mention any
metafictional intervention which denounces the characters’ deception or indicates that the
writer herself is deceiving her readers. This aspect will be dealt with in close relation to the
trickster motif, which, as will be demonstrated, pervades Atwood’s works I have chosen as
case studies.
Through establishing a link between the condition of “Otherness” and the need to
deceive in order to fit in or simply to survive, my thesis will show the postcolonial
significance of the deception motif, on the one hand, by underlining all the instances when
deception is only one of the necessary steps in a quest for a hybrid state, and, on the other
hand, by showing that deception is often closely linked to parody and irony, and is, as such,
part of a process of mimicry within the context of postcolonial resistance to patriarchal
authority.
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For this study, I have chosen to analyse the eleven novels published by Atwood at the
time when I began working on my project. I consider novels as longer narratives, better suited
for the study of the characters’ evolution and of the quest pattern. Within this corpus, I shall
subsequently examine the topics mentioned above: metafictional comment and parodic intent,
deception and mimicry strategies, moments of magic realism and its categories, trickster
figures, questions of “otherness” and hybridity. I shall also observe how these issues influence
the development of the quest pattern. In the course of my analysis, I shall also devote my
attention to Atwood’s concern for ecology, in relation to the concept of hybridity, especially.
The study will deal with the novels in a chronological order, so as to bring to light the
evolution that takes place in Atwood’s fiction. My analysis of Surfacing will examine
deception in the novel as a survival strategy. Another early novel, Lady Oracle, will be
studied with a special focus on the trickster, since this narrative displays Atwood’s first fully
developed trickster figure. Subsequently, I shall argue that Atwood’s next novel, Life Before
Man, Bodily Harm, and The Handmaid’s Tale should be studied together, because the three of
them illustrate how to use deception in a subversive way. Further, I regard Atwood’s Cat’s
Eye and The Robber Bride as variations on the quest pattern. Both multiply the quest in order
to underline the similarities in their various characters’ experiences. They also display
Atwood’s first truly dark trickster figures, Cordelia and Zenia. Then, I shall proceed with the
analysis of Alias Grace, which I consider Atwood’s first positive vision of hybridity. In the
section devoted to The Blind Assassin, I shall focus on the various levels of deception,
whereas the last chapter of this study will address the themes of hybridisation and
colonisation in Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. But first, I intent to demonstrate the socially
induced mimicry strategies and the traces of hybridity detectable in Atwood’s first novel, The
Edible Woman.
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Chapter 1. The Edible Woman :
A Case of Socially Induced Deception.
“Perhaps this was another labyrinth
of words, and if she said the wrong
thing, took the wrong turning, she
would suddenly find herself face to
face with something she could not
cope with” (140).
In my analysis of The Edible Woman, Atwood’s first novel written in 1969, I would
like to highlight the role of deception as a socially induced phenomenon, i.e. as a necessary
strategy for the heroine in order to be accepted as a member of Canadian society. Indeed, I
regard the protagonist’s frequent use of deceptive utterances and action as a way of
mimicking an ideal female personality, a woman who, both as a wife and a housewife, would
correspond to society’s demands. Another interesting figure is Duncan, the young literary
student, who eventually becomes her lover. This secondary character accompanies the heroine
throughout her crisis and leads her on the way to selfhood. He does so by resorting to humour
and by constantly lying, which also identifies him as a trickster figure, as does his clear
connection with the realm of death. As such, this character also functions as a prominent
figure in a postcolonial study of Atwood’s work, because, as a trickster figure, a marginal
creature, he can reveal the hidden aspects of postcolonial society. He can draw the heroine’s
attention to the role imposed on her by this society.
The young heroine, Marian McAlpin, works for a market-research company, shares a
room with another girl called Ainsley, and is currently engaged to Peter, a successful lawyer.
As a job assignment, she must conduct some interviews for a beer survey and thus meets
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Duncan, an eccentric graduate student. At the beginning, Marian clearly mimics the typical
role of the dynamic working girl who will later settle down as a married woman, as society
expects her to do. Yet, several episodes underline Marian’s rising discomfort and her need to
escape from Peter’s paternalistic hold. Her behaviour becomes all the more irrational as Peter
decides to propose to her. The prospect of being married causes Marian to become anorexic.
The reader then follows Marian through the streets of Toronto, in her desperate quest for
selfhood. Duncan accompanies her as a kind of guide, although he remains quite distant and
cynical in his comments on Marian’s escape. She eventually finds a cure to her illness: after
her descent into the dark streets of the city and into her own personality, Marian decides to
bake a cake made in her own image, which she offers Peter to eat, as a symbol for his wish to
assimilate her. Recognising the symbolic meaning of the act, Peter refuses to get involved and
leaves without touching the cake. Having found an answer to her dilemma, Marian eats part of
the cake herself and offers what remains of it to Duncan, thus finding a compromise to these
conflicting demands.
Marian, as Atwood’s first novelistic heroine, already turns out to be a gifted deceiver,
since she is constantly forced to justify her strange behaviour and since these weird actions
are nothing else than a concealed way of uttering her feeling of “otherness”. Moreover,
throughout the novel, Marian seems to be constantly lying to herself, by resorting to a series
of convenient lapses of memory. These lies deserve careful study from a psychological and
social point of view. They can demonstrate that Marian’s quest for a status outside patriarchal
values can be equalled with the colonised subject’s acknowledgement of his or her hybridity.
Marian constantly acts as a trickster, deceiving the other characters, but also herself.
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Several critics have alluded to Marian’s deceptive behaviour, yet, none so far has
linked this concept to those of mimicry and hybridity. Elspeth Cameron, for instance, has
identified the symptoms of anorexia nervosa in the novel and states, as far as the character of
Marian is concerned: “she commences what will become a pattern of deceptive behaviour
typical of anorexic patients” (Cameron “Faminity” 56). This study will further demonstrate
that deception functions as a pattern in all Atwoodian novels, which serves to highlight the
heroine’s hybridity. Still according to Cameron, “The Edible Woman is a psychodrama about
autonomy: the difficulty of attaining it and the dire consequences of not assuming it”
(Cameron “Faminity” 67). However, this study also focuses on the reason why Marian shows
so many difficulties in acquiring autonomy when contending that Marian’s passivity and
subaltern position results from the colonised role into which consumption society imprisons
her. Closer to the focus of this study, is Coral Ann Howells’ feminist reading of The Edible
Woman in relation to Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. Howells’ interpretation of the
novel relies on the idea that Marian inflicts anorexia upon herself because “the female body
becomes the site of victimisation, internal conflict and rebellion” (Howells, Margaret Atwood,
42). Such an interpretation relies on Friedan’s theories about “women suffering from fatigue,
heart attacks and psychotic breakdowns, a catalogue of female hysterical illness induced by
women’s attempts to conform to the (impossible and undesirable) codes of the feminine
mystique” (Howells, Margaret Atwood, 42). This interpretation corroborates this study’s
claim that Marian’s behaviour is part of a deceptive mimicry process exerted in order to adjust
to social demands, and with its conclusion that such behaviour is doomed to failure because of
woman’s hybrid position in modern society.
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1. Metafictional Intertext and Irony
The Edible Woman contains numerous authorial interventions: indeed, Atwood often
expresses her opinions through the words of her heroines or depicts secondary characters in a
way which includes comment on social constraints. Authorial comment can assume various
shapes: an indirect statement on secondary characters, who bear no name and represent social
values; further, ironical mention of overtly patriarchal slogans and types of behaviour; and,
most importantly, numerous literary allusions.
In the first chapter, for instance, the writer introduces “the lady down below” (13).
This secondary character significantly does not have a name of her own. Marian conveniently
claims that she cannot remember her name, confessing that she must have a mental block
about this person (13). This attitude is understandable, since the lady represents the voice of
narrow-minded, bourgeois society. One should notice the difference which this lady
establishes between Marian and Ainsley. Ainsley is clearly identified as the embodiment of
evil, while Marian receives all the complaints because she has been judged as acceptable.
Marian expresses the belief that her clothes make all the difference, which implies that they
function as a disguise – “a camouflage or protective colouration” (14), Atwood writes – which
allows Marian to give society an appropriate image of herself, while her roommate Ainsley
simply does not care. The discrepancy in the behaviour of the two women allows Atwood to
induce comment on Marian’s relation to society and to achieve a more accurate
characterisation.
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Similarly, the characters of the “Office Virgins”, with their interchangeable names,
aspirations and look, function as yet another criticism of society. They represent what Marian
could become, were she to follow the indictments of society: a girl who desperately fears
what people might say, a hypochondriac, or someone who rules out anything which might
make her life slightly more complicated and interesting (22). These characteristics are all
present in Marian in lesser proportions, and the reader will somehow witness Marian’s
flirtation with and gradual moving away from them. Marian’s uneasiness at dealing with the
“Office Virgins” transpires at the end of chapter three when she confesses her reluctance to
volunteer information to them about her private life (29).
The questionnaire, which Marian works on in chapter three, ironically conveys all the
stereotypes of manly superiority. Atwood indubitably chose the type of questionnaire –
listening to a beer commercial – and its target – male subjects as an eyewink to the reader, this
category of macho beer drinkers constituting a far from ideal image of patriarchal power. The
name of the beer – Moose – gives it a definite Canadian character, while several words in the
commercial – “a real man’s holiday,” “manly flavour,” “hunting,” fishing” – establish it as a
product exclusively designed for male consumers (26). Once again, the exaggerated manliness
of the commercial functions as an ironical authorial comment on patriarchal values.
Metafictionality also characterizes Canada’s vision of the wilderness, which is repeatedly
mentioned in an ironical tone. For example, when hearing the words “Tang of the wilderness”
in the beer commercial (53), Duncan immediately embarks on the story of a dog, white
hunters, Indians and a cruel trapper, clearly an Atwoodian allusion to the traditional stories
associated with Canada. Indeed, one should keep in mind that three years after writing The
Edible Woman Atwood published her controversial book of criticism Survival, which
precisely analyses this stereotyped vision of typically Canadian concepts such as the
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Wilderness. 1 Indeed, Duncan ends his description of Canadian wilderness with a dog buried in
the snow (54), which Atwood identifies in Survival as one of the most common ways of dying
in Canadian Literature. 2
Chapter eleven features several ironic comments on Marian’s part, such as: “I’ve
chopped Peter up into little bits. I’m camouflaging him as laundry and taking him down to
bury him in the ravine” (92). These sentences, addressed to Ainsley, symptomatically allude
to Marian’s quality as a trickster (camouflage), as well as to her wish to descent in to a ravine
(introspection). Moreover, the ironic statement also metaphorically expresses what constitutes
the core of Marian’s problem: how to get rid of Peter, and of the false self which he forces her
to endorse.
The novel can further be regarded as metafictional in its numerous allusions to other
works of fiction. The writer here adopts a trickster-like attitude, indicating through a series of
literary quotes that this novel might be more than the simple story of a working girl and
inducing the reader to discover the subversive aspect of the novel. When involved in the free-
association game of the beer questionnaire, Duncan interprets one of the words as alluding to
1 For interesting insight on the wilderness theme in Canadian literature, one might read the second chapter of
Atwood’s book of criticism, Survival. In this second chapter entitled “Nature the Monster,” Atwood reflects on
nature’s frequent use as a reflection of the protagonist interior landscape. Canadian wilderness is often depicted
as dead, indifferent or frankly hostile and is almost always described as “winter landscape.” This constitutes the
canon of nature as a distrusted element, one which did not live up to our expectations. Nature as divine or
sublime entity can indeed never be achieved because of the existence of bugs, roots, swamps, dead or aggressive
animals. The image of nature in Canadian literature constantly oscillates between an ideal and a horrific vision,
an alternation which definitely results in a split, an alienated attitude towards wilderness. See Margaret Atwood’s
Margaret, Survival (45-67). Atwood herself largely draws on Northrop Frye’s The Bush Garden.
2 Similarly, in the second chapter of Survival, Atwood refers to death by nature, identifying drowning and
freezing as the most common causes of death in Canadian literature. She stresses the omnipresence of snow in
the Canadian landscape and explains its recurrence as a lethal weapon by the absence of other lethal elements.
Yet, in her conclusion to the chapter, Atwood emphasises that nature appears as a monster if you fail to accept it
as it is. As she concludes: “Snow isn’t necessarily something you die in or hate. You can also make houses in it”.
(Atwood, Survival, 66).
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cannibal stories, an ironical reference to the end of the novel and to its very title. The reader
here senses the presence of authorial irony. The fact that Duncan is an undergraduate student
in literature allows Atwood to quote through his words several works which share common
themes with the novel, in this case, Boccaccio’s Decameron, 3 Grimm’s tales 4 and
Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus 5 (53). Indeed, these works all contain one or more allusions
to form of cannibalism.
Irony and metafictional comment are equally present when Duncan describes his
roommate Fish. Indeed, Fish wanted to write a thesis on womb symbols in D.H. Lawrence’s
work (97). Yet, he seems to fail to produce any valid work and is himself sterile, both in his
attitude to life and in his academic production. This is obviously Atwood’s own tongue-in-
cheek comment on the academic world to which she belonged at the time. Moreover, the
theme of sterility due to inappropriate social behaviour is one of those addressed throughout
the novel.
Yet, the most obvious case of metafictional intervention in the novel takes place in
chapter twenty-two, which features Marian’s dinner with Duncan and his roommates. During
this dinner, the reader discovers Fish’s theories on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland,
3 The ninth story of The Decameron’s fourth day, entitled “The Eaten Heart,” once again alludes to cannibalism,
in the form of a betrayed husband who feed his wife with her lover’s heart.
4 For an outlined discussion of the relationship between Grimm’s fairy tales and The Edible Woman, see Sharon
Wilson’s analysis of the novel in chapter three of Margaret Atwood’s Fairy-Tale Sexual Politics. Wilson
establishes the link between the novel and Grimm’s The Robber Bridegroom and Fitcher’s Bird. Both tales
feature a groom who kills and eats his brides. Wilson analyses the novel’s food metaphors and its fabulation
tone. She also mentions the importance of the disguise motif and the heroine’s trickster-like qualities, which
characterise both the novel and the tales. (Wilson, Fairy-Tale Sexual Politics, 82-96).
5 The quotation from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus is undoubtedly a reference to the end of the novel. The
symbolical cake at the end of The Edible Woman may indeed be regarded as a metafictional echo of the dish
eaten by the Queen of Goths and in which Titus has cooked her son’s limbs. The dish as an instrument of
revenge works as a powerful symbol in both works. (Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, Act V, Scene 3).
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which here functions as a metaphor for Marian and for the novel as a whole. 6 The passage
reads as follows:
Of course everybody knows Alice is a sexual-identity-crisis book (…) What we have
here, if you only look at it closely, this is the little girl descending into the very
suggestive rabbit-burrow, becoming as it were pre-natal, trying to find her role (…)
as a Woman. (…) Patterns emerge. One sexual role after another is presented to her
but she seems unable to accept any of them, I mean she’s really blocked. She rejects
Maternity when the baby she’s been nursing turns into a pig, nor does she respond
positively to the dominating-female role of the Queen and her castration cries of
“Off with his head!” (…), you’ll recall she goes to talk with the Mock-Turtle,
enclosed in his shell and his self-pity, a definitely pre-adolescent character (…) she
is accused of being a serpent, hostile to eggs, you’ll remember, a rather
destructively-phallic identity she indignantly reject; and her negative reaction to the
dictatorial Caterpillar, just six inches high, importantly perched on the all-to-female
mushroom which is perfectly round but which has the power to make you either
smaller or larger than normal, I find that particularly interesting. (…) So anyway she
makes a lot of attempts but she refuses to commit herself, you can’t say that by the
end of the book she has reached anything that can be definitely called maturity (193-
194).
Atwood once again reveals a trickster-like attitude: she overtly alludes to Alice in
Wonderland, in order to bring her readers to draw a parallel between, Marian, her protagonist,
and Carroll’s Alice. When reading Fish’s analysis of Alice in Wonderland, one cannot help
making a parallel with Marian. First presented as an immature girl, Marian is shown
oscillating between different sexual roles such as future bride and old maid. Her rejection of
maternity pervades the book, and Clara’s nursed infant Arthur might here easily function as
the baby turning into a pig. Indeed, as he is often referred to as hiding excrement around the
house. The dominating female role reminds us of Mrs Bogue who heartlessly manages the
department. Even the Mock-Turtle, with his tendency towards self-pity appears as a plausible
6 For a full analysis of the Carrollian intertext in The Edible Woman, see David L. Harkness’ article “Alice in
Toronto: The Carrollian intertext in The Edible Woman” (Harkness, 103-111). Harkness associates Duncan both
to the Mock Turtle for his mournful state of mind and to the White Rabbit for his role as a leader in Marian’s
descent.
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equivalent of Duncan, while the Caterpillar, as a phallic symbol, would here represent Peter.
The serpent’s hostility towards eggs is a clear allusion to Len Slank’s disgust for them,
immediately followed by Marian’s refusal to eat them. Moreover, Fish’s conclusions about
the novel, namely that the heroine fails to acquire maturity, are also highly applicable to
Marian at the end of The Edible Woman. The whole passage should therefore be read both as
a key for the interpretation of the novel and its ending, and as Atwood’s ironical comment on
literary criticism.
Yet, there is more to the relationship between Alice and Marian: Alice in Wonderland
offers an image of a binary society divided between the strong and the weak, 7 or in
Atwoodian terms, the victors and the victims. Marian definitely shows the attitude of a person
who seeks to escape victimhood, a position which is very similar for the colonial subject’s
need to have a voice of his own. While Marian desperately tries to belong to the stronger
social group by controlling her eating habits, one cannot help noticing that she is literally
devoured by Peter.
Apart from all the possible interpretations in relation to the Carrollian intertext, one
should also keep in mind that Atwood here plays with the reader. This becomes obvious when
she subsequently dismisses this passage of literary criticism through the words of Duncan’s
other roommate, who comments: “I don’t approve of that kind of criticism myself (…) The
7 For a complete analysis of the food metaphor in relation to the Carrollian intertext, see Mervyn Nicholson’s
1987 article in Mosaic: “Food and Power: Homer, Carroll, Atwood and Others.” When alluding to Marian’s
position in Canadian society, Nicholson clearly identifies her as “one who is eaten”, in opposition to Peter, her
patriarchal fiancé, to whom she literally offers herself in the form of a perfectly edible cake at the end of the
novel (Nicholson M. 48).
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very latest approach to Alice is just to dismiss it as a rather charming children’s book” (194-
195). Fish’s later choice of a thesis topic which deals with poetry regarded as a form of
pregnancy (198), ironically restates one of the novel’s main theme, namely women’s role in
society. Once again, Atwood skilfully makes use of metafictional comment to highlight the
novel’s predicaments. Metafiction is thus largely exploited in this novel in order to provide
authorial intervention and irony 8 : Atwood’s trickster-like voice can indeed be recognised in
her tongue-in-cheek description of so-called respectable women as secondary characters, in
her ironical choice of over-patriarchal details, such as beer commercials and in her literary
allusions, which all draw the reader’s attention to the protagonist subaltern position in
postcolonial society.
2. Marian’s Mimicry Mania
Marian’s position as a woman, and therefore as a subaltern person in patriarchal society
induces her to adopt mimicry as a general way of governing her in everyday life. This results
in her obvious attempts to control every element of her life, including her food consumption,
and to display a personal image which might correspond to what society wishes her to
become, i.e. a respectable wife. Marian’s situation is further echoed by two other characters,
Ainsley and Duncan, who both resort to deception to conceal their ex-centric position in
society.
A series of episodes underline Marian’s attempt to show that she keeps her life under
control, a situation which causes her to resort to numerous deceptive strategies. From
8
Pamela S. Bromberg, in VanSpanckeren’s book, also briefly alludes to the satiric intent in Atwood’s depiction
of literary discourse (Bromberg 13).
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Marian’s first comment in the novel, “I know I was all right on Friday when I got up” (11),
the reader easily understands that the heroine wishes to have complete control over her life,
and therefore already suspects that this first assertion might be nothing more than a façade.
This impression is later reinforced by the numerous allusions to camouflage whenever
Marian’s clothes and make-up are referred to: in the first chapter, Ainsley says that Marian
chooses her clothes as “camouflage or protective colouration” (14). Indeed, they allow Marian
to be accepted by the landlady as a respectable girl.
The reader also learns that Marian conveniently uses deception at several times in the
novel: she mentions that she was the one that managed to get the flat while Ainsley affected
an innocent look (15). This demonstrates that both characters easily indulge in deception in
order to obtain something that society would otherwise refuse them. Likewise, when it comes
to introducing alcohol in the flat, Marian once again confesses disguising the bottles as
groceries in order not to get into trouble (15). While she admits that nothing is clearly
forbidden, she consequently feels as though everything she does will be criticised (16), a clear
way of expressing her uneasiness about society’s demands and expectations.
Peter’s proposal to Marian will result in another kind of deceptive behaviour on her
part. Indeed, while trying to meet society’s requirements in accepting to become a married
woman, Marian still features a feeling of “otherness,” which she attempts to reduce to silence.
Therefore, Marian extensively resorts to self-deception, pretending to act as she wants to. The
author draws our attention to the fact that Marian acts against her own will by emphasising
the distance between mind and body. Indeed, the reader has the feeling that someone else has
taken over Marian’s body and that she is watching the scene from a remote place, without any
personal involvement. When Peter, for example, asks her to set a date for their marriage,
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Marian thinks: “My first impulse was to answer (…) “What about Groundhog Day?” But
instead I heard a soft flanelly voice I barely recognized, saying, “I’d rather have you decide
that. I’d rather leave the big decisions up to you.” (…) The funny thing was I really meant it”
(90). The episode stresses Marian’s self-deception, as well as her attempt to endorse a role
imposed on her by patriarchal society, that of the obedient wife. Marian goes on deceiving
herself in the next chapter when she pretends that her decision to marry Peter was guided by
an unconscious desire (101). She consequently refuses to acknowledge what happened at the
laundromat – kissing Duncan – as the expression of her own wishes. She rejects the whole
scene as “a kind of lapse, a blank in the ego, like amnesia” (103), and totally dismisses
Duncan – whose name she does not even know at the time.
Later, while getting ready for the party which takes place at Peter’s, Marian stresses
the disguise-like quality of her clothing and make-up. Of the latter, one reads : “Marian had
always thought that on her own body these things looked extra, stuck to her surface like
patches and posters” (209). Similarly, when she has her hair done, she looks at the mirror and
says: “it’s a little – um – extreme for me”, thinking that it makes her look like a call-girl
(210). When looking at herself in Ainsley’s hand-mirror later at the party, her total
estrangement from herself is once again stated: “Marian stared into the egyptian-lidded and
outlined and thickly-fringed eyes of a person she had never seen before. She was afraid even
to blink, for fear that this applied face would crack and flake with the strain” (222). Even
when fleeing from the party, Marian counts “on her dress to act as a protective camouflage”
(245).
These examples indicate that Marian resorts to mimicry to resemble what society –
here Peter – wants her to be, i.e. a flamboyant, sexually self-assertive woman. She repeatedly
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states that her appearance is fake, yet Peter symptomatically expresses his wish to see Marian
dressed like that everyday (228-229). Only Duncan, when he arrives at the party, reacts in a
way that confirms Marian’s feelings and comments: “You didn’t tell me it was a masquerade 9
(…) Who the hell are you supposed to be?” (239), stressing at once Marian’s deceptive
attitude and her complicity in what is taking place at the party. Symptomatically, Duncan asks
Marian to take off her make-up before having sexual intercourse with her (253). When he
further offers her to escape, Marian has “a vision of the red dress disintegrating in mid-air,
falling in little scraps behind her” (260) – which indicates that this kind of clothing does not
correspond to Marian’s inner nature. Indeed, this is one more example of Marian’s recurring
attempts to comply with society’s desires.
Marian moves a step further into her mimicry strategy when she resorts to all kinds of
lies to convince both the other characters and herself of her willingness to satisfy social
requirements. This is made apparent in several episodes alluding to Marian’s relationships
with her family. Marian’s reaches the top of her mimicry process in chapter twenty, when she
visits her family to prepare for the wedding: she then mentions their satisfaction at the idea of
her wedding, while alluding to her remoteness from them. Indeed, Marian’s comment on her
family’s reaction is both highly comic and a clear expression of the deception she is inflicting
upon herself:
9 In her book Strategies for Identity: The Fiction of Margaret Atwood, Eleonora Rao provides an interesting
interpretation of the party in terms of Irigaray’s psychoanalytical theories. Quoting Irigaray’s This Sex Which Is
Not One, she comments: “The masquerade represents the moment in which women try to ‘recuperate some
elements of desire, to participate in man’s desire, but at the price of renouncing their own. In the masquerade,
they submit to the dominant economy of desire in an attempt to remain ‘on the market’ in spite of everything.’
For a woman this movement signifies the “entry into a system of values which is not hers, and in which she can
‘appear’ and circulate only when enveloped in the needs/desires/fantasies of others, namely, men’ ” (Rao,
Strategies, 136).
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Their reaction though, as far as she could estimate the reactions of people who were
now so remote from her, was less elated glee than a quiet, rather smug satisfaction,
as though their fears about the effects of her university education, never stated but
always apparent, had been calmed at last. They had probably been worried she
would turn into a high-school teacher or a maiden aunt or a dope addict or a female
executive, or that she would undergo some shocking transformation, like developing
muscles and a deep voice or growing moss. She could picture the anxious
consultations over cups of tea. But now, their approving eyes said, she was turning
out all right after all (174).
Apart from its comic enumeration of old maid stereotypes, which, as is often the case with
Atwood, are exaggerated to the point of becoming grotesque, the passage equally makes clear
that Marian’s role as a bride-to-be, is utterly remote from her real aspirations and can be
regarded as a mere attempt to mimic what society expects her to become. Therefore, her
behaviour can also be regarded as a good example of self-deception. Significant is also the
fact that Marian mentions her difficulty to remember the wedding arrangements chosen by her
family members (174).
Secondary characters are equally used by the author in order to echo Marian’s
difficulty to fit in. Marian’s roommate, Ainsley, for example, equally displays deceptive
attitudes in order to correspond to what society – and men – wish her to be. From the very
start, Ainsley is shown lying to one of her dates: she confesses to Marian that she had to
undergo a boring dinner with a dentist and that she did not let him know that she was working
in the same business, in order not to intimidate him (12). Marian further suspects Ainsley of
lying when she narrates the story of a woman who tried to murder her husband by short-
circuiting his electric toothbrush (23). Apart from the comical effect of the anecdote, this
element of the story contains deeper meaning since it suggests the elimination of patriarchal
power. Ainsley will further resort to deception in her multiple attempts to seduce Len Slank:
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indeed, she will make him believe in her innocence (67), while she voluntarily tries to become
pregnant. Yet, in chapter fourteen, Ainsley, now eager to become pregnant, feels trapped in
her role of a naive young girl (119). Marian equally has to keep silent. Indeed, she fears that if
she tells Peter about Ainsley’s plan, he will side with Len out of male solidarity (120).
Deception may thus prove dangerous to play with. Indeed, Marian is well aware of her own
complicity as regards Ainsley’s trap : she has repeatedly served as an alibi to make Ainsley’s
“innocent girl” image more credible, remaining silent, for instance, when Ainsley claims that
the bottle of alcohol found in the apartment belongs to Marian (121).
Duncan also uses deception: indeed, another form of mimicry shows up when Duncan
and Marian are depicted together trying to conceal the real nature of their relationship. Once
they decide to become lovers, they must find a place to meet and contemplate the idea of
renting a hotel room, deceiving people in pretending that they are a married couple. Duncan
highlights the ludicrous nature of this lie: “They’d never believe it (…) I don’t look married.
They’re still asking me in bars whether I’m sixteen yet” (202). Such a comment, further
echoed in the novel (202, 248), clearly serves to emphasise the ridicule of the situation and of
social convention as a whole.
This desperate situation also stresses the difficulty facing the hybrid subject who is
forced to resort to mimicry strategies in order to fit in. After being confronted to this problem,
Marian undergoes a change in her general attitude and starts wondering whether her situation
will ever improve. This radical change can be spotted at the beginning of chapter twenty-two,
which reads : “Ever since this thing had started she had been trying to pretend there was
nothing really wrong with her, it was a superficial ailment, like a rash; it would go away. But
now she had to face up to it; she had wondered whether she ought to talk to someone about it”
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(203). This passage indicates both that Marian is tired of being engaged in a mimicry strategy,
and that she is ready to proceed in her quest. She thus can examine the unconscious processes
behind her strange behaviour. She then starts examining some of the female role which
society might offer her, and discovers that she is deeply afraid of changing without being
conscious of it (206). When she later tries to test her normality by trying to eat half of Peter’s
cake (207-208) – a symbol of their future situation as a married couple – the failure of the test
confirms her ‘abnormality’ and stresses the need for her to face her problem.
These examples demonstrate that Marian, in her relationships to her fiancé, to her
family, to her friends, such as Ainsley, or to strangers – after all, she barely knows Duncan
and his roommates – displays a whole range of deceptive strategies indicating she is engaged
in a mimicry process. This technique enables her to provide the outside world with an
acceptable image of her, although it does not function as a reflection of her alienated inner
self. It therefore causes her environment to acquire a fantastic, grotesque quality, which will
be discussed in the next section.
3. Making Sense of Magic Realist Moments
The Edible Woman is primarily articulated as a realistic plot. Yet, some elements of magic
realism are introduced through the heroine’s consciousness. They serve to convey her feeling
of “otherness”, her pervasive and devastating sensation of not fitting in. Magic realist
elements are indeed of the utmost importance in a postcolonial work, because they enable
marginality to find its place among a perfectly articulated set of patriarchal rules. They
constitute an opportunity for the heroine to become aware of her ex-centric position and, as
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such, they represent a possible twist in the story, a moment of revelation, of epiphany, which
makes a different outcome possible and offers the heroine an escape from social constraints.
Magic realist moments are often characterised by their grotesque quality, 10 which stresses the
discrepancy between the heroine’s inner vision of herself and society’s expectations. Their
first appearance in the book highlights Marian’s marginality, drawing a parallel with the
character of Leonard Slank, also immediately recognisable as an outsider. They further stress
Marian’s growing feelings of discomfort by attributing a grotesque quality to everyday
objects, such as bathtubs, tears, dolls, razorblades; ordinary people, such as a pregnant
woman, or usually safe places, such as hospitals wards, parties, bedrooms or bathrooms. Such
occurrences of magic realist moments become more frequent as the heroine acquires
understanding of her inner conflicts: from disparate moments in Part One, they become utterly
pervasive in the second section of the novel. Yet, contrary to what has often been written
about the novel, I contend that such elements of magic realism perfectly make sense from the
point of view of the alienated “Other.”
The first element of magic realism occurs when Marian is requested to sign the
company’s Pension Plan. This compulsory step causes Marian’s feeling of panic: she
immediately fantasises on the magic value of her signature, which will bind her for the future
and transform her into a pre-formed self, which will work for Seymour Surveys ever after. A
simple signature here functions as a lethal trap (21). The grotesque quality of this
daydreaming sequence emphasises Marian’s rising discomfort with her job and with her
position as a female worker within the patriarchal business world. While the Pension Plan
constitutes a real problem for Marian, she remains unable to mention it to Ainsley because she
would not understand Marian’s distress (30), a sign that Marian, though giving the appearance
of a well-balanced girl, feels ill-at-ease and marginal.
10 See Delbaere’s definition of grotesque magic realism (Delbaere, Magic Realism, 256).
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In chapter five, Ainsley express her wish to become a mother, as a way of reaching
“wholeness” (41). From then on, the novel will be punctuated by Ainsley’s desperate attempts
at finding a father for her baby in the person of Len Slank. The grotesque character of
Ainsley’s search for a male and the implausibility of her courtship and seduction tactics give
the novel a fantastic atmosphere which renders Marian’s quest more plausible. In Atwood’s
plots, the function of such farcical and grotesque elements is to make other, more profound
moments of consciousness possible. As such, Ainsley’s quest for a genitor parallels and works
as a foil to Marian’s quest for selfhood. The grotesque character of Ainsley’s action therefore
remains acceptable in a realistic plot development. Moreover, I agree with Coral Ann
Howells’ interpretation of the relationship between Len and Ainsley (Howells, Margaret
Atwood, 45): Ainsley’s duplicity in her attempts to seduce Leonard Slank, himself well-
known for seducing too young girls, enables Atwood to expose the dynamics of sexual
politics while giving the whole plot a comic aspect through its reversal of a traditional
situation. The surreal elements in Ainsley and Len’s relationship can thus be regarded as a
denunciation of the deceptive aspect of sexual power politics.
Magic realism also serves another purpose: it stresses the parallel between Marian and
Len who both are unable to cope with the demands of society. Len vehemently expresses his
refusal to become a father in a grotesque magic realist scene in which eggs turn out to be
unborn little chicken (160). The reader then comes to understand that the character of Len,
with his sudden inability to eat eggs, functions as a caricature of Marian and of her social
inadequacy.
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Several scenes bring together apparently unrelated elements. These kinds of free
associations give these scenes a magic realist quality: an element is suddenly retrieved from
its ordinary context, and given a different, epiphanic value. Often, the association of singular
elements seems so unexpected that it acquires a grotesque quality, which is also typical of
magic realism. A typically grotesque moment features Marian’s thoughts when having sexual
intercourse with Peter in the bathtub. Being confronted to Peter’s totally unexpected desire,
Marian lets her imagination run free and soon associates the bathtub to a coffin, imagining the
lovers’ tragic death by drowning (60). The whole scene, set in an unreal atmosphere typical of
magic realism, is significantly followed by a moment of lucidity. Marian suddenly wonders
what she actually represents for Peter (62). This interpretation of the event throws light on
what bothers Marian most in her relationship with Peter, namely that he could actually take
over her personality and make all important decisions for her.
Marian’s loss of control and growing alienation are further alluded to in the episode of
the dinner with Len, during which Marian’s rising discomfort causes her to start crying. The
description of her breakdown shows once again a truly magic realist character, since the
teardrop is first identified as an external object, which has nothing to do with Marian’s body.
Here then, magic realism is resorted to in order to stress Marian’s instability and self-
rejection. The passage reads as follows: “After a while I noticed with mild curiosity that a
large drop of something wet had materialized on the table near my hand. I poked it with my
finger and smudged it around a little before I realized with horror that it was a tear. I must be
crying then!” (70). Marian feels clearly estranged from her own body, since she initially fails
to recognise the teardrops as her own. The bizarre quality of such an acknowledgement gives
the whole dinner scene an unreal, magic realist atmosphere which underlines Marian’s hybrid
position.
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The same unreal atmosphere can be noticed during Marian’s escape, which the author
chooses to describe as a chase (72-74) and to her ultimate attempt to hide from Peter’s
threatening proposal. After Marian sedately followed Peter to Len’s apartment, she suddenly
decides to hide under the bed. This place functions both as a site of regression and reflection.
Indeed, Marian first alludes to the isolation and safety of her hiding place: “the semi-darkness,
tinted orange by the filter of the bedspread that curtained me on all four sides, and the
coolness and the solitude were pleasant (…) I felt I was underground, I had dug myself a
private burrow. I felt smug” (76). The description of the party from under the bed, gives it an
unreal atmosphere, since all lights and sounds are faded. Yet, the hiding place turns out to be
not so comfortable since Marian comes to realise that she is stuck underneath that bed. First
happy to be concealed from everyone, she gradually feels ridiculous and resents being left
alone, which brings her to reflect on her relationship with Peter and on the necessity to make a
decision. The way in which Marian remains stuck under the bed and must be helped by her
friends to come out appears ludicrous. It simultaneously allows the author to mention Peter’s
superior attitude to Marian and his complete misunderstanding of her discomfort. The whole
scene can therefore be regarded as one more allusion to Marian’s inadequacy. While the
reader then expects Marian to reject Peter’s proposal, she surprisingly accepts to marry him.
Marian thinks that marriage will bring a solution to her problems. However, her discomfort
will from then on become greater and her rising awareness of her hybridity will be made
visible through the numerous incursions of magic realist moments in the second part of the
novel.
While magic realism is present in Part One in the form of some unexpected, disparate
episodes, it becomes more pervasive in the second part of the novel. Chapter thirteen
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significantly starts with Marian’s elaborate fantasies to retrieve the customers’ used
razorblades. Marian’s plot about a miraculous razorblade (107) might well be an indication to
the reader that, from now on, other bizarre event will punctuate the story, mainly because of
Marian’s hybrid state. Symptomatically, the passage is immediately followed by an allusion
to Duncan, who, if we indeed regard him as a trickster figure, quite logically appears during
moments of revelation, i.e. moments of magic realism.
When confronted to situations which utterly frighten her, such as Clara’s pregnancy,
Marian reacts by letting her imagination dominate, which results in magic realist descriptions
of otherwise totally realistic characters. Such is the case when Clara’s delivery is mentioned:
Marian suddenly indulges in fantasies, viewing Clara as a gigantic queen-ant (115), another
instance of grotesque magic realism here caused by Marian’s colourful imagination. This
episode clearly indicates both Marian’s estrangement from the idea of pregnancy, as well as
her rejection of the role imposed on women by society. It is therefore symptomatic of
Marian’s hybrid position.
Marian’s fantasies about the “horrible Underwear Man” who bothers some of the
company’s interviewees also possess this grotesque, unreal and unexpected quality. They are
aimed at denouncing the danger of society’s demands and excesses (117). Marian even
imagines that the Underwear Man is no else than Peter, whose personality she fails to
understand (118). Once again, all this takes place in the realm of fantasy rather than reality,
which indicates that Marian does not totally fit in reality.
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Magic realism becomes ever more prevailing when Marian leaves the hospital where
she visits Clara to go to Duncan’s. The setting – hospital and city – is described as a labyrinth,
from which Marian finds it difficult to escape. This frightening experience sounds as follows:
By the time she had got matters straightened out with Peter she had felt as though she had
been trying to unsnarl herself from all the telephone lines in the city. They were prehensile,
they were like snakes, they had a way of coiling back on you and getting you all wrapped
up (…) She stopped and looked around. Wherever else she was going it was not towards
the main exit. She had been so involved in the threads of her own plans and reflections that
she must have got off the elevator on the wrong floor. She was in a corridor exactly the
similar to the one she had just come from, except that all the room-doors were closed (134-
135).
This description of Marian’s progress through the hospital takes on all its magic realist quality
because it echoes her own state of mind: she is utterly confused and does not know what to
make of her life; all doors, all opportunities seem unattainable to her; ordinary elements taken
from her usual environment are therefore given a grotesque, aggressive attitude. Thus, they
make Marian aware of what goes wrong with her, to bring her perceive and understand her
own hybrid state.
From all the examples above, it is clear that magic realism is symptomatic of Marian’s
growing awareness. It indicates that she is about to take a step which will bring her a little
further on her quest. The most obvious example of this takes place when Marian takes a bath
while getting prepared for Peter’s party, which constitutes the novel’s climax. Watching the
silvery taps, Marian suddenly notices “a curiously-sprawling pink thing” (218), which she
symptomatically does not recognise at once as her own body. This, of course, indicates her
ever growing feeling of alienation. Indeed, when she is described getting out of her bath, her
feelings read as follows : “Looking down, she became aware of the water, (…) and of the
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ody that was sitting in it, somehow no longer quite her own. All at once she was afraid that
she was dissolving, coming apart layer by layer like a piece of cardboard in a gutter puddle”
(218). While this passage expresses the heroine’s fear, it does not sound purely magic realist.
Yet, the bath scene develops into a typically magic realist moment when the heroine watches
her childhood dolls reveal their malevolent nature: “The two dolls which she had never
thrown out after all were staring blankly back at her from the top of the dresser. As she looked
at them their faces blurred, then re-formed, faintly malevolent (…) But now that she
examined their faces more closely she could see that it was only the dark one, the one wit the
peeling paint, that was definitely watching her” (219). And further:
She saw herself in the mirror between them for an instant as though she was inside them,
inside both of them at once, looking out: herself, a vague damp form in a rumpled dressinggown,
not quite focussed, the blonde eyes noting the arrangement of her hair, her bitten
fingernails, the dark one looking deeper, at something she could not quite see, the two
overlapping images drawing further and further away from each other; the centre, whatever
it was in the glass, the thing that held them together, would soon be quite empty. By the
strength of their separate visions they were trying to pull her apart (219).
Such passage emphasises the heroine’s growing alienation, as well as the sufferings caused to
her by social constraints, here symbolised by the discrepancies in the dolls’ visions, which
literally tear the heroine apart. Attributing to objects the deeds and feelings of human beings,
and, in this case, supernatural powers which they can exert on the heroine, once again
constitutes an example of grotesque magic realism. It is designed to emphasise the
protagonist’s growing awareness of her split condition as a woman trying to satisfy
paternalistic claims.
Marian’s feelings of alienation resulting from her hybrid nature are equally
emphasised in a magic realist moment of epiphany taking place at Peter’s party, right before
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her flight. Indeed, Marian first imagines herself wandering through endless corridors – a
labyrinthine image, once again – in search for the real Peter. When she seems to be convinced
of his harmless nature, she decides to turn back to the party, but experiences a strange feeling:
She was back in Peter’s living room with the people and the noise, leaning against the
doorframe holding her drink. Except that the people seemed even clearer now, more sharply
focussed, further away, and they were moving faster and faster, they were all going home, a
file of soapwomen emerged from the bedroom, coats on, they teetered jerkily out the door
trailing husbands, chirping goodnights, and who was that tiny two-dimensional figure in a
red dress, posed like a paper woman in a mail-order catalogue, turning and smiling,
fluttering in the white empty space… This couldn’t be it; there had to be something more.
She ran for the next door, yanked it open (243).
This passage masterly expresses Marian’s utter feeling of despair. Indeed, the mimicry
process in which she is engaged has clearly transformed her into a voiceless, isolated,
alienated individual, echoing the fate of the colonised subject as well. Marian’s situation
echoes the colonised subject’s lack of dimension in a society in which he cannot find his
place, due to his hybrid nature. The passage therefore results in Marian’s ultimate flight, as a
symbol of the hybrid subject’s search for an acceptable place in society. Indeed, Peter’s
subsequent act of taking a photograph of her echoes the coloniser’s wish to take possession of
the colonised subject, and is as such unbearable to Marian.
The notion of nonsense has frequently been associated to The Edible Woman. Glenys
Stow claims that the novel’s nonsensical environment serves to undermine the destructive
potentialities of traditional female roles (Stow 90). Of the novel, Stow writes: “The lens of
apparent distortion gives an unfocussed dreamlike effect to many of its hilarious but menacing
events” (Stow 91). In contrast, I interpret those elements regarded by Stow as nonsensical, as
ingredients of grotesque magic realism. As such, they perfectly make sense in relation to the
novel’s themes. Indeed, I assert that the dreamlike atmosphere of magic realist moments is
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precisely used by Atwood to highlight the discrepancies between Marian’s hybrid notion of
woman’s place on the one hand, and social demands on the other. As such, magic realism thus
plays a major part in staging the novel’s power politics: every time an element seems
unexpected or incongruous amid a description, a more thorough examination of its symbolic
implications or of the feelings which it generates in the protagonist’s minds generally brings
the reader to the conclusion that this element is not nonsensical at all. This is especially true if
we consider it from the point of view of the character’s ex-centric position, i.e. if we make the
effort of acknowledging the voice of the “Other.” Yet, one must keep in mind that the heroine
might be unable to reach this awareness on her own, and needs the help of a trickster figure to
do so.
4. Marian and Duncan as Tricksters
Throughout the novel, Atwood regularly points at Marian’s need to trick and deceive her
environment. The possibility of interpreting Marian as a trickster figure is briefly hinted at by
Sharon Wilson in Margaret Atwood’s Fairy-Tale Sexual Politics, when she compares Marian
to the fairy-tale character of Gretel (Wilson 95). Yet, Wilson fails to produce a thorough
analysis of this contention.
In the first chapter, she is described as wearing clothes as camouflage (14), and lying
to “the lady down below” in order to rent the flat (16). Marian will not hesitate to lie to “the
lady down below” to cover up for Ainsley who brought Len into their flat (126). These first
elements are reinforced in chapter two, set in Marian’s office. There, the reader gets
acquainted with Marian’s job and soon comes to understand that part of this job involves
deception and concealment. Indeed, Marian’s function is to design questionnaires to test the
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consumers’ reactions to products. This kind of work clearly establishes Marian’s desire to fit
in society, since she is complicit with society’s consumption ethics. The company functions as
a microcosm of society: it expresses a desire to make people adapt to social requirements.
Through her position in the company, Marian is described as naturally involved in a process
which maintains these social prerogatives and makes them powerful. 11 Yet, Marian soon
comes to question her role at Seymour Surveys: realising that her position as a woman
prevents her from obtaining a better, more interesting and creative job within the company
(17), she understands that this job will never totally satisfy her, worse, when the accountant
urges her to submit to the Pension Plan and stresses the compulsory character of this step,
Marian becomes clearly reluctant to spend her whole career in this company (18).
Another episode at the beginning of the novel reveals Marian’s trickster-like attitude.
At the end of chapter three, Marian must answer a letter from an angry consumer who found a
fly in her cereal. The exaggerated way in which Marian flatters the client in her reply as well
as her deliberate avoidance of the word “fly” indicate that deception is actually part of her job
and that, as such, she must have learned to master the process. After writing her draft, Marian
symptomatically comments: “The main thing, I knew, was to avoid calling the housefly by its
actual name” (28). Marian makes further use of deception when looking for interviewees.
When confronted to a man who advocates tolerance and blames her for drinking alcohol, she
answers that her company does not sell the product (46). Although this is true, she fails to
admit that the use of her questionnaire is to make the beer commercial more effective: as such
her work clearly participates in the selling process and even constitutes a main component of
it. Similarly, when confronted to the problem of a sanitary napkin survey, one of her
colleagues argues that they must convince the interviewer to do her best “to better the lot of
11 As Elspeth Cameron claims in her article on anorexia nervosa in The Edible Woman: “Pressures to conform
are implied by the manipulative techniques of Seymour surveys” (Cameron, “Faminity,” 48).
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Womankind” (109), in order to have the survey done. Once again, this attitude indicates that
deception lies at the core of Marian’s job, and is therefore fully integrated in her personality.
The narrator significantly concludes that Marian is “tired, tired, tired of being a manipulator
of words” (110)!
She once again tricks people when she convinces her colleagues, the “Office Virgins”,
to attend Peter’s party, pretending that there will be several handsome bachelors present
(220). She subsequently contemplates the idea of not informing Peter about the presence of
supplementary guests, but refrains from deceiving him again (226). Peter nevertheless resents
the presence of these unknown guests as a sign of Marian’s unconfessed secrets. He feels she
is not entirely devoted to him.
Marian further functions as a deceiver in her relationship to others. When Len Slank
informs about the nature of her relationship with Peter, she says that it is not serious (39),
lying to Len, but also to herself, as she refuses to admit the coming development: Peter’s
proposal. She further works as an accomplice when Ainsley wants to give Len the impression
that she is a very young girl, whom he could easily seduce. Indeed, Marian comments : “I was
furious with Ainsley. She had put me in an awkward position. I could either give the game
away by revealing she had been to college and was in fact several months older than me, or I
could keep silent and participate in what amounted to a fraud” (67). Although Marian
expresses her anger at the situation, she will nevertheless keep the same attitude throughout
the novel and indeed take part in Len’s downfall. Apart from showing Marian’s willingness to
resort to deception, the episode further entails that Marian will choose female solidarity.
Moreover, Ainsley’s deception, with Marian’s complicity, can be regarded as yet another
criticism of women’s stereotyped images in patriarchal society: indeed, Ainsley is reluctant to
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eveal her image of an independent working girl and rather appears as a young innocent prey
in order to seduce Len.
Much later, when Marian indulges in her strange love-affair with Duncan, the reader
repeatedly watches her as she tries to make up stories which she could tell Peter, in case he
caught her with Duncan: she imagines presenting Duncan as an old friend from college (185),
and stages imaginary conversations with Peter about the innocent character of her relationship
with Duncan (189). She further becomes Duncan’s accomplice when she takes off her
engagement ring in order not to reveal her situation to his roommates (192). Moreover, one
must admit that Marian remains a deceptive character throughout the whole novel. Indeed,
when she turns back to normal life after her introspective crisis, she considers telling Peter the
whole truth about her flight (266), but eventually fails to see the point of it. Marian thus
recurrently acts as a trickster, who plays with other characters in order to produce a suitable
image of herself.
Yet, Marian is not the only trickster-figure in the book. From chapter six onwards, the
reader discovers another prominent deceiver, namely Duncan, the young student whom
Marian interviews for her job. Duncan soon appears as a professional liar, who constantly
changes information about himself and his roommates. He clearly enjoys lying and delights in
examining Marian’s perplexity when she is faced with his tall tales. Moreover, he displays a
corrosive sense of humour and a liking for morbid situations, which give him both a clown-
like and an ex-centric quality. Like Marian, he feels remote from the outside world and
repeatedly mentions his difficulties to cope with everyday life. He is a marginal character,
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who embodies the “Other.” 12 I shall therefore examine in detail the elements of description
and plot development which make it possible to identify Duncan as a trickster figure, i.e. an
archetypal character, with recognisable traits, such as his qualities as a deceiver and a shape-
shifter, his fondness of bawdy jokes and his close relationship with death. 13
From the start, Duncan deceives Marian through his appearance. Indeed, he looks very
young and Marian assumes that he must be fifteen years old, an assumption soon corrected by
Duncan who says that he is twenty-six (49). Duncan is further described as “emaciated”,
“cadaverously thin” (48), which brings him in relation to death. This feature identifies Duncan
as a trickster figure, the trickster being a deceptive character, who exists between two realms,
that of the living and that of the dead. Further, Duncan, when he first meets Marian, is
barefoot, an image commonly associated with death in Indian culture (48). The encounter
proceeds with Duncan’s evasive and tricky answers to Marian’s questions (50-51). Marian
still has doubts about Duncan’s age, as she does about the existence of his roommates.
Duncan further states that his chair is the green one (50), which symbolically indicates his
kinship to nature. While searching for a place to perform the interview, Marian hints at the
presence of numerous garbage bags (51), which can be interpreted as an allusion to Duncan’s
trickster-like nature, the trickster being originally associated with scavenging, a characteristic
which stresses his link to death. Duncan fully reveals his deceptiveness when he tells Marian
12 Several critics have interpreted the character of Duncan as a potential trickster figure. Glenys Stow, for
instance, writes the following: “Like a clown he watches the world from a distance, melancholy and mocking
(…) In folklore terms, he is a trickster, always unpredictable, narcissistic, a teller of lies, a shape-changer” (Stow
99). Stow further stresses Duncan’s function as Marian’s doppelgänger, her dark twin (Stow 100), implicitly
identifying her as a trickster too.
Rao identifies Duncan as Marian’s alter-ego, who “will have a crucial role in her process of self-understanding”
(Rao, Strategies, 46).
Yet, the only critic who textually highlights Duncan’s deceptiveness is T.D. MacLulich. In an article dating from
1978, MacLulich regards Duncan as “the incarnation of the trickster figure” (MacLulich 183). He further
emphasises the parallel between Duncan and the fox, as a figure from the fairy-tale “The Gingerbread Man.” He
equally mentions that Marian’s relation to the world is based on the dualistic opposition between exploiter and
exploited, resulting in either deception or destruction” (MacLulich 184). However, while mentioning the social
implications of the novel, MacLulich fails to introduce the postcolonial aspect.
13 For a full definition of the trickster figure, see the introductory section entitled “The Trickster Figure.”
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first that he never drinks beer, second, that he said this in order not to fill in the questionnaire
in full because he found it boring (55). However, his last remark to Marian, asking her why
she has such a “crummy job” (55), highlights Duncan’s function in the novel, i.e. to bring
Marian to ask herself questions about her life.
Marian’s second encounter with the trickster symptomatically takes place immediately
after Peter’s marriage proposal. Marian feels the need to go to the laundromat and meets a
man whom she does not immediately identify as one of her interviewees (93). This alludes to
the trickster’s ability to take on different disguises. Duncan’s allusion to the presence of pubic
hair in the washing machine (94) equally qualifies him as a trickster, a figure often associated
to bawdy sexual jokes and renowned for its sexual appetite. Similarly, he tells Marian that he
is working on a paper on pornography (97). He further talks about his research as an
undergraduate student and compares it with a search for truth (96), which indicates that he
might be able to assist Marian in her own quest for identity, as the trickster figure often does.
As a true agent of disorder, Duncan also disturbs routine for Marian, as well as for his
roommates. For instance, he confesses having set fire to the apartment, “partly on purpose”
(98). Yet, at this point, Marian claims recognition of Duncan’s duplicity and of his fondness
of making up stories. She slowly starts not to take everything he says for granted (99). She
further alludes to the possibility for Duncan of possessing powers when she wonders: “He
must be equipped with a kind of science-fiction extra-sense, a third eye 14 or an antenna”
(100). This quote can clearly be interpreted as an allusion to the trickster’s supernatural
powers. Marian concludes her meeting with the trickster figure with a kiss, which symbolises
the pact which she agrees to conclude with him and her acceptance to go on with her quest.
14 This allusion to the “third eye” frequently recurs in Atwood’s work. See for instance the short-story
“Instructions for the Third Eye” in the collection Murder in the Dark, or the marble symbolism in Cat’s Eye.
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The chapter symptomatically ends on the words “give the gift of life” (101), which is what the
trickster proposes to offer the protagonist.
Marian’s third encounter with Duncan takes place at the cinema (124). This haphazard
meeting occurs at the same time as Ainsley’s successful attempt to get pregnant. The sterility
of Marian’s encounter with the trickster stands in sharp contrast with the prospects of
Ainsley’s plans. Duncan is once again identified from the start as a trickster figure, i.e. a
figure related to death and endowed with supernatural powers: described as “shadowed,”
“darkness,” and “emptiness” (125), he is several times referred to as materialising,
disappearing and reappearing, so much so that Marian eventually believes that she has been
hallucinating. He is chewing pumpkin seeds, which can be regarded as a symbol of life;
Marian considers them a “primitive signal” (126), which at this stage of her quest she feels
unable to decipher. Further, Marian also wishes to have physical contact with him, even if this
desire is restricted to her left hand, which she feels severed from her body – a typical sign of
the growing alienation and fragmentation from which she suffers.
Subsequently, Duncan phones Marian and disturbs her with a strange request: he
wants her to bring him some of her laundry because he suffers from a compulsive need to
iron. Metaphorically, this urge can be interpreted as the trickster’s wish to solve Marian’s
troubles. This proposal to iron Marian’s laundry therefore functions as the trickster’s offer to
help Marian in her personal development. During this phone call, Duncan mentions his habit
of chewing pumpkin seeds. He associates this action with oral satisfaction (133), a comment
which befits the idea of the trickster as a primitive, archaic figure in an early, animal-like
stage of its development, as described by Jung.
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Marian truly enters the realm of the trickster at the beginning of chapter sixteen, where
she is symptomatically described as an animal: “she was trailing somebody by an instinct that
was connected not with sight or smell but with a vaguer sense that had to do with locations”
(135). This sense of location should be linked with the concept of sacred sites often
mentioned in “primitive” religions. The intervention of the trickster therefore allows the
individual to enter the realm of the sacred. This is what happens to Marian when she enters
Duncan’s flat. Several elements allude to Duncan’s trickster-like qualities: he first alludes to
the fact that he cannot see his reflection in the mirror (139), a statement which highlights both
his supernatural nature and his deceptiveness: even his own image cannot be trusted. Yet, he
immediately dismisses this explanation as another of his tricks. The whole scene causes
Marian to get a glimpse of her own situation when she thinks: “Perhaps this was another
labyrinth of words, and if she said the wrong thing, took the wrong turning, she would
suddenly find herself face to face with something she could not cope with” (140). This
sentence undeniably demonstrates that Marian feels utterly lost in a labyrinth of deception.
Duncan subsequently confesses his identity as a trickster in a series of other fantasies about
himself: “I’m a changeling. I got switched for a real baby when young and my parents never
discovered the fraud (…) I’m not human at all, I come from the underground…” (141). He
then explains his function when describing his current ironing activity: “you straighten things
out and get them flat” (142), which he later symbolically performs for Marian. He further
hints at one of the topics which unconsciously bother Marian most at the moment:
“Production-consumption” (143). Indeed, even if she is still unable to express this in words,
Marian’s trouble is mainly caused by her relationship to Peter and her being considered as a
product of consumption because of her wedding prospects. Conversely, she enjoys the
neutrality and lack of involvement of her relationship with Duncan. Marian further alludes to
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Duncan’s extreme thinness and wonders how he manages to stay alive (144). Duncan then
acknowledges her as a fellow-trickster, saying “you look sort of like me” (144).
Once their fellowship is established, Marian frequently meets Duncan, in what appears
to be an uninvolved love-affair. Their next meeting takes place at the museum. Duncan’s
choice fits his trickster-like nature: as a shadowy figure, he logically is fascinated by death,
which he regards as a thoroughly natural phenomenon (187). He then introduces Marian to his
womb-symbol: a mummy in a foetal position (188). Once again, Marian’s visit to the museum
symbolises an escape through a desert-like labyrinth: “The labyrinthine corridors and large
halls and turnings had confused her sense of direction. There seemed to be no one else in this
part of the Museum” (186).
Duncan remains a mysterious character until the end of the novel. Indeed, even after
having had sex with him, Marian fails to understand him and reasserts his trickster-like
qualities: “he was smiling in the darkness, but with what expression, sarcasm, malevolence, or
even kindness, she could not guess,” and further, “she could feel his breath (…) his face
pressing against her (…) like the muzzle of an animal, curious, and only slightly friendly”
(254). Duncan thus shows his trickster-like nature throughout the novel.
His penultimate intervention consists in leading Marian into a ravine, which helps her
to become conscious of her hybrid nature. On this occasion, Marian comments: “He seemed
to know where he was going (…) He was leading her. He was in control” (259). Yet, several
words punctuate Marian’s progress to indicate the pitfalls of this enterprise: “danger,”
“afraid,” “falling off cliffs,” “an unofficial path” (260). The ravine is deep and narrow, totally
unknown to Marian (260). She eventually finds herself standing on the edge of a cliff,
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frightened, while Duncan, featuring his usual familiarity with death, dangles “his legs
nonchalantly” (262). There, Duncan explains Marian how he deals with his hybridity,
acknowledging his marginal condition, when he says: “They tell me I live in a world of
fantasies. But at least mine are more or less my own, I choose them and I sort of like them,
some of the time. But you don’t seem too happy with yours” (263). This excerpt shows both
that Duncan, conscious of his marginal place in society, acknowledges his hybridity as a
temporary moment of balance. Marian, on the contrary, assesses her desire to conform to
society’s demands when she cries: “But I want to be adjusted” (263), not understanding yet
the impossibility of his wish. Their subsequent discussion undermines a series of stereotypes:
indeed, Duncan once again fulfils his role as a trickster when it becomes clear that he lied to
Marian about his sexual experience (264); yet, this deception demonstrates that Marian herself
has developed a tendency to think in terms of stereotypes, while for her part she refuses to be
classified as a typical female cliché. Duncan then encourages Marian to find a solution to her
problem: “It does look as though you ought to do something: self-laceration in a vacuum
eventually gets rather boring. But it’s your own personal cul-de-sac, you invented it, you’ll
have to think of your own way out” (264). Duncan thus convinces Marian to turn back to her
life and leave him behind, his role having been fulfilled. Indeed, the trickster is a solitary
figure, “a dark shape against the snow, crouching on the edge and gazing into the empty pit”
(265). When Duncan eventually shows up at the end of the novel, he remains mysterious,
providing Marian with yet another interpretation of the cake’s symbolism and devouring it,
greediness (both sexual and alimentary) being another well-known feature of trickster-like
characters (Eliade 190).
Both Duncan and Marian clearly feature characteristics of the trickster figure. Yet, it
stands out that these traits particularly point to the characters’ inability to fit in Canadian
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patriarchal society. Therefore, I would interpret the characters’ resemblance with trickster
figures as a sign of their ex-centricity, of their marginality. In other words, being a trickster,
equates “Otherness.” As such, it implies a growing awareness of one’s hybrid nature.
5. Hints at Hybridity
Having identified Marian as a trickster, partly through an examination of her own behaviour
and partly from her resemblance with Duncan, I shall now determine in which sense these
characteristics identify Marian as a hybrid person. From the very beginning of the novel,
Marian McAlpin’s loneliness cannot fail to strike the reader. Marian shares her flat with a
roommate, although they definitely have nothing in common. Her boyfriend abandons her
because of his best friend’s marriage; she finds no comfort at work, where her relationships
with her colleagues remain distant and superficial. Even her best friend Clara is unable to help
her because her pregnancy. Marian’s feeling of “otherness” surfaces when she confesses
feeling nervous at the idea of revealing her private life to her colleagues (29). Her “otherness”
grows further when Clara tells her not to feel so concerned about her (30): indeed, her tragic
interpretation of Clara’s condition points to her own helplessness at dealing with the idea of
maternity.
Chapter four also introduces the character of Len Slank, Clara and Marian’s old friend
who equally seems to suffer from an inability to fit it: he has apparently moved from Canada
to England and back due to his difficult relationships with women. The reader will
subsequently observe Len’s growing inadequacy in his way of dealing with Ainsley’s
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courtship and his ultimate breakdown, as a symbol of what could have overcome Marian, had
she failed to acknowledge her own nature.
The reaction of Clara’s husband, Joe, here symbolises as the voice of society: he
clearly disapproves of Len’s behaviour as “not ethical” and advises Ainsley not to get mixed
up with him. As Marian comments, his attitude is definitely paternalistic (35). And neither
Marian nor Ainsley appreciate this aspect of Joe, as revealed by Ainsley’s reaction: she
immediately asks for Len’s phone number and will from then on consider him a prospective
father for her future baby.
Part two presents Marian as a future wife. Soon after this announcement, Marian
shows the first signs of her growing discomfort with food: “Marian was surprised at herself.
She had been dying to go for lunch, she had been starving, and now she wasn’t even hungry”
(112). Marian’s lack of appetite relates to her decision to comply with society’s demands by
becoming a future wife. Her eating disorders will therefore evolve for the worst as the
wedding approaches. This problem can be interpreted as an utterance of Marian’s hybrid
condition and of her hesitation to acknowledge this hybridity. Joe Bates’ subsequent phone
call inviting Marian to come and visit Clara at the hospital (114) causes another fit of anguish,
clearly brought about by what Clara represents, i.e. childbearing as the logical consequence of
her marital status. Marian nevertheless manages to welcome this visit as a rediscovery of the
real Clara, deflated and therefore less frightening (115).
Marian really manages to face her hybridity in the last four chapters of the novel. After
trying to adjust to social requirements, symbolised by Peter’s party, for which she used a red
dress and outrageous make-up in order to fit in, Marian suddenly realises that she is totally out
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of place. He runs away, and after a brief and deceptive sexual encounter with the ever present
trickster-figure Duncan, she follows him down a ravine, when she is forced to face her
problem. Understanding that she must solve her problems through self-knowledge, Marian
turns back to “normality”, not without acting like a trickster one last time: indeed, she decides
to bake a cake which she offers to the two men who equally tried to use and consume her:
Peter and Duncan. They react differently : while Peter, as a true product of society; fails to
understand the metaphorical value of such a deed, Duncan, as befits a trickster, once again
produces a different interpretation of the facts : “Peter wasn’t trying to destroy you. That’s
just something you made up. Actually you were trying to destroy him” (280), and further:
“But the real truth is that it wasn’t Peter at all. It was me. I was trying to destroy you” (281), a
statement which leaves Marian without a settled solution. However, it offers her a temporary
assistance, curing her from her anorexia.
In The Edible Woman, hybridity remains a vague concept, which is difficult to
identify, because Atwood’s first heroine acquires but a limited awareness of it. Yet, as will be
demonstrated in my analysis of Atwood’s subsequent production, the heroine’s understanding
of her hybrid nature remains but a fleeting, temporary state, only briefly alluded to in this
debut novel. As Atwood’s novels develop, hybridity becomes an increasingly pervasive motif,
which warrants a postcolonial reading of her work.
6. Quest for a Lost Voice
As Atwood’s first novel, The Edible Woman features a rather simple, chronological
development. In Atwood’s later work, the plot often incorporates large flashback episodes
which either develop a first failed quest, re-enacted by the protagonist in the present. In other
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cases, it contains the first stages of a quest, which the heroine tries to bring to its conclusion in
the present. In the case of Atwood’s first novel, the woman’s quest shows a simple pattern
and develops chronologically. I shall therefore examine the novel’s structure, i.e. its five
introductory chapters, the five stages of the actual quest, and its symbolic conclusion in the
last two chapters. 15
As all Atwoodian novels, The Edible Woman clearly displays the structure of a quest
novel. Many critics have alluded to this aspect of the novel, often emphasising the descent
movement inherent in Marian’s self discovery. Such is the case with Catherine McLay’s
analysis of the novel as romance, in which one reads: “Marian is, in a sense, the romantic
hero/heroine who searches for her identity through a quest which takes her on a dark voyage
into the underworld and back” (McLay, “The Dark Voyage,” 125). This analysis focuses on
the novel’s traditional quest structure, while situating the aim of the quest at the level of the
subject’s hybrid self.
The first five chapters of The Edible Woman situate the protagonist in time and space,
to provide the reader with a general overview of the heroine’s personality and to introduce
two elements at the core of the heroine’s trouble: her position as a woman at work and in
society. Chapter one introduces the main characters, situating them in place and time: Marian
shares a room with Ainsley in the Toronto of the 1960’s. Both have a job and are unmarried,
though Marian seems to have a boyfriend called Peter. The action takes place at Marian and
Ainsley’s flat, thus revealing the heroine’s private life. Chapter two focuses on Marian’s job
15 In her chapter entitled, “Novels of Rebirth and Transformation,” Pratt distinguishes five stages in the woman’s
journey : first, splitting off from family, husbands, lovers, i.e. from society; second, the green world guide or
token, where the heroine is helped to cross a threshold by an ordinary event, object or person, that is suddenly
given epiphanic significance. The third stage introduces the green-world lover. He often features animal-like
qualities and helps the heroine at a difficult stage of her discovery journey without imposing social constraints
on her. In the fourth stage, the heroine confronts parental figures, often in the form of memories. And finally,
the fifth stage brings about the heroine’s plunge into the unconscious (Pratt, Archetypal Patterns, 137-143).
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in a food test company, stigmatising her ambivalent position as to what is expected from her
as a model employee and what she actually ambitions – i.e. a more fulfilling job. The chapter
contains some striking examples of what Marian might become, were she to work for
Seymour Survey all her life: either heartless Mrs Bogue, or one of the desperate Office
Virgins. It offers a general view of a woman’s position as an office worker in the late sixties.
Chapter three draws our attention to the peculiarities of Marian’s job. It already introduces the
element which forces Marian to engage on her quest, namely the questionnaire, which she
ironically accepts to complete, although she should actually be enjoying a free weekend. After
carefully examining the questionnaire, Marian symptomatically receives a phone call from her
boyfriend Peter to cancel their dinner. In so doing, Peter leaves Marian free to engage on her
quest. Peter also introduces the topic which induces the highest fear in both of them, namely
marriage, in the form of the tragic announcement of the imminent marriage of his best friend
and alter-ego, Trigger. Chapter four and five offer a transition before the quest can actually
begin. They confront Marian with another possible solution to her questions: pregnancy and
maternity. Chapter four focuses on the theme of pregancy by introducing the character of
Clara, Marian’s best friend and a seven-month-pregnant woman. Clara’s portrayal
immediately strikes the reader as negative: Clara is the example of what Marian most
emphatically refuses to become. This episode consistently establishes pregnancy as an
unsuitable solution to Marian’s identity problem. She therefore has to look into herself to
discover her own desires. Chapter four eliminates another of Marian’s options. However, the
negative view of maternity introduced in this chapter is immediately contradicted in chapter
five by Ainsley’s wish to become a single mother, a decision which, in Marian’s eyes, proves
totally foolish and irresponsible. However, the reader cannot help wondering Marian’s own
lack of foolishness and spontaneity does not constitute her real problem.
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Having been confronted to questions threatening her comfortable life, Marian then
engages on a quest, which consists of five stages: isolation, meeting the green world guide,
entering the trickster’s world, confronting one’s parents, and exploring one’s unconscious.
Chapter six constitutes the beginning of Marian’s quest, i.e. the first stage of the quest, which
always starts with an isolation of the protagonist from her usual environment. It significantly
starts with Marian’s recollection of a dream in which she is gradually dissolving. This may be
interpreted as her wish to get rid of a false self made of appearances. Symptomatically,
Marian cannot see herself in the mirror, indicating that she has not acknowledged her hybrid
self yet and will have to engage on a quest to find it (43). Searching for men to answer her
questionnaire on beer consumption, Marian decides to leave her neighbourhood and takes a
bus. The first stage of the quest pattern – the separation from the usual environment is thus
accomplished. Several details hint at Marian’s discomfort, gradually emphasised by climatic
conditions: an oppressive day, an unclear sky, heavy air and a blurred vision (44). In other
words, Marian may now explore this unknown environment – and her self. She mentions
feeling intimidated by the idea of meeting closed doors (45), an effective metaphor for her
fear at discovering her hybrid self, which has so far not been disclosed to her.
Chapter six also features the second stage of the female quest, i.e. the encounter with
the “green world guide,” i.e. Duncan, who will help the heroine cross a threshold. The
importance of Marian’s meeting with Duncan is echoed in the way in which she describes the
event: “The questionnaires I was carrying had suddenly become unrelated to anything at all,
and at the same time obscurely threatening” (49). She further confesses: “the contrast with the
heat outside had made me dizzy. Time seemed to have shifted into slow motion; there seemed
to be nothing to say; but I couldn’t leave or move” (49). Marian then concludes about her first
meeting with Duncan: “I felt a slight sensation of alarm as I stepped over the threshold and
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the door closed woodenly behind me (49).” Clearly, Marian has entered the realm of the
trickster and her quest has truly begun. Indeed, she displays anguish as to what will become of
her in this unknown world, and even though she does not realise the significance of this
encounter in her life, she nevertheless has an ominous feeling that her life is about to change.
Once inside the house, Marian reacts very negatively at the idea of conducting the interview
in the bedroom (51), which may indicate her fear of involvement and intimacy. The following
sequence of the interview, based on free associations, should be regarded as a dive into
Duncan’s unconscious. The originality and the surprising character of his answers make
Marian feel uncomfortable. While Duncan claims that “this is just like those word-game tests
the shrink gives you” (52), and seems to enjoy himself a lot, Marian watches the situation
getting out of hand. She begins to fear for the outcome, namely that she will not be the same
when leaving Duncan’s house. She concludes: “By this time I was convinced that he was a
compulsive neurotic of some sort and that I’d better remain calm and not display any fear”
(53). This shows that, at this stage of her quest, she is totally unable to recognise the cathartic
value of Duncan’s dive into his unconscious and regards the phenomenon as a form of
madness.
Marian’s meeting with her guide forces her to question the foundation of women’s
social position. Therefore, in the subsequent nine chapters, she explores various stereotypes
offered to women to help them conform to society’s demands. The stereotypes comprise: the
typical male figures, man being either the perfect boyfriend (Peter) or the womaniser (Len);
the importance of engagement; the different kinds of couples; and finally the marriage
proposal. Chapter seven stands in sharp contrast with the preceding episode in that it
introduces Peter, who is exactly Duncan’s opposite. In order to visit Peter, who lives in the
suburbs, Marian has to resort to public transportation, a symbol of her continued journey.
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Moreover, the unfinished character of Peter’s apartment, still in construction, mirrors
Marian’s own engagement in the process of building her personality and her relationship with
Peter. Although he represents the perfect boyfriend, Marian remains hesitant as to her
involvement with Peter. The next chapter focuses on a different male character: it introduces
Len Slank, Marian’s friend, who had already been mentioned previously as a seducer of
women. The plot really becomes comical when Marian realises Ainsley’s plan to seduce Len
as a possible father for her baby. Peter further comments on the unhappy fate of his best
friend Trigger, who has recently announced his intention to get married. The chapter thus
addresses one of the novel’s main themes, i.e. interpersonal relationships between men and
women, here in the form of the official commitment of marriage. It therefore logically ends
with Marian’s decision to run away, which symbolises her utter fear of further involvement
with Peter. Chapter nine focuses on Marian’s fear of engagement. It narrates Marian’s escape,
which is described as a chase, Peter playing the role of the hunter. It then logically ends with
Marian’s capture. Another significant event happens at Len’s place, where Marian, feeling
more and more alienated from the group, crawls under the bed to find a safe place. Yet, the
chapter demonstrates that hiding provides no solution either, since, after expressing his anger
at Marian’s ludicrous behaviour, Peter finally proposes to her. The next stereotype, examined
in chapter eight, focuses on life within a couple. The chapter illustrates the relationships
within the three couples of the novel: Marian and Peter, Ainsley and Len, and Clara and Joe,
identifying each couple as a distinct way of behaving. Indeed, Marian and Peter seem to get
married in order to conform to society’s demand; Ainsley plans to be a single mother, and in
so doing expresses her desire to challenge social pressure, whereas Clara and Joe turn out to
represent society’s voice. Indeed, they express their concern for Marian’s situation as a single
woman, as their happiness at the announcement of her engagement indicates. Chapter eleven
constitutes an ironic counterpart to the preceding chapters. It shows Marian in a lonely
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situation, when she can actually be herself. Significantly, the chapter allows her to meet the
trickster figure once again, in the unbelievable setting of the laundromat. Chapter twelve, the
last chapter of part one, faces the reader with Marian’s conclusion on her situation as a future
wife. Indeed, Marian claims having made the right choice and dismisses her encounter with
Duncan as a phenomenon of amnesia, an attitude which will bring about her personal collapse
and eating disorder in Part Two. The second part of the novel is marked by a change of point
of view, which indicates the heroine’s growing trouble. The first-person narration of Part One
abruptly changes into a third-person narration. The presence of an omniscient external
narrator in this part of the story constitutes a clear sign of Marian’s alienation. It indicates that
she has lost her voice because of social pressure. Part Two also corresponds to Marian’s
examination of a last stereotype, marriage. It also coincides with the beginning of Marian’s
eating problems, as a sign of her rising psychological trouble: Marian’s refusal to eat
epitomises her inability to have a voice of her own. 16 Chapter thirteen symptomatically
evokes the moment when Marian decides to announce her marriage plans to her colleagues.
The next two chapters provide a transition towards the third stage of Marian’s quest,
i.e. her discovery of the trickster’s world. The reader attends to the conclusion of Ainsley’s
seduction strategy concerning Len: Ainsley finally succeeds in getting Len so drunk that he
agrees to accompany her to her apartment, leaving Marian with no other choice than going to
the movie. Significantly, this evening, which will result in Ainsley’s pregnancy, also brings
about Marian’s third encounter with the trickster figure. Marian clearly finds it difficult to
deal with the question of women’s social role as mothers: it leads her to meet the character
who will accompany her through her quest. Marian’s visit to Clara at the hospital, providing a
direct confrontation with maternity, and the ever pervasive intrusion of the trickster in her life,
16
A similar idea is expressed in Sharon Wilson’s analysis of fairy-tale motifs in the novel in Margaret Atwood’s
Fairy-Tale Sexual Politics (Wilson 84).
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here in the form of Duncan’s first phone call, conclude stage two of Marian’s quest. This
climax comprises a frightening magic realist flight into the hospital labyrinth-like corridors,
which forebodes the beginning of stage three.
In chapters sixteen to nineteen, Marian is finally ready to face the third stage of her
quest: she enters the realm of the trickster, when she decides to answer Duncan’s invitation
positively: in stage three, Marian experiences the trickster’s help to evade her deception-clad
life. The next chapter describes Marian’s dinner with Peter. Marian’s passivity strikes the
reader: Peter is making all the decisions, drawing conclusions on Marian, while she suffers
from a rising discomfort, mainly expressed through her growing difficulty to eat. Marian’s
problem with food becomes even worse in the next chapter, when Ainsley announces her
pregnancy. The office Christmas party gives Marian another occasion to face the different
kinds of women into whom she might one day turn: an office virgin or a ripe housewife.
Symptomatically, this prospect causes Marian to flee to the park and encounter Duncan again.
Duncan has now become a dominant feature in Marian’s life. He influences her in all
important decisions and guides her towards knowledge of her inner self and discovery of her
own hybridity. When she gives in to Duncan’s wish to iron her clothes (136), Marian clearly
agrees to acknowledge him as the one who detains knowledge and might provide help, even
though his behaviour might be ludicrous or incomprehensible. Facing Duncan’s repeated
deceptions, Marian comes to a conclusion which reveals her hybridity : “Perhaps this was
another labyrinth of words, and if she said the wrong thing, took the wrong turning, she would
suddenly find herself face to face with something she could not cope with” (140). From this
moment onwards, Marian consciously realises that she is engaged on a quest and must
absolutely proceed with it.
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Yet, in order to discover her hybrid personality, Marian must first face the past in the
next stage of her quest: the confrontation with parental figures, which takes the form of a
Christmas visit and of several allusions to parenthood in relation to Duncan and his
roommates and to Clara. Indeed, chapter nineteen already briefly alludes to Marian’s two-day
visit to her parents to prepare for the wedding. Moreover, the chapter contains an allusion to a
girl who suddenly decided not to wash anymore. This rejection of personal hygiene ironically
echoes Marian’s refusal to eat and might be interpreted as a kind of regression, which Marian
will later experience as well. After a brief encounter with the trickster, which indicates that
her quest is moving forward, Marian engages in the fourth stage, which consists in a
confrontation with parental figures. It here takes the form of a trip back home in order to
prepare for the wedding. The reader notices Marian’s sudden discovery of her vegetarianism,
which can be regarded as a sign of her growing estrangement from social conventions.
Symptomatic is also the fact that Marian mentions all the decisions for the wedding as not
being her own. From then on, Marian’s quest, punctuated with frequent encounters with
Duncan, will proceed at an accelerated rhythm. In chapter twenty-one, they meet at the
museum, Duncan fantasising over mummies and death, as befits a trickster. Two elements in
chapter twenty-two indicate that we are now getting closer to the novel’s climax. The first of
these elements is the allusion to a cake, a foreboding of the making of the cake in the shape of
a woman giving the novel its title. The second consists in Marian’s thought that she might not
be able ever to return to “normality” – i.e. a normal eating behaviour – a concern which will
force her to take action. The chapter further contains the well-known parody of Carroll’s Alice
in Wonderland, and thus functions as a key to the interpretation of the novel as a tale of
discovery of the unconscious. The next two chapters narrate Marian’s preparation for Peter’s
party – the novel’s climax – as well as Len’s decision to run away, which provides a
caricature-like foreboding of Marian’s own behaviour at the party. Similarly, Ainsley’s overt
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confrontation with the “Lady down below” alludes to what can happen when one refuses to
conform to social constraints. These chapters provide a transition towards the fifth and last
stage of Marian’s quest, namely her dive into her unconscious.
Peter’s party constitutes a climax in the novel, in that it illustrates the ultimate rise of
Marian’s discomfort, resulting in her flight. As is often the case, an introspective moment of
regression precedes this climax. Marian ritualistically takes a bath and gets ready for Peter’s
party, putting on exaggerated make-up and a stupendous red dress, which turns her into a
stereotyped object of lust. Yet, at the party, Marian discovers that she cannot deal with all the
requirements of the perfect bride-to-be. She panics and decides to run away. Marian then
accompanies Duncan to a hotel: she gets more thoroughly involved with the trickster figure in
order to be able to face the last stage of her quest: questioning her unconscious motivations.
Duncan then takes Marian into a ravine, where she finally faces her inner conflicts, a
confrontation which causes her to turn back to normal life with a better understanding of her
hybridity. Indeed, on Marian’s return from the ravine, one reads: “Now she knew where she
was” (265).
When returning back to normal life, Marian performs one last trick, which illustrates
her new understanding and serves as a conclusion to the novel: she decides to bake a woman-
shaped cake, which she offers both Peter and Duncan, so as to exorcise their wish, as male
characters, i.e. as colonisers, to exert their power on her, and, in a way, consume her.
Marian’s recovery of her voice as a woman is here alluded to when the novel’s point of view
shifts back to a first-person narrative. She has literally and narratively regained her right to
speak as an individual.
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***
One might wonder whether Marian has really integrated her hybrid personality after her
introspective crisis. While some critics, such as John Lauber, claim that the end of the novel
provides a resolution of Marian’s crisis and that “there are no more false identities left”
(Lauber 28), this analysis contends that Marian has not made any progress yet: her recovery
from eating disorders is but a first step and she must try and rebuild a self, integrating its
hybrid qualities. This study equally confirms that Marian’s quest takes a circular form and
never produces a clear positive outcome, 17 apart from Marian’s resolution of her eating
problems. Indeed, one cannot help noticing that, at the end of the novel, Marian is left in the
same state as in the beginning, and, whereas she has already had a glimpse of what her hybrid
nature may be, she still has to explore it further, and to learn to deal with it in everyday life.
However, this thesis could not be confined to the analysis of a single work, as my
point is to demonstrate the omnipresence of postcolonial issues in selected novels of Margaret
Atwood. As her first novel, The Edible Woman, already contains all the elements which, in
my view, constitute a postcolonial novel, i.e. deceptive characters, metafictional comment,
cases of mimicry, magic realist moments, trickster figures, and a quest pattern moving
towards an acknowledgement of hybridity. The novel clearly shows how the heroine is
progressively compelled to abandon her lies, deceptive strategies, and false images of
17 In that, I agree with Hilde Staels’ interpretation of the novel: “Whereas threshold imagery does appear in the
narrative text, a moment of spiritual renewal remains absent, as Marian dare not move beyond any threshold. She
never takes any important decisions that radically change her familiarized patterns of action or perception”
(Staels, Margarat Atwood’s Novels, 29).
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womanhood as she reaches a better understanding of the woman’s position as “Other” in
paternalistic society. All these elements will become ever clearer as we proceed to examine
Atwood’s subsequent production. Atwood’s next novel, Surfacing, introduces the reader to a
more marginalised woman, confronted with the past and present prejudices of the region
where she grew up.
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Chapter 2. Surfacing: Deception as Survival Strategy
“It’s too late, I no longer have a
name. I tried for all those years to
be civilized but I’m not and I’m
through pretending” (Surfacing,
168).
Atwood’s second novel, Surfacing, deals with a woman in her late twenties, who returns to
Northern Quebec, the place where she grew up, to search for her father. She is accompanied
by her lover, Joe, and friends, Anna, and David. The heroine engages on a quest for her father
through a series of remembrances from the past. These memories bring the reader to realise
that several elements in the story have gone wrong, that the anecdotes somehow do not
correspond to the weird images which they conjure up, and thus that the narrator must be
lying. After a traumatic but healing experience at the bottom of the lake, the narrator
eventually surfaces and acknowledges her real past. She then undergoes animal regression and
eventually re-enters society. This novel therefore offers an ideal vantage point from which to
study unconscious deception processes.
The novel contains numerous reflections on the dubious nature of language, which I
choose to examine from a metafictional point of view. Moreover, I shall study the
protagonist’s tendency to indulge in deception as a strategy for survival in the face of the
conventions imposed by a patriarchal society, based on values such as marriage and forcing
the “Other”, i.e. the single woman eventually opting for abortion, to mimic the personality of
a dutifully married mother. The novel also features several remarkable instances of magic
realist moments, which often coincide with the heroine’s discovery of a crucial aspect of her
personality. Most significant are the protagonist’s trickster-like qualities, which turn out to be
a positive gift inherited from both her parents. While the narrator herself definitely endorses
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the role of a trickster figure, the missing father, leaves behind clues for his daughter to
interpret on her discovery journey. In a truly grotesque magic realist moment, the disappeared
father eventually shows up in an animal form, may also figure as a trickster. The same can be
said of the heroine’s mother, who functions as a guide, indicating her how to act. The
protagonist needs to acknowledge this innate trickster talent in order to develop another, more
efficient survival strategy. She does so by undergoing a stage of animal regression, which
enables her to accept her “otherness,” the animal aspect of her personality, as well as the idea
of the existence of evil. Surfacing further presents the reader with an interesting variation on
Annis Pratt’s archetypal rebirth journey (Pratt 137-143), in which the last three stages of the
quest are mixed up, in order to highlight phase three – the encounter with the green-world
lover – as a (temporary) solution to the heroine’s quest.
1. Parodic Rewriting
Surfacing can be read at different metafictional levels. 1 I here choose to focus on the author’s
statement concerning the unreliability of language, because this metafictional comment
closely reflects plot development, especially if we take into account the heroine’s own
propensity to lead her friends – and the reader – astray. In order to demonstrate Atwood’s
parodic intent, I shall also examine her allusions to other books.
1 Critics’ essays have also regarded Surfacing as a re-writing of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (Brydon,
Tiffin 89-104), which makes it doubly interesting within the context of postcolonial studies. Indeed, we can
consider the marginality of Atwood’s surfacer as an ironical echo of the coloniser’s situation of loneliness, which
eventually drives him mad. Both novels take place at a level which lies beyond reality: indeed, Conrad’s
narration sounds removed from reality by the use of an unknown narrator who retells Marlowe’s story, while
Atwood’s story immediately strikes the reader as unreal through its numerous gaps and inconsistencies, linked to
the narrator’s construction of a self-deceptive identity, a construction which this study proposes to examine.
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Surfacing contains some overt literary echoes, all deserving careful study. In chapter
four, the narrator turns back to the log cabin where she lived as a child and reflects on her
father’s books: reference books on plants and animals, some DIY books and some works by
eighteenth-century rationalists. The allusion to these books and to her father’s confidence in
reason and good will are immediately contradicted by the narrator’s reference to her
husband’s opinion on this belief in reason. This man destroyed the image of these writers as
paragons of virtue, thereby destabilising the heroine’s values. Suddenly, people whom she
were brought up to admire, appear as drunkards or madmen (38). This subtle metafictional
allusion helps the reader understand that the narrator, brought up in the bush, i.e. far away
from evil, in a sheltered environment, felt as a hybrid person when confronted to life in the
city, a feeling which might account for her past failures. The “husband’s” subsequent
comment that women cannot be real artists (52) is of the same nature, considering its negative
influence on the heroine. Indeed, this constitutes an example of Atwood at her best, providing
at once effective characterisation of her heroine and an interesting insight into one of her main
themes, namely the role of women in modern society, compounded, as always, with numerous
ironical touches.
Atwood conveys metafictional commentary in several ways throughout the novel. One
of those consists in echoing her heroine’s reflections on the dubiousness of language, an
aspect which should induce distrust in the reader and should warn him not to take the
narrator’s story for granted. Indeed, the book contains numerous allusions to the dangers and
inadequacies of language and to the difficulties of communicating accurately. The narrator
constantly quotes David’s use of slang, though he happens to be a specialist in
communication. For example, David constantly uses phrases such as “bloody fascist pig
Yanks” (9), “rotten capitalist bastards” (12). He comes to use them so often that they become
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devoid of any meaning. Towards the end of the book, when she has achieved a more complete
knowledge of herself, the narrator comments on David as follows: “I could see into him, he
was an imposter, a pastiche, layers of political handbills, pages from magazines, affiches,
verbs and nouns glued on to him and shredding away (…) he didn’t know what language to
use, he’d forgotten his own, he had to copy” (152). I personally regard this description of
David as highly parodic because it conveys an image of what the narrator might have become,
had she maintained her former deceptive behaviour. This passage can thus be regarded as
Atwood’s hidden comment on the necessity for the protagonist to attain personal truth and
knowledge.
Indeed, making sense of what you say, hear or read constitutes one of the main issues
of the book. The complexity of this task is rendered through the narrator’s difficulties to
understand the language of her childhood, i.e. French. From the very beginning of the book,
she refers to posters with French words (14-15), which she can hardly make sense of. Her
later dialogue with her father’s neighbours emphasises this problem of communication (20-
21), as does her visit to the butcher’s, where people ironically allude to her language mistakes
(26).
The novel also contains several allusions to the power of language. In one of the most
striking examples, the narrator recalls a childhood episode, which highlights the power of
words and the fear which they can create. Indeed, she describes her first encounter with
religion as follows:
I learned about religion the way most children then learned about sex, not in the
gutter but in the gravel and cement schoolyard, during the winter months of real
school. They would cluster in groups, holding each others’ mittened hands and
whispering. They terrified me by telling me there was a dead man in the sky
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watching everything I did and I retaliated by explaining where babies came from.
Some of their mothers phoned mine to complain, though I think I was more upset
than they were: they didn’t believe me but I believed them (45).
Such an excerpt clearly demonstrates the importance of words as well as the traumatic impact
which they can have. In the introductory part of the same chapter, the narrator therefore
comments that she should have become a linguist instead of an artist (41), wishing for a better
way of assessing her territory. The passage further draws our attention to the narrator’s wish
to understand, hence to control language, and is thus linked to her capacity to lure the reader
into believing her.
For the narrator, language equally functions as a cause of alienation and
fragmentation. 2 Indeed, she mentions the separation between head and body as a primarily
linguistic split (76). Significantly, the narrator becomes conscious of that split after diving
into the lake, i.e. after her first moment of introspection. She then shows herself able to
acknowledge that her vision was blurred, saying: “I was seeing poorly, translating badly, a
dialect problem” (76), a sentence which demonstrates the heroine’s difficulty with words.
Simultaneously, it hints at her deceptiveness.
A subsequent evocation of high school life again focuses on her problematic
relationship with language. It contains intricate vocabulary which she fails to understand and
which ironically alludes to notions of power and limitation. Indeed, the words “demarcation”
and “sovereignty”, which bothered the heroine in high school (97), both suggest the idea of
borders, of limits and of power politics. As such, they admirably support the novel’s thematic
2 In Strategies for Identity, Eleonora Rao presents us with a Kristevan reading of Surfacing. Indeed, she
interprets the heroine’s progressive move away from language as a gradual access to semiotics, a process which
she identifies as a form of rejection of patriarchy and as an experience of a different sense of self (60-64).
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development and can be regarded as another instance of Atwood’s use of irony. Moreover, the
passage precedes Anna’s confession of her husband’s infidelity (98-99), which brings us back
to the theme of power politics within a married couple.
The narrator’s discovery of her inner self does not enhance her ability to communicate.
On the contrary, as she turns back from her dive into the lake and begins her regression to
animal life, several episodes underline her difficulty to communicate with the other members
of the group, especially males. She obviously fears getting involved in lies again. When
talking to David, who tries to seduce her, she comments: “I had to concentrate in order to talk
to him, the English words seemed imported, foreign; it was like trying to listen to two
separate conversations, each interrupting the other (…) His fingers were squeezing, he was
drawing away some of the power, I would lose it and come apart again, the lies would
recapture” (150-151). These words clearly indicate that the protagonist has gained wholeness
from her descent into the lake, but that this experience is only temporary. The fragility of that
moment of balance symbolises the protagonist’s hybrid state, as does her distrust of language.
Indeed, her hybridity deprives her of the linguistic freedom of her friends, which makes it
difficult for her to adjust to life in patriarchal society. Indeed, appropriate deceptive
communication is one of the main weapons allowing the individual – more precisely the
woman – to exist and survive within patriarchal society. At that point, the narrator
immediately identifies David as a liar (153), a capacity she lacked before, which caused her to
believe everything her former lover told her. Because, she has clearly lost her gullibility, she
handles human communicative relationships in a different way. Still involved in a stage of
animal regression, she adds “he was lying about me, the animals don’t lie” (153), a comment
which clearly establishes the difference between her own hybrid self and that of her fellow
human beings. She still regards him as a liar when he informs her of the details of her father’s
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death (157). Her inability to acknowledge this death indicates that her quest for a means of
survival is not quite finished.
Finally, one should keep in mind that the reader’s task of discovering the truth about
the heroine parallels the latter’s own search for her father. The ironic aspect of this search
becomes even more obvious when the reader realises that Atwood is playing tricks on
him/her. Indeed, she allows her protagonist to lead the reader astray by means of numerous
lies, omissions and vague allusions. The heroine’s propensity to deceive herself, her
entourage, and the reader thus admirably functions as a metaphor for Atwood’s own tendency
to manipulate her audience. 3
References to literary works embodying the voice of reason, allusions to the practical
aspects of life and to the dangers and limitations of communication draw the reader’s
attention to the fact that this novel is also a construction of the mind. As such, it might contain
a series of deceptive elements. Indeed, a literary work might function as a puzzle, which the
reader is left to solve, in the same way as the narrator must face the mystery of her father’s
death. If one opts for a postcolonial reading of the novel, one should of course mention the
importance of the power relationships involved in language. Indeed, the official story is
generally the one imposed by the coloniser. As a woman, in a male-dominated world,
Atwood’s heroine has no other choice than using the coloniser’s vocabulary to express
3 As an example of Atwood’s narrative tricks, one can read Shuli Barzilai’s article entitled “Who Is He? The
Missing Persons Behind the Pronoun in Atwood’s Surfacing.” The author mentions the heroine’s “aptitude for
defensive revisions” and her “selective omissions of antecedents” (64). Barzilai also claims that the pronoun
“he” in Surfacing deliberately remains vague, alluding at times to the father, the lover or the lost child, and at
times missing clear reference. The author identifies this technique as part of the Freudian processes of repression
and disavowal. He adds: “Atwood’s unreliable narratorial agent deceives not only the reader but also herself. She
is lying and truth-telling simultaneously. The reality of her past experience may be glimpsed at times through the
pseudo-past she invents to cover it up. One of the textual strategies enabling this tour de force is the pronoun
without nominal precedent” (Barzilai, “Who Is He?” 64).
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herself; 4 a strategy which may go as far as the creation of an “official version” of her past, one
that echoes patriarchal values. In a word, she comes to develop an unsuspected and highly
efficient deceptive strategy.
2. Deceptive Mimicry: A Case Study
In order to determine the various elements of the heroine’s deceptive process, this section will
be focused on the heroine’s attitude with her friends, her revelations about herself, her own
thoughts and comments, her deceptive strategies, often developed in relation to the theme of
evil, and the numerous gaps and inconsistencies which pervade her narration. These features
help us delineating the protagonist’s overwhelming feeling of “otherness” and the resulting
compulsive need to mimic received behaviour in order to comply with society’s demands.
Observing the heroine’s attitude when returning to her childhood environment, the
reader cannot help noticing her efforts to produce an image of herself which fits social
requirements. Indeed, from the start, the narrator clearly wishes to appear as an average
woman, endowed with a partner and friends. Yet, this self-image soon becomes deceptive.
Friendships and love relationships are truncated, empty of any real feelings. About her friend
Anna, the narrator comments: “She’s my best friend, my best woman friend; I’ve known her
two months” (10). Such a sentence reveals the necessity for the heroine to be regarded as
4 In the section of her book dealing with “Denial and Assertion of the True Romance Code,” Hilde Staels equally
emphasises the heroine’s involvement in patriarchal society when she writes: “Margaret Atwood borrows
elements from cautionary tales, true romance magazines, fashion magazines, fairy tales and folk tales (…) they
are neither innocent nor a valueless world of disbelief. The narrator does not yet realize that the apparently
innocent texts, which mass culture spreads, are ideologically oppressive texts” (Staels, Margaret Atwood’s
Novels, 54). I totally agree with this interpretation of what I here identify as yet another of Margaret Atwood’s
metafictional interventions, aiming at drawing the reader’s attention to the novel’s subversive content.
Very interesting also is Ronald Granofsky’s study of fairy-tale morphology in Surfacing, based on Propp’s
Morphology of the Folktale. This study uncovers the patriarchal structure at work in fairy-tale narratives
(Granofsky 51-64).
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“normal.” However, it also implies her problematic relationship to other people: is it “normal”
for someone to consider “her best friend” someone whom she only met two months ago?
What event caused her to break away from her former life and friends? Or else, has she
always been a loner, an alienated being, a hybrid person? The reader soon discovers that the
heroine has indeed abandoned her former life, where, as a hybrid person, she lived torn
between her parents’ and society’s definition of a decent woman and her actual life as the
mistress of a married man. This break caused her to invent a new self, more suited to society’s
requirements. At the beginning of the novel, she has already become so involved in this false
self that she feels unable to acknowledge its deceptiveness. She has moved beyond the realm
of reality. She is currently engaged in a process of mimicry, which prompts her to constantly
re-invent her past life. This introduces a series of discordant elements, which gradually lead
the reader to the discovery of the heroine’s self-deceptive nature. This behaviour is confirmed
at the end of chapter two, when she intimates that her father will have returned and will be
waiting for her in his cabin (24), a totally false assumption.
The setting itself contains a series of details, which create a deceptive atmosphere: the
“welcome” sign at the border, featuring bullet holes (11), the imitation cherub (12), the
heroine’s own voice, which sounds odd (13), as if she were lying; the bar too is an imitation
of a more southern place (27); even her drawings as a child mimic a glamour world, very
different from her log cabin (42). Later, when the protagonist becomes an illustrator, her
comments on her work also give the reader the impression that her job is “fake”. Indeed, she
mentions: “This is the fifth book I’ve done (…) Quebec Folk Tales, it’s a translation. It isn’t
my territory but I needed and money” (52). Further, when she meets her editor, she confesses:
“He said one of my drawings was too frightening and I said children liked being frightened.
‘It isn’t the children who buy the book,’ he said, ‘it’s their parents.’ So I compromised; now I
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compromise before I take the work in, it saves time (…) I can imitate anything” (53). This
statement once again stresses the character’s propensity to mimic a certain kind of behaviour
to conform to society’s expectations. The heroine’s submissiveness is further presented as an
old habit of her, which finds its roots in her early childhood: when the heroine discovers the
scrapbooks in which she drew as a child, she recalls her wish to become what society wants
her to be, i.e. a lady or a mother. She then adds that “it wasn’t a lie” (91), thus stressing the
possible deceptive quality of the rest of her story. Her scrapbook, made of images cut out of
magazines, stands in sharp contrast with her brother’s numerous drawings of explosions and
war scenes, which indicate that her brother, unlike herself, has been able to acknowledge the
existence of evil. The narrator, on the contrary, remains in the idealised world of girlhood, a
position which paternalistic society expects her to occupy.
She also practises self-deception when she recalls her fishing trips with her brother.
Indeed, she pretends that the fish which she caught were willing, thereby diminishing her
feelings of guilt (64). Self-deception in Surfacing often occurs when the heroine tries to
mimic other people’s behaviour while refusing any responsibility for it: for instance, she
accepts to kill the fish, but refuses to acknowledge the evil which this action entails.
Therefore, deception here functions as a crucial element in the illustration of one of the
novel’s main theme, namely the existence of evil, which the heroine definitely cannot easily
accept. The protagonist also shows difficulties to face the fact of death, when her parents are
concerned, especially in relation to her father’s disappearance: in chapter eleven, she
obviously refuses to admit that her father might have died, claiming that he is merely gone on
a trip and will eventually come back (95).
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The novel is further pervaded with the heroine’s references to mysterious and often
discordant past events 5 : at the beginning of part two, the birth of her child is referred to as an
inhuman and violent act. The passage strikes the reader as inappropriate to describe child
birth. We definitely suspect that something may have gone terribly wrong in the heroine’s
past. This birth happened as follows:
After the first I didn’t ever want to have another child, it was too much to go through
for nothing, they shut you into the hospital, they shave your hair off you and tie your
hands down and they don’t let you see, they don’t want you to understand, they want
you to believe it’s their power, not yours. They stick needles into you so you won’t
hear anything, you might as well be a dead big, your legs are up in a metal frame,
they bend over you, technicians, mechanics, butchers, students clumsy or sniggering
practising on your body, they take the baby out with a fork like a pickle out of a
pickle jar. After that they fill your veins up with red plastic, I saw it running down
through the tube. I won’t let them do that to me ever again.
He wasn’t there with me, I couldn’t remember why; he should have been, since it
was his idea, his fault. But he brought his car to collect me afterwards, I didn’t have
to take a taxi (80).
The quotation conveys a particularly negative view of birth. Some elements are totally
incongruous: the shaven hair, the heroine being tied onto her bed, the depiction of doctors as
butchers and the baby as a pickle in a jar. The end of this excerpt confirms our idea that this
passage might not refer to a normal birth, but rather to a miscarriage or an abortion. Yet, the
narrator’s vagueness and her inability to remember her husband’s role in the episode prevents
the reader from knowing with certainty what actually happened to her. At this stage of the
story, however, we know for sure that the narrator is concealing things from the reader and
from herself. Her experience obviously strikes us as both negative and deceptive. The passage
5 Discordant notes and contradictions literally pervade the novel. Coral Ann Howells provides us with interesting
insight on the subject in her article “Worlds Alongside: Contradictory Discourses in the Fiction of Alice Munro
and Margaret Atwood.” The article draws the reader’s attention to the oscillation between realism and fantasy in
Atwood’s (and Munro’s) work, a commentary, which in my view must be linked to the frequent incursions of
magic realism in Atwood’s work (Howells, “Worlds Alongside,” 121-135).
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also contains hints about the woman’s inferior position in society, those in power being
representatives of paternalistic society. Chapter ten indeed tackles the problem of the position
of woman in society: it shows the heroine’s negative reaction to her boyfriend’s marriage
proposal. She seems to resent his desire to possess her and tries to find an escape (87). She
describes her relationship in terms of defeat or victory, thereby emphasising the power
politics involved. She then tries to convince Joe of renouncing to marry her by telling him
about the fiasco of her first marriage. Again, her unconvincing story contains unexpected
elements, such as the smell of antiseptic, a broken cherub, an ache, an invalid bride, and the
heroine’s feeling of utter despair (87-88). Significantly, right after acknowledging her
inability to express real emotions in chapter sixteen, the narrator briefly mentions her husband
with a negative event, which he referred to as an “accident” (138). Atwood gradually prepares
the reader for the revelation about the heroine’s real past. The whole scene is set against the
context of sexual power politics as subtly indicated at the end of the chapter, which reiterates
the now well-known image of the barometer couple (138). This image functions as a clear
allusion to socially acceptable sex roles.
The reader finally learns the truth after the protagonist’s dive into the lake and her
frightful confrontation with her father’s body, which brings back in her the memory of what
happened:
He hadn’t gone with me to the place where they did it; his own children, the real
ones, were having a birthday party. But he came afterwards to collect me (…) It
wasn’t a wedding (…)
“It’s over,” he said, “feel better?”
I was emptied, amputated (…) (144).
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The passage reveals the full length of the narrator’s deceptive strategy. It also highlights the
cruelty of the treatment which she underwent and, as such, provides the reader with an
explanation for the character’s need to resort to deception. From then on, the narrator reveals
the real nature of her former relationship with that married man who made her pregnant. For
instance, she mentions that she was wearing a wedding ring because it facilitated the renting
of motel rooms (148).
Besides, the heroine herself sometimes mentions the deceptive quality of her own
discourse. When she refers to her family as “they”, distancing herself from them, she
immediately corrects this deceptive utterance saying: “That won’t work, I can’t call them
“they” as if they were somebody else’s family: I have to keep myself from telling that story”
(14).
At times, she also proves conscious of her alienated attitude. Referring to her return to
her childhood place to look for her father, she realises the oddity of her behaviour. Indeed, the
other characters have all rejected their parents long ago and are embarrassed by her quest (16-
17). She also intimates that she grew up in an atmosphere of lies, unaware of the war (18)
until her brother himself found out about evil and violence and initiated her into it. This idea
is reiterated when she mentions that her mother, dying from cancer, must have concealed the
pain for months (21, 35), another remark which stresses the heroine’s lack of communication
within family structures. This deficiency also distorts her relationship to her so-called friends:
the lack of communication prevents her from knowing anything about their past (30).
In chapter four, the narrator also first alludes to Anna and David’s marriage,
mentioning her own “marriage” in parallel (40), which indicates her desire to be like
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conventional Anna. She then feebly utters her own lack of interest in marriage, suggesting
that her husband started expecting a certain attitude from her. This can be interpreted as a
weak, though legitimate plea for the right to counter social conventions, thus demonstrating
the narrator’s unwillingness to adjust to them. When she later watches Anna putting on make-
up, she cannot help reflecting on the unnecessary quality of such behaviour in the bush (43-
44), a tendency which becomes increasingly manifest as the novel progresses. Indeed, when
forgetting her make-up on a fishing trip, Anna exclaims in a panic: “he’ll kill me” (122),
talking of her boyfriend David. Yet, one might also interpret the narrator’s rejection of this
common form of camouflage as a sign of her inadequacy to city life: she does not need make
up because her deception devices are far more developed; she has already moved beyond such
a simple process. Yet, at the end of the book, when Anna again uses make up, one notices that
the protagonist’s view has not changed: she still regards Anna as an artificial girl, “an
imitation,” “a paper doll” (165). This final negative comment on make up indicates the
narrator’s choice not to comply with patriarchal values, which require women to look like
magazine models. The different possible interpretations of the narrator’s rejection of make up
should draw the reader’s attention to the often multiple meanings of Margaret Atwood’s use
of symbolism.
The narrator’s hybrid state is further referred to when she alludes to her lack of
religious knowledge as a child. Indeed, she clearly comes from a family of atheistic scientists,
as demonstrated when she recalls an episode from her childhood: at recess, she was frightened
by the other children’s tales about religion. She tried to impress them by revealing to them
how babies were made, causing the other children’s parents to intervene (45). This passage
indicates once again that the narrator, even as a child, could not adjust to social conventions.
When she later decides to go to church out of curiosity, she has to face both her father and
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other’s incomprehension and the villagers’ amusement (55-56). Her feeling of “otherness”
at that time highlights her hybrid nature. Several other episodes from her childhood underline
the heroine’s early feelings of “otherness,” as appears in the quotation below:
The only city place I can remember hiding is behind open doors at birthday parties. I
despised them, the pew-purple velvet dresses with anti-macassar lace collars and the
presents, voices going Oooo with envy when they were open, and the pointless
games, finding a thimble or memorizing clutter on a tray. There were only two
things you could be, a winner or a loser; the mothers tried to rig it so everyone got a
prize, but they couldn’t figure out what to do about me since I wouldn’t play. At first
I ran away, but after that my mother said I had to go, I had to learn to be polite;
“civilized” she called it. So I watched from behind the door (…) they found me
amusing in general. Each year it was a different school, in October or November
when the first snow hit the lake, and I was the one who didn’t know the local
customs, like a person from another culture: on me they could try out the tricks and
minor tortures they’d already used up on each other. When the boys chased and
captured the girls after school and tied them up with their own skipping ropes, I was
the one they would forget on purpose to untie (71-72).
This excerpt clearly demonstrates the heroine’s sensation of “otherness,” due to her
experience of isolation in the bush: totally unable to play the requested part in children’s
games, she becomes the target of the other children’s wicked proceedings. One of the
strategies which she developed as an adult in order to be accepted is the creation of a
deceptive false-self. The heroine further comments on her state of “otherness” in these words:
“Being socially retarded is like being mentally retarded, it arouses in others disgust and pity
and the desire to torment and reform” (72). Hence the protagonist’s need to use mimicry in
order to escape such torments.
One of the heroine’s tactics to refrain from admitting her hybridity consists in
pretending that she truly belongs to the world of nature, of the bush. Such is the case in
chapter seven when she reflects: “How have I been able to live so long in the city, it isn’t safe.
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I always felt safer here, even at night” (73). Yet, she immediately contradicts herself saying:
“That’s a lie.” She then reveals how the forest used to terrify her during her childhood. Such
passage demonstrates that the heroine suffers from harbouring a fake vision of herself and of
her past. Even her childhood memories have been reconstructed to fit the new self which she
wants to make credible for the outside world.
Concealment is another defensive strategy, which the narrator chooses to practice
while facing her father’s disappearance. Indeed, she mentions the necessity for her to hide her
fear and maintain a semblance of order, especially as she thinks her father has gone crazy, and
will inevitably sense her fear (78). Hiding and lying to oneself and others has thus become a
survival technique. The narrator therefore uses the same tactics when she realises that she has
to organise a search trip for her father, about which she says: “I could disguise it as a fishing
trip” (105), once again resorting to her well-known deceptive tricks. When she later tries to
discuss her relationship with Joe, she once again pretends to tell the truth, while thinking:
“The voice wasn’t mine, it came from someone dressed as me, imitating me” (107). This
quote clearly draws the reader’s attention to the mimicry process which the narrator
undergoes. Significantly, she immediately mentions her fear of feeling dead, frozen (107),
alluding to the “missing part” of herself (108). She further adds that she cannot remember any
photographs being taken at her wedding, once again, a weird element (108).
Chapter twelve plays a pivotal part in the development of the novel’s theme of
alienation and fragmentation, because it closes on the heroine’s recognition of her hybrid
state, using the oft-quoted phrase in Atwoodian criticism, in which the heroine plays “tricks
with mirrors” (108). The whole passage works as a very effective presentation of the dilemma
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facing all Atwoodian heroines: becoming an outcast, or deciding to integrate society by
mimicking an acceptable kind of behaviour:
No hints or facts, I didn’t know when it had happened. I must have been all right
then; but after that I’d allowed myself to be cut in two. Woman sawn apart in a
wooden crate, wearing a bathing suit, smiling, a trick done with mirror, I read it in a
comic book; only with me there had been an accident and I came apart. The other
one, the one locked away, was the only one that could live; I was the wrong half,
detached, terminal. I was nothing but a head, or no, something minor like a severed
thumb; numb (108).
Apart from expressing the heroine’s state of deep suffering, the passage also intimates that the
narrator has been presenting us with a truncated aspect of herself. Indeed, she realises that the
only chance for her to achieve wholeness is to reveal her hidden part, thereby pointing to the
novel’s outcome.
All these examples indicate the heroine’s propensity to make use of deceptive
strategies so as to mimic another, more acceptable image of herself, in which she eventually
comes to believe. However incongruous the details given by the heroine about herself may be,
they still belong to the realist level of narration. On the contrary, when the character has to
face the truth about herself and her past, this confrontation often takes place in a blurred,
dreamy, magic realist atmosphere, which reflects her utter confusion.
3. Uncanny Apparitions
Surfacing is undeniably a novel of visions: it contains several moments of epiphany, from the
heroine’s encounter with the murdered blue heron to her discovery of her father’s body in the
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lake and her subsequent encounter with her parents’ ghosts. 6 I contend that those epiphanies
often take place in a magic realist atmosphere. Uncanny descriptions and metaphors literally
pervade the novel from the first pages onward, creating a providential atmosphere for self-
discovery. Magic realism is omnipresent throughout the book, in the form of an improbable
collusion of animate and inanimate elements. A first example occurs when the heroine briefly
mentions her feeling of remoteness concerning her parents, identifying them as “mammoths
frozen in a glacier” (9), one of the numerous awe-inspiring metaphors of the novel. Indeed,
such images help creating a mysterious, uncanny atmosphere, typical of magic realism.
As in many of Atwood’s novels, the uncanny and frightening image of the maze 7 (31)
often appears, made even scarier because it refers to the wilderness, an unknown and
mysterious entity, literally surrounding and suffocating the village. Nature, i.e. the bush and
the lake, reveal themselves as tricky and sometimes lethal. Atwood, in her book of literary
criticism Survival, often refers to what she calls “death by landscape,” i.e. drowning or getting
lost in the woods, for instance, a phenomenon which she clearly singles out as typical of
Canadian literature. 8 As a magic realist phenomenon endowed with the power of killing,
nature is thus often omnipresent in the novel. This fear of the wilderness also emerges when,
6 Atwood herself has called Surfacing a ghost story in her interview with Graeme Gibson (Gibson 20).
7 Peter Klovan examines the maze motif in Surfacing. He mentions that the word “labyrinth” appears five times in the novel
and interprets it in terms of Jackson Knight’s definition in Virgil: Epic and Anthropology. He regards the maze as a boundary
between without and within, a place of obstruction and simultaneously a gate, a place of entrance (Klovan 8).
8 Chapter Two of Atwood’s book of criticism Survival indeed tackles the issue of “Death by Nature,” considering several
ways for the hero to die, from drowning to freezing, with perhaps as the most stunning case, the famous “death by bushing”
in which the character literally goes crazy because of his isolation. About this last possibility, Atwood writes: “Legends of
the Wendigo get connected with this one – the character sees too much of the wilderness, and in a sense becomes it, leaving
his humanity behind” (55). For a thorough description of death by nature in Canadian Literature, see Survival, 54-58. For a
complete analysis of the concept of wilderness in Atwood’s work, please consult chapter two of Coral Ann Howells’s book
on Margaret Atwood. The chapter, entitled “Atwood’s Canadian Signature: From Surfacing and Survival to Wilderness Tips,”
describes Atwood’s fiction as abounding in references to the Canadian literary tradition of explorers’ and animal stories
(Howells, Margaret Atwood, 22). Howells identifies the wilderness as a significant decor for the woman’s quest for identity
(24). She explains that “there is the outer world of landscape and society and there is the inner world of the narrator’s own
mind, where borders blur between realism and fantasy (25). The border-blur takes place in wilderness territory which
functions as an ideal site for dynamic transformations (25). The article thus clearly refers to the link which exists between the
wilderness setting and the narrator’s confused state of mind. Howells develops a similar point in her contribution to Lorraine
York’s book Various Atwoods (Howells, “It All Depends,” 47-69). See also Verena Bühler Roth’s Wilderness and the
Natural Environment. Margaret Atwood’s Recycling of a Canadian Theme.
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at the end of chapter five, the narrator recalls the games which she played with her brother
and father as a child. Indeed, looking for her father in the forest, she comments:
It’s like the times he used to play hide and seek with us in the semi-dark after
supper, it was different from playing in a house, the space to hide in was endless;
even when we knew which tree he had gone behind there was the fear that what
would come out when you called would be someone else (50).
This innocent childhood recollection may in fact be interpreted as an intimation of the
narrator’s fears as she engages on the quest for her father: indeed, this time, it is no longer a
game, and she really fear what she might discover in the wilderness concerning her father and
her own identity. Once again, the use of an uncanny, magic realist moment, here significantly
located at the end of the chapter, highlights one of the novel’s main themes: the existence of
evil within man and nature, and the possibility for the narrator to acknowledge this evil part of
herself, or, in other words, to accept her own hybrid self.
The bush repeatedly works as a magic realist presence, a living threat surrounded by
an aura of mystery. The heroine’s description of her childhood experience of the forest seems
at once frightening and surreal: “sometimes I was terrified, I would shine the flashlight ahead
of me on the path, I would hear a rustling in the forest and know it was hunting me, a bear, a
wolf or some indefinite thing with no name, that was worse” (73). Such terrifying vision of
the place receives a magic realist touch through its last allusion to something unknown, which
the narrator, now having reached adulthood, somehow fears all the more. The sentence creates
a mysterious, uncanny atmosphere, suitable to a quest pattern.
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Equally impressive is the narrator’s progressive realisation of her father’s death. The
heroine starts having doubts about her father’s sanity, a thought which perfectly fits the
gradual development of the novel’s mysterious, uncanny atmosphere. Indeed, the heroine
discovers clues to her father’s progressive loss of sanity, which she interprets as a kind of
metamorphosis: she believes that her father has disappeared in the forest and has gradually
become a half-human, half-animal monster. The occurrences of the father will therefore take
place in a magic realist context, which prompts us to relay the father to a trickster-figure. The
narrator first mentions the possibility of her father’s transformation when faced with his
incomprehensible drawings. The eerie nature of these drawings contributes to the magic
realist quality of her father’s presence. For instance, the narrator describes one of his drawings
as follows: “The drawing was something he saw, a hallucination; or it might have been
himself, what he thought he was turning into” (101). This quotation underlines the narrator’s
state of doubt as to what happened to her father. This atmosphere of mystery, typical of magic
realism, makes the novel’s outcome even more powerful, a sign of stylistic effectiveness.
Magic realism literally pervades the end of the book, which contains numerous allusions to
the presence of the narrator’s dead parents. This mode of writing enables the author to create
an atmosphere of terror, in which the supernatural finds a doorway to reality. One of the most
obvious examples is the evocation of the protagonist’s fear when she suspects that her
metamorphosed parents try and enter the house at night:
In the middle of the night silence wakes me, the rain has stopped. Blank dark, I can
see nothing, I try to move my hands but I can’t. The fear arrives like waves, like
footfalls, it has no center; it encloses me like armour, it’s my skin that is afraid,
rigid. They want to get in, they want me to open the windows, the door, they can’t
do it by themselves. I’m the only one, they are depending on me but I don’t know
any longer who they are; however they come back they won’t be the same, they will
have changed. I willed it, I called to them, that they should arrive is logical; but logic
is a wall, I built it, on the other side is terror.
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Above on the roof is the finger-tapping of water dripping from the trees. I hear
breathing, withheld, observant, not in the house but all around it (174).
This passage features an obvious magic realist quality in its allusions to ghostly presences, its
personification of the rain and its gradual insistence on the protagonist’s fear. Yet the
supernatural presence of the parents’ ghosts is still counterbalanced by the narrator’s
comment at the beginning at the next chapter, which intimates that the whole frightening
scene might be just a dream. This statement, however, does not undermine the magic realist
character of the scene, a dream-like atmosphere being one of the often cited components of a
magic realist mood. The scene further features a definite in-betweenness of mood – another
magic realist component – in which the everyday becomes alien (Delbaere, “Magic Realism,”
256).
Further, essential magic realist moments take place when the heroine last sees her
parents’ ghosts. 9 The first of those ghostly presences are her mother’s:
Then I see her. She is standing in front of the cabin, her hand stretched out, she is
wearing her grey leather jacket; her hair is long, down to her shoulders in the style
of thirty years ago, before I was born; she is turned half away from me, I can see
only the side of her face. She doesn’t move, she is feeding them: one perches on her
wrist, another on her shoulder. (…) I’m afraid, I’m cold with fear, I’m afraid it isn’t
real, paper doll cut by my eyes, burnt picture, if I blink she will vanish. (182).
9 In her book entitled Strategies for Identity, Eleonora Rao points to the link between those ghostly presences and the
heroine’s sense of otherness: “Unlike the Gothic tradition of the divided self where union between ‘self’ and ‘other’ hardly
ever takes place, in Surfacing there occurs an assimilation of the ‘other’ self, which is part of the regenerating process that
reveals to the protagonist the possibility of a different modality of being, of a different life” (Rao, Strategies, 27). Rao further
qualifies the end of the novel as “a literature of the ‘supernatural,’ which focuses on extra-sensory perceptions, delusions and
hallucinations” (28). These comments are in keeping with my own theory on the importance of deception in Atwood’s novels
and on the significance of magic realist moments of epiphany. Yet, I would like to highlight the fleetingness of such
strategies, as well as their failure to resolve the character’s quest permanently. They merely provide temporary glimpses of
awareness. Howells also offers interesting insights when she states that Atwood’s gothic, on a psychological level, provokes
the “erosion of boundaries between the self and the monstrous Other” (Howells, Margaret Atwood, 63).
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This passage once again contains references to the protagonist’s sensation of fear, but for
different reasons. The heroine does not fear the ghost. On the contrary, she tries not to lose
contact with it. In addition, the ghost takes the form of her mother at her own age, feeding
animals, another hint at the heroine’s difficult acknowledgement of her connection with
nature. The change in the heroine’s attitude towards the ghost, which similarly outstretches its
hand and turns to the protagonist, highlights the connection between them. The scene thus
marvellously demonstrates how the use of a magic realist moment can enhance the
significance of a scene and transform it into a fleeting moment of vision.
Even more impressive is the heroine’s contact with her father’s ghost, which
characteristically takes place near the lake:
He is standing near the fence with his back to me, looking in at the garden. (…)
He has realized he was an intruder; the cabin, the fences, the fires and paths were
violations; now his own fence excludes him, as logic excludes love. He wants it
ended, the borders abolished, he wants the forest to flow back into the places his
mind cleared: reparation.
I say Father.
He turns towards me and it’s not my father. It is what my father saw, the thing you
meet when you’ve stayed here too long alone.
(…)
It does nor approve of me or disapprove of me, it tells me it has nothing to tell me,
only the fact of itself.
(…)
I see now that although it isn’t my father it is what my father has become. I knew he
wasn’t dead (186-187).
The passage clearly conveys the same message as the one involving the mother: it highlights
the father’s connection with nature – often equating him with an animal – as a significant
element of the heroine’s own personality. As such, the excerpt can be read as a variant on the
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well-known Wendigo myth. Indeed, in Survival, Atwood mentions the famous “death by
bushing” in which the character’s loneliness causes him to become crazy. 10 About this type of
“death by nature,” Atwood writes: “Legends of the Wendigo get connected with this one – the
character sees too much of the wilderness, and in a sense becomes it, leaving his humanity
behind” (55). This is exactly the kind of experience alluded to in Surfacing. Moreover, it turns
out to be of great interest for a postcolonial reading of Atwood’s work, because she here
alludes to a native myth often used by First Nation writers as well.
Further, the father also turns towards his daughter, but the meaning of that gesture has
different implications. Indeed, the heroine soon realises that her presence does not interest her
father and that – most importantly – he does not judge her. Although it is not transmitted
linguistically, this comment constitutes the core of her father’s message to her, i.e. that she
must live without paying attention to people’s judgement. There lies the true meaning of her
quest for the acknowledgement of her hybrid self. Quite logically, this crucial element once
again shows up in a scene featuring obvious magic realist qualities, which make it
recognisable for the reader as a moment of vision. Symptomatically, at the end of the scene,
the heroine recognises footsteps as her own and turns back to normal life, now that she has
learned how to handle her hybridity with the help of two predominant trickster-like
characters, her mother and her father.
10 A larger account of the Wendigo and its occurrences in Canadian Literature can be found in the Clarendon
Lectures, collected and published under the title Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature
In the third lecture, Atwood addresses the theme of the Wendigo as depicted by male Canadian writers (Atwood,
Strange Things, 77-103). In the fourth, she examines the presence of the Wendigo myth in the writings of female
authors (107-140). In her conclusion, she quotes Surfacing as her own example of “woman-in-the-woods novel”
(139).
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All these instances of magic realism form a distinguishable kind of magic realism,
which I would call “gothic magic realism.” This type of magic realism features elements of
both mythic and grotesque realism, as described in Jeanne Delbaere’s article (Delbaere 256).
On the one hand, it is clearly connected with the character’s overwhelming experience of
nature. Her gradual awareness of the natural world brings her to a better understanding of
herself, when she eventually recovers her past by diving into the lake. This moment of
epiphany functions as an example of mythic magic realism, i.e. a form of magic realism
which borrows its images from the environment. On the other hand, the description of the
father’s corpse, as well as the narrator’s subsequent encounters with her parents’ ghost, rather
qualify as examples of grotesque magic realism, defined by Delbaere as the feeling of
strangeness that emerges from the interpenetration of different realms of reality. I would add
that Atwood’s combination of these two kinds of magic realism, together with her frequent
use of the supernatural can be interpreted as a different form of magic realism, which I call
“gothic magic realism,” due to the frequent presence of supernatural elements drawn from
gothic literature, such as ghosts, apparitions, monstrous creatures, old manors, labyrinthine
settings and to the ever present gloomy atmosphere. “Gothic” is indeed a frequent word in
Atwoodian criticism. 11 Again, this aspect of Atwood’s work can also be assessed in a
postcolonial way if we consider the use of gothic elements as a form of parody, enabling the
author to utter criticism about patriarchal values as often celebrated in the gothic tradition.
This aspect will however become more obvious in our analysis of Atwood’s next novel, Lady
Oracle. Moreover, the gothic element enables Atwood to introduce the uncanny into an
otherwise realistic plot. This introduction of the strangely monstrous into everyday reality is
11 For analyses of Atwood’s use of gothic, please read Ann McMillan’s article on Lady Oracle in
VanSpanckeren and Castro’s book on Atwood (McMillan 48-67). See also Alice Marie Palumbo’s dissertation
on the gothic in Atwood’s novels (Palumbo, The Recasting of Female Gothic). More recent is Verena Bühler
Roth’s analysis of the wilderness theme in Atwood’s work, which significantly identifies the gothic element as
part of Atwood’s postcolonial concern for the environment (Bühler 53-54).
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one of the techniques used by postcolonial writers. Indeed, the uncanniness consists in a
specific combination of the familiar and the unfamiliar, 12 and as such, perfectly refers to the
postcolonial concept of “otherness”. Keith Garebian, in his 1976 article on Surfacing, already
identified the narrator as different from other human beings and possessing the power “to
operate in several worlds simultaneously” (Garebian 8). Similarly, I contend that a magic
realist reading of the novel’s climactic scenes similarly emphasises the heroine’s “otherness”
in a postcolonial context. This gothic form of magic realism is characterised by an
overwhelming sense of the environment, be it urban or wild. It also features a quality of
strangeness of otherness and a propensity to resort to supernatural events. About these three
characteristics, one should of course mention the postcolonial implications of both the
environmental concern and the allusions to “otherness.” As to the supernatural aspect, it has
often been mentioned by critics as a fundamental element of Atwood’s writing.
4. The Narrator and her Parents: Inherited Tricksterism
While the narrator of Surfacing makes clear from the start that she chooses to appear as a
married woman in order not to subvert the social conventions of her childhood place, the
reader soon comes to realise that there is more to the heroine’s strange behaviour and that
he/she might also be the victim of her deception. As such, the narrator of Surfacing can be
regarded as an instance of a narrator as a trickster, 13 as will be demonstrated by means of
12 For a postcolonial analysis of the concept of uncanniness, please read Gerry Turcotte’s paper on the uncanny
in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan. Turcotte identifies the Freudian notion of uncanniness as “a central feature of Gothic
narratives in Canada and Australia” and as an essential element of postcolonial theory (Turcotte 123-5).
13 Although the concept of narrator as trickster is relatively recent in Atwoodian criticism, Keith Garebian, as
early as in 1976, alludes to the heroine’s trickster-like qualities when he writes : “The heroine is different in
degree and kind from other humans and this distinctiveness consists of a power to operate in several worlds
simultaneously” (Garebian 8). This interpretation also supports the theory of the significance of magic realism
which I have developed above.
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several elements from the novel. Other minor characters, related to the protagonist, also
exhibit trickster-like characteristics.
follows:
The narrator’s unreliable comment on her marital situation in chapter two reads as
“Your husband here too?” he asks irrelevantly.
“Yes, he’s here,” I say, skipping over the lie even in my own mind. (…) Joe will
do as a stand-in. My status is a problem, they obviously think I’m married. But I’m
safe, I’m wearing my ring, I never through it out, it’s useful for landladies. I sent
my parents a postcard after the wedding, they must have mentioned it to Paul; but
not the divorce. It isn’t part of the vocabulary here, there’s no reason to upset
them. I’m waiting for Madame to ask about the baby, I’m prepared, alerted, I’ll tell
her I left him in the city, he’s better off with my husband, former husband (23).
From this first passage about her former “husband”, the reader infers that the narrator here
resorts to deception, in order not to shock people. Yet, the unnatural, unemotional way in
which she alludes to her child, which she presumably left with her husband, already indicates
that some details in her assertions may be wrong. The subsequent reference to the barometer,
with its stereotyped woman with long skirt and apron and man with an axe (24), here
ironically refers to the heroine’s necessity to conform to socially imposed patterns. The
narrator’s allusion to her first encounter with her former “husband” equally strikes the reader
as totally emotionless (28). So is her account of how she ran away from her husband,
abandoning her child in the city (29). This lack of emotion in the narrator’s stream of
consciousness is a first indication that she might be leading the reader astray, instead of
revealing the truth about her situation. She later comments that she does not feel as homesick
as she anticipated (30), which again demonstrates her lack of emotional response. In the next
chapter, the narrator goes on mentioning her child in quite a peculiar way, emphasising her
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total refusal to get emotionally involved with the baby. For instance, she refused to try and
find names for it before it was born and felt like an “incubator” (34). From these comments,
the reader suspects that there was more to this pregnancy than what the narrator now
confesses to say. Once again, one wonders what he/she will discover about the narrator’s real
past and already feels deceived by her tale. In the next chapter, she mentions her divorce,
which she regards as an amputation (42). After that separation, she never felt whole again,
which suggests that she actually felt even more hybrid because of the failure of her love
relationship. Later on, when Joe tells her that she was talking in her sleep, she says that she no
longer dreams (43). This can be interpreted as follows: while it is clear from Joe’s sentence
that the heroine still dreams, she may also be so inhibited that her unconscious prevents her
from remembering these dreams. This interpretation corroborates the reader’s already strong
feeling that the heroine does not tell the truth about her past life, and that more will come to
light as the novel proceeds. Later, on the trail in the forest, she again recalls her husband,
confessing her lack of emotional commitment since the failure of her “marriage” (47). She
then reveals that Anna, her so-called close friend, and Joe, her lover, do not know about her
past and her baby. She says that they will never find out because she has no picture of the
baby, which seems odd. Of her child, she further adds: “I have to behave as though it doesn’t
exist, because for me it can’t, it was taken away from me, exported, deported. A section of my
own life, sliced off from me like a Siamese twin, my own flesh cancelled. Lapse, relapse, I
have to forget” (48). This quote clearly indicates that while definitely deceiving the reader,
the narrator also tries to deceive herself and to forget about her painful past. The narrator goes
even further, overtly alluding to the unreliability of her memories when she reflects:
I look around at the walls, the window; it’s the same, it hasn’t changed, but the
shapes are inaccurate as though everything has warped slightly. I have to be more
careful about my memories, I have to be sure they’re my own and not the memories
of other people telling me what I felt, how I acted, what I said: if the events are
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wrong the feelings I remember about them will be wrong too, I’ll start inventing
them and there will be no way of correcting it, the ones who could help are gone. I
run quickly over my version of it, my life, checking it as an alibi; it fits, it’s all there
till the time I left. Then, static, like a jumped track, for a moment I’ve lost it, wiped
clean; my exact age even, I shut my eyes, what is it? To have the past but not the
present, that means you’re going senile (73).
Such quote clearly demonstrates the narrator’s unreliability: indeed, she has reconstructed her
past life as a kind of alibi for what she has become, while her present version of herself is
blurred, even in her own mind.
Furthermore, the narrator often lies to other characters, especially as her quest has
actually begun. In chapter seven, for instance, when the characters organise a fishing trip, she
deliberately lies to Anna, telling her that she needs her in the boat for extra weight. In fact, she
is afraid of leaving her alone in the cabin, thinking that her mad father might reappear (62). In
the next chapter, she wonders what she will tell her friends in order to be left alone and thinks:
“I can’t tell them about my father, betray him; anyway they might think I was making it up
(…) I could tell them there isn’t enough food. But they’d spot that as a lie, there’s the garden
and the rows of cans on the shelves” (70). Once again, lying has become the heroine’s natural
behaviour.
The narrator’s first evocation of her trickster-like personality takes place at the end of
chapter three when she recounts the episode of her brother’s drowning, which occurred before
she was born. Yet, she claims having been the witness of this event (32), thus alluding to
some kind of supernatural powers. The narrator’s trickster-like nature becomes ever more
manifest as the second part of the novel unfolds. Indeed, right after her dive into the lake, the
narrator comments:
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I’m not sure when I began to suspect the truth, about myself and about them, what I
was and what they were turning into. Part of it arrived swift as flags, as mushrooms,
unfurling and sudden growth, but it was there is me, the evidence, only needing to
be deciphered. From where I am now, it seems as if I’ve always known, everything,
time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee in the darkening bedroom, I hold
inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do (76).
This passage first refers to the heroine’s gradual understanding of her evil role, the
acknowledgement of the existence of evil in herself and others being one of the novel’s main
themes. Yet, if we regard Surfacing as a novel belonging to the tradition of trickster
narratives, this passage can also be decoded as the heroine’s recognition of her trickster-like
behaviour and thus as an acceptance of her own and her parents’ hybridity. The interpretation
of the heroine as a trickster is supported by her reference to the possession of superior
knowledge. This feeling of omniscience eventually brings her to reveal the hidden version of
her past to the reader. It is confirmed in the next chapter, which starts with the narrator’s
prophecies concerning the weather, and subsequently foregrounds the absence of borders.
This draws the reader’s attention to the narrator’s capacity to transgress categories and pass
from the human realm into the animal world (83). The allusion to a folk tale, in which a king
displays the capacity to talk with animals (84), further reinforces this motif. The text also
refers to a heron colony, another important element regarding the subsequent role of the dead
bird in the heroine’s epiphany (85). The beginning of chapter eleven contains another allusion
to the heroine’s role as a trickster. Indeed, it suggests that the borders have been restored to
where they had been (92), thus indicating that everything is now ready for the heroine to
proceed on her quest.
The narrator’s first allusion to her father’s possible role as a trickster occurs early in
the novel, at the end of the third chapter, when she stresses her father’s fondness for
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camouflage (32), a typical characteristic of Atwood’s tricksters. The reader also suspects the
father’s trickster-like role in chapter six, when the narrator, thinking that her father is now
dead, starts examining what he left for her. Amongst his notes, she notices “a stiff childish
figure, faceless and minus the hands and feet, and on the next page a similar creature with two
things like tree branches or antlers protruding from its head” (59). Such description reminds
us of drawings representing Amerindian gods, which might indicate that the narrator’s father
has been in contact with such figures and might have acquired special knowledge, which
qualifies him as a trickster. When examining his notes, the heroine further comments: “I can’t
make sense out of them. The handwriting is my father’s, but changed, more hasty or careless”
(59). The fact that the narrator fails to understand those notes precisely causes her to proceed
on her quest. This “trickster text” left by the father thus constitutes a most important plot
element. Moreover, her subsequent remark about the change in her father’s writing might well
be a hint: if the father’s writing has changed so much, it may be due to a major transformation
in his personality, one caused by his contact with a higher level of knowledge as a trickster
figure. Indeed, the narrator then comes to think that her father might not be dead but insane
because of his staying too long alone in the bush (60). Since he might still be alive, it becomes
her duty to search for him and, though reluctantly, to continue her quest.
The father’s tricksterish-like features fully come to the fore in chapter twelve, when
his daughter discovers additional notes and drawings. The latter show descriptions of half-
human, half-animal creatures which can unmistakably be associated with Amerindian spirits.
The pictographs, which play a pivotal role in the heroine's spiritual progress, recall Algonkian
rock art. Interestingly, this archaic art form is linked to shamanic practices and dreams. 14
14 See Marie-Françoise Guédon, “Surfacing: Amerindian Themes and Shamanism,” 94. Also see Kathryn
VanSpanckeren’s article “Shamanism in the Works of Margaret Atwood.”
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Atwood's petroglyphs 15 refer to two main characters in Ojibwa-Cree mythology: May-may-
gway-shi, the rock spirit, and Mis-shi-pi-zhiw, the Great Snake, of which the narrator gives an
accurate description: “The body was long, a snake or a fish; it had four limbs or arms and a
tail and on the head were two branched horns. Lengthwise it was like an animal, an alligator;
upright it was more human, but only in the positions of the arms and the front-facing eyes”
(101). When associated with this divinity, the father clearly appropriates its supernatural
powers and reveals himself as the trickster-shaman, who accompanies his daughter on her
quest. An article found among her father’s notes further establishes those entities as “powerful
or protective spirits” (102). This motif is reinforced by the predominance of the red colour
(103), traditionally associated with the flesh, as is the trickster, famous for its sensuousness
and its sexual appetite. Those drawings contribute to the plot development as they reveal a
topographic name, “White Birch Lake” (104). The latter shows the heroine how to proceed
with her quest. The narrator significantly uses the word “portage” (104) to refer to the
connection to the main lake, a word choice which again draws the reader’s attention to the
advancement of the quest. After passing the second portage, the narrator makes a second
allusion to a fish, which clearly represents the non-fragmented animal stage to which she
longs to return. This fish, a symbol of the narrator’s desire to experience an animal state of
being is literally sacrificed and symbolically alludes to the Christian values of non-violence
and self-renunciation. Moreover, it also contributes to the heroine’s gradual acknowledgement
of the existence of evil in mankind, as is mentioned in this crucial passage:
Thud of metal on fishbone, skull, neckless headbody, the fish is whole, I couldn’t
any more, I had no right to. We didn’t need it, our proper food was tin cans. We
15 Diana Brydon provides an interesting postcolonial explanation for the presence of those petroglyphs in the
novel: from a postcolonial point of view, she regards the novel as a recognition of the genocide perpetrated on
First Nations peoples. The petroglyphs here function as a hint to interpret the narrator’s guilt as metaphoric of
Canada’s (Brydon, “Beyond Violent Dualities,” 52).
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were committing this act, violation, for sport or amusement or pleasure, recreation
they call it, these were no longer the right reasons (120).
These words clearly indicate that the novel represents more than a woman’s discovery of her
inner self and of her past. It addresses the theme of the existence of evil and of our
responsibility in senseless violence and destruction of our natural environment. The heroine’s
awareness of evil functions as a condition for her to fulfil her quest, as a necessary stage of
her psychological development. This particular epiphany enables her to acknowledge her
hybrid nature: half-human/half-animal, half-innocent/half guilty. It culminates in chapter
fifteen when she realises that the hunters, whom she mistook for Americans, are in fact
Canadians like herself. She then thinks: “I was furious with them, they’d disguised
themselves” (128). The chapter then goes on with references to Hitler as the embodiment of
evil and episodes from the woman’s childhood, in which she cruelly tore apart one of her
dolls. Atwood’s treatment of the theme of evil culminates in the protagonist’s intimation that
evil resides in our heart:
It wasn’t the city that was wrong, the inquisitors in the schoolyard, we weren’t better
than they were; we just had different victims. To become like a little child again, a
barbarian, a vandal: it was in us too, it was innate (132).
In addition to mentioning the heroine’s awareness of her own dark side, this passage clearly
refers to the need for her to undergo a regression to a barbarian, animal, childish
developmental stage which enables her to acknowledge her own hybridity.
Subsequently, the narrator follows the trail of her father as she attempts to
understand the meaning of a trickster’s jokes. Chapter fifteen shows the heroine’s discovery
of her father’s numerous hints: “he had been here” (126), “he hadn’t followed the rules, he’s
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cheated, I wanted to confront him” (127). About his trickster-like behaviour, she reflects: “I’d
reasoned it out, unravelled the clues in his puzzle the way he taught us and they’d led
nowhere. I felt as though he’d lied to me” (127). All these quotes reveal the deceptive
character of the father’s intervention in his daughter’s quest. Yet, the last sentence also
emphasises his role in the heroine’s decision to continue on her journey: he clearly acts as a
catalyst, who, by forcing the protagonist to discover what has happened to him, also induces
her to question what she has become. She then comes to realise that this discovery will
necessarily take place in the water and that she has to dive into the lake (133). Yet, her
encounter with her father’s dead body at the bottom of the lake does not deprive her from his
trickster-like features: she remains hybrid. Indeed, when returning to the shore, the heroine
displays a need to perform a series of rituals which rather confirm her belief in supernatural,
trickster-like entities: “These gods, here on the shore or in the water, unacknowledged or
forgotten, were the only ones who had ever given me anything I needed; and freely” (145).
This sentence clearly states the benevolent attitude of the novel’s trickster figures.
Furthermore, it demonstrates the role which they play in the heroine’s quest for self-
knowledge.
The portrait of the narrator’s mother is also highly relevant. This woman seems
endowed with magic knowledge, with supernatural powers. A childhood episode where the
mother confronts a bear demonstrates her exceptional abilities:
it materialized on the path, snuffling along bulky and flat-footed, an enormous
fanged rug, returning for more. My mother stood up and walked towards it; it
hesitated and grunted. She yelled a word at it that sounded like “Scat!” and waved
her arms, and it turned around and thudded off into the forest.
That was the picture I kept, my mother seen from the back, arms upraised as though
she was flying, and the bear terrified. When she told the story later she said she’d
been scared to death but I couldn’t believe that, she had been so positive, assured, as
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if she knew a foolproof magic formula: gesture and word. She was wearing her
leather jacket (79).
The narrator strongly believes in her mother’s trickster-like nature. She attributes to her
mother the magic of the trickster: she is able to frighten the bear with a single word and
gesture. Moreover, the mother is wearing a leather jacket, in other words an animal skin, in
order to underline her connection to the realm of nature. The mother is further associated to
forebodings in one of the heroine’s childhood memories: she forces her children to watch the
birds from indoors in order not to frighten them (93), an attitude which both stresses the
mother’s connection with nature and her supernatural powers. Symptomatically, the narrator’s
encounter with her dead father is not sufficient to guarantee her survival once she returns to
society. She still needs to face her mother’s ghost in order to receive a hidden message or gift:
More than ever I needed to find it, the thing she had hidden; the power from my
father’s intercession wasn’t enough to protect me, it gave only knowledge and there
were more gods than his, his were the gods of the head, antlers rooted in the brain.
Not only how to see but how to act (153).
The difference between the father’s and the mother’s inheritances comes to the fore in this
passage. The father’s legacy concerns knowledge. Having learned more about herself, the
narrator still needs to find out how to act in society, a gift which can only be contributed by a
fellow female trickster-like figure, namely her dead mother. She eventually finds her mother’s
gift in the form of one of her own scrapbooks, which contains a very important drawing:
On the left was a woman with a round moon stomach: the baby was sitting up inside
her gazing out. Opposite her was a man with horns on his head like cow horns and a
barbed tail.
The picture was mine, I had made it. The baby was myself before I was born, the
man was God, I’d drown him when my brother learned in the winter about the Devil
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and God: if the Devil was allowed a tail and horns, God needed them also, they were
advantages.
That was what the pictures had meant then but their first meaning was lost now like
the meanings of the rock paintings. They were my guides, she had saved them for
me, pictographs, I had to read their new meaning with the help of the power. The
gods, their likenesses: to see them in their true shape is fatal. While you are human;
but after the transformation they could be reached. First I had to immerse myself in
the other language (158).
The importance of the mother as a trickster figure, and, on a more general level, of the female
nature of the protagonist is manifest. Indeed, returning to her childhood drawings, the heroine
grows aware of the importance of motherhood. Having integrated her painful past experience
and the guilt caused by her abortion, she can now face a return to society. Before starting on
her journey back to civilisation she eventually feels the need of conceiving a child – i.e.
acknowledging her female and instinctive hybrid nature.
5. Animal Regression as Quest for Hybridity
In my interpretation of the last part of the novel, the importance given to the heroine’s
regression to animal life highlights her struggle to be accepted as hybrid. The book features
several characters who display difficulties to adjust to society. From the start, the protagonist
is said to be alienated and gives the reader the impression that she has not found her place in
society yet and longs for a certain kind of recognition. At the beginning of the novel, for
instance, Anna practices palmistry and hints at the narrator’s alienation: indeed, when reading
the narrator’s hand, Anna explains: “You had a good childhood, but then there’s this funny
break” (8), which constitutes a first allusion to the heroine’s hybrid state. Further, the film
made by the heroine’s fellow travellers functions as an effective metaphor for their
fragmented identities: indeed, it consists of a series of bits and pieces, put together at random,
and failing to achieve significance, thus comparable to the characters’ chaotic life. As the
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narrator puts it at the very beginning of the book: “How can you tell what to put in if you
don’t already know what it is about?” (10), a remark that shows her total incomprehension of
the project. Further, it also applies to her own identity. Later, she comes closer to her moment
of epiphany, to her acknowledgement of the existence of evil, to her understanding of animal
cruelty even in herself. The narrator repeatedly stresses her feelings of numbness, her lack of
sensitivity, which can be explained by her obvious reaction to the more instinctive aspect of
her personality. She clearly expresses her fear of dying for displaying emotions which are not
really hers:
I rehearsed emotions, naming them: joy, peace, guilt, release, love and hate, react,
relate; what to feel was like what to wear, you watched the others and memorized it.
But the only thing there was the fear that I wasn’t alive: a negative, the difference
between the shadow of a pin and what it’s like when you stick it in your arm, in
school caged in the desk I used to do that, with pen-nibs and compass points too,
instruments of knowledge, English and Geometry, they’ve discovered rats prefer any
sensation to none. The inside of my arms were stippled with tiny wounds, like an
addict’s. They slipped the needle into the vein and I was falling down, it was like
diving, sinking from one layer of darkness to a deeper, deepest; when I rose up
through the aesthetic, pale green and then daylight, I could remember nothing (111).
The heroine’s state of numbness, together with her need to mimic emotions instead of really
living them, come to the fore. Further, she inflicts pain on herself with the help of what she
calls “instruments of knowledge”, thereby associating knowledge to guilt, a feeling she is
incapable of experiencing. Moreover, Atwood’s dexterity shows in the image of the needle,
associating a childhood episode with the heroine’s deeper secret, her abortion. At this stage,
the association of compass needles with a totally different, surgical atmosphere intimates that
there is more to the narrator’s numbness than the pain of mere childhood alienation. Indeed,
the last lines of the quote definitely refer to a deeper, more tragic kind of trauma, which, as
the narrator confesses, has caused a total loss of memory – or an irresistible need to deceive.
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The narrator also constantly emphasises her own emotional emptiness, her inability to love
and share feelings, a state which stands at the core of her desire to engage on her quest for self
knowledge. Talking of David and herself, she observes: “we are the ones who don’t know
how to love, there is something essential missing in us, we were born that way, Madame at
the store with one hand, atrophy of the heart” (137). The heroine compares her state to a
handicap, because it prevents her from living a normal life. Yet, she also mentions that she
was born with it.
After her descent into the lake, the narrator acquires a different vision of herself,
which forces her to acknowledge her hybridity. She then engages on an inward journey,
which takes the form of a regression to animal behaviour, in the hope of gaining knowledge of
how to behave in the patriarchal world. This phase of regression involves a series of rituals:
feeding the dead (155), not being allowed in certain places (175-176, 178), washing her hands
(176), dropping her wedding ring into the fire (176), burning her father’s book (177), slashing
a knife through her parents’ clothes (177), eating natural food, red one if possible (179). She
believes that those rules will enable her to establish contact with her dead parents, who,
through their own trickster-like hybrid nature, might function as guides towards a more
spiritual way of life. The whole scene naturally involves a last dive into the lake (178), as a
ritual of purification which enables the protagonist to achieve vision. The heroine’s
understanding of her dead parents’ message contains clear hints at an acceptance of hybridity.
It works as a plea for open-mindedness:
Now I understand the rule. They can’t be anywhere that’s marked out, enclosed:
even if I opened the doors and fences they could not pass in, to houses and cages,
they can move only in the spaces between them, they are against borders. To talk
with them I must approach the condition they themselves have entered; in spite of
my hunger I must resist the fence, I’m too close now to turn back (180).
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This allusion to the border echoes the heroine’s perpetual feeling of “otherness.” Moreover,
the protagonist eventually accepts her difference – as this is probably the substance of her
parents’ message to her. This acceptance of her “otherness,” described as a difficult, painful
process, involves the heroine’s literal starvation. It symbolises her struggle to achieve self-
knowledge. The feeling of communion with nature which she then experiences makes her call
out “I am a tree”, “I am a place” (181). Evidently, she has accepted her animal component, as
a first step towards her integration into society.
Finally, the heroine’s most vivid realisation of her hybridity occurs when she decides
to return to normal life. Watching her reflection in the mirror, she thinks:
In it there’s a creature neither animal nor human, furless, only a dirty blanket,
shoulders huddled over into a crouch, eyes staring blur as eyes from the deep
sockets; the lips move by themselves. This was the stereotype, straws of hair, talking
nonsense or not talking at all. To have someone to speak to and words that can be
understood: their definition of sanity (190).
The heroine is thus faced with her own in-betweenness, whereby she gains an awareness of
the dangers of her regressive attitude. She understands that her quest for hybridity, far from
being limited to the discovery of her animal side, also includes the acceptance of social
conventions in order to evade insanity. This constitutes a crucial moment in the heroine’s
psychological development, since it initiates her return to society – be it successful or not.
6. Surfacing or the Story of a Single Woman’s Alterity
Numerous critics have thoroughly analysed Surfacing as a female quest novel. Personally, I
contend that the quest pattern followed by the heroine should be given a postcolonial
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interpretation. This section studies the development of the plot, emphasising the distinctive
elements which point to the heroine’s progress in her quest, referring to Annis Pratt’s
theory 16 of the female quest pattern. She identifies the five stages of such a journey: a splitting
off from the familiar environment, an encounter with the green world guide, then with the
green-world lover, a confrontation with the parental figures and a dive into the unconscious.
As I shall demonstrate, these last three stages have been inverted in Surfacing, thus laying
emphasis on the protagonist’s search for hybridity and on a typically postcolonial concern for
the environment.
The heroine’s quest begins in the initial moments of the novel, with this oft-quoted
sentence: “Now we’re on my home ground, foreign territory. My throat constricts, as it
learned to do when I discovered people could say words that would go into my ears meaning
nothing. To be deaf and dumb would be easier” (11). Such an introduction undeniably draws
the reader’s attention to the heroine’s anxiety when facing the discoveries to be made.
Moreover, it alludes to the heroine’s alienation when mentioning her inability to understand
words spoken in another language. This can be regarded as an allusion to the heroine’s early
sense of hybridity as a child, an English speaking person living on a French speaking territory
where she never thoroughly felt at home. The heroine’s growing feeling of alienation as an
adult is further demonstrated by her saying that she cannot find her way anymore (12): she
16 In Davidson’s The Art of Margaret Atwood, Pratt provides us with another analysis of Surfacing, featuring
seven distinctive stages (Pratt, “Surfacing and the Rebirth Journey,” 139-157). I personally prefer to rely on the
more basic five-stage quest pattern, because it turns out to be applicable, with a few nuances, to all of Atwood’s
novels.
Another interesting development of the quest theory in Atwood’s Surfacing can be found in Arnold and Cathy
Davidson’s article “The Anatomy of Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing,” which analyses the book in reference to
Northrop Frye’s notion of romance quest in his book Anatomy of Criticism. Frye distinguishes between three
stages: the perilous journey, the struggle, and the exaltation of the hero (Frye, Anatomy, 187). Bouson-Brooks
develops the same argument in her book Brutal Choreographies, in which she describes Surfacing as a
subversive rewriting of traditional romance plots. So does Josie Campbell in her article “The Woman as Hero in
Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing.” While those three stages are undeniably present in Surfacing, I find Pratt’s
pattern, with its connection to nature, more in keeping with postcolonial and hybridity theories.
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has become totally estranged from the place where she grew up, its conventions and its
traditions, to which she actually never really belonged, as is revealed later in the novel.
Another element indicates that the heroine engages on a quest: at the end of the first chapter,
she comments “I feel deprived of something, as though I can’t really get here unless I’ve
suffered” (15), which implies that her journey will necessarily be a painful one.
Chapter two further highlights the heroine’s hybrid nature, mentioning her lack of
knowledge of French, a language which surrounded her throughout her childhood (19). This
and the following chapter further describe the narrow-mindedness of the social conventions
which dominated the heroine’s childhood (18, 25). In this small French-speaking village, lost
in the wilderness, the heroine’s family definitely stood out as different, as emblematic of the
“other.” As she puts it: “my family was, by reputation, peculiar as well as anglais” (20). The
heroine’s “otherness” is thus regarded as inherited from her parents, even more deeply-rooted
than when it results from a personal choice. Language is further identified as one of the
distinctive features of the heroine’s hybrid nature: it allows the narrator to be deceptive and
prevents the heroine from relating to her environment. The description of her mother’s visits
to Madame (21), which are characterised by a lack of communication, once again stresses the
“otherness” of the heroine’s family. Moreover, the heroine’s fascination, as a child, for
Madame’s amputated arm, metaphorically alludes to her own feeling of fragmentation.
Further, in the next chapter, the description of the place as “border country” (26) also
metaphorically alludes to the heroine’s hybridity: she was brought up there, while really
belonging somewhere else. Chapter three brings the narrator closer to the place where she
lived as a child and offers more details about her father’s disappearance. The apparent reason
for the quest is thus established: the narrator needs to find her lost father. The end of the
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chapter significantly contains allusions to the possibility for both father and daughter to
function as the novel’s trickster figures. Chapter four confirms the father’s absence and
features the narrator’s presence in the log cabin with her friends, before embarking on a more
thorough exploration of the place. The chapter further contains more strange allusions to the
heroine’s past and to the nature of evil, two elements which constitute the core of the
heroine’s social inadequacy. Chapter five follows the four characters in search for the
heroine’s father in the forest. The heroine’s actual quest has not begun yet: it is by definition a
solitary, introspective experience, which only takes place when she leaves her friends behind.
Indeed, while the next chapter starts with the heroine’s satisfaction and her wish to return to
the city, she soon changes her mind and goes on with her exploration.
The next chapter is crucial in the novel’s development because the discovery of her
father’s notes makes the narrator suspect his insanity. He might still be alive, which prompts
her to start her actual quest: the narrator both hopes and fears discovering more about her
father. The next chapter significantly contains the first appearance of the blue heron (63), a
symbol of the heroine’s self-induced victimisation, here described as flying away, while the
heroine embarks on her quest. In chapter eight, she expresses her wish to be left alone (70),
but does not know how to get rid of her three friends. At the end of the chapter, the narrator
leaves her friends behind and dives into the lake (75). The first step of her quest – isolation
from the group to explore further her own personality – has taken place. Indeed, just before
diving, she recalls an episode from her childhood where her brother almost drowned. She
believes that such an incident endows someone with special knowledge. The diver necessarily
comes back with secrets, which she now wishes to apprehend for herself.
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From chapter ten onwards, the quest proceeds towards its second stage, namely the
encounter with what Pratt calls “the green world guide or token.” In this case, it takes the
form of the encounter with a dead heron, which epitomises the narrator’s guilt and her need to
face the existence of evil. Several elements, immediately preceding this event, indicate its
importance in the quest development: a number of allusions are made to the passing of
portages and the departure on a fishing trip. In chapter thirteen, the narrator mentions being at
“the beginning of the path” (113). The numerous fish images eventually lead to the epiphanic
vision of the dead heron:
It was behind me, I smelled it before I saw it; then I heard the flies. The smell was
like decaying fish. I turned around and it was hanging upside down by a thin blue
nylon rope tied round its feet and looped over a tree branch, its wings fallen open. It
looked at me with its mashed eye (115).
The narrator first becomes conscious of the heron’s presence because of its smell, a sign that
she is ready to let her animal instincts take the lead. Moreover, the dead heron also gains its
significance as epiphanic presence through its Christ-like position, its function as a redeemer
for the narrator’s crime and as a symbol for her growing sense of guilt. The bird’s eye,
focussed on the narrator, highlights the fact that faking innocence is no longer possible for the
protagonist, and that she must explore the depth of her guilt. The importance of the heroine’s
gradual reconnection with nature is emphasised as she passes the second portage, which
brings her closer to self knowledge. She describes it as “shorter but more thickly overgrown:
leaves brushed, branches pushed into the corridor of air over the trail as though preventing”
(117). Nature’s hostile attitude constitutes one of the obstacles facing the protagonist, from
whom the lake, at this stage of her quest, still remains hidden.
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As they finally get closer to the water, its description strikes the reader as
unfathomable. When dipping her face into it, the narrator thinks: “This water was not clear
like the water in the main lake: it was brownish, complicated by more kinds of life crowded
more closely together, and it was colder” (125). This coldness, combined with the presence of
various life forms, indicates the narrator’s growing feeling of discomfort in the face or her
experience of self-discovery and her gradual awareness of nature’s life force. As a
consequence, a quest journey necessarily involves an acknowledgement of the supremacy of
nature and an acceptance of physical and psychological pain. The heroine’s dive into the lake
represents the third stage of the quest pattern, namely the exploration of her unconscious. It
begins with a reference to the sacrificed heron, treated as a Christ-like figure (140). It both
represents man’s tendency towards evil and the narrator’s desperate need for redemption. The
introduction to the chapter also emphasises the dangerous character of the dive, referred to as
“hazardous” (140). The reader soon realises the importance of the event for the heroine: “My
other shape was in the water, not my reflection but my shadow, foreshortened, outline blurred,
rays streaming out from around the head” (141). The scene clearly expresses the importance
of the moment in terms of psychological knowledge: the reference to the shadow is highly
efficient, both as a symbol of the heroine’s hidden past and, on a larger scale, as a sign of her
awareness of a collective unconscious in the Jungian sense of the word. The narrator expects
an encounter with her father in trickster-like form, whom she imagines as a “lizard body with
horns and tail and front-facing head” (141), a description which once again stresses her need
for a communion with nature. The narrator further encounters a shadow hidden in the lake,
probably the body of her dead father, which reminds her of her aborted baby:
It was there but it wasn’t a painting, it wasn’t on the rock. It was below me, drifting
towards me from the furthest level where there was no life, a dark oval trailing
limbs. It was blurred but it had eyes, they were open, it was something I knew about,
a dead thing, it was dead (142).
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Although the identification of this dark figure with the lost father is never made explicit, the
reader understands that the narrator has reached stage four of her quest – i.e. the confrontation
with parental figures – a stage which is developed further on in the remaining chapters. One
should also notice that Atwood here chooses to postpone traditional stage three – the
intervention of the green-world lover – to a later phase of the heroine’s coming to awareness.
Indeed, at the end of the novel, Joe, in the role of the green-world lover, initiates the heroine’s
return to civilisation and forces her to acknowledge her hybridity. The heroine’s dive into her
unconscious, into her deeply buried past reveals her abortion to the reader:
At first I thought it was my drowned brother, hair floating around the face, image I’d
kept from before I was born; but it couldn’t be him, he had not drowned after all, he
was elsewhere. Then I recognized it: it wasn’t ever my brother I’d been
remembering, that had been a disguise.
I knew when it was, it was in a bottle curled up, staring out at me like a cat pickled;
it had huge jelly eyes and fins instead of hands, fish gills, I couldn’t let it out, it was
dead already, it had drowned in air. It was there when I woke up, suspended in the
air above me like a chalice, an evil grail and I thought, Whatever it is, part of myself
or a separate creature, I killed it. It wasn’t a child but it could have been one, I didn’t
allow it (143).
This awe-inspiring passage strikes the reader both through its magic realist quality and
through its importance in the plot development. Indeed, the heroine’s child has become an in-
between creature: he is at once a highly realistic corpse and a living, monstrous fish. The
grotesque character of the figure’s huge eyes and the fish-like characteristics of its body
contribute to the magic realist atmosphere of the epiphanic scene, because it juxtaposes
human and animal beings in one and the same creature. Moreover, the quotation takes its
whole meaning in the light of the narrator’s own interpretation of it, while she simultaneously
confesses her deceptive forgeries:
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That was wrong, I never saw it. They scraped it into a bucket and threw it wherever
they throw them, it was travelling through the sewers by the time I woke, back to the
sea (…) Not even a hospital, not even that sanction of legality, official procedures. A
house it was, shabby front room with magazines, (…) furtive doors and whispers,
they wanted you out fast. Pretence of the non-nurse (…) her criminal hand on my
elbow (…) Ring on my finger. It was all real enough, it was enough reality for ever,
I couldn’t accept it, that mutilation, ruin I’d made, I needed a different version. I
pieced it together the best way I could, flattening it, scrapbook, collage, pasting over
the front parts. A faked album, the memories fraudulent as passports; but a paper
house was better than none and I could almost live in it, I’d lived in it until now
(143-144).
This highly significant passage fully reveals the delusion of which the reader has been the
victim: there was no wedding, no husband, just a clandestine abortion in a sordid place,
without any consideration for the woman who underwent it. Words such as “different
version,” “pieced together,” “faked,” and “fraudulent” all refer to the deceptive aspect of the
heroine’s narrative. Moreover, they emphasise the painfulness of her situation and her
reluctance to face it. Indeed, the narrator goes on describing how she felt incapable of
revealing the truth to her parents (144). She further acknowledges her guilt in what happened
when she finally concludes “I could have said no but I didn’t; that made me one of them too, a
killer” (145), a sentence which sounds like the confession of a crime.
When she then returns to the other characters, she enters yet another phase of her
quest, which traditionally takes place earlier and consists of the heroine’s encounter with a
green-world lover, who usually helps her proceed on her quest. In this case, Joe helps the
protagonist return to social life by assisting her through her regressive animal stage. One
significant point here is that the heroine has now learned to tell the truth: indeed, she
immediately tells Joe that she does not love him (146), a statement which totally changes the
sexual power politics of their relationship. Their relationship is from now on free from
patriarchal empowerment and becomes different from the one she had with her former lover.
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Chapter twenty signals a major episode in the character’s quest for hybridity. Indeed,
this chapter describes the protagonist’s ultimate stage of animal regression, which culminates
in conceiving a child with her animal-lover Joe. Several elements underline the lover’s
animal-like nature: he “unzips his human skin” (160), the importance of smells (160), the
heroine’s claim that he must learn “to see in the dark” and “grow more fur” (161). The animal
aspect of the lover is praised by the protagonist, as a necessary component of her quest for her
hybrid self. She comments: “he’s given me the part of himself I needed” (162). This
acceptance of her pregnancy demonstrates the heroine’s new ability to acknowledge her
femininity. It also hints at a different attitude towards evil. Indeed, whereas she now fully
accepts evil as a natural component of a human being. She can resist and refuse to be a victim.
This attitude will certainly be of the utmost importance for her return to patriarchal society.
Her subsequent description of the dead heron as “the creature in me” (168) echoes this
acceptance of evil.
The heroine’s tears, her sudden anger at her parents for dying and leaving her
behind, her outcry “Here I am (…) I’m here!” (172) express her new willingness to voice her
feelings and to take her place in society. She eventually concludes her quest with a final
meeting with her parents’ ghosts. This encounter shows her how to behave when she returns
to society with her new understanding of her hybridity. Her father teaches her how to think,
while her mother shows her how to act. Endowed with this new knowledge, she comes out of
her quest with an acknowledgement of her otherness, symbolised by her future baby – a
“time-traveller,” “the first true human” (191). This description of her potential child sounds as
a glorification of her hybrid condition, which she – at least temporarily – integrates through
maternity.
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***
As Atwood’s second novel, Surfacing clearly contains the five elements which I have
previously identified as postcolonial traits, i.e. metafictional comment, mimicking behaviour
on the protagonist’s part, magic realist epiphanies, trickster-like figures and a quest pattern
oriented towards an acknowledgement of the heroine’s hybridity.
As always in Atwood’s work, the novel literally abounds in literary allusions, which
have formed the subject of numerous critical interpretations. I personally have chosen to
highlight Atwood’s metafictional and parodic intent concerning language, which pervades the
novel. Indeed, I believe that a subversion of the patriarchal order necessarily involves a
questioning of language, because the discourse imposed on and used by the heroine always
echoes the values of the dominant class. The heroine’s gradual rejection of language should
therefore be interpreted as a subversive strategy.
The same can be said of her propensity to project an image of herself that fits the
expectations of the dominant class. Indeed, the protagonist has created a false-self system: she
wants people to believe that she is married and had a child. Even as an artist, she submits to
the patriarchal claim that women cannot be real artists by, once again, mimicking other
people’s art. Mimicry has become the heroine’s most effective survival strategy in a world
which wants to impose a certain kind on behaviour on her. The heroine clearly tries to resist
the process of self-discovery and desperately holds on to logic and realism, while she at times
experiences moments of vision, which are set in a magic realist atmosphere. In Kristevan
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terms, she briefly abandons the realm of the Symbolic to turn to the Semiotic and to
acknowledge a more instinctive aspect of her personality (Rao, Strategies, 60-64).
The heroine acquires a similar awareness when she unravels her trickster powers and
gradually discovers that she has inherited them from her parents, who both accompany her as
awe-inspiring, yet benevolent figures throughout her quest. Both parents display trickster-like
qualities and serve as guides for the heroine. The father clearly represents the mind, the
Symbolic, who leaves behind seemingly illogical clues for the heroine to follow, while the
mother, associated to nature and pregnancy, teaches her daughter how to act as a woman in
society.
However, the heroine’s return to that society necessitates a profound understanding of
her otherness, of her hybridity, which she can only experience through a complete regression
to a natural way of life. Atwood has here significantly chosen to differ from the common
quest pattern by postponing the animal phase, to emphasise the importance of the heroine’s
struggle to acknowledge her hybrid self. Whereas some critics read the outcome of Surfacing
as the resolution of the heroine’s trauma, I would rather conclude that the protagonist turns
back to society having gained some insights on how to apprehend her role as a woman in a
male-dominated milieu.
In the famous episode of the dive into the lake, Margaret Atwood develops a powerful
metaphor of postcolonial acknowledgement of identity: the heroine decides to discover her
spiritual in-betweenness under the guise of a search for her lost father. Atwood shows us how
the fragmented, self-victimised individual, so ill at ease within patriarchal culture penetrates a
totally different realm thanks to the acceptance of her own “otherness.” The narrator achieves
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a magic realist fusion with the wilderness. She then embraces nature’s modes of
communication when regressing to an animal stage and confronting her parents’ ghosts. This
exploration of an unknown territory is another characteristic of postcolonial writing (Brydon;
Tiffin, “The Thematic Ancestor,” 89-93).
Hybridity itself has proved a useful concept in order to analyse the protagonist’s
response to the wilderness. My conclusion points to the importance of nature in the heroine’s
quest for her hybrid self. In many instances, the heroine’s feeling of “otherness” and
inadequacy is amplified and distorted by her immersion in wilderness. The outcome of the
heroine’s quest therefore eludes any simple conclusion. Nature reverberates her progressive
disintegration of the self, a process which forces her to question her identity. To this dramatic
disintegration corresponds a growing awareness of the wilderness, a closer connection with
trickster’s spirit, and a rising concern for the environment. All those features are subtly
intermingled in Surfacing, a novel which, although it was published as early as 1972 by a so-
called “mainstream” writer, can be read from a postcolonial point of view. Atwood’s next
novel, Lady Oracle, offers the reader another aspect of the writer’s talent. In a highly comical
mode, it challenges the stereotypes of femininity, thus addressing in yet another way the
theme of empowerment.
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Chapter 3. Lady Oracle: Joan Foster as Trickster
“But it wasn’t more honesty that
would have saved me, I thought; it
was more dishonesty. In my
experience, honesty and expressing
your feelings could lead to only one
thing. Disaster” (Lady Oracle, 37).
Joan Foster, Lady Oracle’s protagonist, is Atwood’s first fully conscious liar. As such, she
deserves a thorough analysis. The plot starts with Joan simulating her own death to escape
from a dull, unsatisfying life. As a child, she became conscious of her parents’ indifference
and unhappiness and tried to cope with this situation by developing a double personality: at
home, she was deliberately quiet and “comatose,” while outside her family circle, her
enthusiasm made her very popular among her friends. She later completely denies her
childhood, panicking each time she meets someone who might recognise her. When she
leaves home, she constructs a new self by losing weight and concealing her former life, even
to her husband. Joan masters disguise and camouflage. As a writer of Gothic romances, an
acknowledged poet or even as the lover of the ex-centric Royal Porcupine, she develops a
different self each time. The character of Joan Foster, with her fancy for disguises and make-
up and her multiple false selves, provides an ideal case-study of trickster figures. Moreover,
the Royal Porcupine, one of her lovers, with his exuberant clothes, harsh humour and
borderline behaviour, can also be considered a parody of the trickster figure, as he features all
of the trickster’s most excessive and grotesque aspects. Joan’s father and her Aunt Lou also
display several tricksters’ characteristics.
Yet, apart from its deception motif and its multi-faceted trickster figures, the novel
also features other elements which I have identified as significant aspects of postcolonial
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fiction, namely metafictional commentary, here facilitated by the heroine’s own work as a
writer; parodies of well-known films or tales – The Red Shoe and The Little Mermaid - ;
postcolonial rewriting of novels such as Austen’s Northanger Abbey or Brontë’s Jane Eyre;
the presence of magic realist moments, which in this novel feature a grotesque quality which
befits both a comedy and a quest process. Passages quoted from Joan’s Costume Gothics 1
provide examples of what I have identified as gothic magic realism, i.e. a mixture of mythic
and grotesque magic realism, as defined by Delbaere (“Magic Realism,” 249-263). Indeed,
those passages integrate both the mythic, uncanny place – the labyrinth – with a grotesque
quality inherent in gothic romances. The utmost importance of such fictional excerpts
transpires as they become the site of the quest’s outcome. In this case, the quest brings the
heroine to leave behind her numerous mimicking strategies to acknowledge her hybridity,
represented by her need to assume different personalities as a writer. She remains, however,
unable to quit writing – i.e. the world of fantasy – altogether and to integrate her hybridity
into everyday life.
1. Atwood’s Sense of Parody: The Heroine as Writer
Lady Oracle contains numerous allusions to popular culture. In the first pages of the novel,
the heroine compares her daydreaming about the meaning of her life with a Disney film
entitled The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met (9), a title which by and large sums up the
heroine’s own struggle to be appreciated despite her rather dull physique and her passive
attitude to life. The allusion is immediately followed by the heroine’s confession of her
inability to cry in a delicate way, one of the features distinguishing her from the romantic
heroine she would like to resemble. The author’s repeated use of elements borrowed from
1 A collection of cheap, over-romantic thrillers in paperback.
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popular culture, i.e. fairy tales, films, popular literature, comics, explores the heroine’s feeling
of inadequacy in strikingly innovative ways. In this work, the heroine’s “otherness” is
parodied in modes comparable to those articulated by postcolonial or ethnic writers. Indeed,
this comedy, although mainstream, ventures into the realm of marginality due to the heroine’s
struggle for self-affirmation and to Atwood’s way of reinterpreting familiar images. Atwood’s
treatment of the labyrinth motif, 2 for instance, deserves thorough consideration. In this novel,
the maze functions as an insightful image of the heroine’s own state of mind: “in any
labyrinth I would have let go of the thread in order to follow a wandering light, a fleeting
voice” (152), Joan says. Likewise, fairy tales reflect her constant inadequacy: “In a fairy tale I
would be one of the two stupid sisters who open the forbidden door and are shocked by the
murdered wives, not the third, clever one who keeps to the essentials: presence of mind,
foresight, the telling of watertight lies. I told lies but they were not watertight.” (152).
Atwood’s use of popular culture reflects her constant search for powerful modes of expression
capable of visualising the heroine’s inner trouble, of dramatising her sense of “otherness.” For
instance, when the heroine climbs into bed with a “fotoromanzo,” she significantly mentions a
series of words and phrases. Those perfectly describe her own confused state of mind: “there
were a lot of words and phrases I already knew. I am not afraid of you. I don’t trust you. You
know that I love you. You must tell me the truth. He looked so strange. Is something the
matter? Our love is impossible. I will be yours forever. I am afraid.” (189). The fairy-tale and
film motifs embedded in Atwood’s fiction, and particularly in Lady Oracle, have fascinated
critics 3 and readers alike. They manifest themselves in moments of epiphany, inducing the
character’s awareness of herself as “Other”:
2 Several critics have noticed that Atwood’s tendency to conceive her novels as labyrinths. Among them, Hilde
Staels writes about Lady Oracle: “The text is a funhouse that multiplies reflections to infinity, a side show in
which characters are enlarged or shrink to absurdities. It is a distorting mirror-maze, a narrative labyrinth, in
which diverse tales mirror one another, effecting a self-reflection in perpetuum.” (Staels, Margaret Atwood’s
Novels, 69).
3 For a thorough analysis of fairy tale motifs, read Sharon Wilson’s chapter on Lady Oracle in her book,
Margaret Atwood’s Fairy-Tale Sexual Politics (120-136).
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I began to feel something was missing. Perhaps, I thought, I had no soul; I just
drifted around, singing vaguely, like the Little Mermaid in the Andersen fairy tale.
In order to get a soul you had to suffer, you had to give something up; or was that to
get legs and feet? (…) Then there was Moira Shearer, in The Red Shoes. (…) I was
doing fairly well by comparison. Their mistake had been to go public, whereas I did
my dancing behind closed doors. It was safer, but… (216).
The combined allusions to The Little Mermaid and The Red Shoe’s ballerina 4 express the
heroine’s psychological dilemma. Her inadequacy can be associated with these characters’
sufferings. Their tragic fate constitutes an oblique revelation of Joan own buried pain;
moreover, they give her an opportunity to unleash her deceptive attitude – “behind closed
doors” – without really naming it.
The novel also portrays the heroine as a writer, albeit in a parodic way. Joan Foster
makes several comments on her career as a writer of Costume Gothics, and later, on her
sudden fame as a poetess. Her highly comical view of the literary world denotes Atwood’s
parodic intent. An autobiographic element, for instance, can be found in the description of the
protagonist’s hair as an important element of her personality as a writer. Atwood here makes
fun of the newspapers, for devoting more attention to her physical appearance than to her
writings:
hair in the female was regarded as more important than either talent or the lack of it.
Joan Foster, celebrated author of Lady Oracle, looking like a lush Rossetti portrait,
radiating intensity, hypnotized the audience with her unearthly … (The Toronto
Star). Prose-poetess Joan Foster looked impressively Junoesque in her flowing red
4 Eleonora Rao provides full analysis of both intertexts in “Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle” (145).
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hair and green robe; unfortunately she was largely inaudible … (The Globe and
Mail) (14).
She also briefly alludes to the futility of fame, through the image of the ants spelling the
heroine’s initials in sugary water, thus making her “a living legend” (21). This tendency
towards self-parody confirms Atwood’s own role as a trickster, fooling readers 5 and critics.
For the one who can read between the lines, the novel reveals her personal opinion on the
writer’s craft.
Joan further illustrates several aspects of her work as a writer, such as finding an
effective title (33) or consulting sources - samples of historical romances, the local library, a
book on costume design through the ages, the costume room of the Victoria and Albert
Museum (156) – and tackles the financial aspect of the job: “I got less for it than usual, partly
because of the length – Columbine paid by the word – and partly because the bastards knew I
needed the money. ‘The conclusion is a little unresolved,’ said the letter. But it was enough
for a one-way airplane ticket.” (176). Likewise, editors 6 become the victims of Atwood’s
parody of the writer’s craft. She thoroughly mocks them as she writes: “‘We thought it was –
ah – reminiscent – of a mixture of Kahlil Gibran and Rod McKuen,’ said Colin Harper
unhappily. (…) ‘I thought we might do you as a sort of female Leonard Cohen,’ said Sturgess.
The other two were slightly embarrassed by this.” (225).
5 Robert Lecker in “Janus through the Looking Glass” notes that “the reader must deal with the realization that
the story forces him to participate in the duplicity and become a sympathetic imposter” (194-195).
6 Susan Maclean’s article on Lady Oracle briefly analyses Atwood’s parody of the Canadian literary
establishment, concluding that “the whole literary scene is depicted as a farcical sham” (181).
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Most importantly, all these allusions to the writer’s task parodically assert the
heroine’s own psychological difficulties. When confronted to dramatic events, she expresses
her insecurity through her literary career: for example, when her mother dies, she first feels
incapable of writing and her attempts turn out to be both ludicrous and ineffective: “I did try –
I started a novel called Storm over Castleford – but the hero played billiards all the time and
the heroine sat on the edge of her bed, alone at night, doing nothing. That was probably the
closest to social realism I ever came” (181). Despite its comic tone, such a sentence mainly
conveys the heroine’s utter state of confusion and despair. Significantly, when she later
mentions the newspaper clippings welcoming her arrival on the literary scene, she also alludes
to the possibility of a disaster:
UNKNOWN BURSTS ON LITERARY SCENE LIKE COMET, said the first review, in the
Toronto Star. The Globe review called it ‘gnomic’ and ‘chthonic,’ (…) Maybe it
wasn’t too bad, after all. (But I didn’t stop to reflect on the nature of comets. Lumps
of cosmic debris with long red hair and spectacular tails, discovered by astronomers,
who named them after themselves. Harbingers of disaster. Portents of war.) (234).
“Disaster” is indeed an appropriate term to describe the heroine’s life, an entanglement of lies
and deception, intended at others but eventually affecting her own vision of herself. However,
at the end of the novel, the character becomes aware of the intricate network of lies which she
has built around her life: “I was waiting for something to happen, the next turn of events (a
circle? A spiral?). All my life I’d been hooked on plots” (310). Ironically, the heroine
functions as a parody of herself, using her own fiction to build up a false biography and a
romanticised personality.
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Lady Oracle should be read as a parody 7 of the genre of gothic romance. Eleonora Rao
has examined the novel’s similarities with Jane Austen’s parody of Gothic fiction in
Northanger Abbey. 8 Without undermining her analysis, I contend that Atwood intended the
novel as a rewriting of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. 9 Rao briefly alludes to Jane Eyre, when
she identifies the shift to Felicia’s perspective as “reminiscent of Jean Rhys’ novel Wide
Sargasso Sea” (Rao: 34). She further interprets the novel as the “setting up of two contrasting
and irreconcilable versions of femininity centred on the polarities of innocence and
experience” (Rao: 34). Evidence found in the Atwood Papers at the Fisher Library of Rare
Books demonstrates that Atwood used Jane Eyre as a preliminary reading, before writing
Lady Oracle. Indeed, in a letter to her secretary, she asks her to purchase a copy of that book,
and mentions it as the most urgent of all her requests (see Appendix I). 10 On reading Jane
Eyre, one cannot help noticing similar elements in Lady Oracle. First of all, young Jane is
accused of being a liar (Jane Eyre, 98). She also fights social conventions and strives for
independence, as Joan Foster does. Jane Eyre further contains numerous allusions to the
uncanny, from mysterious whispers to Bertha’s frightful laughter (Jane Eyre, 138). The same
kind of laughter is heard by Joan’s heroine’s when they come near the maze. Moreover, both
7 Several critics have studied the concept of parody in Lady Oracle. In her article “George, Leda, and a Poured
Concrete Balcony,” Carol L. Beran, for instance, identifies the novel as a parody of two kinds of writing: the
autobiographical form used by celebrities and the fictional spiritual autobiography. She concludes: “Partaking of
two conventions yet failing to fulfil the expectations generated by either form, Lady Oracle calls into question
generic expectations in such a way as to make us question not merely what is a novel, but also what is the
relation of a novel which purports to be autobiography to autobiography – specifically to a form of
autobiography that often impresses readers as distinctly fictional” (Beran, “George, Leda,” 19). I find such
analysis particularly interesting in the light of the narrator’s frequent use of deceptive practices. I agree with
Beran’s idea that Atwood in Lady Oracle makes her readers question the relationship between fiction and reality
(22). Staels, for her part, examines Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” as another of the novel’s intertexts (Staels,
Margaret Atwood’s Novels, 86). She also mentions Joan’s use of “other gothic conventions such as suicide;
melodrama; the fear of traces of past selves; concealment of past acts; of past passions; fear that hidden evidence
of some unspeakable transgression will be traced down; a general sense of guilty secrecy; a pervasively ominous
atmosphere…” (Staels, Margaret Atwood’s Novels, 91).
8 RAO, Eleonora, “Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle,” 136-137. Ann McMillan provides a similar analysis in
VanSpanckeren and Castro’s book on Atwood (McMillan 56-57). See also Rao’s book, Strategies for Identity,
28, 30-31.
9 John Thieme briefly mentions the correlation with Jane Eyre, when he compares the foreign Countess with
Rochester’s wife and notices the similarities between Castle DeVere and Thornfield Hall (Thieme 76). Coral
Ann Howells equally mentions Jane Eyre in her analysis of Atwoodian Gothic (Howells, Margaret Atwood, 71).
10 Atwood Papers, Collection 200, Box 27, File 27:1, p.4.
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novels contain examples of premonitory dreams: Joan’s dreams are visited by her mother and
her Aunt Lou before they die, in the same way as Jane dreams of a child (Jane Eyre, 249)
before being informed of the death of her cousin and former tormentor Mr. John and before
Bertha enters her room (Jane Eyre, 310). Leda Sprott’s séances remind us of Mr. Rochester’s
disguise as a fortune teller (Jane Eyre, 225). Joan’s mother strongly resembles Jane’s
heartless aunt, Mrs. Reed. Atwood also added a hint in the name of one of Joan’s characters.
Indeed, when reading both novels carefully, one notices that Edmund DeVere (162), one of
her novels’ villains shows striking similarities with the name of Charlotte Brontë’s Lord
Edwin Vere (Jane Eyre, 265), one of Georgiana’s fiancés, evicted by her jealous sister. As to
the general structure of the book, Jane is forced to run away after the failure of her wedding
(Jane Eyre, 347) and introduces herself to the Rivers using an alias (Jane Eyre, 363), a tactic
often resorted to by Joan. All these examples, together with the clues found in the Atwood
Papers, establish the fact that Atwood used Jane Eyre as one of her models for writing Lady
Oracle. I contend that Atwood’s choice of Jane Eyre as one of Lady Oracle’s intertext is of
great significance in the prospect of a postcolonial reading of the author’s early work. Indeed,
one should keep in mind that Jane Eyre embodies as the prototype of the subversive heroine,
rejecting the role ascribed to women in her time. Therefore, the novel’s recurrent allusions to
Jane Eyre remind the reader of the rebellious aspect of Joan’s personality and of her repeated
pleas for women’s freedom.
The novel uses elements drawn from the genre of gothic romance, such as the
idealised female heroine as a victim and the supernatural. The unrealistic atmosphere of such
passages, their nightmarish and simultaneously grotesque quality parody the protagonist’s
state of mind and psychological development. Joan’s gothic romances are metafictional in the
sense that they parallel her own state of mind. At the beginning of the novel, Charlotte, Joan’s
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fictional heroine, foregrounds Joan’s inability to deal with men, as she calls them “Liars and
hypocrites, all of them!”(30). The fact that Joan repeatedly has to follow the routes taken by
her heroines (162) emphasises the parallel between them. It offers a deconstruction of Joan’s
stereotypical identity formation process as a female victim. Indeed, her second heroine,
Samantha Deane, is emblematic of women’s position as victims within patriarchal society.
When Joan reproduces Samantha’s gestures in her writing process, the similarities in their
experiences of empowerment becomes striking: “There were footsteps behind her (…) there
was a hand on her arm, and a voice, hoarse with passion, breathed her name… At this point
in my rehearsal I felt something on my arm (…) there was a hand on it. I screamed, quite
loudly, and the next thing I knew I was lying on top of a skinny, confused-looking young
man.” (164). At this point, fiction and reality intertwine, as they often do in Joan’s life.
Significantly, this scene also describes her first meeting with Arthur. This man later becomes
her husband, and therefore one of the main causes of her current distress and alienation. As
the novel proceeds towards the final conclusion, Joan gradually engages in another kind of
relationship with her heroines. She breaks away from the codes of gothic romance to question
the woman’s role as a victim: “she had to die. In my books all wives were eventually mad or
dead, or both. But what had she ever done to deserve it?” (319). This questioning brings about
a different kind of denouement in her fiction, forcing her to side with the female villain, thus
reconciling the two antithetical sides of her identity. At the beginning of her literary career,
Joan could only think of women in binary terms: in gothic romances, the virginal victim
usually falls in love with a brooding hero while his wife, often a cunning villain, deserves to
die. When she eventually expresses her sympathy for Felicia, the villain (319-320), Joan
points the way to a third possibility, a hybrid space that would accommodate both aspects of
her own female personality.
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2. Variations on Mimicry
From the very first page of the novel, the reader discovers the heroine’s ability to lie and
deceive. 11 Indeed, the novel starts with the heroine’s avowal of one of her biggest lies: she has
faked her own death, and mentions that this imaginary episode of her life is quite distinct from
what happened to her earlier: it has been planned carefully. This episode thus stresses the fact
that the heroine wishes to exert control over her life (7). One might as well say that the
heroine has spent the whole of her life in disguise. Quite logically then, Atwood chooses to
introduce to the reader a heroine who definitely wishes to remain unknown and unrecognised
in her new environment. This choice might not be so easy to live with. Indeed, by the end of
the first chapter, the protagonist utters her fear at being recognised (12), a feeling which
recurs in the first part of the novel. Her numerous descriptions of her subterfuges point to her
inability to free herself completely from her former self: “I’d taken precautions, of course. I
was using my other name, (…) I’d worn my sunglasses and covered my head with the scarf
I’d bought at the Toronto airport” (13). In the following scene, Joan expresses her inability to
create a truly effective disguise, i.e. to conceal her “otherness:” “the old man had caught me
without my disguise, and, worse still, with my hair showing. Waist-length red hair was very
noticeable in that part of the country” (13). The subsequent depiction of her wet clothes, as
the remains of her fake suicide, evokes a kind of rebirth, though an unsuccessful one:
The suitcase was under a big fake-baroque chest of drawers with peeling veneer and
an inlaid seashell design. I pulled it out and opened it; inside were my wet clothes, in
11 In her article “The Self-Inventing Self: Women Who Lie and Pose in the Fiction of Margaret Atwood,” Ann
Parsons examines the uses of deception in both Lady Oracle and The Edible Woman. Interesting is Parsons’
assertion that “the two novels join much serious modern fiction by women, in asking whether women are
coerced or conditioned into deceitful behaviour, and if so, by what forces” (Parsons 98). Parsons thus establishes
the link between female subversion and deception, a concept largely equivalent to my theory of deception as a
mimicry strategy. Clara Thomas equally denounces the heroine’s self-delusion and unreliability in the
Davidsons’ The Art of Margaret Atwood (Thomas “Lady Oracle,” 168).
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a green plastic Glad Bag. They smelled of my death, of Lake Ontario, spilled oil,
dead gulls, tiny silver fish cast up on the beach and rotting. Jeans and a navy-blue T-
shirt, my funerary costume, my former self, damp and collapsed, from which the
many-colored souls had flown (19).
The negative undertones of this description are reiterated when the heroine decides to get rid
of her clothes: “I decided to bury them. (…) I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I still felt
although I was getting rid of a body, the corpse of someone I’d killed” (20). This sentence
reflects the protagonist’s feelings of guilt and uneasiness, mainly due to her repetitive
unsuccessful attempts to conceal her “otherness.”
The novel further revolves around the relationships between deceptive Joan and her
overpowering environment. The action takes place in Toronto, London and in the Italian town
of Terremotto where the heroine seeks refuge after her last and biggest lie. The conflicts
between Joan, her mother, her lovers and her husband are often dramatised humorously.
Joan’s multiple personalities and deceptive behaviour complicate matters. The way she
interacts with the male characters symbolically illustrates the clash between her own self and
patriarchal demands. Thus, Joan comes to embody the “Other,” the alienated female
individual at a loss with patriarchal values. Even the messages sent to her friend and
accomplice Sam, to tell him that their plan succeeded, show traces of patriarchal
empowerment. Indeed, the heroine feels safer signing the postcard as a couple, and not as a
single woman: “Postcard to Sam (…) HAVING A SUPER TIME. ST. PETER’S IS WONDERFUL. SEE
YOU SOON, LOVE, MITZI AND FRED. That would tell him I’d arrived safely. If there had been
complications, I would have written: WEATHER COOL AND FRED HAS DISENTERY. THANK GOD
FOR ENTEROVIOFORM! LOVE, MITZI AND FRED” (25-26).
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However, such a small, harmless lie does not destabilise the heroine, who has been
lying all her life. Her literary career, especially, reflects her careless attitude towards
deception. Throughout the novel, the heroine frequently alludes to her various identities: she
is at once Joan Foster, Arthur’s wife, a celebrated poetess, and Louisa K. Delacourt, the
author of numerous gothic romance books. Even after faking her suicide, Joan succeeds in
maintaining her double identity. Indeed, she goes on writing costume gothics to earn a living
and therefore comments:
I could fill in the opening pages, write another eight or nine chapters, and send them
to Hermes Books with a covering letter explaining that I’d moved to Italy on
account of my health. They’d never seen me, they knew me only by my other name.
They thought I was a middle-aged ex-librarian, overweight and shy. Practically a
recluse, in fact, and allergic to dust, wool, fish, cigarette smoke and alcohol, as I’d
explained to them when declining lunches. I’d always tried to keep my two names
and identities as separate as possible (33).
She later explains the origin of her literary alter-ego:
of course I used Aunt Lou’s name; it was a kind of memorial to her. Several years
later, when I’d switched to a North American publisher, I was asked for a
photograph. (…) so I sent them the shot of Aunt Lou at the Ex, with me standing
beside her. This picture was never used. The women who wrote my kind of book
were supposed to look trim and healthy, with tastefully grayed hair (157).
Far from merely denoting the heroine’s ability to lie, the excerpt, in its last sentence, also
exemplifies the complicity of the literary world with her construction of a false self. Indeed,
the narrator implies that the editors also impose an image of the female writer corresponding
to patriarchal configuration. Repeated allusions to delusion – “New articles were appearing
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every week, (…) ‘Lady Oracle: Hoax or Delusion?’” (250) – along with the heroine’s
shameless use of deception – “I told Sturgess my mother was dying of cancer and I had to go
to Saskatchewan to look after her.” (252) – express the protagonist’s anxiety about
“otherness” in a comical mode. Her repeated distortion of reality constitutes a mimicry
strategy aiming at giving others the impression that she has reached social assimilation. Even
in the climactic/epiphanic scene at the end of the novel, when the heroine becomes aware of
her hybridity, it remains unclear whether she will be able to renounce deception altogether.
Indeed, imagining her readers’ reaction to the announcement that her suicide was a fake, she
concludes: “If I rose from the dead, waltzed back and announced that it was all a deception,
what were they supposed to do? (…) they’d hate me forever and make my life a nightmare.”
(314), a sentence which casts doubt on the successful outcome of her whole adventure.
Examining the content of the narrator’s long flashback about her childhood, one
notices the protagonist’s propensity to lie from very early on. The various episodes deal with
the subject’s necessity to lie about everyday facts in order to fit in. For instance, recalling a
song she learnt at the Brownies – “Here you see the laughing Gnomes, Helping mothers in our
homes” (55) – the heroine immediately corrects the recollection as follows: “This was not
strictly true: I didn’t help my mother. I wasn’t allowed to. On the few occasions I’d attempted
it, the results had not pleased her” (55). A subsequent scene satirises the Brownies’ necessity
to mimic socially accepted behaviour, 12 an often difficult task for Joan, who, as a child,
already suffered from a deep feeling of inadequacy and alienation:
‘Now, now, Joan, we don’t like to see unhappy faces at the Brownies;’ (…) I had to
be secluded in the cloakroom so as not to embarrass everyone until I had, as Brown
12 Staels significantly notices that “gnomic” also means “a collective, anonymous and authoritative voice which
speaks for and about what it aims to establish as ‘accepted’ knowledge or wisdom. (…) Girls who do not
coincide with the image in the mirror are doomed to be failures.” (Staels, Margaret Atwood’s Novels, 75).
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Owl put it, got my Brownie smile back again. ‘You must learn to control yourself,’
she said kindly. (…) She didn’t know what a lot of territory this covered (58).
Indeed, Joan often cries for being the scapegoat of other children. The older girls quickly
become aware of her credulity, despising her because it is so easy to make her cry. Yet,
instead of deriving comfort from an adult such as Brown Owl, she only experiences more
shame at being different. “Learning to control oneself”, as Brown Owl puts it, is yet another
form of mimicry, aiming to prove that Joan is not different from the other children. From then
on, mimicry becomes the main strategy adopted by Joan in order to be socially accepted.
While she remains the other children’s scapegoat, she must endure it, for even her mother
would not help her: “I couldn’t tell my mother about any of this because I felt that whatever
she would say, underneath it her sympathies would lie with them. ‘Stand up for yourself,’ she
would exhort” (59). Consequently, the girl resorts to deception whenever she feels threatened
as “other” by social constraints. In one of her recollections, she evokes how Aunt Lou once
asked her not to reveal her adulterous life, thus indicating the strength of social prejudices: “I
found out even later that Aunt Lou had a boyfriend of sorts. His name was Robert, he was an
accountant, he had a wife and children, and he came to her apartment on Sunday evenings for
dinner. ‘Don’t tell your mother, dear,’ Aunt Lou, said. ‘I’m not sure she’d understand’” (84).
As an adult, she uses the same kind of deceptive behaviour. After a violent quarrel with her
mother, Joan decides to leave, stealing money from her mother’s purse and assuming from
then on her Aunt Lou’s identity:
I’d never stayed in a hotel before in my life. I used Aunt Lou’s name, as I didn’t
want my mother to trace me. That was stupid, she would have recognized Aunt
Lou’s name at once, but I didn’t think of that. Instead I was prepared to be
challenged by the desk clerk for being underage, and I would then have been able to
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whip out Aunt Lou’s birth certificate and demonstrate that I was forty-nine. (135-
136).
Joan clearly wants to affirm her maturity and independence. The white gloves she decides to
wear function as a symbol of “adulthood and social status” (136). In order to find a room, she
has to resort to deception again:
In the morning I bought a paper and went through the want ads, looking for a room.
I found one (…) and represented myself over the phone as a twenty-five-year-old
office girl, non-drinking and non-smoking. I pinned my hair back, put on my white
gloves and went off to inspect it. I gave my name as Miss L. Delacourt, and I used
this name also when I opened a new bank account later in the day. I withdrew all my
money from my other account and closed it; I didn’t want my mother tracking me
down. This was the formal beginning of my second self. I was amazed at how easily
everyone believed me, but then, why should they suspect? (137).
She gradually gets involved in more lies to preserve that fake identity, which makes it more
and more difficult for her to reveal the truth both to others and to herself. She thus logically
concludes that “hidden depths should remain hidden; façades were at least as truthful” (197),
a sentence which indicates that deception has become Joan’s sole strategy in order to survive.
From the start, the heroine also displays a tendency to uphold a blurred or erroneous
vision of herself. After mentioning her faked suicide, she confesses, for instance, seeing
herself as “a Mediterranean splendor” (7), a description immediately contradicted by her
urgent need to find suntan lotion. Her interest in advertisement – “I was a sucker for ads,
especially those that promised happiness” (29) – suggests both her gullibility and her inability
to resist self-deception. The reader soon realises that this behaviour was established from very
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early on: as she recalls her childhood experience in the ballet class, Joan comments on the
necessity for her to correspond to the socially accepted image of the thin ballerina. A fat and
ugly child, she is totally out of place in the role of an aerial butterfly. The description of the
making of her costume bespeaks her attempts to fit in and to conceal her hybrid nature.
Indeed, at this early stage of her development, she remains totally incapable of conceiving
that she might be different: “My mother struggled with the costume, lengthening it, adding
another layer of gauze to conceal the outlines, padding the bodice; it was no use. (…) I did not
look like a butterfly. But I knew the addition of the wings would make all the difference. I
was hoping for magic transformations, even then” (46). Joan clearly deceives herself when
she thinks that the wings will significantly modify her costume or when she regards her
mother as the cause of her misfortune: “I always felt that if my mother hadn’t interfered Miss
Flegg would have noticed nothing, but this is probably not true” (47). Definitely unhappy
with her life, yet unable to grasp the significance of her “otherness,” Joan remains an
apathetic, obese adolescent who deceptively claims: “‘I like being fat,’” and bursts into tears
(83). Totally dissatisfied with her life, she finds no comfort in her mother’s attitude. Indeed,
the woman keeps pointing to her insufficiencies and inadequacy, so much so that the heroine
indulges in yet another form of delusion: “In one of my daydreams I used to pretend Aunt Lou
was my real mother” (88). The choice of her friendly, benevolent aunt as a role model in
womanhood helps the protagonist move away from her overpowering mother, who also turns
out to be deceptive. Although the narrator never confesses this element, the reader soon
guesses that her mother considers Joan the cause of her unhappiness. The birth of this
unwanted child and the departure of the father apparently caused her mother to conceive
feelings of hatred for Joan. Through Joan’s fragmented memories, the reader gets a glimpse of
her mother’s drama:
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There were no pictures of her as a girl though, none of her parents, none of the two
brothers and the sister I later found out she had. She almost never talked about her
family or her early life (…) Her parents had both been very strict, very religious.
(…) She’d done something that offended them (…) and she’d run away from home
at the age of sixteen and never gone back (68).
One easily understands that the mother’s pregnancy was the cause of her flight, a fact which
explains her resentful attitude to Joan. Strangely, Joan never seems to be able to understand
fully what happened to her mother, in the same way that she cannot acknowledge her
hybridity. However, she is aware of her mother’s deceptive strategies – “My father didn’t
come back until I was five, and before that he was only a name, a story which my mother
would tell me and which varied considerably” (68-69) – and one wonders whether she did not
actually copy her mother’s behaviour when constantly resorting to lies. Indeed, in the
narrative of her adolescence, she frequently mentions her mother’s propensity to lie for
matters of social and private concerns: “My mother was having a dinner party, entertaining
two couples whom she claimed privately to dislike” (73) or “my mother was on the
chesterfield, pretending to read a book on child psychology (…) but actually reading The Fox,
a historical novel about the Borgias. I had already finished it, in secret” (70). This sentence
highlights the similarity between the two characters. It demonstrates that Joan, though she
dislikes her mother, actually resembles her in many ways, a fact which she is not ready to
acknowledge yet.
While recalling her childhood and adolescence, Joan further emphasises her feeling of
inadequacy, which is in fact the conscious part of her hidden hybridity. She repeatedly
mentions her inability to express herself properly or to understand other people, as in the
following examples: “I could never manage the right emotions at the right times, anger when I
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should have been angry, tears when I should have cried; everything was mismatched” (15) or
“what did they want? The question I could never answer” (15). Her contacts with Mr. Vitroni,
her Italian landlord, dramatise her alienation: “I was a foreigner, this was the sort of thing I
was supposed to like and he’d brought them as a gift, to please me. Dutifully I was pleased; I
couldn’t bear to hurt his feelings” (17). She confesses that she often feels at a loss when it
comes to understanding the innuendoes constituting social interactions: “The language was
only one problem; there was also that other language, what is done and what isn’t done. If I
accepted a picture, would I have to become his mistress?” (17); “I had the feeling that much
more had happened in the conversation than I’d been able to understand, which wouldn’t have
been unusual. Arthur used to tell me I was obtuse” (18). Joan’s lack of understanding of her
own hybrid self causes her to display very different kinds of behaviour in order to fulfil
people’s expectations: “At home I was sullen or comatose, at the movies I wept with Aunt
Lou, but at school I was doggedly friendly and outgoing” (93). In her desire to adopt an
acceptable behaviour, she comes to symbolise the difficulties of acknowledging “otherness.”
Far from resolving her problem, losing weight only increases her inadequacy, as she discovers
that her trouble might involve more than matters of physical appearance: “I felt very lonely; I
also longed to be fat again. It would be an insulation, a cocoon. Also it would be a disguise. I
could be merely an onlooker again, with nothing too much expected of me. Without my magic
cloak or blubber and invisibility I felt naked, pruned, as though some essential covering was
missing.” (141). She then resorts to self-deception again, thinking that her new physique
makes her a different, more socially adjusted person:
Suddenly I was down to the required weight, and I was face to face with the rest of
my life. I was now a different person, and it was like being born fully grown at the
age of nineteen: I was the right shape, but I had the wrong past. I’d have to get rid of
it entirely and construct a different one for myself, a more agreeable one (141).
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This passage dramatises the irreconcilable character of Joan’s artificially constructed
personality. She confesses she elaborated a totally new self. Yet, it remains an unsatisfactory
solution, partly because of the discrepancies between this new self and her hidden past, partly
because she fails to address her real problem: society’s patriarchal demands.
The first chapter conjures up the figure of the absent husband in Mr. Vitroni’s not so
innocent question: “Your husband will come soon also?” (18), an early sign of Joan’s inability
to conceive a life without the approval of a protective male presence. After leaving home,
Joan leads a solitary life soon interrupted by her meeting with a Polish Count, Paul. From the
start, Paul displays all the characteristics of the paternalistic, older male figure. Several
sentences hint at his superior attitude towards Joan. He treats her as a child – “His manner
was warm but patronizing -, as if I were an unusually inept child” (146). Moreover, he makes
decisions for her and does not care about her own opinion: “‘We will go in a taxi, and by
boat.’ He had not asked me, he had told me, so I didn’t think of saying no.” (147). This part of
the novel concentrates on the formation of Joan’s false self in an attempt to conceal her
hybridity. “Otherness” might well be what attracted her to Paul. Indeed, she recognises him as
one of her kind, as a person who needs to lie to be accepted. When he tells her the story of his
adventurous arrival in Canada, she comments: “My first reaction to this story was that I had
met a liar as compulsive and romantic as myself.” (148). As an immigrant, the Polish Count
foreshadows what might happen to Joan if she persists in living a deceptive life. The scene
implies the Count’s alienation within a Canadian background. It suggests, somewhat
pessimistically, that finding one’s place in Canadian society can only be achieved in delusion,
through the use of mimicry strategies. Those are exactly the techniques used by Paul when he
writes under the improbable name of Mavis Quilp, his WASP alter-ego (153). Joan intuitively
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grasps the in-betweenness of her lover’s situation when she comments on the style of his
nurse novels: “There was something odd about the language, the clichés were a little off,
distorted just slightly.” (153). This distortion is emblematic of the Polish Count’s “otherness”
and echoes the heroine’s own feelings of alienation. No wonder then that she feels attracted to
Paul’s job and becomes quite successful as a writer. Paul’s attitude towards her gradually
changes to reveal his mimicked paternalistic attitude: he resents her earning more money than
he does (157) and starts denigrating her work (159, 160). This reaction shows that Paul has to
some extent accepted society’s patriarchal view and takes delight in victimising Joan. He thus
symbolises the typical attitude of the subordinate subject mimicking the attitude of those in
power.
In her second lover and future husband, Arthur, Joan encounters the same
overpowering attitude. She describes him as a man incapable of knowing her personality,
preferences or feelings: “Arthur wouldn’t have liked the picture. It wasn’t the sort of thing he
liked, though it was the sort of thing he believed I liked” (18-19). He likes to influence her
choice of clothes (22-23) and, like the Polish Count, treats her as a child: “‘You’re an
intelligent woman,’ Arthur would have said. He always said this before an exposition of some
failing of mine, but also he really believed it. His exasperation with me was like that of a
father with smart kids who got bad report cards” (34). Logically, when Joan decides to stage
her own death in the hope of escaping Arthur’s judgement, she expresses her joy: she thinks
she will finally achieve self-expression:
emotion, fear, anger, laughter and tears, a performance on which the crowd feeds.
This, I suspected, was his view of my inner life. And where was he in the midst of
all the uproar? Sitting in the front row center, not moving, barely smiling, it took a
lot to satisfy him; and, from time to time, making a slight gesture that would
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preserve or destroy: thumbs up or thumbs down. You’ll have to run your own show
now, I thought, have your own emotions. I’m through acting it out, the blood got too
real (19).
Yet, as one gets accustomed to Joan’s deceptive twists, one wonders whether this utterance
contains any sincerity. Indeed, while she wishes to achieve freedom from the domination of
her husband, Joan simultaneously acts as an accomplice, accepting the role of the feeble,
endangered female, as in this example: “noticing just in time the small brown scorpion
concealed in the folds. It was hard getting used to these ambushes. If Arthur had been there I
would have screamed” (24-25). Part of her acceptance of hybridity implies the avowal of her
duplicitous nature. The first sign of this process of avowal appears as early as in the third
chapter, when the heroine, seeking refuge in Italy, longs to let Arthur know how she so
cleverly deceived him:
It was a good plan, I thought; I was pleased with myself for having arranged it. And
suddenly I wanted Arthur to know how clever I’d been. He always thought I was too
disorganized to plot my way across the floor and out the door, much less out of the
country. (…) I would love him to know I’d done something complicated and
dangerous without making a single mistake. I’d always wanted to do something he
would admire (27).
However, the last sentence indicates that, at this stage, she wishes to do so in order to conquer
the admiration of the patriarchal power, and not as a truly subversive gesture of self-
empowerment.
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The heroine then engages in a description of the extent of her deceptive power. She
reveals that she decided to conceal her identity as a writer of costume gothics mainly out of
fear:
When I first met him he talked a lot about wanting a woman whose mind he could
respect, and I knew that if he found I’d written The Secret of Morgrave Manor he
wouldn’t respect mine (…) These books (…) would be considered trash of the
lowest order. Worse than trash, for didn’t they exploit the masses, corrupt by
distracting, and perpetuate degrading stereotypes of women as helpless and
persecuted? They did and I knew it, but I couldn’t stop (33-34).
This passage shows how much she values the opinion of the dominating male figure and of a
society of left-wing intellectuals. Never in the course of her narration does she express regret
for her deceptive behaviour; on the contrary, she prides herself on her ability to deceive and
praises dishonesty as an effective survival strategy 13 :
I should have been honest from the beginning, expressed my feelings, told him
everything. (But if he’d known what I was really like, would he still have loved
me?) The trouble was that I wanted to maintain his illusions for him intact, and it
was easy to do, all it needed was a little restraint: I simply never told him anything
important. But it wasn’t more honesty that would have saved me, I thought; it was
more dishonesty. In my experience, honesty and expressing your feelings could lead
to only one thing. Disaster (36-37).
13 Eleonora Rao equally points to the effectiveness of fantasy as a survival device when she writes: “If Joan then
does reveal a quixotic and capricious aspect, her inclination to live partly in a fantasy romance world acquires
the positive significance of a strategic defensive and survival device” (Rao, “Writing Against Notions of Unity,”
147).
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The reason why honesty seems so disastrous to the heroine is that she cannot cope with her
hybrid self, let any alone simple social judgement about it. She goes on lying about her past,
her family: “I invented a mother for his benefit, a kind, placid woman who died of a rare
disease – lupus, I think it was – shortly after I met him. Luckily he was never very curious
about my past: he was too busy telling me about his” (41). Most significantly, when Arthur
discovers a picture of Joan as a teenager, she dismisses herself as an imaginary despicable
aunt.
For a moment I hesitate, on the verge of telling the truth. ‘That’s my other Aunt,’ I
said, ‘My Aunt Deirdre. Aunt Lou was wonderful, but Aunt Deirdre was a bitch.’
(…) What lies I told him, and it wasn’t just in self-defense: already I’d devised an
entire spurious past for this shadow on a piece of paper. (…) ‘She looks a bit like
you,’ he said. ‘A bit,’ I admitted. ‘I didn’t like her. She was always trying to tell me
how to run my life.’ (91-92).
The excerpt discloses Joan’s negative vision of her alienated self. This imaginary aunt, “a
bitch,” telling her “how to run her life” epitomises the social constraints imposed on Joan,
first by her mother, then by her lovers. Moreover, the passage suggests that her use of
deception is not just a matter of self-defence. At that point, she starts enjoying it, multiplying
the lies and making them gradually more ludicrous, as for example, in the story of how she
lost her virginity: “The story I told Arthur later, about being seduced under a pine tree at the
age of sixteen, by a summer camp sailing instructor from Montreal, was a lie. I was not
seduced at all. I was a victim of the Miss Flegg syndrome: if you find yourself trapped in a
situation you can’t get out of gracefully, you might as well pretend you chose it. Otherwise
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you will look ridiculous.” (149). Deception definitely functions as an appropriate means of
avoiding ridicule, i.e. of behaving as society dictates.
Even Joan’s first encounter with Arthur is marked by deception as she pretends to be
“at least semi-informed” (165) of his political activism. Her attitude becomes highly comical
once the other members of the group entrust her with explosives to be used in subversive
attacks. Joan brilliantly feigns political interest to seduce Arthur, as in the following passage:
“He seemed to enjoy discussing the philosophy of civil disobedience with me, or rather telling
me about it, for I was wise enough not to reveal my ignorance and mostly nodded.” (168). She
also uses politics as an alibi in order not to mention the existence of the Polish Count. This
enables her to become ever more deceptive, a situation she enjoys fully: “‘I’ve been evicted,’
I told him. (…) ‘Because of my political sympathies. The landlord found some of those
leaflets… he’s violently right-wing, you know. There was a terrible row.’ (This was a version
of the truth, I felt. Paul was the landlord, sort of, and he was right-wing. Nevertheless I was an
impostor, and I felt like one.)” (170). As she grows more entangled in her relationship with
Arthur, Joan expresses her desire to move away from deception and to reveal the hybrid
character of her personality: “I longed to marry Arthur, but I couldn’t do it unless he knew
the truth about me and accepted me as I was, past and present. He’d have to be told I’d lied to
him, that I’d never been a cheerleader, that I myself was the fat lady in the picture.” (197-
198). Yet, because she has not internalised her own hybridity, she utterly fears disclosure – “I
was terrified that I’d be exposed at the last minute as a fraud, liar and impostor.” (199). The
climactic scene of Joan’s flashback about her life with Arthur takes place during the wedding
ceremony when she realises that Arthur takes her back to the place where she grew up. She
becomes highly afraid of being recognised (200). As usual, she reacts with an attempt at
escaping reality, this time not by lying, but by fainting (201). Confronting Leda Sprott as the
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minister in charge of the ceremony, she realises that she does not want Arthur to know the
truth (215) and that deception functions as an effective mimicry strategy. Having rejected
Leda Sprott’s suggestion to tell the truth, Joan has no other choice than to become even more
entangled in her numerous selves (286). She would have continued in this way forever, were
it not for the godlike intervention of a nosy journalist, attracted by her sudden fame. He
blackmails her. This incident, in which Joan resorts to deception once again to trick the
journalist, eventually brings about a state of mental confusion: Joan no longer knows how
many lies she has been telling for all these years. She reflects: “He’s discovered at least two
of my secret identities, and I was so confused at that point I couldn’t remember whether I had
any more” (286), an attitude which suggests the only possible outcome for her, escape. It also
accounts for the novel’s cyclical pattern, which echoes Joan’s imprisonment in her lies and
the hopelessness of her situation.
Joan Foster’s creation of multiple identities, her propensity to resort to deception in
everyday life circumstances, her tendency to regard herself as an inferior person, a victim or
an outcast, demonstrate that Atwood uses deception in order to underline her heroine’s
subaltern position within Canadian society. All the men in Joan’s life try at one point or
another to make her endorse the role of an obedient wife: the Polish Count resents her success
as a writer; Arthur never gives her the opportunity to express opinions different from his, and
the Royal Porcupine, after indulging in all kinds of fantasies, finally turns out to be an
ordinary man, another symbol of social constraints. In her relationships with those three male
characters, Joan is forced to develop highly efficient mimicry strategies based on deception in
order to satisfy their patriarchal demands.
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3. Grotesque and Gothic Magic Realism
Lady Oracle is a novel which constantly oscillates between reality and fantasy. Indeed, as a
reader, one often wonders to what extent Joan has made up the world which she describes. A
first example of this characteristic can be found in her daydreaming about her own fake
suicide. In this episode, she imagines her friends and relatives waiting for her on the other
side of the water (8). All characters are smiling and waving to her, except one, her Aunt Lou,
who later appears as the person who most wants the heroine to be herself. She therefore turns
away from Joan, as if she resented her deceptive disappearance. This attitude should be
analysed in relation to the meaning of the novel’s quest, which I consider unfulfilled. The
passage also contains the heroine’s leitmotif “it wasn’t fair” (9), which perfectly sums up her
own opinion about her life. It expresses her passivity in dealing with all its events. When
making this comment, the protagonist realises that the friends and family members of her
dream are not interested in her fate. It functions as a typical example of psychic magic
realism, in which the uncanny is conjured up in the character’s mind. The novel contains
several instances of that subcategory of magic realism (Delbaere “Magic Realism” 249-263).
The protagonist’s feeling of panic when being alone in Italy provides yet another instance of
this narrative mode: “The panic I hadn’t allowed myself to feel for the past week rolled in an
ice-gray wave back over my head, carrying with it the shapes of my fear, a dead animal, the
telephone breathing menace, killer’s notes cut from the Yellow Pages, a revolver, anger…
Faces formed and disintegrated in my head” (15). Although beneficial in her writing career,
Joan’s powers of imagination prevent her from accepting reality.
Joan’s state of in-betweenness, her oscillation between reality and fantasy best comes
to light in her mental description of her former trip to Rome with Arthur:
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Had it happened or was I making it up? Had we really walked through the maze of
Roman streets together, did we meander in a rented Fiat, did we drive along the
Appian Way with its tombs and rumored ghosts, did we descend into the
Catacombs, stuffed with the dried shells of Christians, were we guided by a short
Bulgarian priest, did we rise again after thirty minutes? Did we go round and round
the Colosseum, unable to find the right exit while thunderous trucks swayed past on
either side, loaded with metal and cement, pillars, lions for the games, loot, slaves?
(133).
Deeply impressed by the historical significance of the place, she mixes up past and present,
visualising slaves and lions as she visits the ruins of the Colosseum. Once again, her
imagination takes the lead and reveals to her a totally unknown realm of significant
connotations. The same occurs when she meditates on her fake suicide. Allowing her
imagination to wander so freely, she can no longer clearly distinguish the difference between
reality and fantasy:
Maybe I really did drown, I thought, and this whole thing (…) was a kind of joke
perpetrated by the afterlife. The soul sticks around the body for a while after death
because it’s confused, or that’s what the Spiritualists said. In that case I should’ve
been hovering somewhere near the oily surface of Lake Ontario (…) Or they’d
fished me out, I was unidentified, I was lying on a public slab; or I’d been cut up for
spare parts and this panorama was going on because some other body got my eyes
(309).
All these unconscious journeys blur the reader’s vision, enabling him/her to experience Joan’s
confusion, to sympathise with her, and to become the accomplice of her fantasies. Among
those, one of the most impressive takes place near the end of the book, when Joan, now totally
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obsessed with the consequences of her fake death, believes her clothes have a life of their
own:
Below me, in the foundations of the house, I could hear the clothes I’d buried there
growing themselves a body. It was almost completed; it was digging itself out, like a
huge blind mole, slowly and painfully shambling up the hill to the balcony… a
creature composed of all the flesh that used to be mine and which must have gone
somewhere. It would have no features, it would be smooth as a potato, pale as
starch, it would look like a big thigh, it would have a face like a breast minus the
nipple. It was the Fat Lady. (…) my ghost, my angel (…) I was absorbed into her.
Within my former body, I gasped for air. Disguised, concealed, white fur choking
my nose and mouth. Obliterated (320-321).
The magic realist passage epitomises Joan’s feelings of guilt for disappearing without any
explanation. It also hints at the uselessness of her deception strategies, which have
accomplished nothing except “obliterating” her. Moreover, the description mentions once
again the Fat Lady, as a symbol of the hybrid part of herself. 14 Thus, the excerpt suggests that
Joan still has to integrate – “absorb” – that aspect of herself before she can resume her
ordinary life.
The novel also features several hilarious instances of grotesque magic realism, which
often serve to express Joan’s frustration and her difficulties to cope with her “otherness.” One
of the best examples is her reaction when her obesity forces her to embody a mothball at the
dance recital: “I threw myself into the part, it was a dance of rage and destruction, tears rolled
14 Staels confirms this when she writes: “The Fat Lady is a freak, the other reduced to a comic spectacle set
against the antithetical “normality” of the spectator.” (Staels, Margaret Atwood’s Novels, 71).
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down my cheeks behind the fur, the butterflies would die; my feet hurt for days afterwards.
‘This isn’t me,’ I kept saying to myself, ‘they’re making me to it’; (…) I felt naked and
exposed, as if this ridiculous dance was the truth about me and everyone could see it.” (50).
Once again, the scene displays the unexpected combination of two separate realms, the human
and the animal, a characteristic of grotesque magic realism. The passage denotes Joan’s anger
and humiliation when she first experiences her otherness as a child. It also underlines her
rejection of hybridity when she thinks “This isn’t me.”
Further, the grotesque description of her rescuer down in the ravine also incorporates
magic realist qualities. Joan’s boundless imagination pictures the man “sending out menacing
tentacles of flesh and knotted rope, forming again as a joyful sunburst of yellow flowers”
(64). The ambiguity of this description of a male figure reflects Joan’s perpetual ambivalence
towards men, as she simultaneously wants to escape and to embody patriarchal values. As is
often the case, the magic realist moments contain the key to Joan’s discovery of her hybridity.
However, at this point, she is still too immature to grasp their epiphanic meaning.
Moreover, Joan’s descriptions of her mother can be regarded as instances of magic
realism. From the start, Joan presents her mother as a heartless monster, who feels neither pity
nor sympathy for her daughter’s distress and would rather side with her tormentors. In a
dream, Joan recalls her mother’s make up sessions and suddenly becomes aware of her
mother’s monstrousness as well as of her god-like superiority:
my mother always had a triple mirror, so she could see both sides as well as the front
of her head. In the dream, as I watched, I suddenly realized that instead of three
reflections she had three actual heads, which rose from her toweled shoulders on
three separate necks. This didn’t frighten me, as it seemed merely a confirmation of
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something I’d always known; but outside the door there was a man, a man who was
about to open the door and come in. If he saw, if he found out the truth about my
mother, something terrible would happen, not only to my mother but to me (65-67).
The research I conducted in the Atwood Papers at the Fischer Library of Rare Books in
Toronto demonstrates that Atwood intended the mother as a representation of the Greek
goddess Hecate Trivia. 15 Atwood notes “goddess of 3 ways – crossroads belong to her – 3
bodies and 3 heads” (see Appendix II). She also mentions the crossing of the Styx and its
consequence, forgetfulness. The whole passage with the three heads might thus point to the
fact that Joan has reached a crossroad, that her life might change totally and that she might
therefore have to forget part of it. Moreover, the fact that the goddess possesses three heads
may also be interpreted as a justification of Joan’s multiplicity. The three-fold goddess then
implies that the acceptance of hybridity may be the right solution for the heroine. Indeed,
social constraints are so diverse that a woman cannot possibly satisfy social demands and lead
a satisfying life, unless she grasps that concept of hybridity. The man threatening the mother’s
secret represents either Joan’s absent father figure, with whom she longs to get better
acquainted, or men in general, i.e. patriarchal disapproval of the mother’s unwanted
pregnancy. Joan’s later change of attitude towards that man indicates her willingness to
surrender to patriarchal demands in order to conform to social requirements: “As I grew older,
this dream changed. Instead of wanting to stop the mysterious man, I would sit there wishing
for him to enter. I wanted him to find out her secret, the secret that I alone knew: my mother
was a monster” (67). What Joan remains unable to accept, at that moment, is that the monster
15 Atwood Papers, collection 200, Box 27, File 27:1, p. 6.
In Survival, Atwood mentions the triple goddess as representative of the three-fold aspect of women: Diana, the
virgin ; Venus, goddess of sex, love and fertility, and Hecate, goddess of the underworld, possessing oracular
power (Atwood, Survival, 199). Roberta Sciff-Zamaro mentions this interpretation of the three-fold goddess in
her article “The Re/membering of Female Power in ‘Lady Oracle’” (Sciff-Zamaro, “The Re/membering,” 35-
37).
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exists within herself as well. Hybridity, repressed and concealed, has turned Joan into a
heartless monster, who uses deception without heeding the consequences.
Finally, Joan’s last confrontation with her mother becomes both dramatic and
grotesque: incapable of accepting her daughter’s otherness, the mother stabs her in the arm.
The whole incident takes on a grotesque, unreal quality due to Joan’s lack of reaction. Not
showing the slightest evidence of pain, Joan merely dismisses the wound and resumes her
activities, making a cup of tea for herself and her aggressor (124), thus proving how mimicry
has turned her into an insensitive being.
The novel’s most grotesque magic realist moments take place when Joan comes in
contact with the spiritualists, a congregation frequented by her Aunt Lou. The passages
possess the magic realist quality of uniting two otherwise separate realms, reality and the
supernatural, life and death. The spiritualists believe in an afterlife and summon the dead to
secure messages for the living. As an adolescent, Joan attends these séances in her usual
placid way, until one of the forebodings turns out to be addressed to her:
‘I have an urgent message,’ she said, ‘for someone without a number.’ She was
looking straight at me. ‘There’s a woman standing behind your chair. She’s about
thirty, with dark hair, wearing a navy-blue suit with a white collar and a pair of
white gloves. She’s telling you… what? She’s very unhappy about something… I
get the name Joan. I’m sorry, I can’t hear…’ (…) ‘That’s my mother!’ I said to Aunt
Lou in a piercing whisper. ‘She’s not even dead yet!’ I was frightened, but I was
also outraged: my mother had broken the rules of the game. Either that or Leda
Sprott was a fraud (110-111).
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Such an apparition becomes a leitmotiv in the novel. Indeed, Joan’s mother keeps appearing
each time Joan is about to make a decision concerning her attitude towards patriarchal
authority. Such is the case, for instance, just before Joan gets informed of her mother’s death,
an event which forces her to break off her relationship with Arthur and to return to Canada.
The depiction of the mother’s spectral apparition constitutes a clear instance of grotesque
magic realism:
How had she found me? She was standing, very upright, on the clay-colored rug,
dressed in her navy-blue suit with the white collar; her white gloves, hat and shoes
were immaculate, and she was clutching her purse under her arm. Her face was
made up, she’d drawn a bigger mouth around her mouth with lipstick, but the shape
of her own mouth showed through. Then I saw that she was crying, soundlessly,
horribly; mascara was running from her eyes in black tears. Through her back I
could see the dilapidated sofa; it looked as though the stuffing was coming out of
her. (…) It was her astral body, I thought, remembering what Leda Sprott had told
me. Why couldn’t she keep the goddamned thing at home where it belonged? (173).
The mother’s face with her large made-up mouth and her running black mascara resembles a
clown’s face. This magic realist carnivalesque distortion of the mother figure, its conflation of
simple reality and supernatural apparition, draws the reader’s attention to her
misunderstanding of motherhood and to the suffering it induced on Joan’ part. It also hints at
the importance of this particular moment for Joan. She is about to be freed both from
motherly authority and from her lover’s oppression and to proceed with her quest for self-
understanding.
The mother’s ghostly presence is further alluded to during Joan’s wedding ceremony
(205). Yet, the apparition is immediately discarded as unimportant. It could be interpreted as
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the mother’s warning to Joan not to fall into the trap of paternalistic power again. Indeed,
each time her mother’s spectre appears, Joan is confronted to a decision which either
positively or negatively influences the progress of her quest for hybridity. Significantly, Joan
resents being faced with that impressive mother figure, who implacably points to her
inadequacies: “I particularly didn’t like the thought of my mother, in the form of some kind of
spiritual jello, drifting around after me from place to place, wearing (apparently) her navy-
blue suit from 1949. Nor did I want to know that she was concerned about me: her concern
always meant pain, and I refused to believe in it” (111-112). The reader then comes to realise
that Joan’s mother initially felt concern for her daughter’s distress, though her own alienation
prevented her from helping the girl efficiently.
The mother’s last appearance in the novel foreshadows the protagonist’s descent into
her unconscious and her discovery of hybridity. Now accustomed to her mother’s spectre,
Joan agrees to follow her and discover what she wants to tell her:
By the light of the moon I could see who it was, and I relaxed. It was only my
mother. (…) ‘What do you want?’ I said, but she didn’t answer. She stretched out
her arms to me, she wanted me to come with her; she wanted us to be together. I
began to walk towards the door. She was smiling at me now, with her smudged face,
could she see I loved her? I loved her but the glass was between us, I would have to
go through it. I longed to console her. Together we would go down the corridor into
the darkness (329).
The mother’s attitude differs significantly: she no longer cries but smiles and stretches out her
arms towards Joan, thus indicating her wish to help her. Only then is Joan capable of listening
to her mother. She decides to follow her down along the dark corridor, in search for the key to
her spiritual in-betweenness.
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Further, the passage resembles one of Joan’s numerous attempts at automatic writing.
The uncanny nature of that activity provides the novel with several magic realist moments, in
which Joan mixes reality, personal fantasies, and literary creation. Her first attempt seems
rather discouraging, for it only results in some burnt hair and a single red line on her notepad
(113-114). However, Joan’s second experience immediately strikes the reader as more
impressive and undeniably uncanny:
The room seemed very dark, darker than it had before; the candle was very bright, I
was holding it in my hand and walking along a corridor, I was descending, I turned a
corner. I was going to find someone. I needed to find someone. There was
movement at the edge of the mirror. I gasped and turned around. Surely there had
been a figure, standing behind me (220).
The scene indubitably hints at Joan’s eventual descent into her subconscious. The first word
she actually produces explains the significance of the experience for Joan: “I looked down at
the piece of paper. There, in a scrawly handwriting that was certainly not my own, was a
single word: Bow (…) I got out the paperback Roget’s Thesaurus (…) cringe, stoop, kneel
(SLAVERY); submit, yield, defer (SUBMISSION)” (220). The word “bow” indicts Joan’s
submissive attitude, constituting an unconscious rejection of patriarchal power. Deeply
impressed by this first result, Joan decides to explore the dark corridor. She then provides the
reader with uncanny descriptions of her wanderings (220-221). The experience becomes
increasingly threatening as Joan discovers an enigmatic female figure, the embodiment of
another hybrid aspect of herself: “However, the words I collected in this way became
increasingly bizarre and even threatening: “iron,” “throat,” “knife,” “heart.” At first the
sentences centered around the same figure, the same woman. After a while I could almost see
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her: she lived under the earth somewhere, or inside something, a cave or a huge building;
sometimes she was on a boat.” (222). The discovery of that “Lady Oracle,” who strikingly
resembles the Greek Pythia, 16 displays an epiphanic quality triggered by Joan’s journey to
success as a famous poetess. As such, it also alludes to her current quest for self-knowledge.
Interesting here is Atwood’s use of Greek myth as a means of introducing fantasy in an
otherwise highly realistic plot. However, it may become dangerous if the subject is not ready
to confront reality, as is the case for Joan. The revelation of hybridity may then seem
overwhelming, threatening to suffocate the individual:
“I don’t know what would have happened if I’d kept on, but I was forced to stop. I
went into the mirror one evening and I couldn’t get out again. I was going along the
corridor, with the candle in my hand as usual, and the candle went out. I think the
candle really did go out. I think the candle really did go out and that was why I was
stuck there, in the midst of darkness, unable to move. I’d lost all sense of directions;
I was afraid to turn around even, in case I ended up going farther in. I felt as though
I was suffocating.” (223).
The passage clearly indicates that Joan refuses to face her unconscious, preferring to go on
living in her self-reassuring world of fantasies.
16 Box 27 in the Atwood Papers shows the chapter about oracles in Robert Graves, The Greek Myths; the
definition of Pythia and Diana in J. Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary; three pages of W.H. Roscher’s
Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie, giving a full description of the goddess
Hecate; the Aeneid’s description of the oracle’s (book VI, l. 70-293), and other allusions to the oracle in Ovid’s
Metamorphoses (book XIV, l. 101-159) and Plutarch’s Morals. See Atwood Papers, Collection 200, Box 27, File
27:10. Marilyn Patton’s article “‘Lady Oracle’: The Politics of the Body” provides extensive description of these
sources (Patton “Lady Oracle” 39-41). It mentions entries from encyclopaedia and dictionaries about the
“Sybil,” excerpts fromVirgil’s Aeneid and from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The article also describes the content of
Box 13, which contains additional material on various Greek and Latin earth goddesses (Proserpine, Hecate,
Cybele) and xeroxed references from Robert Graves’s The Greek Myths, which Atwood mentions as a source for
her last book to date The Penelopiad.
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Ironically, her fiction forces Joan to come to terms with her hybridity. Exiled in Italy,
supposedly dead, Joan must absolutely finish her last costume gothic because she needs
money. The image of the maze, which recurs in her fiction, functions as a threatening and
uncanny reminder of her own confused state of mind. The maze intrigues Joan’s innocent
heroines from the first pages of the novel (30). It soon becomes identified as a place where
several women – i.e. the different components of Joan’s fragmented hybrid self – have
disappeared:
‘It’s not a good place, the maze, especially for young girls. (…) The Master won’t
talk of it, ever since the first Lady Redmond was lost there, and the second one too,
in broad daylight it was. Some say the Little Folk dance there and they don’t like
intruders, but that’s just superstition. The first Lady Redmond (…) went into it just
to prove it was harmless, but she never did come out. (…) The second one (…) got
so curious about what happened to the first, she went in as well. That time they
heard her screaming (…) Some say as how there’s no center to the maze and that’s
how they get lost (…) Some say as how the first Lady Redmond and the second one
are still in there.’ (186-187).
The absence of a centre in the maze may be regarded as a metaphor for Joan’s inner feeling of
marginality, in other words, for her ex-centric position as an individual. Joan’s heroines feel
irresistibly drawn to that mysterious place (187), as Joan herself becomes aware of the
necessity of her quest for self-knowledge.
As the conclusion of the novel – and simultaneously of Joan’s last book – draws
nearer, she suddenly blurs several kinds of fictions, adopting a narrative technique
reminiscent of magic realism, which characteristically entangles different kinds of realities:
“Strange that they never recovered Felicia’s body, though he had had the riverbed dragged.
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The shrubberies stirred and a figure stepped out from them, blocking his path. It was an
enormously fat woman dressed in a sopping-wet blue velvet gown” (332). Having expressed
her sympathies for Felicia, the novel’s villain, Joan has acknowledged the existence of evil
within her own personality. Significantly, she then confronts the Fat Lady, as another
concealed aspect of herself, i.e. her past as an obese adolescent, which she refuses to reveal to
her husband. This issue is subsequently dramatised in a highly unrealistic scene, in which
Joan’s fictional characters encounter her real-life husband:
‘You didn’t want me to come back at all,’ she wept. ‘You’re happier without me…
and it was such an effort, Arthur, to get out of that water and come all this way, just
to be with you again…’ Redmond drew back, puzzled. ‘Who is Arthur?’ he asked.
The woman began to fade, like mist, like invisible ink, like melting snow... (323).
The whole scene displays undeniably grotesque magic realist features: it superbly blends
reality and fiction, mixing real and imaginary characters, transforming a human being into a
natural element. The allusions to her disappearance in water and to her husband have an
epiphanic value, for it embodies Joan’s fear of being rejected because of her “otherness.”
In an ultimate climactic scene, Joan eventually grasps the epiphanic meaning of her
writing process. As her heroine reaches the centre of the maze, Joan becomes aware of the
hybrid character of her personality:
A stone bench ran long one side, and on it were seated four woman. Two of them
looked a lot like her, with red hair and green eyes and small white teeth. The third
was middle-aged, (…) with a ratty piece of fur around her neck. The last was
enormously fat. She was wearing a pair of pink tights and a short pink skirt covered
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with spangles. From her head sprouted two antennae, like a butterfly’s, and a pair
of obviously false wings was pinned to her back. (341).
In the maze, Felicia/Joan encounters four women, two of whom resemble Joan. They embody
the two aspects of her personality as a writer, the writer of cheap romances and the acclaimed
poetess. Further, she meets a figure representing Aunt Lou, someone she admired and
imitated. Though she represents Joan’s attempts to resist patriarchy, Aunt Lou appears as a
slightly old-fashioned marginal figure, whom Joan would no longer want to resemble. The
last woman, the fat ballerina, strikes the reader by the fake quality of her attributes, thus
indicating the deceptive aspect of that figure as well. Indeed, this epiphanic encounter makes
Joan grasp that she is not one of these women. Each of them are only parts of her hybrid
personality. Nevertheless, I doubt that Joan, by the end of the novel, has fully come to terms
with her hybrid identity. Indeed, like Felicia, who is “too well bred” to show her surprise,
Joan decides to turn to yet another aspect of her fragmented self. Everything seems to indicate
that she intends to return to her husband, thus submitting again to the rules of patriarchy.
Further, she mentions that she has decided to become a science-fiction writer, a decision,
which, once again, draws her closer to the world of fantasy than to reality. In this case, magic
realism, though undeniably endowed with epiphanic qualities, thus fails to bring about the
heroine’s recognition of hybridity.
4. Parodies of Trickster Figures
From the very first pages of the novel, the heroine uncovers her trickster-like personality.
Indeed, she identifies her faked suicide as “a trick” (7). Moreover, she mentions that this
technique allows her to disappear altogether, becoming a corpse, a shadow, as befits a
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trickster. She then goes through the details of her disguise process, explaining the necessity to
dye her too recognisable red hair (14). She notices that this transformation also induces
another change: “My face looked quite different, though: I could pass for a secretary on
vacation” (14). The description of her transfiguration acquires a ritualistic value as she
equates it with a form of sacrifice through burning: “I began to sacrifice my hair. It shrivelled,
blackened, writhed like a handful of pinworms, melted and finally burned, sputtering like a
fuse” (14-15). The whole scene resembles a purification ritual preceding the heroine’s actual
metamorphosis into a more powerful individual, belonging to the realm of the dead and
therefore endowed with superior knowledge. Joan precisely hints at that power when she
describes her relationship with her fictional heroines:
Now I could play fairy godmother to them (…) I had the power to turn them from
pumpkins into pure gold (…) Why refuse them their castles, their persecutors and
their princes, and come to think of it, who the hell was Arthur to talk about social
relevance? Sometimes his goddamned theories and ideologies made me puke. The
truth was that I dealt in hope, I offered a vision of a better world, however
preposterous (35).
Far from simply alluding to her power, Joan’s reflection also underlines her decision to give
fellow women some hope in a society mainly run by paternalistic male subjects like her
husband, Arthur.
Early on, Joan realises that people show more sympathy for girls who correspond to a
socially accepted image, that of the charming, skinny ballerina (52). She simultaneously
understands the necessity for her to use cunning in order to mimic social integration.
Incapable of transforming into the cherished ballerina, she decides to become, at least at
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school, a joyful and friendly confidante, while remaining jealous of the other girls’ life:
“Everyone trusted me, no one was afraid of me, though they should have been. I knew
everything about my friends. (…) But they guessed nothing about me; I was a sponge, I drank
it all in but gave nothing out, despite the temptation to tell everything, all my hatred and
jealousy, to reveal myself as the duplicitous monster I knew myself to be.” (94-95). For a
while, she succeeds in tricking her classmates to believe in her qualities. Yet, when moving
over to higher education, Joan resists, feeling unable to play the part of the fat good friend any
longer (95). However, she simply abandons one kind of tricksterism for another, a more
professional one. She confesses her attraction to the figure of Mercury, “the god of thieves
and trickery as well as speed” (97), before engaging in yet another form of transformation.
Indeed, Joan decides to lose weight – the condition for inheriting money from Aunt Lou – and
thus gain her independence. The whole process can be interpreted as a metamorphosis into a
trickster figure. 17 Once again, Atwood here resorts to a trickster figure originating in the Latin
background. One of the first sign of this mutation is Joan’s sudden clarity of vision: “I
developed some peculiar side effects: (…) an alarming clarity of vision. The world, which I’d
seen for so long as a blur, with the huge but ill-defined figure of my mother blocking the
foreground, came sharply into focus. Sunshine and brilliant colors hurt my eyes.” (122).
Another symptom is her unsuspected nastiness: “I became listless and crabby; I snapped at
my friends, I told them I didn’t want to hear anymore about their stupid boyfriends, I turned
down requests to help with the decorations for the Senior Formal” (122). Her mother
17 Identifying Lady Oracle as a form of the picaresque novel, Lucy M. Freibert writes: “In order to survive
within the master-slave relationship, the character learns to live by his or her wits and gradually develops into a
picaro, or rogue – a protean figure who repeatedly changes forms and disguises to suit the occasion. The picaro
consorts with rogues of all classes and from them learns the fine points of deception (Freibert “The Artist as
Picaro” 23),” which is precisely what happens to Joan as she comes in contact with a series of secondary
trickster-like figures. To her definition of the picaro, Freibert adds: “Having given Joan this apprenticeship in
roguery, Atwood turns her into a Protean picaro, who assumes many roles and guises, either successively or
simultaneously, and who eventually becomes an expert escape artist” (26). Yet, I disagree with Freibert when
she interprets Joan’s new interest in science fiction as a radical change of attitude (31). On the contrary, it
suggests the narrator’s inability to move away from her fantasies and to enter real life.
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underlines another characteristic feature of the trickster when she reproaches Joan to “go to
extremes with everything” (123). Similarly, the Polish Count mentions her goddess-like
quality as he admires her body (142). However, the reader realises that Joan remains reluctant
to transform. When she discovers the nature of the oracle in her poems, she comments: “She
was enormously powerful, almost like a goddess, but it was an unhappy power. This woman
puzzled me. (…) she had nothing to do with me. I wasn’t at all like that, I was happy. Happy
and inept.” (222). In her successful book of poetry, she describes her trickster-like alter-ego in
these words:
She sits on the iron throne
She is one and three
The dark lady the redgold lady
the blank lady oracle
of blood, she who must be
obeyed forever
Her glass wings are gone
She floats down the river
singing her last song (226).
Metaphorically, the poem, with its three ladies forming one, assesses the heroine’s hybridity
as a powerful state, nevertheless involving suffering, here represented by blood. It hints at the
protagonist’s difficulty to integrate her hybrid components into a unified person, one capable
of behaving creatively.
After that climactic awareness, Joan’s trickster-like features are again mentioned in
relation to her fake suicide. She finds accomplices in her friends Sam and Marlene, whom she
tricks into believing that she will be arrested by the police for having concealed dynamite
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(294-6). She takes great care in conceiving a credible story documented with photographs of
her before the alleged accident (299-301). Joan eventually reveals her true nature as she
imagines her readers’ reactions: “They’ll probably say my disappearance was some kind of
stunt, a trick…” (345). She regards her fake suicide as a trick, another of her numerous
instances of deceptive behaviour.
While Joan indubitably constitutes the novel’s most elaborate trickster-figure, the plot
equally features other, either incomplete or parodic versions of the trickster. To begin with,
the heroine might have inherited her trickster’s talent from her enigmatic father figure. An
anaesthetist at the Toronto General Hospital, he seems capable of bringing people back to life.
The heroine soon becomes aware of this power, which fascinates her: “My father was an
anaesthetist at the Toronto General Hospital. (…) I thought all my father did was put people
to sleep before operations. I didn’t know about this resurrectionist side of his personality.
‘Why do people try to kill themselves?’ I asked. ‘How do you bring them to life again?’ ” (72-
73). During a conversation at the dinner table, she also gathers that her father worked in
intelligence during the war, which gave him the power to deal with people’s life and death:
“He was in Intelligence. (…) You wouldn’t think it to look at him, would you? (…) You
wouldn’t ever hear it from him, but he can speak French like a native (…) His job was to kill
people they thought were fakes” (75). The father’s ability to speak a foreign language
undeniably reminds us of his daughter’s talent to be someone else. Moreover, the father
clearly belongs to the realm of nature: one of the activities which bring him closer to his
daughter consists in taking care of plants, a wordless activity, belonging to the world of
instincts (76). The heroine remembers him as a powerful man, endowed with sacred
knowledge: “He was a conjuror of spirits, a shaman with the voice of a dry, detached old
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opera commentator in a tuxedo” (76). Naturally, she expects him to give an answer to
existential problems, that her mother could not help her to solve:
“I wanted him to tell me the truth about life, which my mother would not tell me and
which he must have known something about, as he was a doctor and had been in the
war, he’d killed people and raised the dead. I kept waiting for him to give me some
advice, warn me, instruct me, but he never did any of these things. Perhaps he felt as
if I weren’t really his daughter (…) he treated me more like a colleague than a
daughter, more like an accomplice. But what was our conspiracy?” (77).
As the words “what was our conspiracy?” suggest, the father’s contribution remains
unsatisfactory. Indeed, his daughter keeps expecting existential clues from him, while he
regards her as an accomplice in his role as a trickster. The passage clearly evokes the bond
existing between the two characters. Yet, it also stresses the frustrating aspect of their
relationship. The male figure seems unable to provide the desired answer; he merely displays
his own power and leaves the protagonist at a loss for a suitable outcome. Even when she later
turns to him for answers concerning her mother’s death, the father strikes us as a distant,
disguised and powerful figure: “I went to the hospital to see my father. (…) I’d never seen
him dressed in his official uniform: he had a white cap on and a gown, and a mask over the
lower half of his face, which he was in the act of pulling down. He looked much more
impressive than he ever had at home, he looked like someone with power.” (137). The heroine
then discovers another, more heartless and dubious aspect of his personality:
He’d already given my mother’s clothes to the Crippled Civilians, (…) he was
systematically violating all the rules. (…) His eyes pleaded with me to believe him,
join the conspiracy, keep my mouth shut. I had a sudden image of him sneaking out
of the hospital, wearing his white mask so he would not be recognized, driving back
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to the house, (…) creeping up behind her. He was a doctor, (…) he’d killed people
before, he would know how to break her neck and make it look like an accident.
(178-179).
Joan clearly suspects her father of having killed her mother. She emphasises his acquaintance
with death and interprets his snug attitude as a form of conspiracy: they both hated her
mother.
A more friendly trickster figure can be found in Aunt Lou, a jovial and exuberant
person, who obviously enjoys life and defies conventions. Recalling a childhood episode, the
narrator focuses the reader’s attention on Aunt Lou’s magic token: a fur fox, which she uses
as a ventriloquist to reveal secrets: “This was a real fox (…) though underneath its nose,
instead of a lower jaw, it had a clamp by which it held its tail in place. Aunt Lou would open
and shut the clamp and pretend that the fox was talking. It often revealed secrets, such as
where Aunt Lou had hidden the gumdrops she had brought me, and it asked important
questions also, like what I wanted for Christmas” (81). Aunt Lou further plays an important
part in the heroine’s development: she forces her to lose weight in order to inherit her wealth.
Her will forces the heroine to ask herself questions: did her aunt want her to lose weight
because, like everybody else, she resented Joan’s obesity? Or did she want to help Joan to
become independent? While the question remains, I would rather favour the second
interpretation, regarding Aunt Lou as a benevolent helper in the heroine’s quest journey. Her
symbol, the fox, functions as a leitmotiv throughout the book. It is mentioned every time an
important change takes place in the heroine’s life, such as, for instance, when Aunt Lou dies
and Joan has to empty her apartment (119). It is also present in the epiphanic conclusion of
her latest gothic romance (341). Aunt Lou further brings Joan in contact with another
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trickster, Leda Sprott. A faith healer and spiritualist, Sprott reveals to Joan her possibilities as
a trickster:
Then, to my embarrassment, she took hold of my hand. ‘You have great gifts,’ she
said, looking into my eyes. ‘Great powers. You should develop them. You should
try the Automatic Writing, on Wednesdays. I can’t tell whether you’re a sender or a
receiver… a receiver, I think. I’d be glad to help you train; you could be better than
any of us, but it would take hard work, and I must warn you, without supervision
there’s some danger. Not all the spirits are friendly, you know.’ (112).
Joan naturally discards these powers as embarrassing. While she briefly contemplates herself
as a powerful psychic, she soon decides she would rather remain insignificant because failure
frightens her too much (112). When Joan meets her again years later, for her wedding, Sprott
bears the significant name of E.P. Revele (202), thus alluding to her ability to reveal things to
the heroine. 18 She agrees to become Joan’s accomplice by not unveiling her past to her future
husband. Yet, she also gives Joan the following piece of advice: “Avoid deception and
falsehood; treat your lives as a diary you are writing and that you know your loved one will
someday read” (202). She further warns her about the dangers of denying one’s gifts – i.e.
one’s hybrid nature:
18 Carol L. Beran identifies Leda Sprott as a character who “carries the potential of producing the cognitio or
anagnorisis that Frye sees as central to the comic and tragic mode (…): she could unmask villains and reveal
heroines or produce in Joan a recognition of who she is and her relation to the universe” (Beran, “George, Leda”
23). Personally, I interpret this description as befitting a trickster, especially if one simultaneously considers
Leda Sprott’s alleged spiritual power. Thieme also mentions Leda Sprott’s trickster-like features when he
writes: “She may be viewed as part con-woman, part-magician; her picaroon manipulations of people’s fantasies
make her a shaman-like figure, a creature whose trickster strategies have the effect of breaking down barriers
between areas of experience (…) but also through her androgynous identity (Joan thinks ‘E.P.Revele’ is going to
be a man until they meet her) collapsing traditional notions of gender roles” (Thieme 77). Thieme adds: “through
her multiplicity of roles and her work as an unintentionally subversive woman writer comes to be a similar
creative trickster, a Houdini who offers genuine possibilities of escape for the female subject” (Thieme 77-78). I
consider the character of Leda Sprott as an important trickster figure in the novel. By displaying the image of a
powerful woman, who also possesses several identities, she simultaneously guides Joan in her quest and warns
her against the dangers of her situation.
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‘You do not choose a gift, it chooses you, and if you deny it it will make use of you
in any case, though perhaps in a less desirable way. I used my own gift, as long as I
had it. You may think I’m a stupid old woman or a charlatan, I’m used to that. But
sometimes I had the truth to tell; there’s no mistaking it when you do. When I had
no truth to tell, I told them what they wanted to hear. I shouldn’t have done that.
You may think it’s harmless, but it isn’t.’ (…) Suddenly I believed in her. I wanted
to ask her all the questions I’d saved up for her: she could tell me about my
mother… But my belief faded: hadn’t she just hinted that the Jordan Chapel was
fraudulent and her revelations guesswork and playacting? ‘People have faith in you,’
Leda said. ‘They trust you. That can be dangerous, especially if you take advantage
of it. Everything catches up to you sooner or later. You should stop feeling so sorry
for yourself. (…) ‘Don’t say what you don’t mean,’ she said irritably. ‘You do
enough of that already.’ (206).
The passage clearly denotes the need for Joan to accept herself as she is, i.e. as a hybrid
person, with the capacity for vision and knowledge it entails. Leda Sprott further denounces
Joan’s attitude as a writer of romances, abusing her readers’ credulity in a fraudulent way. She
also hints at Joan’s propensity to lie and deceive her friends and relatives. Having proceeded
with Joan and Arthur’s wedding, Leda Sprott bids Joan farewell, asking her not to reveal her
false identity (207). In doing so, she recognises Joan as a fellow trickster.
The last trickster-like secondary character, the Royal Porcupine, presents the reader
with a parody of a trickster figure. Joan’s ex-centric lover displays the trickster’s typical
exuberance, a desire to shock, and a rejection of social convention. His first encounter with
Joan, on the release of her book of poetry, shows his intention to provoke her: “‘What’s it like
to be a successful bad writer?’ I was beginning to feel angry. ‘Why don’t you publish and find
out?’ I said. ‘Hey,’ he said, grinning, ‘temper. You’ve got fantastic hair, anyway. Don’t ever
cut it off.’ This time I looked at him. He too had red hair, (…) and a top hat embroidered with
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porcupine quills.” (239). Atwood immediately alludes to their similar nature by stressing their
identical hair colour. She further identifies him as a trickster by associating him with death
and nature: indeed, the Royal Porcupine is an artist who collects frozen dead animals (240),
which he transforms into works of art. He mocks the monarchy (244), as befits a tricksterish
character rejecting authority. Moreover, he forces the heroine to acknowledge her own
trickster-like nature: “I was more than double, I was triple, multiple, and now I could see that
there was more than one life to come, there were many. The Royal Porcupine had opened a
time-space door to the fifth dimension; cleverly disguised as a freight elevator, and one of my
selves plunged recklessly through.” (246). However, one should notice that only one of Joan’s
multiple identities gets truly involved with the Royal Porcupine, the others remaining safely
hidden. Joan, the famous poetess, is indeed repeatedly identified with that ex-centric
companion, “dressed up in middle-aged tourist outfits, bought at the Crippled Civilians, and
registered under assumed names.” (257). Nevertheless, the reader should not underestimate
the importance of the Royal Porcupine in Joan’s quest for self-knowledge. Indeed, he allows
her to become aware of her ex-centric, marginal component. As such, he functions as a key
element in the heroine’s discovery of her hybridity. Atwood gives us a clue as to the
importance of that character when Joan offers him a highly important and symbolic token: “I
even gave him my fox, the one that had been Aunt Lou’s. This was a real gift: I valued it.”
(270). This gift denotes Joan’s recognition of the similarities between the Royal Porcupine
and herself. It also indicates that she is now ready to leave Aunt Lou behind as a guide and
proceed alone on her quest for her hybrid self.
The novel contains several trickster figures, of whom Joan is undeniably the most
gifted one. Indeed, none of the secondary tricksters – her weak father, her cherished Aunt
Lou, and the exuberant Royal Porcupine – succeeds in helping her significantly in her quest
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for hybridity. Joan totally fails to grasp the significance of her silent complicity with her
father. The financial security provided by her Aunt Lou’s inheritance only helps her to escape
from her problems, not to save them, as she decides to endorse yet a different identity.
Finally, her tumultuous affair with the Royal Porcupine, who eventually chooses to become
an ordinary man, only provides Joan another means of escape. The protagonist herself uses a
variety of tricks in order to fool other characters and to safeguard her artificially constructed
lives. Although she possesses the trickster’s power of transformation, she remains unable to
use such energy in order to come to terms with her hybrid self.
5. From Multiple Personalities to Hybridity
This section examines how the novel may be interpreted as Joan’s quest for hybridity.
Therefore, it focuses on the protagonist’s feelings of alienation, on her sense of marginality,
and on the strategies she uses to simultaneously comply to and fight against patriarchal
empowerment. At the beginning of the novel, Atwood presents us with a heroine who has
clearly chosen escape as the solution to her problem:
“I burst into tears and shoved my head under the pillow. Then I decided it would
have to stop. I couldn’t let Arthur go on controlling my life, especially at such a
distance. I was someone else now, I was almost someone else. People used to say to
me, ‘You don’t look at all like your photographs,’ and it was true; so with a few
adjustments I’d be able to pass him on the street one day and he wouldn’t even
recognize me” (24).
The passage proves highly significant through the simultaneous allusions to Arthur’s control
over the heroine’s life and her wish to be someone else. Even in her remote Italian town, the
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protagonist still bothers about patriarchal demands: she worries about the reaction of people
when they realise that she travels without her husband: “What else was there to know about a
foreigner? The only thing that might bother them was that I lived alone: it wouldn’t seem
natural to them. But it didn’t seem natural to me, either” (26). The end of this quote confesses
her own usual acceptance of those social rules. She then frequently alludes to her need to
escape, a desire she shares with the readers of her cheap books (34).
Atwood then deftly introduces the theme of otherness, as an explanation for the
heroine’s wish to escape reality. The first occurrence of the heroine’s sense of marginality
takes place when, as a child, she has to perform a dance disguised as a mothball. Joan’s
physical difference – she is obviously much fatter than the other little girls of the dance class
– makes it impossible for her to play the part of a light butterfly. Therefore, the dance teacher
decides to assign an altogether different role to her:
‘Joan, dear,’ she said, ‘how would you like to be something special?”
I smiled at her uncertainly. (…)
‘What am I going to be?’ I asked as she led me away.
‘A mothball, dear,’ she answered serenely, as if this were the most natural thing in
the world. (…) I was wounded, desolated in fact (…) She also wanted me to hang
around my neck a large sign that said MOTHBALL (…) I had to stand in the mothball
suit with Miss Flegg’s hand on my shoulder while she explained to the other
Teenies, sylphlike in their wispy skirts and shining wings, about the change in plans
and my new, starring role. They looked at me, scorn on their painted lips; they were
not taken in (48-49).
Joan consequently has to deal both with the sorrow she feels for being singled out as different
and with the other girls’ anger and incomprehension. At this point, she has not the slightest
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idea of why she is set apart. She only utters the pain she feels: “What was the matter with me?
It wasn’t that I couldn’t dance. (…) The worst thing was that I still didn’t understand quite
why this was being done to me, this humiliation disguised as a privilege” (50). Recalling the
episode, she soon associates it with a more general inadequacy to meet social requirements:
“It’s true I had received more individual attention than the others, but I wasn’t sure it was a
kind I liked. Besides, who would think of marrying a mothball? A question my mother put to
me often, later, in other forms” (51). Indeed, the situation worsens as Joan gets older, partly
because of her credulity. The mother’s desire to send her to a better group of Brownies, in a
remote neighbourhood (52-53), reinforces Joan’s isolation even more. Joan comments on her
situation: “at the Brownies itself I was an alien from beyond the borders” (53). In fact, the
Brownies is situated far away (53) and forces Joan to get acquainted with older girls who take
advantage of her credulity (54). However, Joan remembers the Brownies as a happy period of
her life. It provided her with a motto which, she thought, might help her to solve her problem:
“at Brownies you were supposed to try to be the same, and I was beginning to find this idea
quite attractive” (54). Yet, she soon discovers that the other girls only tolerate her (56), and
later use her as a scapegoat (57). Symptomatically, a childish game in which one discovers
one’s own image in a mirror, turns into a disaster when the other girls abandon Joan in a
ravine, at the mercy of strangers (61). Both Joan’s failure in this test of self-recognition and
her mother’s subsequent reproaches – “you were stupid to let the other girls fool you like
that” (63) – hint at her alienation and “otherness.”
Atwood further stresses her heroine’s “otherness” through a series of short episodes:
for instance, as a child, she covers her entire face with eye shadow to become blue (66). Later,
when she has become an obese teenager, Joan delights in showing up in rooms where her
mother is making a show of her obesity (71). The reader soon learns that Joan’s trouble in part
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finds its source in her knowledge of being an unwanted child, a situation which she
unconsciously identifies as the cause of her eating disorder: “I ate to defy her, but I also ate
from panic. Sometimes I was afraid I wasn’t really there, I was an accident; I’d heard her call
me an accident. Did I want to become solid, solid as a stone so she wouldn’t be able to get rid
of me?” (78). She then recalls another childhood episode, which once again stresses her
“otherness:” when a girl at school offers her a kitten, she significantly chooses one with seven
toes on each foot (79), a symbol of her own difference. Even her clothes gradually become a
way of asserting this difference: “I sought out clothes of a peculiar and offensive hideousness,
violently colored, horizontally striped (…) The brighter the colors, the more rotund the effect,
the more certain I was to buy. I wasn’t going to let myself be diminished, neutralized” (88).
Aunt Lou’s friendliness provides Joan with one way of dealing with otherness when she tells
her: “‘That’s just the way I am,’ Aunt Lou said once. ‘If other people can’t handle it, that’s
their problem. Remember that, dear. You can’t always choose your life, but you can learn to
accept it.’” (88). Sensitive to other people’s distress, Aunt Lou refuses to let Joan visit the
Freak Show. The site therefore becomes a mystery, a mythical place for Joan. Identifying with
the freaks, Joan somehow integrates one of them – the Fat Lady – as a symbol of her
otherness 19 :
19 Enoch Padolsky’s article, which studies the ethnic minority/majority binary in Lady Oracle, also interprets the
Fat Lady image as a commentary on patriarchal values. According to Padolsky, Atwood explores “the
consequences, social and psychological, of this cultural non-conformity, and uses the presence of the ‘fat
woman’ in the novel as a site of commentary on Canadian patriarchal culture” (Padolsky 264).
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“‘It’s wrong to laugh at other people’s misfortunes,’ she said, sterner than usual. I
found this unfair: other people laughed at mine, I should get a chance too. But then,
nobody regarded being fat as a misfortune; it was viewed simply as a disgusting
failure of will. It wasn’t fated and therefore glamorous, like being a Siamese twin or
living in an iron lung. Nevertheless, the Fat Lady was in that tent and I wanted to see
her; but I never did. What I couldn’t remember was this: were there two tents, or
was there only one?” (90).
Significantly, Joan feels unable to remember whether the Fat Lady was part of the freak show
or not, in the same way as she finds it difficult to assess the importance of her otherness.
From then on, the Fat Lady reappears whenever Joan faces an identity crisis.
Paradoxically, that ludicrous character therefore possesses epiphanic qualities: the Fat Lady
points to Joan’s growing awareness of her hybridity. For instance, when Joan thinks of a
fellow schoolmate equally bullied for her “otherness,” the Fat Lady suddenly shows up: the
schoolgirl reality is suddenly interrupted by the apparition of a surreal character, who reminds
Joan of her own inadequacies:
I was sitting in a circus tent (…) Suddenly a spotlight cut through the blackness and
focused on a tiny platform at the top of the tent. Upon it stood the Fat Lady from the
freak show at the Canadian National Exhibition (…) She carried a diminutive pink
umbrella; this was a substitute for the wings I longed to pin on her. (…) You’d think
I would have given this Fat Lady my own face, but it wasn’t so simple. Instead she
had the face of Theresa, my despised fellow-sufferer. At school I avoided her, but I
wasn’t altogether a heartless monster, I wished to make reparation, I had good
intentions. (102-103).
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The Fat Lady, whom Joan recognises as her alter-ego, significantly displays the face of
another girl, Theresa. This other fat girl in Joan’s school year has few friends. She represents
the other option for an outsider, i.e. becoming invisible. Joan, on the contrary, has opted for
another strategy: being a best friend and confidante. Yet, she remains deprived of the other
girls’ privileges – having boyfriends, going to parties – precisely because of her “otherness.”
Joan strangely resembles the Fat Lady when she gets an arrow in her buttock at the
fair. She then becomes the object of people’s laughter (116). She eventually questions her
physical appearance realising that Aunt Lou wanted her to lose weight as well (121). Thinking
about her situation, Joan understands that Aunt Lou wanted to offer her the possibility to
escape from her mother. At that time, she does not know that her physique may not constitute
the core of her problem. Indeed, she definitely finds it more difficult to accept her inner
hybridity than her physical difference. When she later manages to lose weight, she becomes
aware of another aspect of her alienation:
I was on these bus trips that I first discovered there was something missing in me.
This lack came from having been fat; it was like being without a sense of pain, and
pain and fear are protective, up to a point. I’d never developed the usual female
fears: fear of intruders, fear of the dark, fear of gasping noises over the phone, fear
of bus stops and slowing cars, fear of anyone or anything outside whatever magic
circle defines safety. I wasn’t whistled at or pinched on elevators, I was never
followed down lonely streets. (…) So when I shrank to normal size I had none of
these fears, and I had to develop them artificially. I had to keep reminding myself:
Don’t go there alone. Don’t go out at night (140).
Joan here confesses that her former fatness preserved her from some aspects of womanhood:
she has never been attractive and consequently does not know how to cope with men’s desire.
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This kind of innocence turns Joan into an easy victim of patriarchy. Willing to please
men at all costs, she decides to have “more than one life” (141), in order to fulfil patriarchal
demands, while safeguarding her personal choices. However, the multiplicity of her inner
selves soon becomes a burden to Joan, who comments: “I wasn’t adjusted. I’d spent all my
life learning to be one person and now I was a different one. I had been an exception, with the
limitations that imposed; now I was average, and I was far from used to it.” (144). Her first
attempt at living a normal life brings her to England, where she feels even more alien than in
Toronto: “I began to feel that England was a message in code which I didn’t know how to
decipher.” (145). Her encounter with her first lover, the Polish Count, epitomises this feeling
of “otherness.” Indeed, Paul hints at his own hybrid character, defining himself as “the last
(…) of a dying race. The last of the Mohicans” (148), a feeling Joan understands all too well.
Like her, he desperately tries to be assimilated as an English citizen, despite his inadequacies.
Joan provides an explanation for his pseudonym as a writer: “He had chosen his pseudonym
because he found the name Mavis to be archetypically English. As for Quilp… (…) ‘This is a
character from Dickens, it is a deformed, malicious dwarf. This is what I see myself to be, in
this country; I have been deprived of my stature, and I am filled with bitter thoughts.’” (155).
Although the Count’s hot temper and excessive jealousy provoke the end of their relationship,
Joan undoubtedly feels attracted to his foreignness. A proof of this lies in her negative
reaction when she discovers her new lover’s Canadian identity: “I would’ve preferred it if
he’d had a British accent; unfortunately, he was only a Canadian, like me, but I overlooked
this defect.” (165). However, this new relationship soon comes to an end with the death of
Joan’s mother and her sudden return to Canada. Back at her parents’ home, Joan attempts to
catch up with the past. She thus becomes aware of her mother’s contained anger, when she
discovers the family photograph album, in which all the men’s faces have been cut out (179-
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180). Joan experiences this episode of her life as a personal failure: she never lived up to her
mother’s expectation and, worse, she found no other solution than running away, instead of
facing her problem. However, she fails to understand the importance of the moment and does
not in the least question the necessity for her to meet other people’s expectations. She
therefore builds her subsequent relationship with Arthur on a mistake, which she formulates
as follows: “For years I wanted to turn into what Arthur thought I was, or what he thought I
should be” (210). She repeatedly addresses the question of her multiplicity. She then
gradually discovers that other people can also be multiple, though not exactly in the same
way: “I soon discovered there were as many of Arthur as there were of me. The difference
was that I was simultaneous, whereas Arthur was a sequence.” (211). In this excerpt, Joan
clearly expresses her sense of hybridity: she constantly regards herself as multiple, while
other people display such feelings only occasionally. Having realised the nature of her
“otherness,” Joan unconsciously expresses her helplessness in her dreams. She obviously does
not know how to cope with her hybrid nature. She fears people’s reaction to it:
In the worst dream I couldn’t see her at all. I would be hiding behind a door. (…) I’d
been locked in, or out, but on the other side of the door I could hear voices.
Sometimes there were a lot of voices, sometimes only two; they were talking about
me, discussing me, and as I listened I would realize that something very bad was
going to happen. I felt helpless, there was nothing I could do (214).
Joan’s rejection of her hybrid self takes the form of her mother’s absence. Unable to accept
Joan as she is, the mother figure thus becomes a member of an ominous plot against her
desperate and helpless daughter. Joan’s distress is worsened by her difficulty to accept her
new, slim figure – a problem highly related to her rejection of her hybridity: “When I looked
at myself in the mirror, I didn’t see what Arthur saw. The outline of my former body still
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surrounded me, like a mist, like a phantom moon, like the image of Dumbo the Flying
Elephant superimposed on my own. I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it
waited for sleep, then cornered me” (214). The essential feature of her fatness resides in its
link with Joan’s experience of “otherness.” This alienation frequently haunts her dreams.
Indeed, if Joan has succeeded in eliminating her physical difference, she remains incapable of
annihilating her inner hybridity.
As the plot unfolds, the heroine gradually becomes awareness of her life’s emptiness
and comments:
“It was true I had two lives, but on off days I felt that neither of them was
completely real. With Arthur I was merely playing house, I wasn’t really working at
it. And my Costume Gothics were only paper; paper castles, paper costumes, paper
dolls, as inert and lifeless finally as those unsatisfactory blank-eyed dolls I’d dressed
and undressed in my mother’s house.” (216-217).
This last allusion to her childhood dolls demonstrates that, although she has changed
physically, this woman has not grown psychologically. She has simply shifted her inability to
deal with hybridity into another environment. In addition, she evokes the danger of her quest
for self-acceptance for the first time: “Now I wanted to be acknowledged, but I feared it. If I
brought the separate parts of my life together (like uranium, like plutonium, harmless to the
naked eye, but charged with lethal energies) surely there would be an explosion.” (217). The
past further catches up with Joan when Arthur introduces her to a friend of his, Marlene, who
also happens to be one of Joan’s former tormentors at the Brownies. Anticipating Marlene’s
reaction, Joan panics because she does not understand why she feels guilty. She hates Marlene
as a symbol of her own inadequacy and failure (229). When they receive Chinese fortune
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cookies at the end of the meal, Joan realises that Marlene’s message “It is often best to be
oneself” should become hers. She therefore ponders: “It is often best to be oneself, whispered
the small, crumby voice, like a conscience. But which one, which one?” (231), thus once
more hinting at her hybridity.
Writing provides a solution to Joan’s psychological trauma – albeit an elusive and
temporary one. Her book of poetry, Lady Oracle, contains a message for herself:
On reading, the book seemed quite peculiar. In fact, except for the diction, it seemed
a lot like one of my standard Costume Gothics, but a Gothic gone wrong. It was
upside down somehow. There were the sufferings, the hero in the mask of a villain,
the villain in the mask of a hero, the flights, the looming death, the sense of being
imprisoned, but there was no happy ending, no true love. The recognition of this
half-likeness made me uncomfortable. Perhaps I should have taken it to a
psychiatrist instead of a publisher (233).
First of all, Joan notices that the book reads like the opposite of her traditional Costume
Gothics. This implies that she might wish to leave behind her fanciful imagination to turn to
real life. It also features the inversion of the role of hero and villain, thus showing that one
might have to integrate the evil part of oneself to reach self-completion. Finally, Joan’s last
remark – “I should have taken it to a psychiatrist” – on the book’s therapeutic value may be
interpreted as an acknowledgement of the necessity for her to further explore her
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unconscious and to find the key to her own personality. 20 From then on, Joan gets a more
lucid understanding of herself, identifying her psychological problems as follows: “That was
the beginning of my double life. But hadn’t my life always been double? There was always
that shadowy twin, thin when I was fat, fat when I was thin, myself in silvery negative, with
dark teeth and shining white pupils glowing in the black sunlight of that other world.” (246).
Her success as a poetess makes her situation even more dangerous. Indeed, she fears being
recognised as a writer of cheap romances and losing all credibility as a poet. She
symptomatically dreams of the Fat Lady falling from her tightrope (251), an unmistakable
sign of her fear of failure. Desperately, Joan concludes: “I was inept, I was slovenly and
hollow, a hoax, a delusion.” (251).
On a trip to Italy with Arthur, Joan suddenly becomes aware of her own desires as she
faces the statue of Diana of Ephesus in Tivoli:
One day we went to Tivoli. (…) we came to Diana of Ephesus (…) She had a serene
face, perched on top of a body shaped like a mound of grapes. (…) I stood licking
my ice-cream cone, watching the goddess coldly. Once I would have seen her as an
image of myself, but not any more. My ability to give was limited, I was not
inexhaustible. I was not serene, not really. I wanted things, for myself (253).
20 In relation to the present excerpt, Parsons also notes that Joan “does not recognize, but we do, the half-likeness
of all this to her own life: the masks; the flights into fantasy and deception; the love-affair with the fantastically
self-creating Royal Porcupine (…); the imprisonment in insecurity; the looming death. The important point about
this tripled identity and its paralleled experiences is that Joan’s writing is created out of the same feelings and
experiences that also produce her fantasies and subterfuge” (Parsons “The Self-Inventing Self” 105). I favour
this interpretation of Joan’s relationship to her own fiction. However, contrary to Parsons, who claims that Joan
has learnt the difference between “lies which entrap and lies which empower” (108), I would express a more
pessimistic view of the outcome of the novel, regarding it as another of the heroine’s numerous escape tricks.
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The statue of Diana, famous for its numerous breasts, symbolises Joan’s misplaced wish to
please everybody in order to offer a satisfying image of herself. She suddenly realises the
need to do things for herself. Atwood mentions this statue of Diana of Ephesus in the Atwood
Papers as one of the first sources of Lady Oracle 21 (see Appendix III), thus demonstrating the
importance of this image as a symbol of the heroine’s difficulties to deal with her hybridity.
Once again, Atwood uses Greek mythology to underline the heroine’s growing awareness.
The heroine repeatedly alludes to her deficiency in offering what people want from her (269).
The attitude of her lover, the Royal Porcupine, equally shocks her. She resents his sudden
attempt to look like a normal man, while she formerly appreciated his fantasy and his
exuberance (271). Eventually, all those drawbacks suggest that she is a hybrid, a mutant, as
she herself says: “I only wanted to be loved. I only wanted some human consideration. Was
that so terrible, was that so impossible, was I some kind of mutation?” (272). When Joan
eventually decides to tell Arthur the truth about herself, she conjures up the Fat Lady, who
prevents her from doing so:
The Fat Lady skated out onto the ice. I couldn’t help myself. It was one of the most
important moments in my life, I should have been able to keep her away, but out she
came in a pink skating costume, her head ornamented with swan’s-down. With her
was the thinnest man in the world. (…) then the thin man lifted her and threw her
and she floated up, up (…) her secret was that although she was so large, she was
very light, she was hollow (273).
The Fat Lady’s hollowness symbolises Joan’s attitude of self-loathing when trying to erase
her hybridity, even to herself. However, Joan fails to understand the inadequacy of such a
behaviour, in the same way as she later misinterprets the Italian villagers’ hostility: “I was
21 Atwood Papers, Collection 200, Box 27, File 27:1, p. 5.
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outside it though, I was a foreigner, and there was something beyond that, something wrong. I
was passing through a corridor of hostile eyes (…) What had I done, what taboo had I
violated?” (312). Mr. Vitroni, her landlord, then explains what she has done wrong: “‘They do
not understand why you have put your clothes beneath the house. (…) They do not know why
you have cut off your so beautiful hair (…) you wear always the dark glasses, like a bat, and
you have taken another name. These are things nobody understands.’” (325). Progressively,
Joan comes to question the necessity for her to deceive. She concludes that she has to do so in
order to get control over her life (314, 315, 320). She identifies deception as a mimicry
strategy, first enabling her to conceal her “otherness,” later forcing her to acknowledge it. Her
unconscious questioning remains linked to the figure of her mother, the person who most
wanted her to change. As we progressively reach the end of the book, Joan achieves this
understanding: “Why did I have to dream about my mother, have nightmares about her,
sleepwalk out to meet her? My mother was a vortex, a dark vacuum, I would never be able to
make her happy. Or anyone else. Maybe it was time for me to stop trying.” (330). She then
decides, in a last act of deception, to disappear altogether (333). She simultaneously grasps
the uselessness of her desire to escape:
Somehow this was not convincing. Why did every one of my fantasies turn into a
trap? (…) I might as well face it, I thought, I was an artist, an escape artist. I’d
sometimes talked about love and commitment, but the real romance of my life was
that between Houdini and his ropes and locked trunk; entering the embrace of
bondage, slithering out again. What else had I ever done? (334).
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Escape does not turn out as an ideal solution. Joan’s utter inadequacy to meet social and
patriarchal requirements is summed up in the image of the red shoes 22 :
“The real red shoes, the feet punished for dancing. You could dance, or you could
have the love of a good man. But you were afraid to dance, because you had this
unnatural fear that if you danced they’d cut your feet off so you wouldn’t be able to
dance. Finally you overcame your fear and danced, and they cut your feet off. The
good man went away too, because you danced. But I chose the love, I wanted the
good man; Why wasn’t that the right choice?” (335).
The Red Shoes, a film whose influence proves of utmost importance in Atwood’s work, 23
illustrates the heroine’s dilemma: she has to choose between two imperatives: being true to
herself or conforming to social norms.
In her Gothic romances, Joan further questions men’s illusions about women: “But
every man has more than one wife. Sometimes all at once, sometimes one at a time, sometimes
ones he doesn’t even know about.” (341). Soon after that, she intimates that men can be
equally duplicitous. Indeed, her heroine recognises the hero as a women’s murderer (342), a
reference to men’s patriarchal oppression of women. In an epiphanic fictional conclusion,
Joan, now in the shape of her heroine, enters the labyrinth of her own unconscious. At the
22 For a complete analysis of The Red Shoes motif in Lady Oracle, the reader can turn to Emily Jensen’s brilliant
article on Atwood’s literary and other forms of parables in Lady Oracle (Jensen, 29-49). See also Rao’s book,
Strategies for Identity, 70-71.
23 Sullivan’s biography of Margaret Atwood, precisely entitled The Red Shoes, gives a full account of the
importance of the film in Atwood’s early development as a woman artist. Atwood was indeed deeply impressed
by the film’s claim that one cannot have a successful career as a woman artist and be happy in one’s private life
at the same time (Sullivan, The Red Shoes, 3-6).
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centre of the maze she encounters the various constituents of her hybridity 24 : Aunt Lou’s
influence, herself as a writer of cheap novels, her other self as a poetess, and, of course, the
Fat Lady, as a symbol of her concealed past.
Yet, I contend that this unconscious acknowledgement of hybridity does not induce a
fundamental change in the heroine’s personality. At the end of the novel, she decides to
become a science fiction writer (345), thus seeking refuge in the world of fantasy again. Her
quest remains neither completed nor successful, though she has found another, less painful
way of surviving.
6. Joan’s Personal and Professional Self-discovery
Lady Oracle is the first of a series of novels featuring the same structure: a quest pattern dealt
with in the present, but which forces the reader to look back at past events. 25 The heroine
symptomatically utters her desire to interpret her past differently when she starts her story as
follows: “You can’t change the past, Aunt Lou used to say. Oh, but I wanted to; that was the
one thing I really wanted to do” (10). This sentence clearly indicates that the narrator’s quest
consists in a revision of her past, as well as a decision to become more active in her future.
24 Hilde Staels expresses this hybridity in terms of “here or now” and “there or then”: “‘Here’ is Joan (subject)
and ‘there’ is everyone who is hostile to her, but on whom she depends for recognition (object). ‘Here’ and
‘now’ is Joan as a new self without past whereas ‘there’ and ‘then’ are Joan’s experiences of the past and the
past ‘selves’ which she keeps covered up. ‘Here’ is Joan as facade, ‘there’ is Joan’s realm of potential renewal
from which she repeatedly runs away. ‘Here’ is the reality of existential doom and gloom, whereas ‘there’ is the
fantasy of lost opportunities in the past and an unattainable happiness in the future.” (Staels, Margaret Atwood’s
Novels, 85). I personally prefer to define Joan’s hybridity within the frame of postcolonial resistance to
patriarchy. However, I completely agree with Staels’s pessimistic interpretation of Joan’s reiterated escapes from
potentialities.
25 Susan MacLean provides an interesting comment on the novel’s intricate structure when she compares it to a
maze, in which the reader must fit the pieces of the puzzle together (MacLean 187). This interpretation is in
accordance with my own view of Atwood as trickster writer. Moreover, it is applicable to several of her novels
which resort to the use of long flashbacks to develop the heroines’ past trauma.
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Indeed, the first part of the novel presents us with a heroine who has voluntarily faked her
suicide in order to start anew, but also to be given a chance to tell her story in her own voice.
The first stage of the quest pattern takes place early in the novel as the heroine moves
away from family and friends by means of her false suicide. Part one describes the conditions
in which that pseudo-death occurred. It also establishes the narrator as a professional deceiver.
The reader discovers the protagonist’s disguise strategies, of which the most impressive is
certainly the change in the heroine’s hair colour: “I decided I’d have to do something about
my hair. It was evidence, its length and color had been a sort of trademark. Every newspaper
clipping, friendly or hostile, had mentioned it, (…) They could trace my hair much more
easily than they could ever trace me. I would have to cut it off and dye the rest” (14). This
first part of the novel also mentions Arthur, the heroine’s husband, thus identifying him as the
cause of the woman’s need to escape. Indeed, Arthur exhibits a clearly paternalistic attitude
towards the heroine, deciding what she ought to like or not on her behalf (18-19). Joan further
describes her occupation as a writer as another cause of her current distress, since her writing
career brought about her multiple personality. The fourth chapter briefly mentions how the
protagonist came to know her readers’ wishes:
The heroines of my books were mere stand-ins: their features were never clearly
defined, (…) these hidden selves rose at night from the mundane beds of their
owners to go forth on adventures so complicated and enticing that they couldn’t be
confessed to anyone, least of all to the husbands who lay snoring (…). I knew my
readers well, I went to school with them, I was the good sport, I volunteered for
committees, I decorated the high school gym (…) and then went home and ate
peanut butter sandwiches and read paperback novels while everyone else was
dancing. I was Miss Personality, confidante and true friend. They told me all (35).
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The half bitter tone of this confession indicates that the heroine had to face unhappiness in the
past. It also entails that this past experience influenced her adult life.
The second part of the book thus engages in a long flashback recalling the heroine’s –
mostly negative – former adventures. It starts with a recollection of the ballet school. Joan, as
a child, with her genuine innocence and her overweight body, definitely fails to correspond to
her mother’s and society’s definition of a beautiful little girl. Nevertheless, her mother
absolutely wants Joan to attend ballet classes, thus making her ridiculous. Indeed, her mother
named her after a famous Hollywood actress:
my mother named me after Joan Crawford. This is one of the things that always
puzzled me about her. Did she name me after Joan Crawford because she wanted me
to be like the screen characters she played (…) or because she wanted me to be
successful? (…) Did she give me someone else’s name because she wanted me
never to have a name of my own? Come to think of it, Joan Crawford didn’t have a
name of her own either. Her real name was Lucille LeSueur, which would have
suited me much better. Lucy the Sweat. (…) There’s more than one side to Joan
Crawford though. In fact, there was something tragic about Joan Crawford (…)
unfortunate things happened to her. Perhaps that was it. Or, and this is important:
Joan Crawford was thin. I was not (42-43).
The passage epitomises Joan’s difficulty to deal with her obesity and her desperate wish to
understand her mother’s attitude. 26 At the Brownies Joan once again experiences the other
girls’ rejection, which climaxes as they abandon her, tied to a tree, in a ravine. A recurring
image in Atwood’s work, the ravine functions as a powerful symbol of natural evil, which the
26 John Thieme interprets this passage as a realisation of the ambivalent and multiple aspect of identity, which
leads to Joan’s subsequent schizophrenic existence through a series of female roles (72).
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narrator describes as follows: “To cross the ravine you had to walk down a long gravelled hill,
then across a wooden bridge, which was quite old. It slanted, and some of the planks had
rotted away completely so you could see the ground a long way beneath. Then you had to go
up a path on the other side, with the leaves and branches almost touching you, like evil
vegetable fingers” (53-54). The ravine thus symbolises the child’s loss of innocence. She is
symptomatically rescued by a man, who might be decoded as a saviour or a molester.
Part Two further explores the relationship of the heroine with her parents. Her mother
displays a particularly hostile attitude to her – unwanted – child. She often appears in the
heroine’s dreams, where, even as Joan becomes an adult, she still threatens her with her
hostility and domineering behaviour. Joan recalls one of these dreams as follows:
One of the bad dreams I used to have about my mother was this. I would be walking
across the bridge and she would be standing in the sunlight on the other side of it,
talking to someone else, a man whose face I couldn’t see. When I was halfway
across, the bridge would start to collapse, as I’d always feared it would. (…) I would
try to run but it would be too late, I would throw myself down and grab onto the far
edge as it rose up, trying to slide me off. I called out to my mother, who could still
have saved me, she could have run across quickly and reached out her hand, she
could have pulled me back with her to firm ground – But she didn’t do this, she went
on with her conversation, she didn’t notice anything unusual was happening. She
didn’t even hear me (65).
The mother’s attitude is clearly indifferent, even threatening towards Joan. This expression of
the mother’s refusal to help suggests Joan’s desperate situation at that point.
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In her long flashback, Joan recalls the constitutive elements of her quest. Though she
only found the courage to escape later in her adult life, she obviously went through some
important stages of the quest pattern before this point. Her relationship with Aunt Lou, first
mentioned in chapter eight, can indeed be interpreted as the anticipated second stage of her
quest, in which Aunt Lou plays the role of the green world guide. 27 An exuberant and ex-
centric character, Aunt Lou brings some entertainment (90) to Joan’s so far dull life. In doing
so, she encourages the adolescent’s rising subversion. She also introduces the teenager to the
Spiritualists – a group of people coming together to summon up the dead and to deliver their
messages to the living. They indirectly play an important part in the girl’s self-discovery. One
of their parables undoubtedly parodies Joan’s own wish to become someone else:
‘If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars (…) which reminds me of a little story I
heard the other day (…) There were once two caterpillars, walking side by side
down a road. The pessimistic caterpillar said he’d heard that soon they would have
to go into a dark narrow place, that they would stop moving and be silent. ‘That will
be the end of us,’ he said. But the optimistic caterpillar said, ‘That dark place is only
a cocoon; we will rest there for a time, and after that we will emerge with beautiful
wings; we will be butterflies, and fly up toward the sun.’ Now, my friends, that road
was the Road of Life, and it’s up to each of us which we will choose to be’ (107).
If we read this passage in parallel with the description of Joan’s wish to be a butterfly at the
dance, we come to understand that the image relates to Joan’s own strategy of creating
multiple personalities, each fitting the image requested by her mother, her fellow students,
men, society, other women, or whatever form of authority she encounters.
27 See introductory section of this work: the green-world guide is a friendly figure associated with nature and
helping the character during his/her quest. It may be either a person or an object endowed with symbolic
meaning.
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The next stage of Joan’s development therefore implies a rejection of authority, in the form of
a confrontation with parental figures. Contrary to everybody’s expectations, Joan decides to
lose weight, a process which irritates her mother even more than her obesity. The climactic
mother-daughter confrontation takes place as Joan’s mother stabs her daughter in the arm in a
fit of anger. This event leads Joan to run away from home and to start a new life, with an
altogether new identity.
After a brief allusion to Joan’s current work as a writer of romances, Part Three
focuses again on Joan’s past and on her emigration to England. As a foreigner in an unknown
country, Joan, for the first time, consciously expresses a feeling of alienation and hybridity:
“In my own country I would have known, but here I was deaf and dumb” (133). She also
mentions the hybrid’s subject deep and abiding desire to become almost invisible: “I was
searching for a city I could move to, where I would be free not to be myself. I didn’t want
anything too different or startling, I just wanted to fit in without being known.” (139).
However, Joan must admit that she is not invisible to everybody: despite her obesity, an
Italian or Greek immigrant, who does not judge her according to Canadian cultural and
aesthetic canons, 28 wishes to marry her in Toronto, an offer she immediately rejects (99-101).
Her subsequent encounter with a Polish Count – another form of hybridity – forces
her to resort to more deceptive strategies, as she explains: “anything I could have said would
have been implausible. This was the reason I fabricated my life, time after time: the truth was
not convincing.” (150). When she later meets her future husband, Arthur, she becomes even
28 Padolsky analyses the episode as “one of Joan’s first insights about the cultural limits of her own identity is to
discover that these assumptions about female appearance are not universal”. However, Padolsky notices that
Atwood’s interest for the immigrant remains external and belonging to the majority perspective (Padolsky 265).
This might be true as far as the present novel is concerned. Yet, I contend that it is not always so, as can easily be
demonstrated if we examine novels such as Life Before Man – with the character of Lesje – and The Robber
Bride, in which we can focus our reading on Zenia’s foreignness.
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more entangled in her numerous lies and romanticised vision of life: “That was the difference
between us: for Arthur there were true paths, several of them perhaps, but only one at a time.
For me there were no paths at all. Thickets, ditches, ponds, labyrinths, morasses, but no
paths.” (169). The last sentence reminds us of the setting of Joan’s own gothic romances,
which function as unrealistic parodies of her life and of her wish to conform to paternalistic
requirements. Having not yet come to terms with authority, Joan faces another parental
confrontation when her mother suddenly dies. The event forces her to return to Canada, as if
she wished to acknowledge her hybridity in her native country. Ironically, Atwood depicts
Joan as a makeup saleswoman, trying on the shop’s wigs in her free time (182), thus alluding
to her later necessity to disguise. This period of her life also brings Joan to discover the
tricksterish nature of her father, who she strongly suspects killed her mother.
Switching back to Joan’s present in Italy, the plot mentions her wish to send a postcard
revealing the whole plan to Arthur. This action is highly subversive: it makes Arthur aware of
the trick he has been the victim of. Joan is shown celebrating her new identity (184). In order
to do this, she buys a fotoromanzo, a trashy romantic story in pictures, reminding us of her
own romances, of her life, which she fantasises at will.
The fourth part of the novel turns to more serious matters as it deals with Joan’s
wedding. It also features another trickster figure in the person of the reverend. Indeed, Joan
immediately recognises Leda Sprott, the leader of the Spiritualists. Leda Sprott draws Joan’s
attention to the necessity for her to reveal the truth, an idea which gradually becomes an
obsession for Joan. Indeed, during her account of her married life, Joan repeatedly alludes to
her growing uneasiness, while she nevertheless keeps deceiving her husband, having a hidden
second identity (213). Joan subsequently narrates her attempts at automatic writing, which
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eventually result in the publication of her first book of poetry. Now an acclaimed writer, Joan
encounters Arthur’s friends, among whom Marlene: “Marlene my tormentor, who’s roped me
to a bridge and left me there, a living sacrifice, for the monster of the ravine; Marlene the
ingenious inquisitor. I was trapped again in the nightmare of my childhood, where I ran
eternally after the others, the oblivious and scornful ones, hands outstretched, begging for a
word of praise.” (229). Far from being a mere childhood anecdote, the recollection forces
Joan to confront her past and to question her inadequacies.
Having realised how much Marlene dismisses this childhood traumatic episode, Joan
decides to deal with her present state of “otherness” by entering the fourth stage of her quest,
that of the green world lover, embodied by the fantastic character of the Royal Porcupine. His
ex-centricity forces Joan to recognise him as one of her kind. His “otherness” is summed up in
the Porcupine’s explanation of his name: “The porcupine though, it does what it likes, it’s
covered with prickles so nobody messes with it. Also it has strange tastes” (240). The
quotation draws the reader’s attention to the character’s marginality. Joan enjoys his ex-
centric behaviour; it gives her the opportunity to express her hybrid personality in the open.
She simultaneously gets involved in Arthur’s political activism: she helps Arthur and his
friends to elaborate a bomb attack. However, this event never takes place: Joan blows up the
dynamite in a park as one of the Porcupine’s numerous ex-centricities. When the Porcupine,
having fallen in love with Joan, gives up his marginal identity to become plain Chuck Brewer,
Joan reacts very negatively, aware as she is of the pathetic aspect of such transformation. On
the Royal Porcupine, she concludes: “He’d always lived in his own unwritten biography, but
now he started seeing the present as though it was already the past, bandaged in gauzy
nostalgia.” (267). Once she is liberated from him, Joan starts writing again. Yet, she remains
incapable of acknowledging her hybridity, let alone to confess it to Arthur.
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The plot speeds up when a blackmailer, journalist Fraser Buchanan, threatens to reveal
Joan’s fake identities to her husband. She then sees no other solution than to fake her own
death in order to disappear completely. She also gradually becomes aware of the existence of
hybridity in other characters, which she formulates as follows: “Every man I’d ever been
involved with, I realized, had had two selves: my father, healer and killer; the man in the
tweed coat, my rescuer and possibly also a pervert; the Royal Porcupine and his double,
Chuck Brewer; even Paul, who I’d always believed had a sinister other life I couldn’t
penetrate. Why should Arthur be any exception?” (292). Part five examines the consequences
of Joan’s mock suicide. It equally features the fifth stage of Joan’s quest, namely the dive into
her unconscious. The plot therefore focuses on Joan’s last gothic romance manuscript. As she
ponders the demands of her career as a writer, Joan briefly envisages the possibility for her to
turn to a more realistic kind of writing (320). In so doing, she would deny her preference for
fantasy, which constitutes her hybridity. Yet, she immediately dismisses this solution to her
psychological malaise and starts writing an ever more romantic ending to her latest romance.
The magic realist conclusion of the book is set in the maze – Atwood’s metaphor for the
heroine’s unconscious. 29 Joan allows her heroine to penetrate into the maze in order to
discover more about herself and writes: “It was noon when she entered the maze. She was
determined to penetrate its secret at last.” (341). Inside the labyrinth, she encounters the
various aspects of her hybridity. She thus becomes capable of accepting the multiple facets of
her self. Yet, the outcome of Joan’s quest is all but positive. She remains trapped in fantasy,
as shown in her desire to become a science-fiction writer. Moreover, telling her story to a
journalist, she once again alludes to escape as a possible ending: “I guess it will make a pretty
29 Susan MacLean analyses the maze’s various symbolic meanings as (1) a standard Gothic device, (2) Joan’s
life, (3) a descent into the underworld as in Virgil’s Aeneid, (4) an equivalent of the ravine from Joan’s
childhood, (5) the heroine’s search for identity (MacLean 193-4). I find more interesting in the context of this
analysis to regard the maze as a magic realist place of revelation, a site of epiphany.
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weird story, once he’s written it; and the odd thing is that I didn’t tell any lies. Well, not very
many. Some of the names and a few other things, but nothing major. I suppose I could still
have gotten out of it. I could have said I had amnesia or something… Or I could have
escaped” (344). The plot clearly displays a circularity 30 – we leave the heroine where we first
encountered her, in Italy. 31 This exile becomes symptomatic of the novel’s lack of resolution.
Indeed, the heroine has simply displaced her fantasy from one period of time – romantic plots
located in the past – to another – science-fiction narrative set in the future. However, she
remains stuck in fantasy, unable to integrate her marginality into her everyday life. 32
***
As Joan enters the maze, Atwood develops a powerful metaphor of the character’s hybridity.
We witness how an apparently successful writer, largely praised for her poems, enters an
entirely different realm of experience as she becomes engaged in the writing process. Through
her writing of gothic romances, Joan achieves an epiphanic vision of her hybrid self. Her
exploration of her inner territory echoes Atwood’s growing concern for the theme of
“otherness.”
30 I here agree with Lecker’s idea of the circular plot as a sign that reality and fantasy are one. “To believe that it
is possible to escape from either is the greatest delusion” (Lecker “Janus” 198).
31 I completely agree with Enoch Padolsky, who stresses the importance of the novel’s Italian setting from a
postcolonial point of view: she associates Joan’s encounters with immigrants and her Italian exile to Atwood’s
wish to introduce cultural alternatives and to redefine the boundaries of the dominant culture (Padolsky 264).
32 I agree with Hilde Staels, who, contrary to many critics, points to the self-destructiveness of Joan’s process of
self-discovery. (Staels, Margaret Atwood’s Novels, 102-103). I believe that, by the end of the novel, the heroine
only succeeds in repeating her story once again, unable either to break the cycle of her multiple reinventions of
her self, or to acknowledge this multiplicity in a positive or creative way.
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In the six sections of this chapter, I have shown how the feeling of “otherness”
pervades Atwood’s conception of the heroine, who alternatively displays a wish to conform to
social demands and a desire to subvert them. My analysis has brought together several
postcolonial themes and modes of writing, such as parody, mimicry, magic realism, tricksters,
and hybridity. It has used these features as keys to the discovery of an aesthetic of “otherness”
in the work of a mainstream writer. In particular, this chapter has investigated Atwood’s
parodic intent, studying her allusions to popular culture, her depiction of the writer’s trade,
and her quotations from the heroine’s gothic romances. Deception has proved multi-faceted,
as the protagonist resorts to it both as a child and as an adult. She lies to her mother, to her
husband, to her lovers, to her editors, and, worst of all, to herself in her desperate attempts at
mimicking what society wants her to be. Her recurrent use of deception is a mere sign of her
inadequacy to deal with inner feelings of “otherness.” In many instances, whether in her
dreams, fantasies or novels, magic realist moments express this feeling of hybridity in a
gothic and grotesque way. In this disintegration of her deceptive personality, Joan is helped
by a series of brief apparitions of trickster figures: her father, her aunt, a psychic, her ex-
centric lover, herself. The diversity of such trickster characters in the novel shows the
complexity of the heroine’s psyche as well as her reluctance to achieve awareness.
Blending postmodern and postcolonial subversive elements, the novel displays a
circular quest pattern often present in Atwood’s work. Nevertheless, it still fails to produce a
positive outcome. The heroine has reached neither affirmation, nor reconstruction; she merely
hints at another form of escape. Atwood’s re-visioning of gothic romances consists of a mix
of magic realism and postmodern parody enabling her to convey the heroine’s sense of
“otherness.” While grotesque magic realism characterises Joan’s fantasies about her obesity,
in the form of the Fat Lady, gothic magic realism, embodied by the ominous presence of the
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maze, constitutes an essential aspect of Joan’s cheap novels. In gothic magic realism, the
maze plays an important role as the heroine’s site of epiphany. Closely related to these magic
realist passages is Atwood’s parody of a dance show in which Joan performs the role of a
mothball emblematic of her marginalised position.
More characteristically Atwoodian is the constant presence of trickster figures, often
accompanying the heroine’s development. However, one should notice that the presence of
these tricksters often tends to marginalise the subject even more; Aunt Lou encourages Joan
to be herself, the Royal Porcupine temporarily brings out Joan’s ex-centric character.
Tricksters point to the heroine’s acceptance of marginality. Yet, they fail to bring about a total
acceptance of hybridity. They represent possibilities along the heroine’s initiation journey.
They do therefore suggest a coming to awareness, while simultaneously stressing the
limitation of the heroine’s development. While the heroine’s numerous identities demonstrate
her difficulty to belong and her lack of any real identity, they also reflect Atwood’s
stammering with the notion of “otherness,” a concept which will receive a fuller analysis in
her subsequent novels. The following chapter examines together three more realist novels, in
which Atwood clearly deconstructs the protagonist’s quest for hybridity. The three novels
represent a transitional stage in Atwood’s novelistic production.
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Chapter 4. Life Before Man, Bodily Harm, and The
Handmaid’s Tale: Atwood’s “Subversion” Trilogy
1. Three Novels of Subversion
“In this way, as in many others, she
cannot seem to avoid being
inappropriate.” (Life Before Man,
239)
“What can she say? I’m not all
here? There’s part of me missing?”
(Bodily Harm, 203)
“Still, I can’t bear it, to have been
erased like that.” (The Handmaid’s
Tale, 240)
This chapter examines the postcolonial undertones in Atwood’s fiction of the eighties. A
number of critics, while analysing postmodern issues of those works, have pointed to the
possibility of viewing them as part of a trilogy, as Atwood herself has explained. 1 In addition,
this vision highlights the common points between the novels. The subversive attitude of their
heroines happens to be one of the obvious similarities. This inherent subversion serves to
express the female resistance against the patriarchal demands of the society of the eighties.
1 In an interview with Gregory Fitz Gerald and Kathryn Crabbe, Atwood says: “The first three novels comprise a
unit, and Life Before Man is the first of another unit of three” (Ingersoll, 136).
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1.1. Life Before Man : Subversion and Ethnicity
Life Before Man is certainly the least critically discussed of Atwood’s novels. Following the
hilarious Lady Oracle, this novel develops the theme of human relationships in an oppressive
atmosphere, in which almost nothing happens. Through a multiplicity of points of view, the
novel narrates the uneventful lives of its three main characters: Elizabeth, her husband Nate,
who plans to leave her, and Lesje, Nate’s mistress. Those three characters often allude to
secondary figures, whose presence renders their relationships even more complex: Chris,
Elizabeth’s lover, who has recently committed suicide; Martha, Nate’s former mistress;
William, Lesje’s former lover; and the scary Auntie Muriel, who educated Elizabeth. In
addition, she reminds the reader of the heartless Mrs. Smeath in Cat’s Eye. 2
Despite its display of highly interesting narrative techniques – the narration takes the
form of the characters’ successive confessions as if in a diary – the novel has nevertheless
been regarded as problematic. Carol Beran writes that this novel “fascinates, challenges, and
repels.” 3 Indeed, one wonders what makes the dull life of this love triangle so fascinating.
Atwood herself gives us some clues as to the significance of the work. First of all, she
identifies Life Before Man as the first part of a trilogy, of which her subsequent novels, Bodily
Harm and The Handmaid’s Tale, constitute the sequels. This perfectly makes sense if we
contrast Life Before Man with Atwood’s previous novels, two comedies, The Edible Woman
and Lady Oracle, and a novel Atwood qualifies as a ghost story, Surfacing. One easily notices
that Life Before Man significantly differs from those novels through its highly realistic plot
2
A comparison made by Sharon Wilson in her analysis of fairy-tale motives in Life Before Man in Margaret
Atwood’s Fairy-Tale Sexual Politics (178).
3
Beran, Carol, Living over the Abyss, Margaret Atwood’s Life Before Man (16).
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and its passivity. Some critics have described the novel as Atwood’s successful attempt at
building up a perfect modernist plot relying exclusively on the characters’ stream of
consciousness. I would disagree with those who consider Life Before Man as a
straightforward realist novel. Indeed, I contend that the plot contains elements of magic
realism, mostly in connection with the character of Elizabeth. This brings me to my second
point, i.e. to the significance of Atwood’s characterisation in relation to the novel’s tragic
mode. Most critics have analysed Life Before Man in terms of the love relationships between
characters. 4 Atwood, in this and in the following two novels, focuses her attention on break-
ups rather than on the feelings involved in any relationship. Indeed, a colonial perspective of
Life Before Man reveals that a character stands out as “other.” In this light, secondary figures
such as Chris, Martha, and Auntie Muriel become highly significant, as all of them are
somehow discarded from the protagonists’ life. Moreover, novels such as Bodily Harm and
The Handmaid’s Tale can both be read from a similar point of view: Bodily Harm clearly
deals with the heroine’s difficulties to come to terms with her breast cancer operation which
has led to her lover’s departure. Further, The Handmaid’s Tale is haunted with the presence of
the narrator’s companion, from whom she violently got separated while trying to escape the
Gileadean regime. My analysis of Life Before Man therefore underlines the elements which
reveal the characters’ otherness and the splits it generates: Atwood’s use of parody, the
characters’ deception and mimicry strategies, Elizabeth flight into dream-like states of
consciousness, the characters’ trickster-like qualities, and their hybridisation. The
development of the quest pattern also indicates that the novel mainly deals with the
characters’ acceptance of their otherness in order to pursue their lives.
4 See the analyses of Paul Goetsch (“Life Before Man as a novel of manners”), Rosenberg, Greene (“Life Before
Man Can Anything Be Saved?”) among others.
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1.2. Bodily Harm: Subversion on Foreign Ground
While Life Before Man deals with a variety of ordinary characters in usual circumstances,
Bodily Harm presents the reader with an ordinary heroine, facing unusual events: she has to
cope with the fact that she might die of cancer and must similarly complete her journalistic
mission on a far-off island on the verge of a civil war. When referring to Rennie, the heroine
of Bodily Harm, the term “hybrid” is considered in its broadest sense: Rennie feels hybrid,
because her illness and its concomitant amputation prevent her from ever feeling like other
people again. Her situation on the island, as a tourist watching events from the outside, echoes
her own inner situation: she feels as though she had lost control over her own life and had
become a spectator to it. Similarly, her irresistible tendency to get involved in the local
political situation might be regarded metaphorically as an effort to regain control over her
own body. In order to do so, Rennie exhibits a subversive behaviour: one never really knows
what she actually thinks of the local politics; yet, it is clear from the outcome of events, that
she has to adopt a subversive, duplicitous behaviour in order to – at least for a while – save
her own life.
A postcolonial reading of Bodily Harm requires careful analysis of the heroine’s
deceptive strategies, especially those entailing a subversive attitude. It also forces one to pay
attention to any part of the novel which might deviate from its otherwise realistic
development, for instance in the form of the intervention of trickster-like figures as role
models in the context of the heroine’s apprenticeship of subversion. Further, this chapter also
examines the heroine’s feelings of hybridity, as the cause of her subversive and deceptive
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stance. Indeed, I consider hybridity as a key concept in the heroine’s personal quest for inner
knowledge, i.e. as part of her process of acceptance of her illness and of its consequences.
1.3. The Handmaid’s Tale: Subversion vs. Propaganda
Although it confronts the reader with an altogether different world, The Handmaid’s Tale can
be regarded as highly similar to Bodily Harm, in that it also presents us with an ordinary
woman, forced to face highly unusual circumstances. This time, however, the heroine’s
alienation from “normal” life is not caused by her illness. On the contrary, her good health
and her capacity to bear a child – a rare quality in the highly polluted world of Gilead – have
transformed her into a valued prisoner within Gileadean society. Indeed, women like her, who
are still able to procreate and were not officially married at the time of the putsch, have
become servants of a peculiar kind: every three months such fertile women are transferred
from one household to another in the hope of giving a baby to a so-far sterile couple. After
three fruitless attempts they are sent to the Colonies to clear up toxic waste and endure a long
and painful agony. Atwood’s highly pessimistic dystopia provides the reader with yet another
depiction of the process of subversion. From the heroine’s description of her coercion, the
reader soon understands the necessity for her to make use of deception and resort to a strategy
of mimicry in order to display a suitable image of herself. The Gileadean regime is based on
religiously and morally repressive propaganda, to which the only possible response consists in
the choice of a personal subversive attitude and the faith in the existence of an underground
resistance. The latter is confirmed in the story’s appended “Historical Notes,” which establish
the subversive character of the writing itself: they reveal the existence of audio cassettes,
which allowed this story to be transcribed, and insists on the clandestine character of such
methods.
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My postcolonial reading analyses the heroine’s feelings of hybridity due to her
condition, her possible means of evasion through daydreaming or transformation of reality,
and the intervention of trickster-like characters who help the heroine on her way out of
Gilead.
2. Subversion through Parody
Parody definitely applies as a means of expressing critique on one’s current life
circumstances. Unsurprisingly, Atwood makes judicious use of parody in these three novels in
order to denounce the restricted situations her heroines have to deal with. Life Before Man, for
instance, is constructed on a parody of The Wizard of Oz, which enables the reader to
understand the role models involved in Elizabeth’s development as a woman. Bodily Harm,
on the other hand, is built on a metaphor equating life with a clue game: indeed, in a life
where people constantly risk to become victims of their own bodily dysfunction or of others’
aggressions, the only resort is to regard life as a game, something Rennie, the heroine, has not
yet learned to do as the narrative begins. Finally, The Handmaid’s Tale, with its numerous
allusions to works of art, presents the reader with a parody of Puritan America, in which the
dichotomy between art and reality has been so submerged by religious fanaticism that it has
resulted into a heartless, dehumanised society, comparable to that of Huxley’s Brave New
World or Orwell’s 1984.
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2.1. Along the Yellow Brick Road: Atwood’s Parody of The Wizard of Oz.
The very concept of parody has proved central to Atwood’s vision of her fiction. Aware of
this importance, many critics have provided us with analyses of Atwood’s parodic allusions in
Life Before Man. I have chosen to rely on Sharon R. Wilson’s work on fairy-tale motives in
Atwood’s fiction in order to examine the postcolonial intent behind the novelist’s use of
parody. In contemporary literatures in English, parody is often used by postcolonial or
minority writers to criticise hegemonic society. 5 Although Atwood qualifies as a mainstream
writer, she somehow adopts a postcolonial perspective in her interest in her characters’ sense
of otherness. In other words, Atwood’s characters in Life Before Man, with their dull life and
their common expectations, demonstrate that otherness, and its consequence – empowerment
– is present not only in marginalised or so-called “ethnic” characters, but in all of us. They
parodically emphasise the universality of the postcolonial stance.
A first instance of parodic allusion is detectable in Elisabeth’s quotation of a poem she
had to memorise at school. Elizabeth recalls:
In Flanders Fields. A Canadian wrote that. We are the Dead. A morbid nation. In
school they had to memorize it two years in a row, back when memorizing was still
in fashion. She’d been chosen to recite it, once. She was good at memorizing; they
called it being good at poetry. She was good at poetry, before she left school (58).
5
See, for instance, the shift of point of view in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, as a rewriting of Jane Eyre’s
plot.
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One may wonder why Canada is here described as a dead nation. One can interpret this quote
as an expression of Elizabeth’s feeling of sterility, here extended to the situation of Canada
itself – as befits a colony, still under the rule of another country. Elizabeth’s subsequent
remark about the uselessness of memorizing poems by heart hints at the mimicry process at
work here. Indeed, the child memorising the poem without any personal creative input utterly
resembles the colonial subject forced to submit to colonial demands.
In Life Before Man, Atwood uses intertextual references to voice the characters’
troubles in dealing with alterity. Literary references are numerous, from Ovid and Virgil to
Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” (Wilson, Fairy-Tale, 167-168). Yet, one reference in particular
significantly influences the novel’s characterisation, structure, setting, and imagery: The
Wizard of Oz, both in its written and its filmed version (Wilson, Fairy-Tale, 176-184).
Atwood’s overt allusions to The Wizard of Oz establish Elizabeth as the central character, the
alter-ego of Dorothy. Elizabeth, giving each character hyperbolic value, casts her Aunt Muriel
as the Wicked Witch of the West and her lost mother as Glinda the Good. Both visions are
highly exaggerated and unrealistic. Nevertheless, they represent the core of Elizabeth’s
psychological dilemma, of her hybridity: does she belong to the world of her unreliable
mother who abandoned her or is she the mere product of her aunt’s rigid education? Hence
the importance of the following scene in the novel’s characterisation:
For months Elizabeth put herself to sleep with a scene from The Wizard of Oz. The
book itself had been left behind, it was part of the old life before Auntie Muriel’s,
but she could remember it. It was the part where Dorothy throws a bucket of water
over the Wicked Witch of the West and melts her. Auntie Muriel was the Witch, of
course. Elizabeth’s mother was Glinda the Good. One day she would reappear and
kneel down to kiss Elizabeth on the forehead. (139)
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Reinvention of a realistic plot as a fairy-tale marks Atwood’s use of intertextual references.
The best instance of this technique can be found when Elizabeth describes her dying aunt:
“She’s falling in on herself, she’s melting, like the witch in The Wizard of Oz, and seeing it
Elizabeth remembers: Dorothy was not jubilant when the witch turned into a puddle of brown
sugar. She was terrified.” (279) This scene epitomises the tension between Elizabeth’s joy and
fear. Indeed, on the one hand, Elizabeth enjoys the power she now exerts on her aunt: she
wonders whether she should tell her the truth about her health. The roles have now been
inverted: Elizabeth is now invested with power. On the other hand, like Dorothy, that newly
acquired power terrifies her, as she does not know how to use it.
Wilson further establishes other correspondences between Life Before Man and The
Wizard of Oz. The dull world, in which Atwood’s characters evolve, evokes the black and
white setting of the beginning of The Wizard. The scene in which Dorothy is caught in the
middle of a cyclone echoes the first scene in the novel where Elizabeth lies on her bed as in a
void (11). Further, Wilson casts Nate as a combination of the Scarecrow – because of his
inefficiency at work – and the Tin Woodman – because he gradually gets rid of his identity.
Lesje, in the guise of the Cowardly Lion, lacks both roots and identity, whereas Chris
functions as an inverted wizard, who, instead of dispensing of his body, commits suicide by
blowing his head off. Wilson concludes her comparison by saying that all characters in Life
Before Man, like those of The Wizard of Oz, characteristically lack something. I would go
further, adding that what they miss is a sense of their own difference, an acknowledgement of
their otherness: Elizabeth does not know how to handle the fact that she is gradually
becoming the “ex-wife;” Lesje fails to understand that she cannot possibly spend the rest of
her life as an extinct species; Nate finds it difficult to choose between his double occupation
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as a lawyer and as an artist. Quite logically then, one may conclude that all characters in the
novel, as in The Wizard of Oz, embark on a quest for self-confidence and self-knowledge.
The novel further contains a reflection casting doubts on the value of human categories
and constructions. As such, we can interpret it as Atwood’s intervention, inviting the reader to
question the notion of reality and fictional constructs. Evading reality into the prehistoric
world, Lesje – answering a young visitor’s question – reflects:
But does the Mesozoic exist? When it did it was called nothing. The dinosaurs
didn’t know they were in the Mesozoic. They didn’t know they were only in the
middle. They didn’t intend to become extinct; as far as they knew they would live
forever. Perhaps she should write the truth: The Mesozoic isn’t real. It’s only a word
for a place you can’t go to any more because it isn’t there. It’s called the Mesozoic
because we call it that. (290)
Like the dinosaurs in the quote, the characters in the novel fail to understand their situation:
they do not realise that the limitations of their life leads them to extinction. Rather, they refuse
to face reality, tending to hide their inadequacy both from themselves and others.
2.2. Life as a Game Parody
Bodily Harm deals with the theme of internal and external forms of aggression. At the
beginning of the novel, Rennie, the heroine, regards her cancer as she does external assaults:
she refuses to face them. Indeed, she seems more willing to accept the fact that she might die
than to fight in order to stay alive. Likewise, she conceals her provincial origins rather than
displaying them to the outside world. Meanwhile, she secretly worships people such as her
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friend Jocasta or her exotic lover Paul, who embody good taste and an adventurous attitude
towards life. However, when she, on a trip to a foreign island, suddenly discovers that
someone has invaded her intimacy by breaking into her hotel room, Rennie is also forced to
admit that cancer might not be the only threat to her life. Indeed, what prevents a perfect
stranger from entering her room at night and assassinating her without any warning or real
motive?
Rennie’s experience in the Caribbean Islands shows how she faces an unknown
menace. It illustrates how she gradually comes to accept risk as a component of human life.
The whole novel is therefore structured as a clue game, 6 in which the reader is implicitly
requested to discover who plays the roles of victim and victor and what the outcome really
means. Atwood hints at the significance of the clue game as a metaphor for the plot’s
development, mentioning it at regular intervals. Rennie introduces the idea of this game at the
beginning of the novel, when she discovers the intrusion into her room: “All I could think of
was a game we used to play. Detective or Clue, something like that. You had to guess three
things: Mr. Green, in the conservatory, with a knife. Only I couldn’t remember whether the
name in the envelope was supposed to be the murderer’s or the victim’s. Miss Wilford, in the
bedroom, with a rope.” (13-14). Significantly, Rennie does not remember the role played by
the person whose name can be found in the envelope. It indicates that she too reluctantly
assesses her responsibilities and her own role in what happens to her. When she later reflects
on the clue game again, Rennie thinks: “Mr. X., in the bedroom, with a rope. And when you
pulled on the rope, which after all reached down into darkness, what would come up? What
6 Lorna Irvine’s analysis of Bodily Harm in Collecting Clues offers a full exegesis of the clue metaphor in the
novel (Irvine Collecting Clues 94-96). While I totally adhere to this interpretation, I do not follow Irvine in her
intimation that the whole novel occurs on the operation table (96). If we take into account Atwood’s comment to
Irvine that the novel takes place in a few hours, I would rather adopt the common critical attitude of assuming
that the whole plot takes the form of a flashback within Rennie’s thoughts as she hopes for escape in her
Caribbean prison.
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was at the end, the end? A hand, then an arm, a shoulder, and finally a face. At the end of the
rope there was someone. Everyone had a face, there was no such thing as a faceless stranger”
(41). Once again, she fails to understand the significance of the game, focussing desperately
on the outcome, which is in keeping with her own obsession with death. Yet, the existence of
this faceless menace allows her to take a risk and get involved with local politics. When she
dangerously accepts to fetch a box at the airport for the mistress of a local politician, she
accepts to risk her own security and to get involved for the first time. Atwood mentions the
clue game several times in relation with the mysterious content of the box (159) and with the
presence of an unknown menace (220).
The way the heroine later reads a detective story reveals a lot about her attitude to life:
“The pages are yellowed and watermarked and smell of mould. Rennie reads the casts of
characters and tries to guess who gets murdered. Then she reads up to the murder and tries to
guess who did it, and then she turns to the back of the book to see if she’s right. She doesn’t
have much patience for the intricacies of clues and deductions” (245-247). The reader
understands that Rennie is more concerned about the roles people embody and about the
possible outcome of their actions than with the intricacies of social relationships. This
explains her feeling of inadequacy: she does not know the real functioning of social
relationships; she only knows how to mimic it. However, Rennie slowly comes to admit her
reluctance to play the role ascribed to her as a woman. She sums it up as follows: “Rennie can
see what she is now: she is an object of negotiation. The truth about knights comes suddenly
clear: the maidens were only an excuse. The dragon was the real business. So much for
vacation romances, she thinks” (258). Suddenly confronted with the politics of male-female
relationships, Rennie understands the need for her to fight back, to earn her own survival, to
find her place in society. When she finally faces even worse circumstances, held captive in a
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local prison and suspected of spying, she is forced to cling desperately to her once so dull life
and claims: “ ‘I’m writing a travel piece. You can phone the magazine and check,’ she adds.
‘In Toronto, when they’re open. It’s called Visor.’ This sounds improbable even to her. Does
Toronto exist? They won’t be the first to wonder. She thinks of her blank notebook, no
validation there” (262). The clue game metaphor is here no longer necessary, since the danger
of Rennie’s situation has become all but too real.
2.3. Metafictional Comments and Parodic Reflections on Art and Reality
In The Handmaid’s Tale, art and fiction have definitely been banished, as the embodiment of
imagination, a perverse deviation of the human mind. Wishing to annihilate man’s ability to
love, to dream, and to hope, the creators of this world have also banished mirrors, as tokens of
women’s futility. Yet, it is through an image in a mirror that the reader discovers the
silhouette of the Handmaid: “There remains a mirror (…) I can see it as I go down the stairs,
round, convex, a pier-glass, like the eye of a fish, and myself in it like a distorted shadow, a
parody of something, a fairytale figure in a red cloak, 7 descending towards a moment of
carelessness that is the same as danger. A Sister, dipped in blood” (19). The fact that the
owners of the house have forgotten to remove the mirror may be interpreted as a sign that
hope still exists. It also allows the heroine to reflect upon her “distorted,” unnatural position in
that household. As she tells us, she feels like a character in a fairy-tale, in a story that – as the
blood denotes – has gone terribly wrong. She then provides her reader with her own
reflections on storytelling:
7 The novel can also be read as a parody of Little Red Riding Hood (See Wilson’s analysis of the novel in
Margaret Atwood’s Fairy-Tale Sexual Politics, 271-294). It further displays elements from Gothic fiction, as it
features a helpless female figure in a hostile environment.
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I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe
it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If
it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an
ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off. It
isn’t a story I’m telling. It’s also a story I’m telling in my head as I go along. Tell,
rather than write, because I have nothing to write with and writing is in any case
forbidden. But if it’s a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You
don’t tell a story only to yourself. There’s always someone else. Even when there is
no one. (49)
In her presentation of her story, the Handmaid desperately wishes it to be a fictional creation,
because the situation seems utterly unbearable to her. She also hopes to gain control over the
story, i.e. to determine its ending. Moreover, telling that story to someone is highly important
to the heroine, isolation being one of her sufferings. From then on, the plot alternates between
episodes true to reality and the heroine’s wishful thinking, which she repeatedly denounces as
such. 8 The narrator insists on the dubious aspect of fiction to draw the reader’s attention to her
high level of unreliability. She induces him/her to be cautious. Her frequent allusions to the
value of works of art of different kinds remind the reader of the existence of the dichotomy
between reality and fiction throughout the whole story.
However, art is also regarded as one of the components sustaining the new regime: the
Handmaid notices the regime’s preference for folk art, as a way of occupying women’s spare
time (17); she also alludes to religious art and its puritanical undertones (41, 89-90). She
draws a parallel between her life and that of the characters in nineteenth-century paintings,
depicting life in harems (79). The picture – containing all those naked women – might not be
8 Howells alludes to the novel’s “double-voiced discourse so characteristic of women,” constantly oscillating
between nature and culture (Howells, Margaret Atwood, 144), or, as I imply here, between reality and fiction,
between life and art.
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the same, but the result – women in captivity – clearly is. All these examples show how art
can be used in order to justify social and political choices. Their parodic presence in the novel
also points to the archaic nature of Gileadean society, and are, as such, part of the
metafictional critique of that regime.
3. Three Forms of Subversive Deception
Life Before Man chronicles the moments of crisis in the relationships of dying and forming
couples in the Toronto of the 1970’s. It focuses on three characters who fail to acknowledge
their otherness. While the title clearly alludes to Lesje’s job as a paleontologist – more
interested in dinosaurs than in human beings – and to pre-conscious understanding, it also
hints, as stated by Carol Beran (Beran, “Functional Ethnicity,” 59), at the time which lies
ahead of man, at what these characters decide to make of their life and at the possible
extinction of the human race. Atwood once again invites the reader to embrace multiple
interpretations of her title and of her characters’ inner life. Likewise, the three protagonists
constantly challenge the realistic plot, resorting to deceptive strategies or indulging in self-
deception. All are involved in a love triangle, which causes them to develop a treacherous
behaviour.
Like Nate and Lesje, Elizabeth is characterised by her capacity to lie and to mimic any
type of required social behaviour. She is also the protagonist who, in the course of the novel,
evolves most clearly towards self-knowledge and self-acceptance. Focussing on her role as a
wife and a mother, she exerts her deceptive strategies on her husband. Similarly, she
unconsciously applies the same strategies to her children. From the very beginning of the
novel, their propensity to use disguises of all kinds demonstrates her children’s comparable
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tendency to mimic. Since the novel’s opening takes place during the Halloween season, it
features frequent allusions to the children’s disguises (13). Significantly, Elizabeth comments
on her children’s behaviour, saying that “they act as though everything is normal” (13). This
sentence indicates that the children already have learnt the art of mimicry. This is confirmed
by Elizabeth’s subsequent judgment on her children’s costume choice: “Nancy has made yet
another variation of her favorite costume. She calls it a monster, every year. (…) Janet makes
a prim entrance. Last year she was a ghost, the year before that she was a cat, both standard.
She tends to play it safe; to be too original is to be laughed at, as Nancy sometimes is” (37-38)
The passage clearly differentiates the children, showing that the eldest has already chosen to
compromise in order to conform, while Nancy’s disguises may cause mockery, making her
stand out as ex-centric. The episode further indicates that the elder child has already mastered
social rituals when she explains to her mother what her costume represents, saving her “the
embarrassment of asking,” (38) as Atwood puts it. Ironically, Janet is disguised as a caricature
gypsy (38), providing the same image as that used by Lesje to describe her otherness (30).
The deceptive resonances in Elizabeth’s stream of consciousness slowly become
obvious. She often makes a mental note betraying the erroneousness of her previous
comments (58). The same process recurs frequently as one reads Elizabeth’s entries (102).
The most striking example of this technique can be detected in Elizabeth’s relation of her visit
to William, to whom she wants to disclose Lesje’s infidelity:
Under ordinary circumstances she would have reserved in advance, but she needed
to seem impromptu. She happened to be passing by the Ministry of the Environment
on her way to do some shopping (false; she never shops at Yonge and St. Clair) and
remembered their recent conversation (also false). She thought how fascinating it
would be to pop in on William and hear a little more about the work he was doing
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(totally false), and if William wasn’t busy for lunch, she’d love to have him join her
(true, but not for the reasons William may have suspected). (176)
The passage clearly underscores Elizabeth’s deceptive strategies by showing how she
elaborates the scenario of her so-called haphazard visit to William. Atwood’s narrative
technique – based on a stream of consciousness – prompts the reader to become aware of
Elizabeth’s deceptive skills.
Elizabeth further encourages the reader’s disbelief in her allegedly exaggerated
description of her wicked aunt: “Elizabeth knows her view of Auntie Muriel is exaggerated”
(119). Her subsequent portrayings of her aunt epitomise not only Elizabeth’s tendency to
exaggerate features of her aunt’s personality, hinting at the problematic relationship between
the two women. Auntie Muriel constitutes an element in Elizabeth’s life that leads her to the
development of mimicry strategies in order to conform to social demands. Elizabeth’s
comatose sister, Caroline, represents what might happen when one either totally accepts those
norms or rejects them altogether: one then indulges in a self-annihilating process resulting in
death. Throughout the novel, Elizabeth’s feelings towards her aunt slowly evolve: from
simple hatred, she soon acquires a position that allows her to exert her power on her now ill
and weak aunt. After her aunt’s death, she fully understands how much she actually resembles
that woman. Hints at this outcome punctuate the novel, as in the following quote: “Auntie
Muriel worked at developing those parts of Elizabeth that most resembled Auntie Muriel and
suppressing or punishing the other parts” (137). The character of Aunt Muriel allows Atwood
to criticise, through Elizabeth’s comments, the values imposed by patriarchal society. Such is
the case, for instance, when Elizabeth humorously explains Aunt’s Muriel’s vision of society:
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She’s quite certain of her own place, however. First comes God. Then comes Auntie
Muriel and the Queen, with Auntie Muriel having a slight edge. Then come about
five members of the Timothy Eaton Memorial Church, which Auntie Muriel attends.
After this there is a large gap. Then white, non-Jewish Canadians, Englishmen, and
white, non-Jewish Americans, in that order. Then there’s another large gap,
followed by all other human beings on a descending scale, graded according to skin
color and religion. Then cockroaches, clothes moths, silverfish and germs, which are
about the only forms of animal life with which Auntie Muriel has ever had any
contact. Then all sexual organs, except those of flowers. This is how Elizabeth puts
it for the amusement of others when she’s telling Auntie Muriel stories. (137-138)
This scene, though hilarious, counterpoints Elizabeth’s earlier vision of Aunt Muriel, when
she desperately feared her as a child. Its humorous tone echoes Elizabeth’s gradual rejection
of the paternalistic values which turned her in what she has become: a seemingly snobbish
Wasp lady. 9 Elizabeth is now capable of ridiculing Aunt Muriel’s vision of the world. She
accepts responsibility for her own place in this society and gradually acquires self-knowledge.
Yet, at this stage of the plot development, Elizabeth has not fully integrated her belonging to
Wasp society. She still positions herself as other, i.e. as not fulfilling Aunt Muriel’s
expectations. In other words, she still considers Aunt Muriel a malignant, evil relative and
herself as a cockroach or silverfish (138). She then narrates the story of her mother’s
disappearance, as seen through Aunt Muriel’s eyes:
Elizabeth’s mother deserted the family out of innate depravity – ran off with the son
of her own father’s lawyer – which Auntie Muriel saw as a kind of incest and which
luckily didn’t last long. She, Auntie Muriel, had rescued the deserted children and
9 In Brutal Choreographies Bouson-Brooks highlights the dialogic strategy used by Elizabeth to “unmask and
dethrone the disciplinary, judgmental speech of her aunt” (92). To me, the strategy has further implications; if
we regard the aunt as the embodiment of paternalistic claims, Elizabeth clearly becomes an ex-centric,
revolutionary figure.
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had begun immediately stuffing them with all the advantages. Elizabeth, even as a
child, did not fully accept this story (138).
The negative connotations of this description strike the reader: words such as “deserted,”
“depravity,” or “incest,” echo the judgement of patriarchal society concerning the behaviour
of Elizabeth’s mother. Yet, the last sentence of this quotation implies that Elizabeth has never
fully accepted this version of her life. Such comment might be regarded as a clue to
Elizabeth’s hybridisation. Although she was brought up according to Aunt Muriel’s
patriarchal values, she does not seem to have fully integrated such values, and traces of a less
rigid form of education dispensed by her mother somehow subsist.
Elizabeth’s double nature constitutes an essential aspect of her personality. It best
comes to light through confrontations with simple, honest characters, such as Nate’s mistress,
Martha, or her imaginary image of Nate’s mother. When Elizabeth imagines an encounter
with Nate’s mother, she emphasises her otherness, drawing on the discrepancy between city
and country. Yet, she immediately adds that such confrontation springs from her own
imagination and has never actually occurred: “The mother: You a friend of his? From the city,
eh? Then, as she’d feared, throwing back the veil, the bad teeth showing, pushing her dark
face towards Elizabeth, her hair turning to snakes: You killed him. (…) As far as she knows,
his parents, if they still exist, have never heard of her. And her images are all wrong, too”
(160). Elizabeth’s feeling of “having the wrong images” expresses the inadequacy of the role
ascribed to her. Her otherness takes its roots in the demands imposed on her by her Aunt
Muriel, after her mother abandoned her. Indeed, Auntie Muriel, as a responsible tutor, wanted
Elizabeth to receive a proper education at Trinity College. She also wanted her to remain at
home for the sake of her autistic sister Caroline. However, Elizabeth identifies such choices as
“a ruse to trap her” and claims that “she wants only one thing: escape” (177). What follows is
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a series of episodes from Elizabeth’s youth, in which she deliberately challenges Auntie
Muriel’s credulity, deceiving her with small lies and angelic images of herself. After going
out with her boyfriend, Elizabeth comes back home excited at the thought of Auntie Muriel
“standing on the bottom step of the staircase in her powder blue dressing gown, accusing,
malignant, triumphant. Elizabeth has fed her a story about evening choir practice, which,
unbelievably, has worked several times before. But she’s never stayed out so late” (179). The
duplicitous nature of Elizabeth’s behaviour prompts her to discovery. She begins to treasure
defiance. Her deception therefore displays a subversive quality characterising the oppressed
subject.
Being an expert at deception from an early age, Elizabeth logically turns out to have a
gift for spotting the same technique in others. Such is the case for Nate’s lies, which she often
refers to as obvious (203-204). By showing off her knowledge, Elizabeth displays her
superiority towards her husband. Realising that he plans to leave the house, she urges him to
do so to be able “to repeat this conversation to her friends, communicating her joy at this
solution to all her problems, radiating quiet confidence and control” (204). Such reaction
evidently constitutes yet another form of deception. Indeed, as a deserted wife, Elizabeth
understands that “she’s being manipulated into this position, by Nate” (204). She therefore
decides to lie to herself and others, displaying the image of a confident woman (205). Her
tendency to disguise her distress finds its roots in the education she received as a child.
Indeed, although she radically rejects her aunt’s ethical principles, she has undeniably been
influenced by her idea that “mothers of young children do not break up families for their own
selfish gratification” and that “there is such a thing as immoral behavior and such a thing as
common decency” (215). Caught between two images of herself – the triumphant,
independent woman and the miserable, deserted wife – Elizabeth reluctantly admits the failure
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of her marital relationship. Her education somehow convinced her that: “If she says, ‘Nate left
me,’ she’ll hear that it was her fault. Husbands do not leave wives who behave properly”
(215). Aunt Muriel’s tendency towards self-mortification has clearly caused her niece to feel
submerged in guilt.
Further, Elizabeth methodically deconstructs the behaviour of people around her,
revealing the multiplicity of mimicry strategies used in order to satisfy social requirements.
She is also perfectly conscious of her own strategies to please patriarchal norms:
With everyone else she can depend on some difference between surface and interior.
Most people do imitations; she herself has been doing imitations for years. If there is
some reason for it she can imitate a wife, a mother, an employee, a dutiful relative.
The secret is to discover what the others are trying to imitate and then support them
in their belief that they’ve done it well. Or the opposite: I can see through you. But
Auntie Muriel doesn’t do imitations; either that or she is so completely an imitation
that she has become genuine. She is her surface. Elizabeth can’t see through her
because there is nothing and nowhere to see. She is opaque as a rock. (216-217)
The passage underlines Elizabeth’s belonging to patriarchal society as well as her inner
rejection of its values. Behind her façade, she loathes imitations. Moreover, she secretly
envies her Aunt Muriel for having integrated those values so well. She admires her power, as
much as she hates being subjected it. Moreover, she fears that her respect of social
conventions might someday transform her into a mere copy of her dreadful relative. Indeed,
she can understand her aunt’s behaviour so well, that she even guesses what Aunt Muriel
might do concerning her marriage – “going to go to Nate and offer to pay him (…) for an
appearance of standard family life” (217). Through these reiterated allusions to Aunt Muriel’s
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middle-class ideals, Atwood not only illustrates Elizabeth’s powerful feelings towards her
aunt; she also stresses the resemblance between the two women. 10
Highly interesting then is Elizabeth’s attitude when she becomes aware of her aunt’s
illness and considerable loss of power. Through a series of small details, Atwood intimates
that Elizabeth searches to gain power over her aunt, i.e. that she passes from the state of
colonised victim to that of heartless coloniser. For instance, Elizabeth reveals that she brings
her aunt chrysanthemums out of pure mischief: indeed, Aunt Muriel cannot stand the smell of
them, and Elizabeth perfectly knows that; she just “conveniently forgot” (278). Further, she
cherishes the idea of revealing to her aunt the seriousness of her health condition (279).
Finally, she admits that she plainly wants her aunt to suffer (280), as a revenge for all the pain
she inflicted on her. She blames Aunt Muriel for the negative image of her mother, whom she
wishes to regard as a saint or as a victim (281).
Aunt Muriel’s death represents a turning point in Elizabeth’s life. It foregrounds an
ultimate confrontation with parental figures, forcing the heroine to wander further into the
meanders of her own unconscious. Nevertheless, at the funeral, Elizabeth, still under the
influence of her aunt’s education, remains unable to display any behaviour other than the
prescribed one: she represses laughter, hoping it will be “mistaken for grief” (298). A short
sentence alluding to one of her daughters – “Janet is weeping decorously; she knows this is
what you do at funerals” (299) intimates that she has already taught her daughters how to act
as society requires. Further, she admits that she will go on retelling reality as she pleases
when she confesses: “Now that Auntie Muriel is actually dead, she is free to restructure her
10 Hilde Staels identifies Aunt Muriel as “Elizabeth’s shadow self, (…) the negative qualities that Elizabeth
refuses to acknowledge as part of herself” (Staels, A Study of Narrative Discourse, 109). Hence my
interpretation of the novel as Elizabeth’s quest for her hybridity.
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closer to her own requirements; also, she would like to find something in her to approve”
(299). This observation divulges one of Elizabeth’s strategies – turning an object of fear into a
joke. For the first time in the novel, it also intimates that Elizabeth wishes to understand her
aunt better, as an important aspect of her own personality. The distance between her and her
aunt enables Elizabeth to question her own vision of reality, and in so doing, to get a glimpse
of her hybridity. She ponders: “She’s finding it difficult to believe that Auntie Muriel, now
shriveled, boxed, dirted over and done with, actually did all the harmful, even devastating
things she remembers her doing. Possibly Elizabeth had exaggerated, invented; but why
would she invent Auntie Muriel?” (300). The question is symptomatic of Elizabeth’s quest for
self-knowledge. Its answer lies in her acknowledgement of her hybrid nature.
In Life Before Man, deception, which enables the character to look like an average
person, assumes a prominent role. Lesje also tries to display a deceptive image of herself.
Several comments indicate that she wishes to control her physical appearance: the way she
dresses (26), or her jewellery (26). Episodes from her childhood explain why physical
appearance is so important to Lesje. She recalls seeing an Indian museum employee on one of
her visits to the museum with her grandmother: “They’d seen an Indian woman, wearing a
beautiful red sari with a gold band at the hem. Over the top of the sari was a white lab coat,
and with the woman were two little girls, obviously her daughters, wearing Scottish kilts.
‘Gevalt,’ her grandmother said, frowning, but not with fear. Lesje stared at them, entranced.
This, then, was her own nationality” (96). Seeing little Indian girls dressed in a Western way,
Lesje’s grandmother clearly expresses her disapproval. As a child, Lesje undoubtedly
experienced this rejection as a personal one, because, like the Indian girls, she felt torn apart
between two different traditions. The way Lesje dresses expresses her hybridity, as shown in
another childhood reminiscence. Lesje describes her father’s company in the following terms:
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“He owned a dress business, true, but reluctantly: his mother almost forced him into it after
his father died. Little Nell Dresses, it’s now called; once it was called Tinker Bell. Lesje grew
up wearing them and resenting them. For her; luxury was not the piqué and lace collars of the
Little Nell line, but the jeans and T-shirts the other girls wore” (113). Clearly, Lesje’s familial
inheritance prevented her from resembling the other girls of her age. Discrepancies between
Lesje’s actual life and her family’s expectations recur throughout the novel, as they gradually
destroy the character’s life. One example of this is her inability to disclose to her family her
affair with William:
Lesje’s mother, in the kitchen putting hard sauce on the slabs of mince pie, sniffled
with quiet stoicism. This too happened every year. She could never ask William to
this meal or even to this house. Don’t irritate your father, her mother said. I know
young people are different now but he still thinks of you as his little girl. You think
he doesn’t know you’re living with someone? He knows. He just doesn’t want to
know. (114)
Lesje lies to her parents as much as they choose not to face the truth. The deceptive strategy
used by the heroine is particularly effective: her immediate environment encourages her to act
in this way. Lesje’s family becomes the accomplice of her mimicry process 11 because, on the
one hand, they want her to find her place within Canadian society, but on the other, they also
want her to respect their own social values. As the direct product of such education, Lesje
could not become anything else than a hybrid. She constantly feels torn between her actual
11 Paul Goetsch’s article “Margaret Atwood’s Life Before Man as a Novel of Manners” provides us with an
interesting analysis of the characters’ attempts to comply with social conventions. However, I do not agree with
his interpretation of Lesje’s behaviour in the following quotation: “Usually, Lesje of course knows how to
behave in harmony with the code” (140). Personally, I think Lesje does not know the code well enough to
integrate it in everyday behaviour. Therefore, she constantly resorts to mimicry strategies or to escapist fantasies
into the prehistorical world.
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life and her family’s expectations, which she sums up as follows: “Her Ukranian grandmother
had wanted her to be an airline stewardess. Her Jewish grandmother had wanted her to be a
lawyer and also to marry, another lawyer if possible. Her father wanted her to make the most
of herself. Her mother wanted her to be happy” (114). Torn between those conflicting desires,
Lesje eventually becomes an incomplete individual, a pale reflection of other people’s wishes.
Lesje’s relationships with the other characters clearly highlight her inability to
integrate social demands. Elizabeth’s pedantic Wasp attitude and William’s snobbishness
generate a feeling of uneasiness in her; she thinks “she’ll never be able to master nuances like
these. William with his wines: full-bodied, bouquet. It all tastes like wine to her” (96-97).
Symptomatically, when William attempts to rape her, she realises her helplessness and her
lack of understanding of the situation:
She’s always thought of rape as something the Russians did to the Ukrainians,
something the Germans did, more furtively to the Jews, something blacks did in
Detroit, in dark alleys. But not something William Wasp, from a good family in
London, Ontario, would ever do to her. They’re friends, they discuss extinction and
pollution, they’ve known each other for years. They live together! (186)
After that episode, William and Lesje’s relationship becomes totally different. While he acts
as though nothing has happened (193), she suddenly understands their actual relationship:
William appreciates her as a form of exotic entertainment. However, he would never
introduce her to his parents or consider her a proper mother for his children. At that moment,
Lesje clearly positions herself as a victim of William’s deception. As she puts it, “she trusted
him like a sidewalk, she trusted him to be what he seemed to be, and she will never be able to
do that with anyone again. It isn’t the violence but the betrayal of this innocent surface that is
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so painful; though possibly there was no innocence, possibly she made it up” (196). This
suffering is made worse by the impossibility for Lesje to confide in anyone. Her parents
would clearly not understand her situation (192, 194). Moreover, Lesje’s relationship to them
involves a form of mimicry of happiness: “Lesje’s mother wants Lesje to be happy, and if
Lesje isn’t happy she wants her to appear to be happy. Lesje’s happiness is her mother’s
justification. Lesje has known this forever and is well practiced at appearing, if not happy, at
least stolidly content. Busy, gainfully employed” (195). Lesje has obviously learned to display
the image her parents want her to project: that of a happy, busy girl. The whole process has
destroyed the child-parents relationship in such a way that Lesje is incapable of confessing
her sorrow to either her mother or her father. Yet, for the first time, she thinks she might not
be able to keep up appearances and “wants her mother to put her arms around her and console
her” (195). Such an unexpected expression of feelings indicates that Lesje is gradually
moving towards an acknowledgement of her hybridity, which implies an acceptance of her
parents’ cultural inheritance. William’s attitude also causes Lesje’s distrust of other men.
When she later gets involved with Nate, she becomes less naive and suspects him of seeing
Elizabeth in secret (210). Her experience with William, though violent and traumatic, has
enabled her to tackle other relationships. She is less fragile, having reached a less innocent
vision of the other sex.
Lesje’s interest for the world of dinosaurs, as a child and later as an adult, is
symptomatic of her deep feeling of inadequacy: unable to find her place in Canadian society,
she feels more comfortable with prehistoric animals, which are, like herself, condemned to
extinction. Several details point to Lesje’s over-emphasised interest for archaic creatures. She
confesses her liking for a book entitled The Lost World and comments: “She still has this
book. She didn’t exactly steal it, she just forgot several times to renew it and then was so
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embarrassed by the librarian’s sarcasm that she lied. Lost, she said. The Lost World is lost”
(45). Another detail indicates Lesje’s wish to hide among the dinosaurs. Indeed, she mentions
that her office has a door camouflaged to look like a rock (208-209). This detail alludes to
Lesje’s wish to remain hidden. It also implies that she feels more at ease in the museum than
in the outer, everyday world. Denying her roots, she has somehow become as extinct as the
animals she studies.
Lesje’s affair with Nate marks a turning point in the young woman’s development.
Indeed, in the course of their relationship, Lesje goes through a series of situations which
force her to acknowledge her difference and to integrate it. She comes to realise the difference
between William and Nate: while the first one kept her prisoner in a relationship of
empowerment, the second treats her as an equal, not as an exotic life form. Lesje also comes
to realise her mixed feelings towards her own hybridity. On the one hand, she “wants to
belong, to be seen to belong; she wants to be classifiable, a member of a group” (267). On the
other hand, Lesje also understands that her ethnic background makes her different from
people like Elizabeth. She also learns to make concessions, which shows that she is capable of
accepting her hybridity. While she remains afraid of becoming too much like Elizabeth, she
also feels ready for motherhood (308), a decision which might, or not, help her escape her
prehistoric refuge.
Bodily Harm is extremely interesting from the point of view of deception. It presents the
reader with a heroine who simultaneously functions as a victim of deception and as someone
forced to acquire techniques of deception in order to survive. Rennie repeatedly uses trivial
tricks in order to deceive people surrounding her. She is described as a character who wears
discreet make-up so as to become “invisible” (15). The reader also understands that her
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elationship with her partner is strongly affected by her illness. They both behave as though
they were still close to one another, which they are not (20). Indeed, Rennie absolutely wants
to maintain “the illusion that nothing bad had happened to her or was going to happen” (20).
She is thus willing to deceive both herself and others in order to forget the potentially dreadful
consequences of her illness. Similarly, she does not really believe she will be fine, although
she says so (31). Jake, her boyfriend, frequently shows up in flashbacks, in which Rennie
insists on the importance of deception and pretence within their relationship. She recalls:
“what she couldn’t bear was the effort he was making to pretend nothing was different, the
effort she was making to help him pretend. She wanted to say, I’m dying, but that would be
melodrama, and anyway she probably wasn’t” (200). As the end of the quote implies, Rennie
mainly suffers from the uncertainties caused by her illness: she does not know whether she is
dying or not, feeling therefore condemned to adopt a deceptive attitude.
Further, she is often depicted as a character who invents trivial lies: for instance, she
sends a postcard to her mother, omitting to mention that her boyfriend left her (81). Through
her comments, she discloses she inherited deception childhood, like many Atwoodian
characters. Atwood writes: “Rennie hasn’t told her mother about the operation, either. She
stopped telling her mother bad news a long time ago. As a child she learned to conceal cuts
and scrapes, since her mother seemed to regard such things not as accidents but as acts Rennie
committed on purpose to complicate her mother’s life. (…) The operation, too, she would see
as Rennie’s fault” (82). From such a quotation, the reader understands the perverted aspect of
Rennie’s misplaced guilt: how could she possibly be held responsible for her illness? Yet, she
implies that whatever she does has generated reproach, from her childhood onwards. Even
though she has become an adult, Rennie still suffers from the guilt she felt as a child. She
derives her willingness to deceive out of such guilt, as a way of projecting an acceptable
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image of herself. Guilt also pervades her as a child when she discovers her father’s defection
from home. Gossip and secrecy constitute the atmosphere in which she grew up (109-110),
first believing that her father would take her with him, then gradually accepting people’s
sideway looks and gossips.
She also lies in an attempt to seduce her doctor (237), a strategy which lamentably
fails, Daniel being more interested in his family than in a relationship with one of his patients.
When meeting him for medical tests, she displays a flamboyant red blouse in order to show
off her confidence. Yet, the effect proves of short duration: Rennie ends up crying in despair
(83). She ultimately decides to trust mimicry in order to lead a normal life again: “It was
important to keep your balance, it was important to behave normally. If you did that enough,
Daniel said, sooner or later you would begin to feel normal” (163). Looking normal soon
becomes an obsession (164): Rennie increasingly resorts to delusion and self-deception in
order to provide the illusion of normality. Even her work as a journalist forms part of her
attempt at preserving normality. She makes a decision: “to act like a journalist, for the benefit
of anyone watching but also for her own. If she goes through the motions, takes a few
pictures, a few notes, maybe she’ll convince herself” (175). However, this strategy only works
up to a point: the suspicions she becomes the victim of in the Caribbeans only serve to
demonstrate the ineffectiveness of her mimicry strategies.
Conscious of her power as a journalist, Rennie sometimes deceives her readers by
writing about trends that do not exist (25). She is not yet aware of the subversive power of her
position as a journalist. Her work necessitates such harmless lies every once in a while: for
instance, when she writes a travel piece, she always suggests that she is not travelling alone,
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ecause it would be interpreted negatively by her audience (42-43). She even fantasises on the
possibility of making up whole articles without even visiting the places (63).
Similarly, she feels deeply convinced of the benefits of mimicry. In her provincial
hometown, people get severely punished for departing from established norms. 12 As Rennie
puts it: “In Griswold everyone gets what they deserve. In Griswold everyone deserves the
worst” (18). She therefore admires her friend Joanne, who changed her name into Jocasta (24)
and always tries to be daring enough to create the latest fashion.
When visiting the Caribbeans as a journalist, Rennie discovers the hidden aspect of
deception. While she often uses deception herself, she understands that she can also become
the victim of deception. At first, such an expression remains vague. She feels she “has been
either duped or used” (120), as she puts it. She soon realises that people think of her as a
deceiver too. Most people on the island refuse to believe that she is a journalist (149). The
local characters explain to her how deception works on the islands: “almost nobody here is
who they say they are at first. They aren’t even who somebody else thinks they are. In this
place you get at least three versions of everything, and if you’re lucky one of them is true.
That’s if you’re lucky” (150). They mention the existence of CIA agents, a couple of so-called
retired bankers, who receive only the information the islanders want them to have (181). The
whole system thus relies on deception as does Rennie’s own life. The islanders are deeply
aware of this: they provide an accurate portrait of her, when they describe her as follows:
12 Coral Ann Howells emphasises that Rennie is a pure product of what she calls “a Griswoldian concept of
femininity,” meaning that Rennie’s vision of herself is determined by “conventional discourses of beauty and
romance” (Howells, Margaret Atwood, 113). Indeed, by conforming to such images Rennie becomes complicit
of her own victimisation: she is willing to play the role of victim within the metaphorical clue-game.
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“You’d rather not be, you’d rather be something else, tough or sharp or something
like that, but you’re nice, you can’t help it. Naïve. But you think you have to prove
you’re not merely nice, so you get into things you shouldn’t. You want to know
more than other people, am I right?” “I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re
talking about,” says Rennie, who feels seen through. (150)
The description proves accurate: Rennie would like to display a different image of herself.
She has been trying to do so all her life and had almost succeeded when her illness shatters
her efforts to nothing. Flirting with danger, Rennie accepts to fetch a mysterious box from the
customs for one of the locals. When she discovers that the box contains a gun, she acts as
though she had not looked inside (173, 176).
When one of the tourists hurts her foot, she is attended to by one of the local faith-
healers. Once again, deception reigns over the scene and Lora, the inhabitant of the island,
comments: “‘The old fake,’ says Lora. ‘Give her a tourist and she’s happy as a pig in shit.
Even if they don’t believe her they have to act like they do. There’s no doctor around here
anyway, so they don’t have a whole lot of choice; if you sprain your ankle it’s her or
nothing’” (193). Such quotation contributes to establish deception as one of the main
strategies used by the inhabitants of the island to impress tourists. It also underlines the
parallel between Rennie and the colony. Indeed, Rennie frequently resorts to the same
strategy in order to give surrounding people the illusion that she lives according to their
paternalistic values.
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Later, when Rennie is confronted to a local exhibition on pornography, sex and
death, she turns to deception again to put her mind at ease, thinking that “it couldn’t possibly
be real, it was all done with ketchup” (210). The passage reveals how the heroine wishes to
protect herself from whatever might hurt or shock her by seeking refuge in deceptive
strategies. 13 She concludes “that there were some things it was better not to know any more
about than you had to. Surfaces, in many cases, were preferable to depths” (211). Having
made that decision, she becomes even more daring in her lies to Lora (220), or to Dr. Minnow
(227, 248). She gradually realises that they are using her to serve their political purposes. She
reflects: “Things are coming clear. They picked her up almost as soon as she was off the
plane. First Paul in the hotel dining room; so much for eye contact. Then Lora, the next day
on the reef boat. Between the two of them they’d hardly let her out of their sight” (243).
Rennie’s growing awareness of her victimhood culminates when she is captured by the local
authorities and suspected of spying. For a while, she indulges in self-deception, hoping for a
highly improbable rescue (280). She then reflects on the absurdity of a place where everything
turns out to be deceptive. Atwood brings us back to the clue game as metaphor for Rennie’s
life. She writes:
Rennie is dreaming about the man with the rope, again, again. He is the only man
who is with her now, he’s followed her, he was here all along, he was waiting for
her. Sometimes she thinks it’s Jake, climbing in the window with a stocking over his
face, for fun, as he once did; sometimes she thinks it’s Daniel, that’s why he has a
knife. But it’s not either of them, it’s not Paul, it’s not anyone she’s ever seen
13 The insertion of pornography in the novel constitutes one more allusion to the power politics involved.
Rennie’s patriarchal education in Griswold has made her unable to deal with pornography. Yet, the reader also
comes to understand that pornography never considers woman as a subject, and therefore serves as a powerful
illustration of Rennie’s alienation. For interesting insights on pornography in Bodily Harm, the reader is invited
to consult Howells’ analysis of the novel in her book entitled Margaret Atwood (119-121). Also interesting is
Atwood’s own condemnation of hard-core pornography in Chatelaine, September 1983, (61, 118, 126-128)
(Atwood Papers, Coll. 200, Box 90, 90:25). Rao stresses the significance of pornography in the novel as she
equates it with an expression of an “obsession with the otherness of femininity” (Rao, Strategies, 143), in my
view a significant theme within a postcolonial framework.
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efore. The face keeps changing, eluding her, he might as well be invisible, she
can’t see him, this is what is so terrifying, he isn’t really there, he’s only a shadow,
anonymous, familiar, with silver eyes that twin and reflect her own. (287)
While it clearly suggests the idea of empowerment, here represented by the assault of a
faceless opponent, the quotation also implies that Rennie is an accomplice in that dark plot.
The faceless stranger somehow turns into a familiar figure, even into a reflection, a twin of
the heroine herself. Atwood implies that Rennie has chosen to take part in the deceptive
processes typical of the book, that she has become an accomplice in the paternalistic
scheme. 14 The political situation in the Caribbean islands echoes the heroine’s mode of
functioning. Like her, the local politicians have indulged in a series of deceptive strategies
which have transformed the democratic system into a farce.
Even the form she signs when leaving the prison is deceptive since it claims that she
has not witnessed any form of violence (293). At the end, Rennie learns they mistook her for
“an agent. Of a foreign government. A subversive” (295). Somehow, she displays all the
characteristics of such an agent through her tendency to lie and to create a false image of
herself. Rennie thus comes to the following conclusion: “she could pose as a tourist but she
chooses not to. Working, she says. She has no intention of telling the truth, she knows when
she will not be believed. In any case she is a subversive. She was not one once but now she is.
A reporter” (300-301). The conclusion of the book implies that Rennie has understood the
purpose
14 In her remarkable article “Atwood’s Postcolonial Imagination: Rereading Bodily Harm,” Diana Brydon offers
us a postcolonial analysis of the book. She contends that the novel deals with the representation of otherness. It
also questions the notion of “travel” as acceptance and encouragement of imperialist and capitalist domination,
as illustrated by the novel’s protagonist. The novel then functions as Atwood’s indictment of that “touristic,”
colonial attitude: Rennie does not take the local revolution seriously and realises that she made a mistake when
she ends up in jail (Brydon, “Atwood’s Postcolonial Imagination,” 89-113). Like Brydon, I think the novel
skilfully questions Rennie’s fear of the “faceless stranger” as other.
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of deception. Perhaps she will be able, in the future, to use deceptive strategies to confront
paternalistic views instead of providing an image of herself promoting the status quo.
The world of Gilead, depicted in The Handmaid’s Tale, is a place of whispers, silences and
lies (279). Deception constitutes, as it were, the only way for all the characters of that
dystopian society to survive. None of the social categories described enjoys an enviable fate:
Handmaids are used as objects, Marthas, dismissed as human beings, Wives suffer from
jealousy, and Commanders witness the failure of their idealistic views in their practical
realisations on a daily basis. Deception therefore remains ubiquitous in that dystopian world
which, through its totalitarianism, fails to bring to life a new form of civilisation. A thorough
analysis of the phenomenon of deception in The Handmaid’s Tale would exceed the limits of
this chapter. I here choose to focus only on the forms of deception which stress the heroine’s
growing awareness of her subversive power.
First of all, whispers and gossips 15 prove of the utmost importance in Gilead:
characters repeatedly indulge in secret exchanges of information, which give them a brief
illusion of power (14, 20, 21, 139). The handmaids always go out by two, one being the
other’s spy (29), a strategy which undoubtedly enforces deception. Given the situation, it
becomes very difficult for Offred to know whether her partner belongs to the resistance or to
the true believers. Every confession entails a risk of being denounced. Offred makes a wise
decision: “I won’t give anything away” (43). Indeed, at this stage, she cannot tell whether the
woman beside her is a friend or an enemy (81).
15 A very interesting article by Brian Johnson examines the importance of gossip in The Handmaid’s Tale. It
identifies gossip both as a female and subversive means of self-preservation and as a means of empowerment
through the appropriation of other people’s life as story (pp. 39-55).
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Disinformation characterises Gileadean society. Yet, handmaids remain in such
desperate situations that they hunger for information of any kind (92). As Offred puts it: “I’m
ravenous for news, any kind of news; even if it’s false news, it must mean something” (30). In
such circumstances, deception becomes easy on the part of the authorities. Nevertheless, when
the Handmaid gains access to any information, she experiences it as a form of victory and as a
sign of hope (31). Throughout the novel, Offred remains aware of the fact that news might be
manipulated. Watching the news on television, she comments:
They show us only victories, never defeats. Who wants bad news? Possibly he’s an
actor. (…) What he’s telling us, his level smile implies, is for our own good.
Everything will be all right soon. I promise. There will be peace. You must trust.
You must go to sleep, like good children. He tells us what we long to believe. He’s
very convincing. I struggle against him. (…) If only it were true. I f only I could
believe. (93)
Indeed, one should also keep in mind that deception functions as a weapon used by the
authorities. The character of Aunt Lydia is repeatedly shown uttering slogans (23, 28, 33, 34,
35, 39, 43, 56, 122-124) and quotations from the Bible 16 (74, 99), sometimes slightly
modified for the purpose, as Offred notices (100, 127). She seeks to lure the handmaids into
believing that they were made for the purpose society assigned them to. In other words, the
Aunts proceed to an effective operation of brainwashing with slogans such as: “Yours is a
position of honour” (23), “Gilead is within you” (33), “there is more than one kind of
freedom” (34), “we were a society dying (…) of too much choice” (35), “modesty is
invisibility” (39), “we are secret, forbidden” (39), “it will become ordinary” (43), “the future
is in your hands” (56), etc. Quotations of that kind abound. Aunt Lydia further describes
16 The name “Gilead” itself comes from the Bible. Mentioned in Jeremiah 8:22, Gilead is the most fertile area of
the Promised Land, about to be destroyed by God’s ire.
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tanned bodies as sinful (65); she regards pornography as the only existing kind of sexuality in
the former world (128); she castigates unemployed women as sinful (129).
In the midst of those uncertainties, Offred must try not to indulge into self-deception
as an escape. Her story is so unbelievable that she might get irremediably lost, if she let her
imagination wander. She says to herself: “I am trying not to tell stories” (60). Such a
comment points to her distress. It also functions as an indication of her unreliability as a
narrator. Indeed, the reader follows Offred in her quest for self-preservation. As such, he or
she might also become the victim of her/his illusions and deceptive strategies for survival.
Aware of her limited knowledge, Offred describes herself as a child, arguing that there are
some things she must not be told (63). Further, she frequently changes her story, indicating so
to the reader (115, 116, 273, 275, 279). She therefore qualifies as one of Atwood’s less
reliable characters. Her unreliability comes to light in the following passage as well:
This is a reconstruction. All of it is a reconstruction. It’s a reconstruction now, in my
head, as I lie flat on my single bed rehearsing what I should or shouldn’t have said,
what I should or shouldn’t have done, how I should have played it. If I ever get out
of here – (…)
When I get out of here (…) it will be a reconstruction then too, at yet another
remove. It’s impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say
can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many
parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or
that (…) (144)
The word “reconstruction” is often repeated by the heroine (150, 275): it concerns her past, of
which some elements remain vague, her present uncertainties, and a hypothetical future
escape. Moreover, the passage offers a metafictional comment on the difficulty of voicing the
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complexity of human experience. Another kind of metafictional intervention takes place when
the narrator compares the evil of the Gileadean dictators with the horrors perpetrated by the
nazis during World War II. The author introduces the allusion subtly: the heroine recalls a
televised interview in which the secretary of a prominent nazi denies knowing about the
extermination of the Jews during the war (155). Implicitly, Offred compares her society to the
totalitarian German state. 17 Later, she suggests that any weak or unproductive person might be
eliminated, as was the case in extermination camps. She mentions that older women are no
longer seen in the street. She does not know what might become of her in case she fell ill
(162-163). As far as self-deception is concerned, the protagonist often resorts to daydreaming:
she imagines herself in the past, with her mother, her boyfriend or her child (73). This attitude
can be called subversive: the protagonist does not accept her fate and refuses to forget her
previous freedom. Likewise, she remembers her former name as a precious gift: “I keep the
knowledge of this name as something hidden, some treasure I’ll come back to dig up, one day.
I think of this name as buried. This name has an aura around it, like an amulet, some charm
that’s survived from an unimaginably distant past” (94). The value attributed to that name is
highly symbolical and subversive: to the character, remembering her former name means that
she still clings to her identity. 18
17 In the Atwood Papers preserved at the Fischer Library of Rare Books in Toronto, one can examine the
newspaper articles which Atwood used as an inspiration for The Handmaid’s Tale. Several articles deal with
Nazi experiments to create a “super race.” They allude to the existence of so-called “lebensborn babies” or
children corresponding to Hitler’s racial standards. The parallel with Gilead becomes clear when one reads that
young girls were selected to fufil this scheme. The articles also explain that childless married couples were
encouraged to seek other sexual partners to procreate. I think such articles clearly illustrate that Atwood took her
inspiration in the Nazi regime to create the Gileadean dictatorship (Atwood Papers, Coll. 200, Box 96, File
96:3). In an interview with Cathy Davidson, Atwood states that all the practices described in the novel have
already taken place or are still happening somewhere in the world. Nothing is invented. (Davidson, C., “A
Feminist ‘1984’”, 24-26). In Nicholson’s book on Atwood, Mark Evans examines the similarities between
behaviours in The Handmaid’s Tale and in the Puritanical New England of the seventeenth century (Evans 177-
187).
18 Several critics claim having identified the name of The Handmaid’s Tale’s anonymous narrator. From a
quotation of several characters’ names, they deduce that ‘June’ is the only name which does not belong to the
other female characters. It might therefore be the protagonist’s name. However, Atwood has always rejected this
interpretation. Personally, I think that the absence of the name is far more powerful given the theme of the novel:
this woman has been deprived of her name, as she has been of her freedom, her identity, and her voice.
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At first sight, Offred looks like any other handmaid. Looking beyond suspicion has
become a matter of survival in this totalitarian regime where the enemy could be the woman
next to you. Therefore, the handmaids have to develop a mimicry process close to perfection:
they all look like true believers (177). Offred describes the working of her mimicry strategies:
“I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech.
What I must present is a made thing, not something born” (76). Offred insists on the
artificiality of the whole process: the result is something facturated, not something innate,
which leads the reader to the conclusion that this attitude constitutes a betrayal of
womanhood. The role Offred is playing in Gileadean society equates a form of acting, which
she must unfortunately perform against her will in order to survive.
A first subversive outcome takes place when a doctor mentions the possibility of
impregnating Offred, a proposal she politely declines, fearing the doctor’s revenge (70-71). At
this stage, Offred’s freedom of choice is so annihilated that she cannot face the temptation of
indulging in subversion. As she puts it: “I’ve crossed no boundaries, I’ve given no trust, taken
no risk, all is safe. It’s the choice that terrifies me. A way out, a salvation” (71) However, her
attitude evolves as she discovers the existence of an underground world of prostitution and
resistance. She then slowly remembers how she tried to escape with her partner and her young
daughter: the fake visas, the forged passports, the sleeping pills she gave to her child (94, 95).
She gradually dreams of escaping again. She thus starts examining her options. She wishes
Luke were still alive, but soon dismisses him: he cannot possibly show up and save her (114).
She feels at a loss for a solution and expresses her despair as follows: “Maybe the life I think
I’m living is a paranoid delusion” (119). The sentence sounds gloomy; yet, it also, at this
stage, functions as an excuse not to act.
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A second subversive opportunity takes place when the Commander seems to develop
an interest in her, inviting her to his office at night. He offers her a taste of the forbidden:
playing Scrabble, reading old magazines, going to an underground party. Offred does not
really know whether he acts out of fancy or boredom. She even suspects him of being in
collusion with his wife, of laughing at her expense (177).
The Handmaid gets even more involved in subversive activities when she discovers
that her shopping partner, Ofglen, belongs to an underground resistance network. She
identifies Ofglen’s subversive behaviour: “In the past this would have been a trivial enough
remark, a kind of scholarly speculation. Right now it’s treason. (…) Subversion, sedition,
blasphemy, heresy, all rolled into one” (177). Through her contact with Ofglen, Offred starts
reflecting on how the new regime emerged. She alludes to the gradual loss of freedom:
suspension of the Constitution, censored newspapers, identity controls, exclusions of female
workers (183). The absurdity of the change comes to light, while Offred, as an unmarried
woman, appears to be one of the numerous victims of the newly established system. She then
decides to perform a fourth subversive act. One day, as she walks in the garden, Serena Joy
offers her to become the chauffeur’s mistress, in order to get pregnant. What Offred obtains in
exchange is a brief glimpse at a photograph of her young daughter (216).
The Handmaid becomes even more subversive when she accompanies her Commander
to an underground club. She emphasises the need for her to enter the place in disguise (243)
and describes the event as a “masquerade party” (247). This episode is of the utmost
importance in the protagonist’s development because it indicates the possibility of a choice,
the existence of a parallel, illegal world, to which she might belong too. Moreover, in this
place, the heroine meets again her childhood friend Moira, who has deliberately chosen to
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lead a subversive existence on the edge of society. Offred expresses her admiration for Moira
throughout the novel. Moira functions as a role model who performs all the deeds the heroine
herself fears to imagine. So much becomes clear from the following excerpt:
Here is what I’d like to tell. I’d like to tell a story about how Moira escaped, for
good this time. Or if I couldn’t tell that, I’d like to say she blew up Jezebel’s, with
fifty Commanders inside it. I’d like her to end with something daring and
spectacular, some outrage, something that would befit her. But as far as I know that
didn’t happen. I don’t know how she ended, or even if she did, because I never saw
her again. (262)
Far from simply expressing the narrator’s admiration for her friend, the passage also conveys
the narrator’s wish to invent part of the story. As such, it reminds us of the heroine’s
unreliability, of her tendency to tell stories and lies to herself and others.
However, Offred’s most subversive action consists in her position itself as the narrator
of this story. Indeed, she comes to the following conclusion:
But I keep on going with this sad and hungry and sordid, this limping and mutilated
story, because after all I want you to hear it, as I will hear yours too if I ever get a
chance, if I meet you or if you escape, in the future or in Heaven or in prison or
underground, some other place. What they have in common is that they’re not here.
By telling you anything at all I’m at least believing in you, I believe you’re there, I
believe you into being. Because I’m telling you this story I will your existence. I tell
therefore you are. (279)
The idea of the actual story as the embodiment of the character’s hope is extremely powerful.
By inviting the reader to become the accomplice of Offred’s self-deception, Atwood
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integrates him or her within the story, as a sign of hope for the heroine. The existence of a
hypothetical reader confers authenticity to the story, despite all its deceptive elements.
The final section of the book, which consists in the introduction to a seminar devoted
to Gileadean society, casts doubts on the authenticity of the handmaid’s story, as if Atwood
wanted to perform a last trick on her readers, showing that she herself can be deceptive. The
passage reveals that the story was found on audio tapes, camouflaged inbetween old songs
(314). It insists on the existence of forgeries of that kind (314) and points to the impossibility
for historians to identify the characters with any certainty (321). Gileadean society remains
deceptive for the reader to the very last page of the novel.
The three novels analysed above, though they can simply be read as factual reports, possess a
symbolic dimension. If we consider the three books as a trilogy, as Atwood herself claims
they are, we notice that all three contain a certain amount of subversion that spreads from a
narrow target – triangular love relationships – to a very large one – a whole social order.
Indeed, in Life Before Man, the reader witnesses how the three main characters challenge the
boundaries of marital and interpersonal relationships. In the course of the novel, the three
protagonists move – willingly or not – from a relationship to another, thus examining what is
socially acceptable. In Bodily Harm, Atwood goes a step further, confronting her provincial
heroine to a world where social rituals differ from those she learned in childhood. She has to
adapt to the ever changing, deceiving appearances around her. Finally, in The Handmaid’s
Tale, Atwood provides us with an apocalyptic vision of the future: in Gilead, social
conventions have become laws; trespassing is punished by death. Subversion as a survival
strategy then represents the heroine’s last hope.
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4. When Reality Verges on the Unreal
At first, one would not expect a seemingly realist novel such as Life Before Man to display
any trace of magic realism. Yet, the novel contains several passages in which the characters’
imagination transcends reality and introduces a more elusive form of narration. Reality seems
blurred; characters become larger than life; their anguish takes the lead and summons up
frightful images. Such passages are present in the novel, mostly in relation to the character of
Elizabeth. Indeed, several critics have identified Elizabeth as the central protagonist of Life
Before Man. I personally endorse this interpretation, Elizabeth being the most fully developed
character from a psychological point of view. Moreover, Elizabeth’s inner conflicts – her guilt
vis-a-vis her dead lover and her mixed feelings towards her husband on the leave – structure
the interventions of other characters. While all three protagonists are described in equal
proportions, Elizabeth soon appears as the centre of this love triangle. Quite logically then,
she displays the most complex psychological depth and her sometimes lyrical reflections on
her life possess a thoroughly magic realist quality.
Elizabeth’s recurrent allusions to her children’s preparation for Halloween take on a
different meaning when set in the light of Chris’ suicide and Elizabeth’s feelings of guilt
towards him. 19 Elizabeth reflects on Halloween as follows: “All Souls. Not just friendly souls
but all souls. They are souls, come back, crying at the door, hungry, mourning their lost lives.
You give them food, money, anything to substitute for your love and blood, hoping it will be
enough, waiting for them to go away” (53). Through this statement, one cannot help thinking
that the image of Chris’ violent suicide keeps haunting her. Later, Elizabeth deliberately
19 Hilde Staels points to the presence of the dead from the very first pages of the novel, as Atwood in the
epigraph quotes Andrei Sinyavsky’s “The Icicle” (A Study of Narrative Discourse, 116). The epigraph clearly
points to the growing presence of the voices of the dead in Elizabeth’s life.
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efuses to involve Chris’ name in her divorce procedure because “to have his name uttered in
that ritual way might cause him to materialize in the witness box, pale and accusing or –
worse – fragmented, his head watching her with a Cheshire grin, his body still contorted in
agony. She’s got him safely buried, she wants no resurrection” (261). This construction of
Elizabeth’s vision clearly qualifies as a example of magic realism, through its surreal and
uncanny character. It displays a blend of two different states, i.e. life and death.
Further on, Elizabeth mentions hearing voices (60), a feeling that recurs throughout
the book, and which she tries to dismiss as the vibration of water pipes (88-89). Whatever
Elizabeth’s interpretation of them may be, such passages clearly indicate that Elizabeth lives a
situation of crisis which might bring her to the verge of madness. Those magic realist
moments suggest that a seemingly balanced individual such as Elizabeth might conceal an
inner division. Magic realism culminates as Elizabeth realises the pointlessness of her attitude
or power: pondering on Nate’s decision to leave her and admiring one of her daughter’s
drawings, she suddenly feels dangerously attracted to its optimistic blue sky. She describes
her experience as follows:
The blue of the sky too is an illusion, the sun is blackening, its tentacles curl like
burning paper. Behind the blue sky is not white enamel but the dark of outer space,
blackness shot with fiery bubbles. Somewhere out there the collapsed body floats,
no bigger than a fist, tugging at her with immense gravity. Irresistible. She falls
towards it, space filling her ears. (205)
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The magic realist quality of the passage is undeniable: the heroine suddenly feels
overwhelmed by the blue sky of the drawing, the symbol of a cloudless marital life, which
suddenly turns into a nightmare and literally swallows the protagonist. 20
Magic realist moments equally crop up when Elizabeth is confronted with her
awesome Auntie Muriel. Identifying her aunt as the cause of her troubles, Elizabeth cannot
help reacting like a little girl everytime she faces her aunt in reality or in imagination. Aunt
Muriel becomes the living symbol of patriarchy and empowerment. As such, she turns into a
kind of ominous monster. Even as an adult, Elizabeth imagines the most horrible stories about
her aunt: “Elizabeth isn’t even all that sure Uncle Teddy is really dead. Auntie Muriel
probably has him in a trunk somewhere in the attic, webbed in old écru lace tablecloths,
paralyzed but still alive. She goes up there for a little nip now and then” (119). The grotesque
quality of the comparison, which identifies the aunt with a spider, qualifies as an example of
magic realism. Such is also the case when Elizabeth attributes herself the quality of
materialising instantly into her aunt’s home every time she visits her (214-215). The whole
passage implies that Elizabeth is incapable of running a decent house, and therefore is
regarded by her aunt as a homeless woman. Utterly fascinated by her aunt’s strong
personality, the adult Elizabeth still fears to conjure up her image. As she puts it:
“Superstition holds her back. If she pronounces that ultimate magic word, surely Auntie
Muriel will change into something else; will swell, blacken, bubble like burnt sugar, giving
off deadly fumes” (218). Her aunt, and the fear she provokes, immediately turn into a magic
realist element. Utterly grotesque also, is Elizabeth’s fantasy on what she will do with her
20 In Margaret Atwood, Coral Ann Howells describes related passages in a similar way. Emphasising the
postcolonial undertones of this “multivoiced novel” (92), she writes: “Elizabeth’s state of suspension is close to
that form of day-dreaming which Homi Bhabha describes not as an ‘alternative’ to the real world but as a
‘supplement’ to it, occupying a problematical space on the borders of a rational, contiguous with perceptual
reality but also discontinuous with it, ‘near but different’ ” (94). Although it primarily looks like a realist novel,
Life Before Man also evokes a parallel, far less realist realm of experience.
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aunt’s ashes (279-280), which, despite its highly comical character, subtly alludes to
Elizabeth’s desire to get control over her aunt.
Finally, Lesje’s quest is punctuated with instances of magic realism, particularly at the
end of the narrative, when she achieves a better knowledge of herself. She then becomes able
to identify her fondness of dinosaurs as an escapist fantasy. The museum transforms into a
magic realist place where illusion and reality collide. Lesje expresses her attachment to the
museum as a hiding place. She confesses:
Whole chunks of time lie here, golden and frozen; she is one of the guardians, the
only guardian, without her the whole edifice would melt like a jellyfish on the
beach, there would be no past. She knows it’s really the other way around, that
without the past she would not exist. Still, she must hold on somehow to her own
importance. She’s threatened, she’s greedy. If she has to she’ll lock herself into one
of these cases, hairy masks on her face, she’ll stow away, they’ll never get her out.
(308)
Far from merely explaining the significance of the museum in Lesje’s life, the quotation also
expresses the necessity for the character to acknowledge her roots. Lesje subsequently
confesses her attraction, as a child, for the hidden creatures in the museum, whose alienation
and eventual extinction relates them to her. She recalls: “when she was much younger she
used to believe, or try hard to believe, that at night when the museum was closed the things
inside it carried on a hidden life of their own; if she could only find her way inside she would
be able to watch”. (310) The idea of the gigantic dinosaurs suddenly coming to life can also
be regarded as a magic realist image. In a subsequent scene, Lesje imagines herself as part of
this resurrected prehistoric world, providing us with an example of what Delbaere classifies as
psychic realism, a variant of magic realism. The passage qualifies as an example of psychic
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magic realism, as Lesje’s incongruous presence in the prehistoric world springs from her own
psychological desire to escape from everyday life:
She’d like to. She’d like to sit here for an hour and do nothing else. She’d close her
eyes and one after another the fossils would lift their ponderous feet, moving off
along the grove of resurrected trees, flesh coalescing like ice or mist around them.
They’d dance stumpily down the stairs of the Museum and out the front door. Eight-
foot horsetails would sprout in Queen’s Park, the sun would turn orange. She’d
throw in some giant dragonflies, some white and yellow flowers, a lake. She’d move
along the foliage, at home, an expedition of one. (310)
However, despite her enthusiasm for prehistoric times, the passage closes on a vision of a
single-out individual, the last of her kind, doomed to extinction. Such magic realist visions of
prehistoric eras coming to life thus foreground the sterility of Lesje’s life.
In Bodily Harm, which likewise displays a highly realist plot, ephemeral moments of magic
realism emerge whenever the heroine is confronted to her anxiety in the face of illness and
death. In one of her dreams, for instance, she imagines herself as a child locked up in the
cellar (53). She expresses her fear at being devoured by tiny animals, which can be read as a
metaphor: what she actually fears most is the illness devouring her in the present. When she
later mentions other dreams, the meaning of those becomes clear when interpreted in relation
to her disease. She thinks: “I don’t feel human anymore (…) I feel infested. I have bad
dreams, I dream I’m full of white maggots eating away at me from the inside” (83). This
dream functions as a clear expression of Rennie’s anguish. She claims not to be human
anymore because illness has turned her into a hybrid creature. Her difference, her “otherness,”
constantly bothers her. It somehow prevents her from leading a normal life. Her insistence on
her disease through the words “infested” and “eating away” explains how cancer has become
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a catalyst for her otherness. Being ill makes her different, even more than before, when she
already resented being a provincial girl in downtown Toronto.
From then on, magic realist moments focus on Rennie’s perceptions of what is taking
place in her body. Whenever she finds some time to rest, her mind wanders, examining her
physical changes:
She lies down on the bed again, hearing the blood running through her body, which
is still alive. She thinks of the cells, whispering, dividing in darkness, replacing each
other one at a time; and of the other cells, the evil ones which may or may not be
there, working away in her with furious energy, like yeast. They would show up hot
orange under one kind of light, hot blue under another, like the negative print of the
sun when you close your eyes. Beautiful colours (100).
The passage describes the development of malign cells as an uncanny and unrealistic war
occurring within the protagonist’s body and within her mind. The uncanny quality of the
description resides in an invisible battle within the heroine’s body, in the shape of a colourful,
kaleidoscopic exchange. However, the beauty of those moving colours cannot conceal the fact
that Rennie’s life is at stake.
Further, Rennie comes to terms with her disease by associating it to her grandmother’s
increasing senility. Several passages allude to the grandmother (115, 274), as a senile old
lady who cannot remember where her hands are. The lost hands symbolise Rennie’s own
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feelings of powerlessness in the face of her illness. 21 This becomes clear when Rennie herself
searches for her hands in one of her dreams:
There’s something she has to find. She stands up, in her bare feet, she’s wearing a
long white cotton gown, it ties at the back, but this is not a hospital. She gets to the
other side of the room and pulls open her bureau drawers, one after another,
rummaging through her slips, scarves, sweaters with their arms tucked carefully
behind them. It’s her hands she’s looking for, she knows she left them here
somewhere, folded neatly in a drawer, like gloves. (116)
The passage draws a parallel between Rennie and her dead grandmother, thus separating her
even more from living human beings. One then wonders whether Rennie’s awareness of death
might function as the cause of her feelings of hybridity. In another moment of epiphany, she
confesses having more and more difficulties distinguishing waking from sleeping: “There’s a
line between being asleep and being awake which Rennie is finding harder and harder to
cross” (172). Equally uncanny is her description of sedation, which she experiences as a
separation between body and mind: “Possibly her life is being saved, but who can tell what
they’re doing, she doesn’t trust them, she wants to rejoin her body but she can’t get down. She
crawls through the grey folds of netting as if through a burrow, sand in her eyes, blinking in
the light, disoriented” (173). This magic realist description of a highly concrete event, such as
an operation, points to Rennie’s feelings of uncertainties as to her fate. Her constant fear of
dying results in a series of frightening visions, which culminate in her imprisonment in the
Caribbean jail. Those passages express both her fear of death and her misunderstanding of her
condition (286). As such, they epitomise Rennie’s behaviour throughout her life, even when
21 For a full analysis of the “lost hands motif” in Bodily Harm, one might read Sharon R. Wilson’s chapter on the
novel in Margaret Atwood’s Fairy-Tale Sexual Politics. Wilson identifies “The Girl Without Hands” as a fairytale
intertext in the novel (198-228).
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facing trivial problems. At that point of the story, Atwood again resorts to the image of the
powerless grandmother:
Her grandmother comes through the doorway between the diningroom and the
kitchen. She’s wearing a black dress printed with white flowers. I can’t find my
hands, she says. She holds out her arms to Rennie, helplessly, her hands hanging
loose at the ends of them. Rennie cannot bear to be touched by those groping hands,
which seem to her like the hands of a blind person, a half-wit, a leper. (297)
The grandmother’s loss of her hands is associated with various kinds of handicap: blindness,
leprosy, mental deficiency. Such comparison implies that Rennie’s powerlessness – in other
words her fear of death – functions as the cause of her “otherness.” Moreover, it suggests
Rennie has inherited this powerlessness from her family education, which somehow caused
her hybridity. 22
The Handmaid’s Tale functions as an exception within Atwood’s use of magic realism.
Indeed, in order to transform Gilead into a credible society, the author had to stick to pure
realism. The novel therefore contains no noticeable example of magic realism. However, if
we consider the novel as a whole, its uncanny character is undeniable: Gilead’s eerie world, in
which the Handmaids’ ghostly figures wander helplessly, strikes us as a surrealist setting. The
handmaid’s unnatural relationship with her Commander, the Wife’s hidden mischief, the
haunting presence of the protagonist’s past all provide the novel with a magic realist
background. Moreover, one passage can be read as a magic realist moment of epiphany.
Indeed, in this climactic scene, the heroine suddenly realises the lack of humanity and the
22 Howells further argues that the whole narrative oscillates between fantasy and reality, identifying it as an
uncanny reconstruction from within the prison cell (Howells, Margaret Atwood, p. 124). This interpretation
accounts for the novel’s incoherences, if taken from a strictly realistic point of view.
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hopelessness of her situation. She reflects:
I stand up, in the dark, start to unbutton. Then I hear something, inside my body.
I’ve broken, something has cracked, that must be it. Noise is coming up, coming out,
of the broken place, in my face. Without warning: I wasn’t thinking about here or
there or anything. If I let the noise get out into the air it will be laughter, too loud,
too much of it, someone is bound to hear, and then there will be hurrying footsteps
and commands and who knows? (156)
Unrealistic as it is, the crack heard by the protagonist echoes the unbearable character of her
situation. The passage uncannily reveals that she has reached a point of no return, feeling
ready to proceed on her quest even at the cost of endangering her life.
Atwood resorts to magic realism as a technique to intimate the presence of a climax scene
with epiphanic content even in novels which, at first glance, qualify as realistic. In this case,
The Handmaid’s Tale constitutes an exception: the dystopian content of the novel generates a
departure from realism. The world depicted in The Handmaid’s Tale is too frightening to be
real. The realism of the situations endured by its uncanny characters frightens the reader who
wonders what part of the story could actually take place. This hesitation on the part of the
reader, this constant questioning of our own social values – could this happen in our world? –
determines the magic realist quality of the narrative. The metafictional aspect of the novel, i.e.
its constant comment on our social prejudices, provides the narrative with an undeniable
uncanny atmosphere typical of Atwood’s gothic magic realism. Life Before Man and Bodily
Harm, which are both set in the present and narrate the stories of ordinary people, magic
realism emerges whenever the characters are about to grasp some crucial details about their
own development.
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5. The Trickster as Embodiment of Subversion
Now I have identified subversion as a main theme providing a link between the three novels, I
wish to examine which characters are most likely to embody the subversive spirit. According
to the many descriptions of trickster figures I have examined in my introduction, the trickster
qualifies as a truly subversive character: he lives on the edge of society, occupying an ex-
centric position and constantly challenging conventions and good manners. I therefore choose
to focus my analysis on the characters who defy patriarchal values in the three novels:
Elizabeth and Lesje in Life Before Man, Lora in Bodily Harm, Moira and – surprisingly – the
Commander in The Handmaid’s Tale.
In Life Before Man, I regard Elizabeth as the character who challenges conventions.
Indeed, from the first pages of the novel, she is presented as an openly adulterous woman. As
the story unfolds, the reader also discovers how she had to struggle to free herself from the
world of conventions imposed upon her by her Aunt Muriel. Elizabeth strikes the reader with
her cruelty, her savageness. She almost reacts like an animal, instinctively protecting her
territory (13). Death accompanies her along the way: at the beginning of the novel she loses
her lover, who commits suicide. Later she narrates the loss of her mother, and of her
surrogate, Aunt Muriel. Elizabeth repeatedly alludes to her own death as well: she enjoys the
thought of it; it fascinates her, as in a passage where she recalls a children’s book offered by
Nate, which contains a riddle about a coffin. Although she disapproves of telling children
stories about death, she clearly fantasises about it in the following considerations: “Sand runs
through her glass body, from her head down to her feet. When it’s all gone she’ll be dead.
Why wait?” (89). This urge to be confronted with death shows up when she refers to her
mother’s death (177). Elizabeth also likes rituals (151, 218) and exaggerations of all kinds.
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She is larger than life and capable of extreme behaviour, as she confesses in the following
excerpt: “Auntie Muriel terrifies her because she doesn’t know where to stop. Other people
have lines they won’t step over, but for Auntie Muriel such lines do not exist. Elizabeth’s
other fear is that these lines do not exist in herself, either” (180). Indeed, the reader
understands why Aunt Muriel scares Elizabeth so deeply: she feels afraid of resembling her,
i.e. of being an ex-centric creature like all tricksters. She only discovers her aunt’s trickster-
like qualities when faced with the farcical aspect of her burial (299). She also claims to be
manipulative in order to obtain what she wants (260). As a conclusion, I would say that
Elizabeth presents the reader with several characteristics endowing her with a trickster-like
feature. However, one has the impression that those features are never fully developed in the
course of the novel, working as mere keys for interpretation., This prompts one to consider
Elizabeth as a trickster in the making, a prototype of Atwood’s later highly efficient trickster
figures, such as, for instance, Cordelia in Cat’s Eye or Xenia in The Robber Bride.
Bodily Harm contains a much clearer example of trickster in the character of Lora.
Rennie encounters this young girl during her trip to the Caribbean Islands. From the start, the
reader has the impression that this meeting is not a coincidence. Indeed, one quickly guesses
that Lora uses Rennie’s freedom as a tourist to import guns within the country. Lora displays
a capacity to fool Rennie very easily. Moreover, she does not feel guilty about her behaviour
and acts constantly as though life were a game. Numerous examples prove that Lora becomes
the master of the game: she offers Rennie soft drugs (91, 97, 100), which shows that she is not
afraid of doing illegal things; she then lies shamelessly when she tells Rennie that the box she
must fetch at the airport contains medicine for her grandmother (96). She repeatedly points to
Rennie’s ignorance of local habits (96) and reveals secrets to her, the identity of the CIA
agents, for instance (181). Throughout this process of revelation, Lora is constantly described
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as a joking person. She also brings Rennie in contact with Elva, the local faith healer, thus
showing her under a less rational lens. Deeply impressed, Rennie wishes to believe in the
trickster’s magic: “She wants to know what it feels like, she wants to put herself into the care
of those magic hands. She wants to be cured, miraculously, of everything, of anything at all”
(194). Rennie also notices Lora’s pleasure in shocking people. She thinks: “She’s enjoying the
reaction; it’s as if she’s displaying something, an attribute somewhere a skill and a deformity,
like double-jointedness; or a mark of courage, a war wound or a duelling scar. The pride of
the survivor” (271). Indeed, this last sentence hints at the main theme of the novel – a
particularly Atwoodian one – survival. What Rennie wants to learn from the trickster is how
to go on living in the face of adversity, when one feels threatened by a severe kind of illness,
or, metaphorically, when one feels trapped in a jail on foreign ground. Rennie’s trip to the
Caribbean Islands likens a journey within herself, a quest for survival. Facing dangers she had
not imagined, Rennie must get rid of her role as a tourist to become “involved” in local
events. Her position as a tourist echoes her attitude towards her illness, namely a kind of
paralysis, a comfortable passivity. Lora, as a trickster figure, forces Rennie to become one of
the characters in the clue game: through her painful sojourn in the local prison, Rennie
realises that she is still alive.
In The Handmaid’s Tale, Moira, the handmaid’s extravagant lesbian friend embodies
the trickster spirit. Every apparition of Moira reveals her extreme behaviour. To the narrator,
she symbolises irreverence and freedom. The reader first encounters her when she arrives at
the Centre. Already, the narrator comments: “she’d defied fashion as usual” (80-81). She also
is the only woman at the Centre who tries to escape, though unsuccessfully (101), thus
showing that she dares to defy authority: she attacks one of the Aunts in the toilets, stealing
her clothes to run away in disguise (138-142). Such violence and irreverence undeniably
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efits a trickster. She turns into a heroic figure who represents hope for fellow women. Offred
imagines: “At any moment there might be a shattering explosion, the glass of the windows
would fall inwards, the doors would swing open... Moira had power now, she’d been set
loose, she’d set herself loose. She was now a loose woman” (143); “the thought of what she
would do expanded till it filled the room. Moira was our fantasy (…) She was with us in
secret, a giggle (…) In the light of Moira, the Aunts were less fearsome and more absurd.
Their power had a flaw to it” (143). Clearly, the trickster figure possesses power. However, it
is also condemned to live at the edge of society. The narrative often refers to Moira later on:
she transforms domestic objects into deadly weapons (180); she remains lucid when other
girls lose their mind (228); she parodies the Aunts’ slogans (230). Not surprisingly, when
Offred meets her again, Moira has become a prostitute in the underground network. She is in
disguise, in an outrageous bunny outfit, which looks totally out of place (251). She also
reveals to the narrator that she has seen her mother in a film about the Colonies (263-264),
bringing her, as it were, news from the dead, since people all know what the fate of women in
those Colonies entails. One may conclude that Moira displays several characteristics of the
trickster: irreverence, disguises, a sense of joke and parody, a preference for extremes and a
definite acquaintance with death.
One may even venture to regard the Commander as a trickster-like figure. Indeed, as a
character who, by definition, represents authority, a trickster-like quality remains unexpected.
However, the reader soon understands that the Commander feels bored and is desperately
looking for some forbidden activities to spice up his monotonous life. The Handmaid then
realises that he violates laws, providing some change in the routine (59). When the
Commander offers her to play a game of Scrabble, she ponders: “Now of course it’s
something different. Now it’s forbidden, for us. Now it’s dangerous. Now it’s indecent. Now
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it’s something he can’t do with his Wife. Now he’s compromised himself. It’s as if he’s
offered me drugs” (149). The duplicity of the Commander develops further, as does the
manipulative power of the handmaid; she confesses that she lets him win the game (149), thus
revealing that she has taken control of the situation.
She calls the situation a “conspiracy” (149), which shows that she feels as an
accomplice to it. When she later mentions their rendez-vous, she defines them as an
arrangement, as though they were equals. She even contemplates the idea of murdering the
Commander (150), thus challenging the limits of her newly acquired power. He brings Offred
to break a series of taboos (165). She obtains small privileges from him: reading magazines,
using hand lotion… (166). She also notices that he watches her with sexual innuendo, another
frequent characteristics of trickster-figures (194). The Commander ultimately reveals his
power as a joker: he explains to Offred that the sentence she mistook for a secret code is
merely fake Latin, which he probably taught to the former handmaid (196-197). He even goes
so far as to take Offred to an underground party. She analyses his behaviour as follows:
He is showing off to me. He is demonstrating, to me, his mastery of the world. He’s
breaking the rules, under their noses, thumbing his nose at them, getting away with
it. Perhaps he’s reached that state of intoxication which power is said to inspire, the
state in which you believe you are indispensable and can therefore do anything,
absolutely anything you feel like, anything at all. Twice, when he thinks no one is
looking, he winks at me. It’s a juvenile display, the whole act, and pathetic; but it’s
something I understand. (248)
The passage is highly interesting because, as suggested later, the trickster goes too far in a
pathetic attempt to achieve power. However, this power can only be acquired in extreme
situations or in ex-centric, underground places. The trickster’s jokes remain dubious, while his
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power looks limited. Indeed, when the handmaid is arrested at the end of the novel, her
trickster-like Commander becomes utterly powerless (306).
From the above comments, the incompleteness of the trickster figures present in the three
novels becomes obvious. Less impressive than the father figure in Surfacing, less colourful
than Joan Foster and her ex-centric lover in Lady Oracle, these trickster figures look like mere
prototypes, focussing on a limited amount of trickster-like characteristics. Elizabeth in Life
Before Man remains too conventional to be truly effective as a trickster. Lora never moves
beyond the state of a secondary figure in Bodily Harm; as do Moira and the Commander, who
present the reader with quasi-caricatural portraits of the trickster. Atwood has not yet reached
her full development of this figure, who becomes a main character in her next two novels.
6. Forms of Hybridity: The Ethnic, the Pathological, and the Survivor.
Life Before Man, Bodily Harm, and The Handmaid’s Tale examine the problem of
hybridisation from three different points of view. In Life Before Man, Lesje appears as the
most hybrid character, though her fellow protagonists Nate and Elizabeth have mixed origins.
Lesje, with her Lithuanian background, expresses many difficulties in dealing with her
otherness. She represents the ethnic aspect of hybridity. In Bodily Harm, the reader
encounters another form of hybridity, which has nothing to do with the geographic origin of
the heroine. Rennie becomes hybrid through the way in which she deals with her illness. In
this sense, we can all become hybrid – i.e. “other” – through the circumstances of life; we can
all acquire the feeling of being different, of wandering away from the norm. Illness being the
cause of Rennie’s hybridisation, I have decided to refer to is as a pathological type of
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hybridity. Offred, in The Handmaid’s Tale, represents yet another form of hybridity. In this
case, becoming hybrid constitutes a matter of survival. Offred realises that her position as an
unmarried woman can no longer be accepted in the light of the social rules imposed by the
Gileadean regime. Forced to enter into a sectarian role, she must act convincingly in order to
stay alive. Her status as a survivor turns her into a hybrid character.
In Life Before Man, Lesje is characterised by her passion for prehistory. The motif of
prehistoric life forms (dinosaurs, fossils, etc.) runs throughout the book, so that the reader
soon comes to the conclusion that Lesje feels better among dinosaurs than among human
beings. In her museum, she feels invisible (18), an attitude often typical of hybrid subjects.
Lesje indicates that she often does not know how to act in society; as though she lacked
essential knowledge of social behaviour (22, 62-63, 195, 239, 240, 266). The best example of
this takes place at a party when people play a game in which they must replace a word by
“moose” in the titles of famous Canadian novels. Lesje proves incapable of participating due
to her limited knowledge of Canadian culture and her lack of assurance (152). In the next
game, being on a lifeboat and pleading for people not to throw her overboard, she feels
confused and unable to justify her presence among a social group (155); ill-at-ease when
people fail to pronounce her name correctly (112). She remembers how children made fun of
her otherness at school (211). The remarks and comments of her lover, whom she nicknames
“William Wasp” (28) emphasise this aspect of her personality. William, as the embodiment of
Canadian white bourgeoisie, often makes fun of her ethnicity. He finds her highly exotic and
sexually attractive (29), yet he refrains from introducing her to his parents and refuses to
marry her or have children with her (29). Nevertheless, he displays her as a proof of his own
open-mindedness (30). Lesje imagines how she would have to disguise herself to meet his
family’s expectations: “She’d paint her teeth gold and come in jingling a tambourine and
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stamping her feet, her head covered with fringed shawls. Living up to their horrified
expectations” (30). She projects a caricatural image of Lithuanian folklore, which somehow
shows that she has not altogether accepted her Lithuanian identity. The image she wants to
give to William’s parents works as an echo of her own limited knowledge of her origins.
Lesje evokes the same caricatural ethnicity when faced with Elizabeth’s judgement (211).
Even with her family members she feels awkward and reserved: her parents would not
understand her relationship with William, marriage being the only acceptable kind of
relationship. Thus, Lesje chooses never to mention William (192). Moreover, the distance
between her and her family makes it impossible for her to trust anybody (195).
Lesje’s double hybridity renders her case more complicated: born in Lithuania, she
simultaneously has Ukrainian and Jewish origins, a doubleness funnily illustrated in the
endless fights between her two grandmothers. Apart from their comic aspect, these scenes
highlight the distress of the child who constantly feels torn between these two elder figures.
She comments: “As for her, they’d both loved her, she supposes; and both had mourned over
her as if she were in some way dead. It was her damaged gene pool. Impure, impure. Each
thought she should scrap half her chromosomes, repair herself, by some miracle” (64-66). The
little girl’s distress becomes clear to the reader who realises that she does not even understand
the languages used by her grandmothers. She remembers receiving a decorated egg from her
Ukrainian grandmother, a gift immediately destroyed with violence by the Jewish one (66).
After such traumatic events, no wonder Lesje still feels uncomfortable about her identity as an
adult. Her encounter with Nate’s children, though they remain very kind and polite to her,
provides an example of her awkwardness: Lesje immediately thinks of herself as deformed: a
disarticulated doll with large teeth and a flat chest (79). The doubleness of her identity
troubles Lesje’s most. She calls it “her own hybrid state” (91), in opposition to her friend
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Marian’s blatant Jewishness. Marian is straightforward about her Jewish origins, whereas
Lesje feels that she only partly belongs to the Jewish community (91). Lesje discusses the
advantages and disadvantages of her multicultural origins with Marian:
“Why would you worry? Ethnic is big these days. Change your last name and you’ll
get a Multiculturalism grant.”
Lesje smiles at these jokes, but weakly. She’s multicultural all right, but not in the
way the grant-givers want. And her father’s family has already changed its name at
least once, though not to get a grant. They did it in the late thirties: who could tell,
Hitler might invade, and even if he didn’t there were enough anti-Semites in the
country already. (…) Which is how Lesje has ended up with the unlikely name of
Lesje Green, though she has to admit that Lesje Etlin wouldn’t have been anymore
probable. For two years, when she was nine and ten, she told the teachers at school
that her name was Alice. Lesje meant Alice, her mother said, and it was a perfectly
good name, the name of a famous Ukrainian poet. Whose poems Lesje would never
be able to read. (91)
Lesje clearly suffers from this multiculturalism as if it were imposed on her: she does not
benefit from the fashionable aspect of ethnicity. On the contrary, she ends up with a name
which sounds incongruous and a first name in a language she does not understand. Hence the
total alienation caused by her ethnic background. Feeling better at ease within the world of
fossils and dinosaurs, Lesje fantasises on the discovery of a lost world called “Lesjeland,”
where she would finally feel at home (92), or of a new kind of dinosaur, the “Aliceosaurus”
(194). This fantasy serves to stress Lesje’s inability to find her place in society. Further, she
explains that she developed her passion for prehistory as a form of language allowing her to
communicate with others (94). On the contrary, she fails to understand the language of her
grandmothers.
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Other details emphasise her search for roots: she tries to discover Lithuanian food
specialties, attends traditional dance shows, and feels as “an outsider looking in,” “excluded
as if she’d been surrounded by a crowd of her own cousins” (92-93). Indeed, all that ethnic
background remains totally alien to her, since her two grandmothers did not allow her to
attend summer camps or religious ceremonies (93). Many episodes humorously refer to her
hybrid situation: she imagines her own conception as a copulation act between the two
grandmothers (93); she recalls her grandmothers’ limited knowledge of English, their
hilarious use of scatological curses (93, 292), and their funny performances of traditional
dances (269). More seriously, she remembers her grandmother’s stories about the past: “I was
the first one to work in Eaton’s, the rest was all English. They didn’t like it. I just didn’t say
nothing when they said what kind of a name is that. I kept my mouth shut and I got along
good enough that way. What we had back then, we had the flowers on our head, and the
dancing. They try to do it now but it’s not the same” (268-269, italics in the text). Despite her
poor knowledge of English, her grandmother seems to have achieved a balance between
integration – as the first foreign worker at Eaton’s – and conservation of her ethnic
background. She insists on the fact that ethnicity, as regarded in the present, is no longer
genuine.
Many critics have interpreted Lesje’s pregnancy as a resolution of her identity
problem. For my part, I would rather regard it as yet another attempt at finding some balance.
Far from providing a solution to Lesje’s interrogations about her roots, a child conceived in
the midst of such an intricate love triangle might, on the contrary, worsen her alienation.
Lesje herself expresses her fear as follows: “Surely no child conceived in such rage could
come to much good. She would have a throwback, a reptile, a mutant of some kind with
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scales and a little horn on the snout” (293). Excessive as it may be, the quotation nevertheless
emphasises the hybrid quality of that pregnancy. Indeed, the end of the book seems to indicate
that Lesje chooses to remain locked up in the ivory tower of science (307), instead of making
a hazardous step into the real world of human relationships. 23
Rennie’s hybridity is of a totally different nature: it consists of a long suffered
inferiority complex, aggravated by the heroine’s current illness. From the beginning of the
book onwards, Rennie frequently insists on her provincial origins. Atwood writes: “Rennie is
from Griswold, Ontario. (…) something that can’t be seen but is nevertheless there” (18).
Rennie reacts to this in different ways. In conversations, she often makes jokes about her
hometown, emphasising its propensity to judge people (18). At other times, she notices that
Griswold still influences the way in which she apprehends people and events. Somehow, she
is still highly prejudiced (39). For instance, while she clearly admires her friend Jocasta, she
simultaneously finds her too extravagant (25). She describes her education at length, insisting
on the conventions and silent agreements. She recalls: “As a child I learned three things well:
how to be quiet, what not to say, and how to look at things without touching them. (…) I
learned to listen for what wasn’t being said, because it was usually more important than what
was” (54). Such an education undeniably determines the way in which she acts in her adult
life. She also realises that she feels “off to the side” (26), “peripheral” (226), “superfluous”
(233), although other people regard her as a fashionable person (26). She finds it difficult to
23 While many critics have regarded Lesje’s decision to have a child as a positive outcome, as a way of taking
control of her life (Frank Davey, Gayle Greene, Catherine McLay, Carol Beran, and Linda Hutcheon) (Bouson-
Brooks, Strategies 106-107). I regard this ending as Atwood’s ironic condemnation of the traditional happy
ending. Indeed, if we read Atwood’s opinion on literary pregnancies – which she calls the Baby Ex Machina – in
Survival (207), one cannot believe that Atwood views this ending as an entirely idyllic one. I agree with Ildiko
de Papp Carrington who writes that Life Before Man “is not about the discovery of identity as a permanently
defined construct, but about the characters’ daily, existential experiencing of identity as a constantly shifting
pattern of alteration, attrition, and inevitable loss” (Carrington “Demons, Doubles” 242). This comment echoes
my own theory that hybridity is an ephemeral feeling, not a permanent condition obtained at the outcome of the
heroine’s quest.
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e really funny and feels highly influenced by gossip (65-66). She resents other people’s
success (66). She often mentions feeling singled out, uncomfortable (36). Her illness,
which, she thinks, everyone notices, worsens this impression of uneasiness (37). Moreover
she constantly feels as though her life were in danger: she feels like a “moving target in
someone else’s binoculars” (40). Truly, she thinks there is “someone in the bed with her”
(40). Paul says that she suffers from “alien reaction paranoia,” detecting danger everywhere
(76, 294). In the midst of such a psychological turmoil, she desperately tries to look normal
(59). Her illness gives her the feeling of being “one of those odd wanderers, the desperate
ones” (59-60). This sentence indicates that her illness has caused Rennie to feel even more
singled out, i.e. more hybrid.
Her exile on a Caribbean island brings her one step further on her quest for hybridity.
There she feels isolated as a tourist (78, 125, 203, 227, 231), a situation which prevents her
from tackling her identity problem. Receiving an ascribed role – in this case, that of the tourist
– she no longer focuses on the discovery of her own identity and its prejudices. Only a
traumatic shock such as her sudden arrest and imprisonment can lead her to introspection and
self discovery. This is why Rennie’s progressive involvement in local politics can be regarded
as a quest for self knowledge and a gradual discovery of her own hybridity. Throughout her
stay on the island, she remembers her illness and operation, focussing on their introspective
value. She realises that her passion for Daniel comes from the fact that “he knows what she’s
like inside” (80-81). The metaphor of the surgeon examining the inside of her body expresses
Rennie’s deep wish for self discovery. She gradually comes to understand that, even as a
tourist, she is observed and judged: people wonder why she does not stay at the right hotel
(148), why she travels on her own (148-149), the local people regard her as a foreigner (192),
she feels incapable of naming things she has never seen before (194, 196). In short, she feels
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alienated. Unsurprisingly, this feeling brings about her flashback on her life with Jake. She
remembers how he jokingly reproached her not to be Jewish (199-200) and remembers the
same feeling of not fitting in. She also comes to realise that, as a child, she already adopted
the attitude of the distant foreigner, even in her hometown. Her situation as a tourist in the
Caribbeans symbolises of her attitude to life: one of non-involvement. 24 Her alienation
overwhelms her so deeply that she feels as though someone else used her voice (200, 299).
Once again, she interprets this paralysis in relation with her illness, thinking “there’s part of
me missing” (203). She mentions feeling “insubstantial” (…) “exempt” (203), a position she
readily accepts as a comfortable one. Indeed, she clearly prefers being an uninvolved tourist
to partaking in events. Her brief love affair with Paul, a local businessman, makes her aware
of her own “fragmentation, dismemberment” (258). Yet, she can only realise this through the
look of the other and has not yet accepted this idea. She will remain hybrid as long as she
does not accept her illness as part of herself. Her imprisonment in the Caribbean jails provides
a moment of introspection during which Rennie realises that she is still alive. Yet, as always
in Atwood’s work, the end of the novel does not offer a clear-cut interpretation of Rennie’s
experience. One does not know which use she will make of her newly acquired self
knowledge, nor whether that knowledge will prove accurate or sufficient. 25
Offred, in The Handmaid’s Tale, is immediately identifiable as a hybrid character.
Indeed, she has known the freedom of women in the former regime and – as most women of
24 In her postcolonial analysis of Bodily Harm, Diana Brydon underlines the parallel between Rennie’s attitude in
her youth and her way of dealing with local events in the Caribbeans (Brydon, “Caribbean Revolution and
Literary Convention,” 182). In both cases, Rennie tries to create an illusion of safety, which turns out to be
highly delusive.
25 Critics have extensively discussed the possibility of Rennie’s escape from her Caribbean jail. Some claim that
Rennie escapes at the end of the novel; others contend that she only dreams her own escape. As to Atwood, she
has mentioned that the use of the future tense at the end of the novel keeps the ending open (Castro, “An
Interview,” 221). I contend that the outcome itself matters less. Far more interesting is the presence of Atwood’s
open ending, which, once again, questions the usual pattern of the quest novel and disclaims the traditional
happy ending of the detective novel, which Bodily Harm parodies.
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her class – shows troubles adapting to her new condition as a biological conception unit. Aunt
Lydia, in her sermon to the handmaids, insists on their hybridity as well. She calls them a
“transitional generation” (127). Offred often mentions the fact that women have been
deprived of their voice 26 (56) or have forgotten their former language (164). She also insists
on the normality of her former life (66-67), as opposed to her current situation. Like many
people who cannot face their hybridity, she stresses her own invisibility: she feels
“transparent,” “made of smoke” (95), “a missing person” (113).
For a moment, Offred tries to obliterate her past life. She reflects: “Time’s a trap, I’m
caught in it. I must forget about my secret name and all ways back. My name is Offred now,
and here is where I live. (…) I am thirty-three years old. I have brown hair. I stand five seven
without shoes. I have trouble remembering what I used to look like. I have viable ovaries. I
have one more chance” (153). This quotation represents a mere factual summary of Offred’s
position. Offred deliberately chooses to negate the individuality of her former life, its
freedom. As she becomes more consciously aware of her hybridity and tackles the problem of
one’s personal understanding, she defines herself as “a mutant, a creature from outer space”
(237). One of her attempts at defining herself strikes one as particularly poignant; she
addresses the reader as follows:
You’ll have to forgive me. I’m a refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go
over the customs and habits of being I’ve left or been forced to leave behind me, and
it all seems just as quaint, from here, and I am just as obsessive about it. Like a
White Russian drinking tea in Paris, marooned in the twentieth century, I wander
back, try to regain those distant pathways; I become too maudlin, lose myself. (239)
26 Staels regards the novel as “a tale of silenced voices,” the underground being the only place where women are
able to express their creativity. Indeed, the Handmaid’s discourse is doubly disavowed: first by the Gileadean
regime, but also by the academics’ discourse which trivialises Offred’s testimony (Staels, “Resistance Through
Narrating,” 458-459).
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She concludes: “I am a blank, here, between parentheses. Between other people” (240). Those
two quotations express the character’s hopelessness within her closed world. She moans on as
she remembers her lost daughter, seeing herself as “a woman of sand” (…), “obliterated” (…),
“a shadow of a shadow” (240). All these words express Offred’s rising feeling of nothingness
so characteristic of hybrid individuals.
Yet, one must keep in mind that her hybridity – her knowledge of women’s past
freedom – also works as a formidable weapon. It first enables her to rediscover womanhood
through her desperate love affair with Nick and eventually brings about what looks like an
escape. Indeed, the outcome of Offred’s story remains unknown; the postscript’s allusion to
the tapescripts implies that she might have escaped. Personally, I interpret this possibility of
escape as a claim for the right to be hybrid. Still remembering and worshipping her past
freedom, the handmaid gradually became unable to perform the function ascribed to her by
the Gileadean regime. She consequently had to find a way to escape. Offred expresses her
gradual awareness of her hybridity as follows: “Behind me I feel her presence, my ancestress,
my double (…) a woman made into an angel, waiting to be found. By me this time. How
could I have believed I was alone in here? There were always two of us” (305). Those are
among the last words left by Offred to the readers. She symptomatically accepts her hybridity
as a means of survival. Unsurprisingly, the postscript similarly acknowledges the possibility
of an escape for her (322).
My conclusion points to the evolution of the concept of hybridity from the first to the last
novel of the trilogy. The first novel – Life Before Man – presents us with a traditional view of
the hybrid subject torn apart between its foreign origins and its mimicry of local customs.
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Bodily Harm examines an individual struggle against illness set against the exotic decor of the
Caribbean Islands. The contrast between the highly personal trauma of the heroine and her
neutrality in relation to the local events sheds light on the hardships of a self-discovery quest.
Finally, the extreme situation in which the handmaid finds herself provides a setting for the
triumph of hybridity, not as a destructuring agent, but, on the contrary, as a life-creating
momentum. This last book establishes hybridity as a key-concept in Atwood’s description of
her heroine’s struggle for self-knowledge.
7. Atwood’s Deconstruction and Reconstruction of the Quest Pattern
Atwood’s Life Before Man presents us with a deconstruction of the quest pattern. Instead of
focussing on one main character who undergoes a series of ordeals – as is classical in quest
novels – Atwood chooses to distribute significant moments of the quest among various
characters. The first stage, estrangement from one’s usual environment, affects the three
characters: Lesje, Nate, and Elizabeth are all involved in a sentimental break. Yet, the
character most affected by this event is Elizabeth, because of the dramatic circumstances of
her lover’s departure. Indeed, Chris chooses to commit suicide. The novel opens on that
character’s recent death, thus identifying Elizabeth as the central protagonist of the novel. The
rest of the novel’s first part reveals more about the three characters’ background. In the
second part, Lesje takes the lead. Indeed, this section of the novel focuses on Lesje’s
otherness, locating its origins in her childhood. It simultaneously identifies Nate as her guide
in her quest for self-knowledge. Part Two thus constitutes the second stage of the quest
pattern, that of the green-world guide, helping the protagonist to proceed on her quest. The
next section switches back to Elizabeth. It deals with the third important stage of the quest
pattern, i.e. the confrontation with parental figures. Through a series of short flashbacks, the
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eader reconstructs Elizabeth’s past: her mother’s escape from responsibilities and her Aunt
Muriel’s rising power. While the novel also addresses Nate’s relationships with his mother
and Lesje’s growing distance with her parents, only Elizabeth acquires a profound knowledge
of how her mother’s attitude determined her future. The next stage, the encounter with the
trickster, in the form of Aunt Muriel’s malevolence, forces her to struggle back and take
power over her life. The last important moment, however, focuses again on the character of
Lesje. Discovering her pregnancy, Lesje is forced to face her unconscious self. She then
realises the contradiction that exists between her sheltered life as a paleontologist and the risk
of living fully and creating life (308). She becomes aware of the intricacy of her hybridity,
which consists in the simultaneous existence in her of a desire for nothingness and of a
creative impulse. Yet, the result of that discovery remains unclear: Lesje’s quest is neither
complete nor satisfactory. 27 In a sense, Elizabeth’s confrontation of her demons (Chris, her
mother, Nate, Aunt Muriel) works far better and results in her higher understanding of her
condition as a human being (316-317). As a conclusion, I would say that both female
characters are involved in a journey towards self-knowledge, though in various ways and for
diverse reasons. The results of this double quest differ enormously: Lesje’s turns out to be a
superficial quest, while Elizabeth’s more mature reflection brings about a more pessimistic
yet more accurate vision of herself.
Rennie’s quest proves of a more intimate kind. However, she proceeds through the
five stages of the quest pattern in a traditional way. She first travels away from her usual
background. Indeed, the first stage of the quest often involves a trip to a far-away place, in
27 In her article “The Canadian Mosaic: Functional Ethnicity in Margaret Atwood’s Life Before Man,” Carol
Beran draws the readers’ attention to Atwood’s deliberate choice of an “ethnic” character as Lesje. While I agree
with Beran about the fact that ethnicity functions as a crucial aspect in Life Before Man, I do not, on the contrary,
think that Lesje’s quest necessarily results in social integration. Her sudden and unexpected decision to become
pregnant is yet another, probably failed, attempt to find a place in society. In my view, this purely selfish act of
will does not guarantee the success of the heroine’s social integration.
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this case the Caribbean Islands. Rennie gives her impressions as follows: “She discovers that
she’s truly no longer at home. She is away, she is out, which is what she wanted. The
difference between this and home isn’t so much that she knows nobody as that nobody knows
her. In a way she’s invisible. In a way she’s safe” (39). The association of the estrangement
with a feeling of invisibility reminds us of the hybrid subject’s attempt to remain invisible in a
prejudiced environment. Her surgeon, Daniel, functions as a first potential green-world lover.
However, Rennie soon dismisses him as an excessively well-behaved married man. After
confronting her parents in the third part of her novel – she confesses concealing aspects of her
life to her mother: her illness, the end of her affair with Jake – Rennie proceeds on her quest
as she meets Lora, the trickster figure. The latter forces her to become involved in local
politics. She also meets her real green-lover guide, Paul. About him, she comments: “She
owes him something: he was the one who gave her back her body” (248). In the course of her
reflection, Rennie comes to realise that her fear of death and of aggression is an expression of
her fear of men. She also understands that the education she received partly accounts for this
attitude. She comes to grasp the deeper meaning of her experience in the Caribbeans. She
confesses:
Once she would have thought about her illness: her scar, her disability, her nibbled
flesh, the little teethmarks on her? Now this seems of minor interest, even to her.
The main thing is that nothing has happened to her yet, nobody has done anything to
her, she is unharmed. She may be dying, true, but if so she’s doing it slowly,
relatively speaking. Other people are doing it faster: at night there are screams. (284)
The passage highlights Rennie’s main problem: focussing on her illness and on the possibility
of her death, she lives in a constant state of inertia. By the end of the book, she is surrounded
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y dying people and, trapped in her dark cell, she meditates on the sterility of her attitude,
while understanding that one cannot go through life as an unaffected tourist:
She’s afraid of men and it’s simple, it’s rational, she’s afraid of men because men
are frightening. She’s seen the man with the rope, now she knows what he looks
like. She has been turned inside out, there’s no longer a here and a there. Rennie
understand for the first time that this is not necessarily a place she will get out of,
ever. She is not exempt. Nobody is exempt from anything. (290)
For the first time, the heroine is capable of distinguishing between real and imaginary danger.
By the end of the novel, Rennie becomes aware of the peculiarity of her experience in the
Caribbean Islands. She concludes: “What she sees has not altered; only the way she sees it.
It’s all exactly the same. Nothing is the same. She feels as if she’s returning after a space trip,
a trip into the future; it’s her that’s been changed but it will seem as if everyone else has,
there’s been a warp. They’ve been living in a different time” (300). This constitutes one of
Atwood’s most optimistic ending. However, it has been interpreted differently. Some critics
claim that the whole novel takes place on an operation table, as Rennie, under sedation,
imagines the whole action. Others imply that she never gets out of her Caribbean prison. My
examination of the phenomenon of hybridity prompts me to opt for the second interpretation,
as this novel works perfectly as a quest novel. For the inner journey to be effective, the
heroine must travel to another place, go through traumatic experiences and benefit from a
moment of introspection. This is clearly the case in Bodily Harm, which demonstrates that a
realistic setting does not prevent the novel from conveying a highly symbolic meaning.
Whether Rennie returns to Canada or not remains unclear, although this uncertainty does not
alter the symbolic significance of the novel.
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In The Handmaid’s Tale, structure proves of the utmost importance. The distribution
of chapters echoes the alternation of night and day sequences. During the day, the heroine
mostly describes her routine, whereas the night sequences leave more space for flashbacks,
introspection and metafictional reflections on the necessities of storytelling. The novel further
presents a traditional quest pattern. The isolation characteristic of the first stage of the quest
takes the form of Offred’s arrival in the new home where she serves as a handmaid (24). In
the fourth section, Offred recalls a character who – through her subversive attitude – guides
her in her own quest for freedom. Indeed, Moira symbolises the ex-centricity, the audacious
behaviour of one who dares defy authority. The heroine wishes to resemble her. Moira’s
repeated apparitions punctuate the novel and indicate that the author is about to progress
towards freedom. The eighth section – significantly entitled “Birth Day” – contains the
heroine’s confrontation with the mother figure. Faced with the imminent birth of a child
within the Gileadean society, Offred recalls an episode of her education at the Centre. She
suddenly remembers the projection of a propaganda film showing her mother in the midst of a
pro-abortion demonstration (chapter 20). Such an episode, especially in the context of the
Gileadean birth scene, draws the reader’s attention to one of the novel’s main themes: female
identity. In this passage, the heroine comes to understand the importance of her mother’s fight
for female rights. She gains a deeper understanding of such matters, which she expresses in
these words: “No mother is ever, completely, a child’s idea of what a mother should be, and I
suppose it works the other way around as well. (…) I wish she were here, so I could tell her I
finally know this” (190).
Moreover, she acquires the strength to develop subversive behaviour. Consequently,
she is ready to meet the trickster, in the form of the Commander. Those encounters take place
from chapters twenty-three to twenty-nine. Through her successive visits to the Commander,
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she gradually realises that subversive behaviour is everywhere, even among those who usually
embody authority. She then starts defying rules and conventions. Her affair with Nick
constitutes the most evident example of her rejection of taboos. It liberates her and enables
her to rediscover her womanhood. She thinks: “I’m alive in my skin, again” (273).
Significantly, this fifth stage is the only step in the quest pattern which takes place at night.
First of all, because it must take place in secret, and second, because it corresponds to the
heroine’s unconscious rediscovery of her own self. On the whole, the novel presents the
reader with a highly traditional quest pattern, of which the significance is heightened by the
alternation between day- and night-sequences. It also strikes the reader as the most convincing
of the three novels as far as hybridity is concerned. Indeed, the quest pattern here consists in a
subversive act of acceptance of one’s hybridity as a means of survival.
***
Once again, the three novels examined in this section contain the elements I have identified as
facets of typically postcolonial works. Of course, in this case, some characteristics – such as
the use of magic realism, for instance – are more subdued due to the high degree of realism of
the works concerned. Yet, one should remember that they remain present. Particularly striking
is the recurrence of powerful trickster figures within the three novels. Elizabeth, in Life Before
Man, learns the trickster’s skills from her Aunt Muriel; Rennie, in Bodily Harm, becomes the
victim of Lora’s trickster power; finally, Offred, in The Handmaid’s Tale confronts the reader
with two powerful figures: Moira who represents the ex-centric position of the trickster and
the Commander who embodies its rejection of established rules as well as its affinity for
sexual innuendoes. In this trilogy, Atwood, as always, resorts to parody: she constructs Life
Before Man as a rewriting of The Wizard of Oz; she transposes Rennie’s fear within the limits
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of a clue game; she allows Offred to become self-conscious in the act of telling a story, to
explore the possibilities and limitations of her narration. Each novel also contains a character
who finds it difficult to deal with a fragmented, hybrid personality: Lesje and Rennie.
Offred’s case is slightly different: she recalls her former life as a free woman. In this case, her
hybridity enables her to escape from her desperate situation: hybridity becomes a concept of
the utmost importance, for it allows the protagonist to survive.
Further, The Handmaid’s Tale develops a theme which will become increasingly
important in Atwood’s work: that of the environment. The narrative often alludes to the
circumstances which have brought about the Gileadean regime: one of those is pollution and
its resulting infertility. Offred recalls a film about the reproduction instincts of animals. It
claims that atomic radiations perturbed the animals so much that they became incapable of
procreating (156). Further, she also identifies pollution as the cause of women’s growing
infertility. She says: “The chances are one in four, we learned that at the Centre. The air got
too full, once, of chemicals, rays, radiation. The water swarmed with toxic molecules, all of
that takes years to clean up, and meanwhile they creep into your body, camp out in your fatty
cells” (122). In environmental matters, Atwood’s position is clear. I would therefore read the
novel’s postscript – entitled “Historical Notes” – in the light of the author’s ecological
concern. In the future described in this addendum, several details point to a change in the new
society’s attitude towards the environment. The new society has undoubtedly learned its
lesson and shows greater respect for nature. Along with the seminar on Gileadean society, the
university organises a fishing expedition and a nature walk (311), which demonstrates that
unpolluted natural land still exists. One must notice that this seminar ironically takes place in
Nunavit. One possibility is that nature has regained its rights: pollution has disappeared and
man shows a renewed interest to discover natural resources. However, another possible
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interpretation is to regard the “Historical Notes” as Atwood’s ironical comment on how those
natural trips are organised, as well as her intimation that Nunavit might be the last piece of
our world still unpolluted. Atwood’s tone is equally tongue-in-cheek when she mentions the
native population: she chooses to give her eminent university professors First-Nation names,
for instance Professor Running Dog (311). The seminar’s introductory speaker describes at
length the environmental disasters which brought about the Gileadean regime: the nuclear
incidents, the leakages from chemical and biological warfare weapons, the illegal dumping of
toxic waste, and the uses of insecticides of all kinds (317). Reading such passages, one
logically links them to the pleas for the environment uttered by Elaine’s father in Cat’s Eye, to
Charis’ respect for nature in The Robber Bride, and, naturally, to the end-of-the-world
atmosphere in Oryx and Crake. Indeed, many postcolonial works express a growing concern
for environmental matters. This brings me to the idea of also showing this aspect of Atwood’s
work in her subsequent production. Moreover, one should notice that Atwood herself, in a
conversation with Alan Twigg has insisted on Life Before Man’s intuition that human life
might become extinct (Howells, Margaret Atwood, 103), a concern which will become ever
more present in her subsequent novelistic production.
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UNIVERSITE LIBRE DE BRUXELLES
FACULTE DE PHILOSOPHIE ET LETTRES
SECTION : LANGUES ET LITTERATURES MODERNES
Escaping the Labyrinth of Deception:
A Postcolonial Approach to Margaret Atwood’s Novels
Volume II
ANNEE ACADEMIQUE 2006-2007
Thèse présentée en vue de l’obtention du
grade de Docteur en Philosophie et
Lettres par Christel Kerskens.
Promoteur : Professeur M. Maufort

Chapter 5. Cat’s Eye and The Robber Bride : Female
Tricksters at Work
“I am not normal, I am not like
other girls. Cordelia tells me so, but
she will help me. Grace and Carol will
help me too. It will take hard work
and a long time.” (125)
Tony herself, lacking strength, will
have to rely on cunning. In order to
defeat Zenia she will have to
become Zenia (191).
Both Cat’s Eye and The Robber Bride narrate their heroines’ confrontation with an utterly evil
form of female power. In the first novel, Elaine Risley, a painter, returns to Toronto for a
retrospective exhibition of her work. While preparing for the opening, she gradually
remembers her tormented childhood. A shy girl, Elaine became the victim of three classmates:
Carol, Grace, and Cordelia. The latter, a particularly cruel child, constantly mimicking adult
behaviour, paralysed Elaine by making her aware of her “otherness.” Back in Toronto years
later, Elaine examines the major influence Cordelia still exerts on her life. She eventually
comes to terms with her feelings of inadequacy, seeking to understand how they came into
being. Similarly, The Robber Bride focuses on the destructive schemes of a female character,
Zenia. Successively finding her place in the lives of the three protagonists, she uses their
weaknesses to wreck their marriage or relationship. Like Elaine Risley in Cat’s Eye, the three
heroines of The Robber Bride suffer from a deeply-rooted inadequacy, an “otherness,” which
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facilitates Zenia’s incursion into their private life. Tony, a university academic specialised in
historical warfare, lacks confidence in her womanhood. She therefore easily welcomes Zenia,
a “femme fatale,” who becomes an example for Tony, until she runs away with her husband.
Similarly, Zenia carves her way through Charis’s life, taking advantage of the latter’s pity.
Charis, who was abused by her uncle during her childhood, has chosen to become the
incarnation of goodness: she has turned into a New-Age yoga teacher, who practises aura
reading and cultivates her own vegetables in a small garden on the Toronto Islands. Mistaking
Zenia’s evil nature for a form of illness, she watches helplessly as Zenia steals her boyfriend
and kills her chicken. Finally, Roz, a practical business woman, who deeply loves her
children, also loses her husband – and a considerable amount of money – to Zenia, who then
seems to disappear forever. As the novel opens, the three female protagonists, who remember
having attended Zenia’s funeral, face the astonishing and devastating news: Zenia has
returned.
Both novels display a series of characteristics illustrating my theory. First of all, they
both show a tendency towards parody and metafiction: in Cat’s Eye, a parodic intent can be
attributed to many of Elaine Risley’s paintings. In The Robber Bride, the title itself points to
the novel’s parody of Grimm’s fairy tale. Moreover, a close reading of the narratives reveals
that all female protagonists make use of effective mimicry and deception strategies. Cat’s Eye
and The Robber Bride also qualify as Atwood’s most magic realist novels: in the first,
Elaine’s mystic visions dwell on the limit between reality and fantasy; in the second, Charis’s
belief in the supernatural and the power it bestows on her provide the novel with an equally
uncanny atmosphere. Both novels also possess powerful trickster figures in the characters of
Cordelia and Zenia. Yet, one should bear in mind that this representation of the trickster as a
totally evil character is incomplete. Rather, the protagonists, as they gradually learn how to
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defeat the trickster, playing by its own rules, become much more convincing as embodiments
of the trickster’s spirit. Further, the heroines’ feeling of inadequacy can be interpreted as a
proof of their hybrid nature. Indeed, the four heroines engage on a journey of self-discovery:
they want to know why they have become insecure individuals struggling daily to conceal
their “otherness.”
1. Parodic Twin Sisters and Fairy-Tale Deconstruction
While some readers might mistake Cat’s Eye for a realistic, autobiographical novel, I favour
another, far more ironic and parodic reading of the novel. First of all, the character of Elaine
Risley repeatedly utters her rejection of any kind of classification: she refuses to be called a
feminist, as she resents being regarded as a precursor. Her interview with a young – slightly
clumsy – female journalist, who constantly alludes to the longevity of Elaine’s career, allows
Atwood to voice an ironic critique of academics’ tendency to classify artists in terms of
movements and theories. When asked about her attitude towards feminism, painter Risley
reacts as follows: “I hate party lines, I hate ghettos. Anyway, I’m too old to have invented it
and you’re too young to understand it, so what’s the point of discussing it at all?” (94). This
metafictional message warns the reader against any simplistic interpretation of a work of art.
Although critics consider Elaine a feminist painter, she rejects such a simplification of her
work, as Atwood would herself. The same tongue-in-cheek comment recurs when Risley
discovers her name in the papers: she takes offence when the journalist calls her an “eminent
artist” (242). Moreover, the negative comment on her clothes – “a powder-blue jogging suit
that’s seen better days” (242) – disappoints her. She daydreams about adopting a deliberately
provocative outfit for the opening: “I could strap on some of Jon’s axmurder special effects,
the burnt face with its one peeled bloodshot eye, the plastic blood-squirting arm. Or slip my
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feet into the hollow casts of feet and lurch in like something from a mad scientist movie”
(242). Elaine confesses her attitude of mockery towards such events (242), though she
remains too insecure of herself to adopt the scandalous behaviour she dreams of.
As always in Atwood’s work, the novels contain a certain amount of intertext. An
obvious allusion in Cat’s Eye can be found in the name of Cordelia. By alluding to
Shakespeare’s King Lear, Atwood gives us a hint as to how to interpret this enigmatic figure.
Indeed, Elaine repeatedly mentions Cordelia’s name as an origin of her misfortune. She first
points to the originality of that name: “none of the girls at school have names like that” (77).
Later, when the reader comes to know what has become of the once so self-assured girl,
Elaine reflects:
Cordelia drifts past; then melts and reassembles, changing into someone else.
Another mistaken identity. Why did they name her that? Hang that weight around
her neck. Heart of the moon, jewel of the sea, depending on which foreign language
you’re using. The third sister, the only honest one. The stubborn one, the rejected
one, the one who was not heard. If she’d been called Jane, would things have been
different? (281).
The quotation clearly interprets Cordelia differently from Elaine. Indeed, as a child, Elaine
provided a portrait of her friend as the embodiment of evil. Through this passage, one slowly
comes to understand that Cordelia’s behaviour was actually that of a desperate child, who
sought to attract attention. Feeling rejected by her father, Cordelia turned to mimicking adult
behaviour in order to fit in. Her use of Elaine as a scapegoat is only an expression of her own
misery. In that sense, Cordelia represents Elaine’s twin sister, because they suffer from the
same rejection. Atwood expresses this similarity by means of several allusions to the girls’
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sisterhood. At one point, “Cordelia reads a story about two sisters, a pretty one and one who
has a burn covering half her face” (225). Once home, Elaine responds to that image as
follows: “I’m afraid I’ll find out that there’s someone else trapped inside my body; I’ll look
into the bathroom mirror and see the face of another girl, someone who looks like me but has
half of her face darkened, the skin burned away” (227). This double with a burned face – be it
Cordelia or Elaine, as one is free to interpret – represents both girls’ sense of deficiency.
Moreover, from the point of view of intertextuality, the image of the girl with the burned face
evokes an Algonquian tale entitled “The Rough-Face Girl.” 1 This Native American fairy-tale,
located in Ontario, tells the story of a Cinderella-like heroine falling in love with an invisible
spirit. In this case, the female character is rejected because of her physical appearance, while
Cinderella’s exclusion, in our Western version, is due to her ragged clothes. Both versions
narrate the story of an outcast, as does the novel too.
A closer look at Risley’s paintings reveals their high degree of parody. 2 Her
representation of Mrs. Smeath, the embodiment of Puritanism, as a nude odalisque can be
interpreted as the protagonist’s rejection of the hypocrisy of Puritan society. Elaine’s work
contains several of those naked figures (90, 241-242). One is called “Rubber Plant: The
Ascencion” (90). This title points to the artificiality of Mrs. Smeath’s life. It also suggests
Mrs. Smeath’s unaltered faith: despite her lack of compassion for Elaine as a child and her
hostility towards her, she remains convinced of having gained her place in heaven. Equally
1 Martin, Rafe, “The Rough-Face Girl.”
2 For a detailed analysis of the symbolical meaning of Atwood’s references to European master paintings of
women, the reader is invited to consult Michelle Gadpaille’s article “Odalisques in Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s
Eye.” Written from a postcolonial viewpoint, the article examines how Risley’s art challenges conventions of
representations based on paternalistic assumptions. For instance, Gadpaille examines how Atwood deconstructs
Ingres’s paintings by substituting highly symbolical objects such as the fan and introducing other details that
invert the paintings’ eroticism. Once they are decontextualised, objects lose their power and become icons of
bourgeois society (Gadpaille, 221, 225, 226).
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ironic is Elaine’s version of the biblical annunciation, pictured in the form of Mr. and Mrs.
Smeath as two gigantic insects copulating in flight (241-242). The painting is deliberately
shocking and controversial: it should be read as another expression of the artist’s rejection of
patriarchal authority. “Empire Bloomers,” another of Risley’s works showing Mrs. Smeath
naked, functions as a further allusion to the Puritanism endured by Elaine as a child. Indeed,
the title refers to an episode of her childhood, in which her teacher’s underwear, associated to
that expression, was elevated to the rank of myth among the children. It contains a clear
allusion to Canada’s colonial state and to the impossibility for children to discuss such matters
because of their Puritanical education. The artist further deconstructs traditional iconography,
representing the Virgin Mary as a lionness (365). However, Elaine warns us: this desecration
entails more than mere mockery. It also expresses the artist’s awareness of her power, as well
as her refusal to accept victimhood. She addresses a message to society:” I have said, look. I
have said, I see” (427). Indeed, the acquisition of vision strikes us as a recurring question in
Atwood’s work.
In another series of paintings, Elaine depicts her mother, gradually dissolving and
rematerialising in her kitchen of the 1940’s. Interesting is the artist’s comment on the various
interpretations of this work of art. She comments:
Because of when it was done and what was going on in those years, some people
thought it was about the Earth Goddess, which I found hilarious in view of my
mother’s dislike of housework. Other people thought it was about female slavery,
others that it was a stereotyping of women in negative and trivial domestic roles. But
it was only my mother cooking (160-161).
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Risley clearly rejects any interpretation other than her own. She manages to remain on the
surface of meaning, refusing to examine the symbolic implications of her art. Yet, the title of
the painting, “Pressure Cooker,” implies that her mother learned how to deal with social
pressure, with patriarchal constraints, while Elaine herself still has not.
An important moment takes place when Elaine becomes of aware of the role of the
mirror – a crucial motif in Atwood’s work – in her life. Once again, she relies on a painting,
Van Eyck’s world-famous “Arnolfini Marriage” 3 to express her inner feelings:
I become fascinated with the effects of glass, and of other light-reflecting surfaces. I
study paintings in which there are pearls, crystals, mirrors, shiny details of brass. I
spend a long time over Van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Marriage, going over the
inadequate color print of it in my textbook with a magnifying glass; what fascinates
me is not the two delicate, pallid, shoulderless hand-holding figures, but the pier
glass on the wall behind them, which reflects in its convex surface not only their
backs but two other people who aren’t in the main picture at all. These figures
reflected in the mirror are slightly askew, as if a different law of gravity, a different
arrangement of space, exists inside, locked in, sealed up in the glass as if in a
paperweight. This round mirror is like an eye that sees more than anyone else
looking: over this mirror is written, Johannes de Eyck fuit hic. 1434. It’s
disconcertingly like a washroom scribble, something you’d write with spray paint on
a wall. (347)
I suspect that Elaine’s fascination for the artist’s discrete presence in the painting reveals her
existential problem: she adopts the same position in life, that of an outsider who rather
watches events rather than participating in them. This detachment accounts for her
3
See Jessie Givner’s article “Names, Faces and Signatures in Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye and The
Handmaid’s Tale.”
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disinterested attitude. While the event highlights Elaine’s ageing process, it also illustrates her
refusal to become the centre of attention, fearing everyone would focus on her shortcomings.
The Robber Bride offers the reader a rich fairy-tale intertext, as is often the case in Atwood’s
narratives. First of all, Roz, who suffers from not fulfilling social beauty standards, often
parodies the queen in Snow White, asking her mirror: who is the fairest of all? (290, 393).
Such ludicrous passages generate the following imaginary dialogues:
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most beautiful of us all? Depends, says the
mirror. Beauty is only skin deep. Right you are, says Roz, I’ll take some anyway.
Now answer my question. I think you’re a really terrific person, says the mirror.
You’re warm and generous. You should have no difficulty at all finding some other
man. I don’t want some other man, says Roz, trying not to cry. I want Mitch. Sorry,
says the mirror. Can’t be done. It always ends like that. (290)
Life is obviously no fairy-tale. But the quote also points to Roz’s other qualities beyond outer
beauty: it stresses her warmth and generosity, i.e. precisely those character traits which
brought about the end of Roz’s marriage. Indeed, Roz’s motherly attitude to Zenia has given
the latter the possibility of seducing Mitch and of running away with him.
Another interesting parodic modification of fairy-tale stories consists in the
feminisation of all tales by Roz’s twins. In their version of The Three Little Pigs, all
characters are female: the three pigs and the wolf (94). The fairy-tale then becomes the echo
of the novel itself, with a bad female wolf – i.e. Zenia – and three female victims. Yet, when
Roz attempts to suppress the violence inherent in the tale to offer a happy ending, her
daughters feel disappointed. Contrary to Roz, who still wishes for a happy ending, her
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children refuse this sentimentalised version of life. When Tony later tells “The Robber
Bridegroom” to the twins, they want it to become “The Robber Bride” (294). Yet, they still
choose the victim to be female, reminding us again of Atwood’s plot. However, this time, Roz
seems to get the point, commenting:
The Robber Bride, thinks Roz. Well, why not? Let the grooms take it in the neck for
once. The Robber Bride, lurking in her mansion in the dark forest, preying upon the
innocent, enticing youths to their doom in her evil cauldron. Like Zenia. (…) Tony
and the twins were right: no matter what you do, somebody always gets boiled.
(295)
Both novels question the nature of reality. Elaine changes the meaning of well-known
brand pictures from her childhood: “a red rose, a maple leaf, a shell. They are in fact the logos
from old gas pumps of the forties” (428). She integrates them in her paintings, because “by
their obvious artificiality, they call into question the reality of landscape and figures alike”
(428). Tony, in The Robber Bride, likewise meditates on the value of historical reference
points. She thinks: “Where to start is the problem, because nothing begins when it begins and
nothing’s over when it’s over, and everything needs a preface: a preface, a postscript, a chart
of simultaneous events. History is a construct, she tells her students. Any point of entry is
possible and all choices are arbitrary” (4). Such a statement raises the question of the value of
history, of reality, and of the facts as related in the novel. Tony constantly reminds us of the
arbitrary character of any relation of facts. Indeed, when the reader compares the three
heroines’ visions of Zenia, details do not correspond: Zenia remains an enigma until her last
encounter with the three protagonists.
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Moreover, Tony’s ability to write backwards is precisely what endows her with power.
Indeed, she claims that “All history is written backwards” (109, Italics in the text), accounting
for the upside-down structure of the novel itself. Throughout the novel, Tony echoes this
narrative technique, frequently resorting to her own secret inverted speech, a barbarian,
“archaic” and powerful language, which she claims she could speak “in her sleep” (19). No
wonder then that Atwood, in the guise of Tony, attracts the reader’s attention to the
arbitrariness of the ending as well:
Every ending is arbitrary, because the end is where you write The End. A period, a
dot of punctuation, a point of stasis. A pinprick in the paper: you could put your eye
to it and see through, to the other side, to the beginning of something else. Or, as
Tony says to her students, Time is not a solid, like wood, but a fluid, like water or
the wind. It doesn’t come neatly cut into even-sized lengths, into decades and
centuries. Nevertheless, for our purposes we have to pretend it does. The end of any
history is a lie which we all agree to conspire. (465)
As a historian facing the lack of certainties in her discipline, Tony gives us an indication as to
how to read The Robber Bride. Indeed, the novel is certainly no realistic narrative. Tony hints
at the problematic notion of truth, thus underlining Zenia’s evasive nature: “But why bother,
in this day and age – Zenia herself would say – with such a quixotic notion as the truth? Every
sober-sided history is at least half sleight-of-hand (…) Tony is daunted by the impossibility of
accurate reconstruction” (461). Indeed, Zenia remains a mystery to all: by the end of the
novel, the three heroines – and the reader – still do not know her real name, her origins, the
reason for her evil deeds, and the cause of her death.
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2. Deception as a Means of Defence
Against the evil of a character such as Cordelia, Elaine Risley uses deception as a defence
strategy. As a child, she enjoys using codes to communicate with her brother (108). This
fondness for secrecy plays an insidious role in the novel: it allows her tormentors to continue
to pester Elaine without any adult intervention, their evil deeds being hardly apparent. Elaine
accepts such conditions of secrecy because she desperately wishes to belong to the girls’
group. She explains: “whatever is going on is going on in secret, among the four of us only.
Secrecy is important, I know that: to violate it would be the greatest, the irreparable sin. If I
tell I will be cast out forever” (127). Elaine’s intense desire to fit in, as well as her inner
uncertainties prevent her from obtaining any help from the adults around her. Similarly, when
Cordelia pushes her over the bridge down the ravine, Elaine tells her mother that she fell,
adding to herself: “Telling the truth about Cordelia is still unthinkable for me” (205). She also
adds that “a lady” helped her on her way home, knowing that her mother would not believe in
any kind of divine intervention (205). Cordelia turns out to have told a story to conceal what
really happened too (206).
However, deception also serves as an ally to Elaine: she gradually gains the
psychological strength to perform small lies on her so-called friends in order to get rid of
them for a while: she claims she has to help her mother, for instance (128). She also refrains
from telling her friends that she got more Valentine cards than them, so as not to provoke
their jealousy and anger (175). She laughs unnaturally, on command (198, 200).
Elaine repeatedly mentions her being in disguise: she does not feel like an adult (14);
she wears a jogging suit not to be considered as an artist (19); she pretends to be “a
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housewife, a tourist” (19-20). She longs for transformation (46), as indicated in her
admiration for comics' heroes “with secret identities,” “who can stretch their faces into any
shape at all” (59). As a young adult, Elaine often uses deception: for instance, to conceal her
affair with Josef from her naive friend Lucy (316) or from her parents (321). She hides her
liaison with Jon (336, 338, 342). Eventually, she disguises her suicide attempt as an accident
(395). She produces a portrait of herself as an utterly deceptive person. She says: “My heart is
a dubious object at best, blotchy and treacherous” (401), thus admitting her unreliability.
In her adult life, Elaine resorts to self-deception because some elements from her
childhood are too unbearable to her. She confesses: “I can remember my other birthdays, later
and earlier ones, but not this one. (…) These things must have occurred, but the only trace
they’ve left on me has been a vague horror of birthday parties, not other people’s, my own. I
think of pastel icing, pink candles burning in the pale November afternoon light, and there is a
sense of shame and failure” (113). The same feelings turn up when she recalls the visit of
Princess Elizabeth, whom she identified at the time with a possible saviour (214). Elaine sums
up her convenient strategy in the following terms:
I’ve forgotten things, I’ve forgotten that I’ve forgotten them. (…) I know I don’t like
the thought of Mrs. Smeath, but I’ve forgotten why. I’ve forgotten about fainting
and about the stacks of plates, and about falling into the creek and also about seeing
the Virgin Mary. I’ve forgotten all of the bad things that happened. (…) Time is
missing. (215)
Indeed, Elaine’s childhood remembrances remain incomplete. They force her to engage on an
inner journey of self-discovery. This journey takes the form of an unsatisfying quest for the
lost Cordelia. Logically, she claims not to recall Grace Smeath, one of her tormentors (246)
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and the holes in which the other girls buried her (271). She eventually utters her wish not to
remember anything, in order to protect herself (277). This deliberate oblivion is yet another
form of self-defence. When Cordelia later asks for her help to get out of the asylum, Elaine
lies again and abandons her (278, 432). When she returns to Toronto as a recognised artist,
who has, apparently, achieved balance, Elaine feels she has erased a good deal of her past.
She considers:
There are several diseases of the memory. Forgetfulness of nouns, for instance, or of
numbers. Or there are more complex amnesias. With one, you can lose your entire
past; you start afresh, learning how to tie your shoelaces, how to eat with a fork,
how to read and sing. You are introduced to your relatives, your oldest friends, as if
you’ve never met them before; you get a second chance with them, better than
forgiveness because you can begin innocent. With another form, you keep the
distant past but lose the present. (…) I sometimes wonder which of these will afflict
me, later; because I know one of them will. (281)
Elaine is thus unconsciously aware of having discarded the most disturbing episodes of her
life. She regularly alludes to her desire for forgetfulness (322). Due to a conversation with her
dying mother, who wants to apologise for not having helped her at the time, she suddenly
recalls the three little girls and their evil intentions towards her: “I am growing confused
myself. My memory is tremulous, like water breathed on. For an instant I see Cordelia and
Grace, and Carol, walking toward me through the astonishing whiteness of the snow, their
faces in shadow” (417). Yet, she only remembers them “for an instant,” immediately rejecting
this reminiscence. Pretence is still at work later on, when Elaine imagines a hypothetical
meeting with the grown-up Cordelia. She thinks: “If I were to meet Cordelia again, what
would I tell her about myself? The truth, or whatever would make me look good? Probably
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the latter. I still have that need” (6). The protagonist thus admits that she still suffers from
psychological wounds, making it necessary for her to confront her past once again.
Further, the reader gets hints of Cordelia’s similarly deceptive behaviour. Indeed, one
gradually becomes aware of Cordelia’s feeling of inadequacy. As suggested by the choice of
her name – that of King Lear’s rejected daughter, 4 Cordelia suffers from a deep desire to
please her father. She never succeeds in satisfying him, which eventually causes her to
perform small thefts and lies in a misguided attempt to attract his attention. She is expelled
from several schools (219). Her elaborate letters to Elaine become less and less convincing
(236). Her attitude with boys likewise appears artificial: she shows too much interest in them
and her laughs sound too high (261, 262, 275). She feigns illness in order to skip school
(271). Eventually, Elaine concludes that Cordelia has become a wreck (275). When she later
incorporates her victimiser in her artistic production, Elaine highlights Cordelia’s doubleness:
This is the only picture I ever did of Cordelia, Cordelia by herself. Half a Face, it’s
called: an odd title, because Cordelia’s entire face is visible. But behind her, hanging
on the wall, like emblems in the Renaissance, or those heads of animals, moose or
bear, you used to find in northern bars, is another face, covered with a white cloth.
The effect is of a theatrical mask. Perhaps. (243)
The comparison with the theatrical mask alludes both to Cordelia’s high school attempts at
artistic creation and to her artificial behaviour, which Elaine, as an adult, immediately
recognises. Cordelia’s former threats and orders sound pathetic.
4 Jessie Givner examines the implications of the choice of Cordelia’s name in an article entitled “Names, Faces
and Signatures in Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye and The Handmaid’s Tale.” The article further examines the
motif of the “half face” in relation to Risley’s paintings and the recurring mirror images as associated to Van
Eyck’s masterpiece “The Arnolfini Marriage.”
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The reason why Cordelia loses her mind lies in her attempts to build her personality in
relation to other people’s wishes. Cordelia, as a child, develops a strategy of mimicry: she
tries to act and talk as an adult does, because she does not know how to please her parents,
particularly her father. When she recalls her first encounter with Cordelia, Elaine stresses the
artificiality of the girl’s behaviour. She remembers: “She has a smile like a grown-up’s, as if
she’s learned it and is doing it out of politeness” (74). Her “voice for adults” and good
manners charm Elaine’s parents (124). Growing up, Cordelia adopts the same kind of
behaviour when she pretends to be an actress. All this “mise-en-scène” eventually brings her
to the asylum, where Elaine witnesses what she might have become too.
Indeed, a closer look at Elaine’s behaviour as a child and as an adult reveals her
frequent use of mimicry strategies. The pictures she collects in her scrapbook as a child depict
traditional girl images (30). Yet, Elaine repeatedly confesses finding it difficult to adopt the
conventional feminine behaviour. She concedes: “Playing with girls is different and at first I
feel strange as I do it, self-conscious, as if I’m only doing an imitation of a girl” (55). Elaine
only manages to mimic the behaviour of girls around her. 5 Like her friends, she uses the
Eaton catalogues (56) to build up a collection of paper objects a “lady” ought to have in her
house. She learns to become hypocritical and to fish for compliments (57). She asks for
Christmas presents that befit a girl, although she has no interest in them (136).
Moreover, wearing skirts feels unnatural to her (81). Similarly, she does not know how
to dress to go to church and resents her parents’ inability to teach her what is appropriate
(106). Under the influence of her three tormentors, who incessantly keep an eye on her (124,
5 In her article on girls’ relationships in Cat’s Eye, Lyn Mikel Brown identifies this stage as a process of
acculturation, a normal stage in the socialisation of girls, largely recognised among psychologists. (Brown, L.M.,
“The Dangers of Time Travel,” 39).
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127, 128), Elaine soon becomes conscious of the shortcomings of her mimicry. As she puts it:
“I worry about what I’ve said today, the expression on my face, how I walk, what I wear,
because all of these things need improvement” (125). This constant failure to please her
friends eventually causes her to rebel and turn her back on them (200). Elaine finds the
strength to do so when she realises that Cordelia’s attitude is a form of mimicry as well:
I can hear this for what it is. It’s an imitation, it’s acting. It’s an impersonation, of
someone much older. It’s a game. There was never anything about me that needed to
be improved. It was always a game, and I have been fooled. I have been stupid.
(207).
Having become aware of the other girls’ strategy, Elaine forgets about their tortures and
moves on with her studies. She adopts the clothing expected from art students (294), then that
of a respectable advertising designer (349). She has chosen to give her daughters ordinary first
names in order to avoid what happened to Cordelia (15); on important occasions, she dresses
the way her daughter wishes (17). All such reactions show that Elaine still resorts to mimicry
to conform to social requirements, having thus accepted part of her experience in childhood.
Likewise, deception is detectable in The Robber Bride. Zenia enjoys displaying a treacherous
behaviour at all times, while the other three protagonists use deception to defend themselves
against Zenia’s evil. One of the motto’s of the book, Oscar Wilde’s “Illusion is the first of all
pleasures,” indicates the importance of this feature.
Zenia, of course, strikes the reader as a professional deceiver. Tony remembers having
been the victim of Zenia’s lies. She recalls: “She would lie earnestly, with a catch in her
voice, a quaver of suppressed grief, or she would lie haltingly, as if confessing; or she would
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lie with a cool, defiant anger, and Tony would believe her” (3), and further, “Zenia has never
been almost, even at her most fraudulent. Her fakery was deeply assumed, and even her most
superficial disguises were total” (36-37). Zenia might have inherited her ability to deceive
from her mother, who produced several versions of Zenia’s father (166). When confronted to
the implausibility of her statements, Zenia becomes highly evasive: “she laughs, and says she
has a short attention span” (182). She uses false names (408) and presents each of her victims
with a different version of herself (363, 406), as in the following excerpt: ““her mother was
stoned to death by Roumanians, for being a gypsy,” says Charis. “What?” says Tony. “No,
she wasn’t! She was a White Russian in exile! She died in Paris, of tuberculosis!” Then Tony
begins to laugh. She laughs and laughs” (282); or later, when Roz confronts her: ““Tony told
me you were a White Russian,” she says. “A child prostitute, in Paris. And Charis says your
mother was a gypsy, and was stoned to death by Roumanian peasants.” (…) “You told her
you had cancer”” (363). Zenia is all deception: even her burial proves a fake (410). Each time,
she manages to know more about her victims’ private life. She then invents similarities with
them so as to appeal to their compassion: to Tony, she claims having had a heartless mother;
she appeals to Charis’s power to heal, hinting at severe illness; finally, she deeply moves Roz,
pretending that this latter’s rogue father was a real hero who saved her life during the war
(316). 6
Yet, the other female characters resort to treacherous behaviour too. Tony, in the first
place, hides things from her partner, West. She does not tell him about Zenia’s funerals (13),
nor does she later tell him that Zenia is still alive (39). She wants him to “think of her as kind
and beneficient. And forgiving, of course” (14). She thinks that when you love someone, you
6 Leclaire underlines the deconstruction operated by Atwood on her heroines’ biographies. The multiplicity and
fluidity of those biographies echo Zenia’s own function in the novel, that of a multiple, overpowerful, ghostly
and almost mythical creature, who provides the reader with a potent embodiment of the woman as phantasy
(Leclaire “La Déconstruction de la biographie” 148-149).
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sometimes have to cheat a little (14). Similarly, she does not mention her appointment with
Roz and Charis to West (15). Tony is a discrete person, who likes “camouflage” (17), who
enjoys hiding in her office (22), who manages, as a historian, to avoid any confrontation with
the present (29). She also lies to herself, trying to believe that her marriage is solid (35). She
often alludes to the possibility of disguising herself to confront Zenia (110, 122, 125). Finally,
she goes as far as to forge a term paper to help Zenia, thus endangering her future academic
career (172, 177). The reader also realises that Tony’s account of her mother highlights her
similarities with Zenia: Tony’s mother exhibited the same propensity to lie (147, 150), the
same theatricality (140).
Though she appears as the embodiment of honesty and goodness, the character of
Charis is based on deception as well. Indeed, Karen changed her name into Charis (41), in an
attempt to discard the years of abuse endured at her uncle’s house. Charis claims to be pleased
with her new self, but she also “wonders if that’s altogether true” (44). She is aware of the
deceptiveness of language (62), of the treacherous desires of her body (69). Further, she hides
an illegal worker – Billy, her boyfriend – in her house and is regularly in contact with his
fellow illegal comrades (215, 216). As a child, Charis – then named Karen – concealed the
bruises caused by her mother’s ill treatments from her loving grandmother (240). When she
later tells her aunt that her uncle regularly abuses her, she is blamed for lying (261). Further,
Charis lies whenever she thinks it appropriate. For instance, she lies to her daughter, telling
her that her father died as a hero in the Vietnam War (285). She also lies in order to obtain
what she wants, though she resents doing so: she deceives Larry to find out where Zenia
resides (422). Eventually, as she faces Zenia one last time, Charis has become less naive: she
is ready to admit that Zenia might be lying, while she formerly took all she said for granted
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(430). Charis has thus changed her attitude towards deception: she has learned to use it when
necessary; she also manages to recognise it in others.
Roz admits to be hiding her real face (73). She is aware that she, like Zenia, might
suffer from physical delusions: she does not regard those as illusions, but as transformations
(102). She also describes herself as the victim of her husband’s deceptions: he regularly
proves unfaithful to her, being particularly careless about clues (299). Roz too changed her
name during the war, because of its Jewish resonances (343). She presents her father as a
hero, though she ignores what he actually accomplished during the war (355). However, like
her friends, Roz learns to recognise deception. She hears “the voice of Tony. Zenia lies, it
says” (362). She also realises that she reproduces her mother’s behaviour when she tends to
forgive Mitch every time he cheats on her (383).
When Zenia eventually dies by jumping out of the window of her hotel room, the three
protagonist have to resort to deception again in order to conceal Charis’s possible
involvement: they tell the police they came back because Roz dropped her gloves in the
fountain, not because Charis had a vision of Zenia’s death (447).
The three women also use mimicry in order to hide their social inadequacies. Tony
realises the role of her clothes in her credibility as an academic: she gets dismissed because
she is a woman in a men’s world (109). She refrains from mentioning her interest in warfare
to other girls: those who already find her strange might consider her pathological (117). She
observes other women, learning how to dismiss insulting remarks (128). She hides her left-
handedness (138). Moreover, Tony gradually recognises the mimicry used by her mother: she
notices the falseness in her voice when she mimics happiness in front of her father (141, 149);
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she identifies the same awkwardness in her mother’s failed attempts to look like other
mothers (144). Also, Tony mentions the impossibility for her to use her mother as a model:
she is conscious that the other children at school would laugh at her (145).
Charis suffers from another problem: a deep awareness of people’s demands on her
and an inability to respond to them. As a child, she undergoes her mother’s violence and soon
learns to conceal her suffering behind the smile usually requested from a little girl (234).
Similarly, she feigns missing a father she has never known, because that is the expected
reaction (234). When her mother hits her, Karen cries because she thinks she ought to (235).
One may conclude that Karen’s childhood displays so many mimicry strategies that she
eventually decides to get rid of all of them, allowing Charis to appear. Charis no longer needs
to mimic anything. She lives on the edge of society and does not care about social demands.
Yet, she does not realise that Zenia’s presence in her life appeals to concepts such as
compassion and pity, which are also imposed on her by society. She then learns the danger of
accepting such values at her own expense.
Roz witnesses mimicry on the part of her children, who tease her with their imitations
(76, 78). Her husband also provides her with a perfect imitation of a father, though she
somehow senses his uneasiness (83). Roz constantly plays a part as well: that of the woman
who ignores her husband’s unfaithfulness (84), that of the older woman who treats her young
colleagues as equals (89). She has learned how to maintain her grin in public in order to
preserve her dignity (373). She mimics the strong woman, who remains unaffected by her
husband’s treachery and Zenia’ attacks on her son. Yet, such mimicry is a mere façade: Roz
ultimately faces the truth when she questions her son and discovers his homosexuality. She
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then, once again, adopts mimicry: in order not to disappoint Larry, she seems to accept the
situation.
3. Magic Realist Dreams and Incantations
Cat’s Eye and The Robber Bride provide us with the best examples of magic realism in
Atwood’s production. Both novels present the reader with a mixture of facts and imagination.
Magic realism in Cat’s Eye has already been discussed by several authors, among whom
Sharon Wilson in her analysis of the fairy-tale intertext in Atwood’s novels. Wilson states that
“the main technique of presenting the book’s intertexts is magic realism” (Wilson, Margaret
Atwood’s Fairy-Tale Sexual Politics, 296). Wilson then provides a definition of magic realism
as “portraying ‘the imaginary, the improbable, or the fantastic in a realistic or rational
manner.’” She locates its presence in Elaine Risley’s paintings and in the novel’s fairy-tale
intertext. However, the heroine’s dreams and visions offer a better view of the scope of magic
realism in this work.
Throughout her memory quest, Elaine gradually discovers a series of elements from
her past, which resurface by means of a smell, a picture, a word. The heroine realises that her
past might not be as untormented as she thinks. Such epiphanic moments mostly take place in
a surreal atmosphere. Such is the case, for instance, when Elaine suddenly remembers the
word “nightshade,” and associates it with an indefinable feeling of uneasiness:
I close my eyes, wait for pictures. (…) At first there’s nothing; just a receding
darkness, like a tunnel. But after a while something begins to form: a thicket of
dark-green leaves with purple blossoms, dark purple, a sad rich color, and clusters of
red berries, translucent as water. The vines are intergrown, so tangled over the other
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plants they’re like a hedge. A smell of loam and another, pungent scent rises from
among the leaves, smell of old things, dense and heavy, forgotten. There’s no wind
but the leaves are in motion, there’s a ripple, as of unseen cats, or as if the leaves are
moving by themselves. Nightshade, I think. It’s a dark word. (113)
Elaine remains unable to define the nature of this recollection: she does not understand its
sadness. Yet, she calls it a “wrong memory” (114), probably because she refuses to remember
the torments it evokes. She experiences the same reluctance to understand when she suddenly
becomes aware of the beating of her own heart (183). This feeling is associated with the
moments when Elaine managed to exit her own body in order to avoid sufferings. The
protagonist’s subsequent description of this experience constitutes another example of the
novel’s numerous uncanny moments. She narrates:
The sky closes to a pinpoint and a wave of dry leaves sweeps over my head. Then I
can see my own body lying on the ground, just lying there. I can see the girls
pointing and gathering, I can see Miss Lumley stalking over, bending with difficulty
to look at me. But I’m seeing all this from above, as if I’m in the air, somewhere
near the GIRLS sign over the door, looking down like a bird. (184)
Once she understands that she can escape reality by fainting, Elaine frequently resorts to this
technique, which she thoroughly learns to control. She eventually enjoys spending time
outside her body (185).
Her distress finds a powerful expression in wild desires for revenge, which take on a
highly grotesque quality, as in the following passage:
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I have a brief, intense image of Mrs. Smeath going through the flesh-colored
wringer of my mother’s washing machine, legs first, bones cracking and flattening,
skin and flesh squeezing up toward her head, which will pop in a minute like a huge
balloon of blood. If my eyes could shoot out fatal rays like the ones in comic books I
would incinerate her on the spot. She is right, I am a heathen. I cannot forgive. (193)
The presence of magic realism manifests itself in the absurdity and the hyperbolic quality of
the scene, associating the animate and the inanimate in one and the same image.
Simultaneously, Mrs. Smeath’s evil nature, symbolised by a dark beating heart, recurs as a
motif (194). It becomes linked to a certain mysticism on Elaine’s part: indeed, the girl
desperately believes that the Virgin Mary will help her out of her despair. Symptomatically,
Elaine’s avid prayers only produce one more vision of the ominous heart (197).
However, when the girls push her over the bridge, thereby endangering her life, Elaine
eventually experiences a moment of epiphany. A woman dressed in a blue cloak appears and
tells her: “You can go home now, she says. It will be all right. Go home” (202-203, Italics in
the text). This episode constitutes a major discovery for Elaine: she turns back home with the
strength to fight back. Yet, as indicated by the fact that she confesses searching for that
woman in all of her subsequent journeys, the vision only provides a temporary soothing. It
does not offer any explanation for Elaine’s strange feeling of inadequacy as an adult.
Therefore, Elaine’s real quest, in order to understand the reason for Cordelia’s tortures,
becomes a necessity upon her return to Toronto.
Obviously, the heroine uses her art to exorcise her past failures. She recalls the state of
nervousness and disgust in which she painted Mrs. Smeath’s portraits:
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Every move I make is sodden with unreality. When no one is around, I bite my
fingers. I need to feel physical pain, to attach myself to daily life. My body is a
separate thing. It ticks like a clock; time is inside it. It has betrayed me, and I am
disgusted with it. I paint Mrs. Smeath. She floats up without warning, like a dead
fish, materializing on a sofa I am drawing: first her white, sparsely haired legs
without ankles, then her thick waist and potato face, her eyes in their steel rims. (…)
She looks out at me from the flat surface of paint, three-dimensional now, smiling
her closed half-smile, smug and accusing. (…) Sometimes I turn her faces to the
wall. (358)
The ominous presence of evil Mrs. Smeath terrorises Risley. By painting the woman, she has
somehow given her real life. Hence her feelings of being watched by her paintings (372). The
canvasses representing Mrs. Smeath are endowed with magic realist overtones, because
inanimate objects suddenly come to life. Quite logically, Elaine’s fear of them culminates on
the day of the opening of the exhibition, when a woman resembling Mrs. Smeath enters the
gallery. This woman, embodying Puritanism, vandalises one of the paintings. Under great
pressure, Elaine fails to make the difference between the Mrs. Smeath from the forties, her
school friend Grace, and a perfect stranger, symbolising the values of the Smeath family. She
expresses her confusion as such:
I look away from Mrs. Smeath, and there is another Mrs. Smeath, only this one is
moving. She’s just inside the door and heading toward me. She’s the same age as
she was. It’s as if she’s stepped down off the wall, the walls: the same round raw
potato face, the hulky big-boned frame, the glittering spectacles and hairpin crown.
My gut clenches in fear; then there’s that rancid hate, flashing up in an instant. But
of course this can’t be Mrs. Smeath, who must be much older by now. And it isn’t.
The hairpin crown was an optical illusion: it’s just hair, graying and cropped short.
It’s Grace Smeath (372-373)
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The passage displays a clear example of Delbaere’s psychic realism. Indeed, the whole scene
is bathed in a fantastic atmosphere because of what takes place in Elaine’s mind.
Overwhelmed with Mrs. Smeath highly realistic presence in her paintings, Elaine suddenly
associates one of the visitors with that presence. An unknown lady becomes the embodiment
of the loathed Mrs. Smeath. The whole vision takes place in Elaine’s mind, while the rest of
the public remains unaware of her deep trouble. Yet, Elaine soon regains consciousness and
reflects: “But I look again, more closely: this woman is not Grace. She doesn’t even look like
Grace. Grace is my age, she would not be this old. There’s a generic resemblance, that’s all.
This woman is a stranger” (373-374). The whole passage derives its magic realist quality from
the fact that the protagonist gets carried away by her imagination to the point of no longer
separating fact from fiction. The magic realist presence of Mrs. Smeath throughout the
narrative renders her sudden apparition totally plausible.
Magic realism also pervades the heroine’s numerous dreams involving the object of
her present quest, i.e. Cordelia, whom she sees falling from a bridge, floating in the air (381),
or beheaded (382). Such visions function as expressions of Elaine’s guilt for abandoning
Cordelia when she most needed her. They bring Elaine on the verge of madness. Worse,
Cordelia’s imaginary childish voice eventually causes her to attempt suicide (395). Elaine’s
wish for self-destruction gloomily echoes Cordelia’s own downfall. The presence of
Cordelia’s voice possesses an uncanny quality: it is a mere product of Elaine’s imagination,
and yet so convincing. She ponders: “I know it wasn’t really there. Also I know I heard it. It
wasn’t a frightening voice, in itself. Not menacing but excited, as if proposing an escapade, a
prank, a treat. Something treasured, and secret. The voice of a nine-year-old child” (396).
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That voice works as a leitmotiv indicating that Elaine has not yet resolved her identity
problem (397, 399).
time:
In a final moment of epiphany, Elaine eventually decides to face Cordelia one last
I know that if I turn, right now, and look ahead of me along the path, someone will
be standing there. At first I think it will be myself, in my old jacket, my blue knitted
hat. But then I see that it’s Cordelia. She’s standing halfway up the hill, gazing back
over her shoulder. (…) I know she’s looking at me, the lopsided mouth smiling a
little, the face closed and defiant. (…) I am the older one now, I’m the stronger. If
she stays here any longer she will freeze to death; she will be left behind, in the
wrong time. It’s almost too late. I reach out my arms to her, bend down, hands open
to show I have no weapon. It’s all right, I say to her. You can go home now. (443)
The magic realist aspect of this imaginary encounter lies in the fact that the girls have become
interchangeable. For a brief moment, Elaine gets a glimpse of Cordelia’s distress and realises
that the little girl probably suffered as much as she did. This last encounter allows Elaine to
cope with her feelings of guilt. She also comes to grasp that “otherness” might be present in
others as well, though, like her, they seek to conceal it.
Likewise, The Robber Bride displays numerous magic realist scenes. Although Tony qualifies
as a rational person, she is not totally immune to visions of that kind. For instance, Zenia’s
return in the middle of the night terrifies her so much that she confuses her with her mother.
The description of the apparition strikes the reader with its uncanniness. It possesses an
undeniable gothic quality, expressed through Zenia’s ghostly presence and the terror it
induces. It starts as follows: “There’s a woman standing in the darkness of the room, her head
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outlined against the yellow-grey oblong of the window. In the instant of waking Tony thinks
it’s her mother” (171) Yet, Tony soon realises that this strange woman is not her mother, but
Zenia. This scene provides us with an example of gothic magic realism as I have defined it in
my analysis of Surfacing, 7 with its overwhelming atmosphere of terror and its fondness for the
supernatural. Roz experiences similar visions of Zenia appearing magically in a corner of her
bedroom, “reassembling herself from the fragments of her own body after the bomb
explosion: a hand, a led, an eye” (72). Further, Tony’s dream exhibits psychic magic realistic
features, betraying an undeniable epiphanic quality:
She is having a dream, a recurring one; she has the feeling that this dream has been
waiting for her a long time, waiting for her to enter it, re-enter it; or that it has been
waiting to re-enter her. This dream is underwater. (…) She comes to an edge, a
chasm. Like going down a hill she drops over it, slides diagonally through the
increasing darkness. (…) Suddenly she knows she isn’t in the sea at all but
miniaturized, inside her own brain. (…) If so, then what is that, on the dim level
white sand at the bottom? Not a ganglion. Someone walking away from her. She
swims faster, but it’s no use, she’s held in place, an aquarium goldfish bumping its
nose against glass. Reverof, she hears. The backwards dream language. She opens
her mouth to call, but there is no air to call with and water rushes in. She wakes up
gasping and choking, her throat constricted, her face streaming with tears. (188-189)
This uncanny dream clearly warns Tony: the figure walking away from her might be West,
whom she might well lose to Zenia. Moreover, her realisation that the whole scene takes place
within her own brain, might constitute an indication that the solution to her problem – a deep
inferiority complex – can be found within herself.
7 See chapter two of the present study.
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Roz’s account, on the other hand, constitutes a clear example of grotesque magic
realism. Indeed, in one of her numerous imaginary fights with Zenia, Roz envisions the
effects of the battle on Zenia’s body, undoubtedly improved by means of plastic surgery:
Still, Roz can picture the stitch marks, the needle tracks, where the Frankenstein
doctors have been at work. She knows the fault lines where Zenia might crack open.
She would like to be able to say a magic word – Sahzam! – that would cause time to
run backward, make the caps on Zenia’s teeth pop off to reveal the dead stumps
underneath, melt her ceramic glaze, whiten her hair, shrivel her amino-acid-fed
estrogen-replacement skin, pop her breasts open like grapes so that their silicone
bulges would whiz across the room and splat against the wall. (102)
The violence of the scene, combined to its gory physical details, endow it with a grotesque
quality. Moreover, the vision allows Roz to express her anger at Zenia, without confronting
her physically. In a second instance, Roz experiences what we might consider as an example
of psychic magic realism when she realises that Charis succeeds in bringing her back to
rationality, by means of her psychic power (386-387).
However, Charis’s extreme sensitivity makes her the centre of magic realist
manifestations in the novel. Charis deeply believes in the supernatural: knowing secrets about
the afterlife, she explains them to the other characters (49); she experiences premonitions (50-
51) – among which an accurate vision of Zenia’s death (444); objects move around in her
house (51); she is aware of the presence of entities around her (203). She actually believes
that Zenia has returned from the dead and wonders: “why did Zenia bother opening the door?
She could have walked right through it” (66). Charis qualifies as an altogether uncanny
character who “gives Roz the creeps because she knows things she has no way of knowing”
(103). From the very beginning of the story, the vision of something falling from a tall
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uilding (67) recurs as a foreboding of Zenia’s fateful future. Due to the character’s
knowledge of the supernatural, Charis’s confrontation with Zenia symbolises a battle between
Good and Evil. Charis does not attend this fight; rather she lets her aura get rid of Zenia (200).
Moreover, Charis possesses an uncanny hidden side, that of Karen, the sad abused girl
she was as a youth. Zenia’s aggression causes Karen to show up again. Her return into
Charis’s life takes place in yet another magic realist scene. The excerpt shows a conflation of
two totally different personality: Charis as a middle-aged woman and her long-silent double,
the abused Karen. Indeed, magic realism lies in the coexistence of usually incongruous
elements, such as the two versions of Charis’s personality in this particular instance, which
cannot possibly reside in the same body:
Someone is coming towards her across the lake, her bare feet touching the tops of
the waves, her nightgown tattered by the years of weathering, her colourless hair
floating. Charis closes her eyes, focusing on the inner picture, trying to see who it is.
Inside her head there’s a moonlight, obscurred by scudding clouds; but now the sky
lightens and she can see the face. It’s Karen, it’s banished Karen (…) demanding to
enter her, to join her, to share in her body once again. Charis is not Karen. She has
not been Karen for a long time, and she never wants to be Karen again. She pushes
away with all her strength, pushes down towards the water, but this time Karen will
not go under. She drifts closer and closer, and her mouth opens. She wants to speak.
(231-232)
The passage clearly indicates that Karen, the repressed aspect of Charis’s personality, seeks to
regain her voice. She has been shut out for such a long time, that she has become
overpowerful, as indicated by her ability to walk on water. From then on, Charis recalls
Karen’s ghost-like life. From a very early age, she was gifted with a deeper sensibility, which
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distinguished her from other people. For example, when her mother gives Karen an egg, she
can feel the life inside. She quickly feels overwhelmed by that presence, as she explains: “The
egg is soft in her hands, like a beating heart with a rubber shell around it. It’s growing,
swelling up, and as they walk back past the garden through the sun’s glare and the vibration
of the bees it gets so large and hot that Karen has to drop it” (244). Likewise, she remembers
feeling her mother’s illness (256). She recalls seeing her grandmother’s ghost in the garden,
entering the house, then dissolving in front of her (263, 276); she also feels the evil presence
of Zenia in the background (276). Karen soon becomes all powerful: Charis can no longer
control her. Karen’s need to express herself has transformed her into an altogether uncanny
figure:
Karen is coming back, Charis can’t keep her away any more. She’s torn away the
rotting leather, she’s come to the surface, she’s walked through the bedroom wall,
she’s standing in the room right now. But she is no longer a nine-year-old girl. She
has grown up, she has grown tall and thin and straggly, like a plant in a cellar,
starved for light. And her hair isn’t pale anymore, but dark. The sockets of her eyes
are dark too, dark bruises. She no longer looks like Karen. She looks like Zenia.
(266)
Charis confuses Karen with Zenia, which points to Charis’s identity problem. By creating the
character of Charis, and simultaneously eradicating Karen, Charis has silenced one aspect of
her personality. She has tried to obliterate the darker side of her self, unable to accept her
hybrid state, her inner oscillation between good and evil.
The description of Charis’s ultimate confrontation with Zenia undeniably conveys
magic realist overtones. Zenia is shown “shooting out blood-red sparks of energy; her black
hair would be crackling like burning fat” (417), “crimson around the edges, with scintillations
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of diamond-hard light” (420); “black lines are radiating out from her, like the filaments of a
spider web. No. Black lines are converging on her, targeting her; soon she will be ensnarled”
(429-430). Charis, on the other hand, displays an obvious superiority as the embodiment of
Good, “invoking the sky” (417). Charis’s identity as a rather inoffensive middle-aged
eccentric suddenly dissolves. Her transformation into a powerful entity definitely belongs to
the magic realist realm, because it results from the implausible coexistence of two utterly
different characters: Charis and Karen. Ultimately, a helpless Charis watches how Karen
defeats Zenia:
she is over behind the flowered drapes, near the door to the balcony, outside her own
body, watching. The body stands there. Someone else is in charge of it now. It’s
Karen. Charis can see her, a dark core, a shadow, with long raggedy hair, grown big
now, grown huge. She’s been waiting all the time, all these years, for a moment like
this, a moment when she could get back into Charis’s body and use it to murder. She
moves Charis’s hands towards Zenia, her hands that flicker with a blue light; she is
irresistibly strong, she rushes at Zenia like a silent wind; she pushes her backwards,
right through the balcony door, and broken glass scatters like ice. Zenia is purple
and red and flashing like jewels but she is no match for shadowy Karen. (429)
Charis’s long frustrations eventually culminate in Karen’s murder of Zenia. The novel’s
magic realist atmosphere allows the two sides of Charis’s psyche to inhabit her body, though
not simultaneously. Charis insists on the fact that she leaves her own body before Karen takes
control of it and lets her dark side express itself. Charis feels guilty for Zenia’s death, thinking
that it is her fault “for holding Karen away, separate from herself, for trying to keep her
outside, for not taking her in” (445). She experiences this awareness as a loss of innocence.
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Finally, Atwood’s use of magic realism in chapter fifty of The Robber Bride offers a
striking rendering of the protagonists’ moment of epiphany. Indeed, the chapter takes place in
a dream-like atmosphere. It recounts a moment of vision for each heroine, revealing the
heroine’s inner problem. Tony’s dream transports her back to her childhood where she faces
the ominous presence of her heartless mother. It directly points to Tony’s inferiority complex,
constantly reminding her of the fact that she is too small. Zenia is present in the dream in the
form of a fire devastating the whole house. Tony finds herself unable to stop that fire: because
of her deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy, she desperately attends the destruction of her
universe. Likewise, Charis’s dream points to her shortcomings. When looking in the mirror,
Charis realises that she and Zenia are interchangeable: through this dream, she becomes aware
of the darkness hidden within her own soul. She still must learn to acknowledge that her evil
resides within her deepest soul. Roz’s dream, which takes on more grotesque overtones, is
equally significant. Walking through a forest, she encounters a house which obviously
belongs to her. Yet, she notices that intruders have penetrated the house. When she wants to
enter it to find her husband and children, she realises that a man is blocking the entrance.
Though he does not in the least look like her, Roz feels that the man resembles a disguised
Zenia. The dream definitely identifies Zenia as a threat to Roz’s marriage, thus pointing to her
weakness – her love for Mitch and for her children. Each of these dreams also contains a
passive figure in the background, that of the women’s partner. (397-400).
The oddity of chapter fifty prepares the reader for the surprising ending. As they
confront their stories, the three women soon realise that Zenia has come back for each of
them, though in different ways (402-403). Some meet Zenia in a tidy hotel room, while the
others remember her hotel room as a mess. They also understand that each of them conceived
a different version of Zenia, one which would undeniably attract their sympathy. The three
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women decide to get rid of Zenia by performing a magic ritual, which succeeds, as Zenia dies
in the end. Eventually, they must admit that Zenia remains a mystery to them beyond her
death, which the police fail to explain. Zenia, as a person, transgresses the boundaries
between reality and imagination to become a magic realist figure.
4. Mature Tricksters
While Cordelia and Zenia appear as manifest trickster-figures in these two narratives, one
should not disregard elements of the trickster spirit in the other protagonists. Elaine, for
instance, displays several characteristics of the trickster. Atwood repeatedly alludes to
Elaine’s propensity to live in chaos and disorder (16), especially in relation to her first
husband Jon (19, 337, 338). Her brother teaches her to see in the dark, like an animal (27).
She compares herself to a scavenger (29, 189). Elaine gains secret power through the
acquisition of a marble, a cat’s eye, whose magic she describes in the following terms:
She doesn’t know what power this cat’s eye has, to protect me. Sometimes when I
have it with me I can see the way it sees. I can see people moving like bright
animated dolls, their mouths opening and closing but no real words coming out. I
can look at their shapes and sizes, their colors, without feeling anything else about
them. I am alive in my eyes only. (151)
The magic force of the cat’s eye enables Elaine to distance herself from people’s gaze.
Suddenly, her friends’ judgements become unimportant. The cat’s eye allows Elaine to
contemplate the world from a distance, thus relativising her distress. It makes her stronger,
insensitive. The object becomes the symbol of the heroine’s quest for inner knowledge: Elaine
therefore makes frequent allusions to it (166).
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Cordelia’s fascination with death brings Elaine to examine it closely: when she finds a
dead raven in the forest, curiosity draws her nearer. The maggots and the smell of rot do not
repel her. They attract her like some sort of food she has already eaten before (154). The
passage clearly forebodes Elaine’s discovery of her trickster power, a long forgotten strength
which helps her overpower Cordelia. Moreover, death fascinates Elaine because of its
numbness, its insensitiveness. She longs to be as invulnerable as the dead raven (154). This
experience restores her ability to dream: visions about the dead raven and the cat’s eye
regularly haunt Elaine’s nights. They are associated with the bridge and the ravine – places of
power and vision, with the helplessness of Elaine’s mother, and with poisonous substances
such as the deadly nightshades (155). Elaine gradually reveals her “vengeful, greedy,
secretive and sly” (164) nature. She slowly acquires vision (208); and she retreats in her
brother’s room, fascinated by the power of his comic book heroes (208). Moreover, her
brother, another alien trickster-like figure, introduces her to his multi-dimensional universe
(234-235). All these elements bring Elaine to the following conclusion: “Cordelia is afraid of
me in this picture. I am afraid of Cordelia. I’m not afraid of seeing Cordelia. I’m afraid of
being Cordelia. Because in some way we changed places, and I’ve forgotten when” (243). At
this point, Elaine has become the trickster, witnessing Cordelia’s desperate attempts to regain
power. (247). When the two girls return to the cemetery, the novel again displays a gothic
quality as Elaine playfully frightens her friend with grotesque stories of vampires and evil
twins sisters. She comments: “I’m surprised at how much pleasure this gives me, to know
she’s so uneasy, to know I have this much power over her” (249). At school, Elaine becomes
known for her nastiness, for her “mean mouth” (251, 264, 303, 322, 341). As befits a
trickster-figure, she becomes associated with darkness, with the night, claiming: “My other,
my real life, takes place at night” (303). Thus, Elaine has definitely endorsed the role of the
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trickster. She has replaced Cordelia, as appears from the novel’s final imaginary dialogue:
“You’re dead Cordelia. No I’m not. Yes you are. You’re dead. Lie down” (437). In this fake
burial, Cordelia plays the role of the dead person.
However, Cordelia remains the most prominent trickster figure in Cat’s Eye, though
she ultimately loses her trickster power to her victim. Elaine often describes her joking or
teasing (76). While she frequently disguises herself (78, 322), Cordelia also pretends she can
create poison with the deadly nightshades (79). Indeed, death figures prominently in Elaine’s
conversations with Cordelia. The latter tries to frighten her gullible friend: she tells her that
the stream which flows along the cemetery contains dissolved dead people (79). Young
Elaine, deeply impressed, strongly believes in this fiction. She feels attracted to death because
of its peacefulness (201). For a young girl, Cordelia strikes us as being strangely interested in
sexual matters. She somehow initiates Elaine into sexuality, explaining to her how babies are
made (98) and how boys kiss girls (99). Breasts fascinate her, as does menstrual blood (96,
97). Cordelia clearly enjoys possessing such knowledge, which gives her power over her
naïve friend. Slowly, Cordelia becomes attracted to the forbidden: she steals (224) and invents
elaborate swearwords (233, 244). From then on, a slow decline awaits Cordelia, which will
eventually bring her to the asylum. However, when Elaine comes to visit her, she notices that
some weak traces of Cordelia’s tricksterism still remain: “‘I can fool them any day,’ Cordelia
says, with a flicker of her old cunning. Of course, I think, she’s an actress. She can counterfeit
anything” (380). Yet, Elaine’s last meeting with Cordelia in the flesh offers us a picture of the
latter’s downfall.
One of the mottoes of The Robber Bride – “A rattlesnake that doesn’t bite teaches you
nothing” – draws the reader’s attention to the necessity of suffering in order to progress. Such
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is precisely the function of the trickster figure. By teasing the other characters, the trickster
makes them aware of their shortcomings. Similarly, by stealing each heroine’s male partner,
Zenia forces the three protagonists to face their weaknesses in order to start anew. Zenia
displays the characteristics of the trickster 8 : She enjoys chaos, disorder, turbulences,
exaggerations (3, 133), as, for example, when she takes revenge on her landlord by practically
destroying her flat (127). Other women regard her as a puzzle (3). From the beginning,
Atwood connects Zenia with the underworld, writing: “Zenia returns from the dead” (4). She
often wears disguises (411); she becomes the embodiment of “malign vitality” (10). She
seems capable of appearing and disappearing at will, as when she suddenly returns to the
Toxique (32). Tony, Charis, and Roz experience this event as a resurrection (37, 101). The
other characters consider her other than human (13) or regard her as a banshee (193), as a
predator (279, 286, 282), who likes hunting (37) – especially when it comes to other women’s
husbands. Tony considers Zenia as a vampire, since she mentions that Zenia cannot enter her
home unless invited (116); Charis treats her as a ghost, for the same reason (50). She enjoys
frightening people as well (189). At university, Zenia effortlessly obtains high grades. She is
“brilliant, and also fearsome. Wolfish, feral, beyond the pale” (132-133). A master of
illusions, Zenia succeeds in making men blind to her flaws (183, 380). She convinces Roz’s
husband to become her accomplice in stealing money from the firm (376). She also tricks
Charis, making her think she is dying of cancer, while she has simply cut out vitamins to
suffer from scurvy (426). Finally, she proves a marginal character, who lives “on the edges”
(182) and possessing numerous secrets (161-162). She calls herself a fox (368): she is proud
8 Hilde Staels already pointed out Zenia’s trickster qualities in her 1998 article “Metaphor and the Unconscious
in Atwood’s Cat’s Eye and The Robber Bride” (8-9). So did Ann Heilmann in her article “The Devil Herself?
Fantasy, Female Identity and the Villainess Fatale in The Robber Bride.” (181). See also Hilde Staels’s book on
Atwood: Margaret Atwood’s Novels. A Study of Narrative Discourse. (200-201). However, none of those studies
provide a full analysis of Atwood’s trickster figures, as I intend to produce in the present study.
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of her slyness, thus acknowledging her trickster-nature. Logically, she uses various identities
(455), as Roz’s detective soon discovers (372-373).
Through their contacts with Zenia, the three other female characters discover part of
their own trickster qualities. For instance, Tony’s ability to write backwards singles her out
(116). It bestows a certain power on her: “Which was the magic word, raw or war? Probably
it was the two of them together; the doubleness. That would have had high appeal, for Zenia”
(130). The passage clearly emphasises the similarities between Tony and Zenia. Indeed, Tony
too acts like a predator: as a historian, she knows the techniques of warfare and mentally
enjoys replaying battles (117). Tony loves her subject matter, because it involves “sheer
mischief,” “perverse joy,” “outrageousness” (170). This otherwise reserved academic displays
a cruel, animal-like quality. Whereas Tony Fremont behaves as an example of morality, her
inverted double, Tnomerf Ynot, enjoys swearwords: “They make her feel powerful, in charge
of something” (138-139). Similarly, like a real trickster, Tony favours darkness, imagining
she can “see things other people can’t see, witness nocturnal events, gain rare insights” (192).
She thus possesses some vision, which, combined with her friends’ trickster talent might
enable her to fight Zenia.
Likewise, Charis can be regarded as a trickster. Her intuitive knowledge enables her to
communicate with the afterworld (53, 263) and with the cycles of nature (201). She also
knows how to perform magical rituals (70, 263, 285, 286) and how to foresee the future (258,
272). For instance, she predicts her grandmother’s death (263); whose ghost she repeatedly
sees. Likewise, she prophesises Zenia’s death: she depicts Zenia as Jezebel falling from the
tower (286). Relying on her grandmother’s Bible as a guide. Haphazardly, Charis chooses a
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sentence, whose recurrence clearly alludes to a woman falling from a tall building – thus
foreboding Zenia’s fate.
One should keep in mind that Charis has inherited her power from her grandmother,
the only benevolent female character in her childhood. Charis’s grandmother embodies the
positive power of the trickster. As from the beginning of the novel, the reader understands the
strength of the bond between that woman and her granddaughter. Charis does not need words
to enlist her grandmother’s help (249), as this relative possesses the power to heal people
from a distance (249). Charis realises that this gift scares most people. She has inherited this
knowledge, though she temporarily dismisses it by getting rid of her alter-ego, Karen. Her
grandmother also teaches Charis not to fear death. Like Zenia, she is a hunter. However, she
kills chicken to eat them, not out of pure cruelty (251-252). Further, the grandmother also
knows how to predict the future with her Bible, a talent she teaches Charis as well (253). All
these details indicate that Charis has been partly educated by a trickster. Some elements of
this apprenticeship resurge in her, however hard she tries to repress them.
Even Roz, the most down-to-earth of the three women, behaves like a trickster. She
strikes the reader with her potential for violence and rage (73). Yet, Roz also puts on several
disguises. She intimates that her ever smiling face merely constitutes a mask (318). Knowing
that she lacks beauty, Roz decides to be smarter and funnier than the other girls. She becomes
a joker, who resorts to rudeness in order to attract attention (345-346, 394).
Like Charis, Roz has inherited tricksterism from her father, a mysterious figure,
always on the edge of legality; a shadow (320), a man with nine lives (318), “doing important
secret things” (320). His companions describe him as such:
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“The best horse thieves,” says Uncle Joe. “No. Your father, he was the best. He
could steal a horse…” “He could steal a horse from right between your legs, you
wouldn’t notice,” says Uncle George. “He could lie…” “He could lie like God
himself.” (…) “He could walk through a border like it wasn’t there,” says Uncle Joe.
(…) He shows Roz his passport, with his picture in it. Then he shows her another,
with the same picture but a different name. He has three of them (…) Uncle George
has four. (…) “Your father, he has more passports than anyone.” (331)
Roz’s father, a thief, a liar, a man with several identities, entertains numerous mistresses
(339), a feature illustrating the trickster’s avid sexual appetite. Among other achievements, he
teaches Roz to play poker (342). Like the trickster, who is both an unethical and a likeable
character, Roz’s father at once appears as a crook and a hero (348, 354). Despite his
dishonesty, Roz obviously loves her father: “She remembers her father, the old rascal; she’s
glad to know that his dubious talents were of service, because he’s still her favourite parent
and she welcomes the chance to think well of him” (362). However, when one examines
Roz’s character, she seems to have inherited the trickster’s positive traits rather than the
negative ones. This makes her unable to fight Zenia on her own: she lacks the cruelty and
voracity of a real predator.
At the end of The Robber Bride, Atwood alludes to the fascination induced by Zenia.
She identifies her as a “male fantasy.” Moreover, she intimates that Zenia has been
transformed through society’s expectations:
The Zenias of this world have studied this situation and turned it to their own
advantage; they haven’t let themselves be moulded into male fantasies, they’ve done
it themselves. They’ve slipped sideways into dreams; the dreams of women too,
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ecause women are fantasies for other women, just as they are for men. But
fantasies of a different kind. (392)
In this passage, Atwood clearly expresses the function of tricksters – and more precisely of
female tricksters – in a male-dominated world. In her view, becoming a trickster constitutes
yet another way of reacting against patriarchy. The woman turns into a “femme fatale,” not to
satisfy male desires, but to overpower them. Moreover, women themselves are conniving in
these sexual power politics.
As to the character of Zenia, it provides us with Atwood’s definition of the trickster.
She identifies Zenia as an “insubstantial” character, a “rumour” (461). Zenia, the magician,
performs tricks with mirrors – like Atwood herself – to make people see what they want to
see. Thanks to Tony’s search for an etymological explanation of Zenia, one learns that she is
at once a god’s daughter, a martyr, a shadow, a warrior, a queen, a stranger, a heretic, a
harem. However, Atwood’s last words remind us of the elusiveness of the trickster figure. She
concludes: “As for the truth about her, it lies out of reach, because – according to the records,
at any rate – she was never even born” (461). Through this analysis of the origins of Zenia’s
name, Atwood conveys the elusiveness of the trickster’s nature. The trickster constantly
wavers on the border between reality and imagination. It can exist only in that in-between
state, where human beings suspend their disbelief so much that they accept the possibility of
crossing the border between life and death. Therefore, the ancestral trickster figure embodies
the multiplicity and the hybridity of our postcolonial present.
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5. Hybridity of the Trickster Figure
All the protagonists of Cat’s Eye and The Robber Bride exhibit a powerful feeling of
inadequacy. All of them, to different degrees, meet social demands, while remaining
unsatisfied on a personal level. In this sense, Elaine and Cordelia, on the one hand, Tony,
Charis, Roz, and Zenia, on the other, can be regarded as twin sisters. However, some of them
have decided to become marginal, ex-centric characters, while others rather disguise their
“otherness” by resorting to deception and mimicry strategies.
At a very early age, Elaine realises that she radically differs from other little girls.
Watching old photographs, she compares herself with an immigrant (28), thereby emphasising
her “otherness.” She equally describes her brother as an alien individual (22-23, 308, 351).
For a while, Elaine shares his mysterious world, grasping its cryptic language (49). She
further intimates that the life of scientific research imposed on her by her father prevents her
from meeting other girls and thus from learning their pattern of behaviour. She recalls: “I’ve
never had any girl friends because I’ve never been in one place long enough” (29); and
further: “We’ve never gone to school for more than three or four months at a time anyway. I
was in school the last time eight months ago and have only dim and temporary ideas of what
it was like” (30). Elaine therefore experiences her family’s settlement in Toronto as a
claustrophobic shock which makes her feel “trapped” (33). Among her new school friends,
Elaine feels terrified to adopt the wrong kind of behaviour. She explains: “I’m not used to
girls, or familiar with their customs. I feel awkward around them, I don’t know what to say. I
know the unspoken rules of boys, but with girls I sense that I am always on the verge of some
unforeseen, calamitous blunder” (50, 254). Later, Elaine experiences the same discomfort
when becoming member of a feminist group (365, 371).
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Cordelia, Grace, and Carol soon become aware of Elaine’s weakness: they take
advantage of it with a refined cruelty. Elaine thus becomes an object of mockery for her
fellow pupils. Her friend Carol, for instance, immediately categorises her as an odd one:
“Carol tells everyone at school that our family sleeps on the floor. (…) She puts it around that
I don’t know what church I go to, and that we eat off a card table. She doesn’t repeat these
items with scorn, but as exotic specialties” (52). Elaine clearly qualifies as an “exotic,” a mark
of her difference. Her entrance into the world of school girls changes Elaine’s desires: she
starts wanting typically female objects that never interested her before. Simultaneously, she
believes the universe of girls less competitive than that of boys: there is no need to run fast or
climb high, she agrees (57). At this stage, though, she has not yet grasped the hypocrisies of
girls. Her father’s wish to return to the bush in the summer draws Elaine away from this new
environment (68, 71). When she comes back to Toronto in the winter, Elaine meets Cordelia,
who immediately treats her as one of her kind (75). From then on, Cordelia, Grace, and Carol
pester Elaine every day. They treat her as a person who needs to learn how to behave properly
(123). The whole process brings Elaine to the following conclusion: “I am not normal, I am
not like other girls. Cordelia tells me so, but she will help me. Grace and Carol will help me
too. It will take hard work and a long time” (125) – which induces her to accept victimisation
as a possible solution to her growing alienation. Her deepest fear consists in not knowing how
to behave or what to say (133, 148-149, 174). At that time, Elaine pities another character,
who, like her, feels socially ill-at-ease, namely her father’s student, Mr. Banerji. This young
man from India obliquely highlights Elaine’s hybridity. Like him, she does not know how to
handle social contacts, behaving as though she came from a far away country. Therefore, she
understands Mr. Banerji’s distress (169-170), providing the following explanation for their
similarity: “He’s a creature more like myself: alien and apprehensive. He’s afraid of us. He
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has no idea what we will do next, what impossibilities we will expect of him, what we will
make him eat. No wonder he bites his fingers”(138). Yet, there is more: Elaine attributes such
inadequacy to their “wildness” – which can be linked with her trickster-like nature:
Wild things are smarter than tame ones, that much is clear. Wild things are elusive and
wily and look out for themselves. I divide the people I know into tame and wild. My
mother, wild. My father and brother, also wild; Mr. Banerji, wild also, but in a more
skittish way. Carol, tame. Grace, tame as well, though with sneaky vestiges of wild.
Cordelia, wild, pure and simple. (138-139)
Quite logically, Elaine associates Cordelia and herself to wild animals, thereby
acknowledging the bond between them. She also stresses the similarities between her and the
rest of her family, thus regarding her “otherness” as an inherited feature. Atwood repeatedly
underlines Mr. Banerji’s hybridity by means of details: for instance, she mentions his wife’s
sari, showing under her dark Canadian wintercoat (266). Elaine dreams that Mr. Banerji and
Mrs. Finestein, her Jewish neighbour, are her real parents (178), thus once again revealing her
hybridity. Simultaneously, Atwood introduces the twin motif (179, 181), thereby hinting at
the connection between Elaine and Cordelia. By the end of the novel, Atwood summons the
characters who helped Elaine acknowledge her hybridity. Having become an adult, Elaine
remembers them with tenderness:
Mrs. Finestein, Miss Stuart from school, Mr. Banerji. Not as they were, to
themselves: God knows what they really saw in their own lives, or thought about.
Who knows what death camp ashes blew daily through the head of Mrs. Finestein,
in those years right after the war? Mr. Banerji probably could not walk down a street
here without dread, of a shove or some word whispered or shouted. Miss Stuart was
in exile, from plundered Scotland still declining, three thousand miles away. To
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them I was incidental, their kindness to me casual and minor; I’m sure they didn’t
give it a second thought, or have any idea of what it meant. (429)
By linking those three characters, who share different – Indian, Jewish, and Scottish – origins
Atwood underlines their importance in Elaine’s development. Each in their own way, these
protagonists provide Elaine with answers as to how to negotiate one’s “otherness.”
Like many hybrid individuals, Elaine suffers from a general feeling of unworthiness,
feeling she is “nothing,” as she puts it (43, 213). Cordelia’s constant nasty remarks aggravate
this all the more. Elaine finds a way of becoming insensitive, acquiring the habit of peeling
the skin off her feet at night (120). The pain caused by such compulsive mutilation allows her
to focus her attention on something else than the bullying of other children. Elaine’s pain
becomes so heavy that the protagonist experiences fragmentation: she often alludes to parts of
her body as though they did not really belong to her (125). She feels invisible (166), going as
far as to consider suicide (166).
At school, Elaine also discovers another kind of “otherness.” Her teacher explains that
they are both Britons and Canadians, with the insinuation that Canadians are not real Britons
(84). Likewise, her friend Grace Smeath implies that her church – the one Elaine does not
belong to – surpasses all others (101). Later on, Mrs. Smeath openly criticises Elaine for her
lack of religious education, which she attributes to her parents (192, 193). However, Elaine
comes to realise that Mrs. Smeath was only another displaced person, like herself, who tried
to claim her place within Canadian society through religious fanaticism (427).
As a young adult, Elaine continues to flirt with hybridity, her first lover, Mr. Hrbik,
hailing from Eastern Europe (291, 299). She resents the mockery of other students, because
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they point to Hrbik’s “otherness:” “They call him a D.P., which means displaced person, an
old insult I remember from high school. It was what you called refugees from Europe, and
those who were stupid and uncough and did not fit in. They mimic his accent, and the way he
talks about the body” (299). Such treatment probably unconsciously reminds Elaine of the
pesterings she underwent as a child. Hrbik sums up the complexity of hybridisation when he
tells Elaine: “I come from a country that no longer exists, (…) and you come from a country
that does not yet exist” (324). Though overtly romanticised, Hrbik’s statement points to his
own and Elaine’s difficulties to find their place in society. Hrbik also offers Elaine a chance to
discover the liminal world of artists: Elaine enjoys her evening classes with Hrbik. She feels
ill-at-ease among university students: indeed, she intuitively senses that she belongs to the
world of art students, of marginality (294). Being a woman artist makes her even more
eccentric (366, 367).
Even later, as a mature artist, she still calls herself “transitional” (5), as if not being
able to determine her real personality. Moreover, the very thought of becoming an eccentric
or slightly crazy old lady scares her (6, 408). Returning to Toronto, a city she has lived in for
years, Elaine admits feeling lost (14). All those reflections, situated at the beginning of the
narrative, suggest Elaine’s discomfort with the adult she has become. Her awkwardness
justifies the journey for self-knowledge she is about to engage on. Even at the gallery, among
women who admire her, she feels as if belonging to another species (92). She describes
herself as “peripheral” (371), “not totally glued together” (380), “watching from the sidelines”
(401), “disembodied” (436) in a word, “Other.”
In addition, one should bear in mind the symbolic value of names in Atwood’s work.
As mentioned above, “Cordelia” refers to the third, rejected daughter in Shakespeare’s King
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Lear. Therefore, Cordelia should also be considered in terms of “otherness.” She is, after all,
the despised, younger sister, who fails to give her father the expected answer. Far from the
image she wants to give to other children – that of a self-confident, well-mannered little girl –
Cordelia directly counters her father’s expectations. One might therefore regard her cruel
behaviour to Elaine and her subsequent breakdown as symptoms of her inner trouble. Elaine
gives us a clue as to the interpretation of Cordelia, when she says: “there is never only one, of
anyone” (6). The novel ends on a note which underlines the highly personal dimension of
hybridity. Indeed, thinking of Cordelia, Elaine reflects: “She will have her own version. I am
not the center of her story, because she herself is that. But I could give her something you can
never have, except from another person: what you look like from outside. A reflection. This is
the part of herself I could give back to her. We are like the twins in old fables, each of whom
has been given half a key” (434). With this comment, Elaine implies that each individual must
pursue a personal quest for their hybridity. As examined in the previous chapters, such a
quest, though it involves similar stages, may present variations due to the personal features of
each character. However, Elaine also suggests that the quest must not necessarily be
performed in isolation. Indeed, she believes that one also reaches self-knowledge through the
other’s gaze.
Likewise, The Robber Bride develops the theme of “otherness,” although it offers an
altogether different outcome. A closer look at the main characters soon enables one to identify
them as hybrid individuals. Tony’s ambidextrous talent (8) and cryptic inverted language (19)
make her stand out as “other.” So do her physical appearance – she is petite – and her position
as a woman among her male colleagues (22). Tony explains how her ability to write
backwards relates to her feeling of “otherness” in the following terms:
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TNOMERF YNOT. This name had a Russian or Martian sound to it, which pleased
her. It was the name of an alien, or a spy. Sometimes it was the name of a twin, an
invisible twin; and when Tony grew up and learned more about left-handedness she
was faced with the possibility that she might in fact have been a twin, the left-
handed half of a divided egg, the other half of which had died. But when she was
little her twin was merely an invention, the incarnation of her sense that part of her
was missing. (137)
Once again, Atwood resorts to the twin’s leitmotiv to indicate her heroine’s incompleteness
(191, 405). Tony strikes people with her physical oddity: “Her face doesn’t go with the outfit.
(…) Her eyes, intelligent, compassionate, and bleak, seem to belong to some other face” (28).
The author stresses her character’s “otherness,” by associating her to a foreign nationality:
“They tell her she is almost Chinese. Only almost, though. Almost is what she has always felt;
approximate” (36). In this passage, Tony clearly expresses her lack of self-confidence. Later,
she adds that she feels “like a Martian on a time-travel holiday” (62), i.e. totally out of place,
disorientated. As a historian, Tony often alludes to the mixtures of people and territories she
explores in her field of study (111, 112). Yet, she herself remains isolated (115), feeling like
the protagonist of Cat’s Eye, uncomfortable among other girls (115). Tony partly derives her
difference from her rather peculiar mother. Indeed, Anthea resembles a “femme fatale” like
Zenia rather than a benevolent mother (136). Like Cordelia’s father, she also makes it clear to
Tony that she is not satisfied with her (138). Hence Tony’s perennial inferiority complex. Her
father too looks down on Tony because she is not a boy (145). Her parents’ feelings towards
her cause Tony to feel alienated in her own house: “So Tony is a foreigner, to her own
mother; and to her father also, because, although she talks the same way he does, she is – and
he has made this clear – not a boy. Like a foreigner, she listens carefully, interpreting. Like a
foreigner she keeps an eye out for sudden hostile gestures. Like a foreigner she makes
mistakes” (145). One senses the same fear of misbehaving that characterizes the heroine of
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Cat’s Eye. Her mother eventually runs away, leaving Tony alone with her feelings of anxiety
and emptiness (154).
Charis suffers from another kind of hybridity. A victim of sexual abuse in her youth,
she has managed to live on, obliterating completely that aspect of her life (263, 264). She has
focused all her energy on becoming a positive person, who lives a healthy life. To get rid of
her bad memories definitively, Charis decides to create a mental picture of herself throwing
her double away in Lake Ontario (265). However, Zenia’s violent attack will cause Charis’s
dark side, the silent Karen, to resurface. Symptomatically, Karen remains speechless, as
Charis has deprived her of her voice (263).
Charis also addresses the problem of hybridity in her relationship with her boss,
Shanita, a minor character allowing Atwood to introduce comments on racialism. Charis
recalls this episode:
People coming into the store frequently ask Shanita where she’s from. “Right here,”
she says, smiling her ultra-bright smile. “I was born right in this very city!” She’s
nice about it to their faces, but it’s a question that bothers her a lot. “I think they
mean where were your parents from,” says Charis, because that’s what Canadians
usually mean when they ask that question. “That’s not what they mean,” says
Shanita. “What they mean is, when am I leaving.” (57)
In this short passage, Atwood addresses a topic that lies at the core of postcolonial studies,
namely the notion of the difference between “them” and “us” (Bhabha, Location, 103, 117;
Brydon, “Atwood’s Global Ethic”). Although she was born in Toronto, Shanita strikes people
as being physically different. Her visible “otherness” attracts people’s curiosity. Nevertheless,
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Shanita’s reaction indicates that she resents their questions as racial aggressions. However,
Shanita often lies about her roots, teasing Charis by changing them at will: Chinese, black,
West Indian, American, Canadian, Pakistani, Ojibway, Mayan, Tibetan, or even Scottish (57).
Charis does not know which story she must believe.
Charis’s own hybridity extends beyond the purely racial. It consists in a sort of
clumsiness, a difficulty to determine the boundary between herself and the outer world (63).
Charis calls herself “slippery and translucent,” though also “contagious and better left alone”
(119), not knowing what normality means (208). At school, she manages to become invisible,
like many Atwoodian heroines (256), often failing to understand what people tell her. She
suffers from somnambulism, like her grandmother (235, 245). Moreover, like many of
Atwood’s “Others,” Charis believes she was “born to the wrong parents” (119). Her
grandmother, who intuitively understands such matters, tells her that “such people have to
look for a long time, they have to search out and identify their right parents. Or else they have
to go through life without” (233). Therefore, Charis feels like an orphan without actually
being one (234). Her grandmother explains her hybrid origins to Charis: “Part Scotch, part
English, part Mennonite, and part of whatever her father was” (250).
Quite logically, Charis falls in love with Billy, a stranger, like her – more precisely a
draft dodger in exile in Canada (209, 210). Through him, Charis comes into contact with the
underground world of marginals and illegal workers (213, 215). When she discovers her
pregnancy, she knows for sure who the father is. Yet, she has other doubts: is she, Karen or
else Zenia the baby’s mother (266)?
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Roz presents the reader with yet another form of hybridity. Atwood often uses the
words “Immigrant,” or “refugee” to characterise her. Once again, the problem of the
difference between “them” and “us” plagues Atwood’s heroine. She ponders:
But things are getting more confusing: for instance, how many immigrants can you
fit in? How many of them can you handle, realistically, and who is them, and where
do you draw the line? The mere fact that Roz is thinking this way shows the extent
of the problem, because Roz knows very well what it’s like to be them. By now,
however, she is us. It makes a difference. (100)
Indeed, though Roz claims to have become a real Canadian, she also recalls her parents’
arrival in the New World, by boat (305). This memory of her origins causes her to develop an
inferiority complex, fostered by her parents, who treat her like a cripple (313). She remembers
the other name she adopted during the war to hide her Jewish origins (318). Like Elaine in
Cat’s Eye, she mentions DP children, feeling somehow related to them (324). Such a
comparison leads her to try to define her “otherness.” She recalls:
There was something about her that set her apart, an invisible barrier, faint and hardly
there, like the surface of water, but strong nevertheless. Roz didn’t know what it was
but she could feel it. She wasn’t like the others, she was among them but she wasn’t
part of them. So she would push and shove, trying to break her way in. (325)
Though this description remains vague, it reminds us of the feeling of inadequacy experienced
by other Atwoodian characters. At that time, the young Roz cannot yet grasp the causes of her
alterity. She gradually comes to understand her difference, when other children voice nasty
remarks on her religion and on her father’s origins (329). This latter’s sudden return changes
Roz’s vision of herself altogether: indeed, she is the daughter of a DP (332). Roz’s experience
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at the nuns' school has an unexpected effect: when she eventually enters a Jewish school at
last, the other children regard her as odd again because of her Catholic background:
There are a lot of Jewish kids at Roz’s new school; in fact at this school Jewish is
the thing to be. But whereas once Roz was not Catholic enough, now she isn’t
Jewish enough. She’s an oddity, a hybrid, a strange half-person. Her clothes,
although expensive, are subtly not right. Her accent is not right either. Her
enthusiams are not right, nor her skills (…) she’s too big; also too loud, too clumsy,
too eager to please. (…) She finds herself in a foreign country. She’s an immigrant,
a displaced person (344).
Once again, the protagonist’s main trouble relates to “otherness.” She cannot compete with
other girls, because this time, she is not Jewish enough (344-345). In the midst of such
distress, one understands how easily Roz becomes the prey of Zenia. The latter tricks her by
making her believe that she knew her father and considered him a hero.
Despite the deceptiveness of her stories, Zenia provides the reader a background which
clearly points to her hybridity. 9 To Tony, she pretends to be a White Russian refugee who
grew up in Paris (163-164), appealing to Tony’s passion for historical facts. To Charis, she
presents herself as a Romanian gypsy (227, 271), playing on Charis’s own ex-centric social
position and on her belief in superstitions. In order to flatter Roz, she claims her mother had
Jewish grandparents (360, 361). Finally, she seduces West imitating the exoticism of a Greek
immigrant (406).
9 Staels states that Zenia embodies her victims’ “otherness,” the rejected aspect of their personality. She
illustrates this through Charis’s gradual understanding that Zenia embodies Karen, her repressed side. I would
add that, though the process takes place at an unconscious level, Zenia produces the same effects on her two
other victims: to Tony, she is the equivalent of the little abandoned girl of her childhood; to Roz, she represents
the half-Jewish girl regarded as other by both the Jewish and the Catholic community. (Staels, Margaret
Atwood’s Novels. 198.)
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Far from simply demonstrating Zenia’s talent for deception, such elements prove that
hybridity functions as a key-concept in Atwood’s work. Yet, one would be wrong to reduce
this hybridity to mere racial concerns. Besides proclaiming her hybrid origins, Zenia
particularly fools her three victims by pretending to have endured the very same hardship that
brought about their hybridisation. Indeed, Zenia above all tells Tony that her mother
abandoned her too (163). She appeals to Charis’s compassion, inventing that her mother was
stoned to death for witchcraft, thus reminding Charis of her own grandmother’s powers.
Finally, she provides Roz with the only thing she has always been looking for, i.e. a positive
image of her father as a war hero. Zenia’s tactics therefore show us that hybridity does not
necessarily refer to the heroines’ cultural background. Rather, hybridity can be found further
away, in childhood, at the time when the heroines had to construct their personality in spite of
their parents’ shortcomings. Most importantly, Zenia proves that “otherness” can be a positive
force, one that enables the protagonist to move on. 10
6. Double Quests: Between Failure and Resurrection
One of the reasons why I decided to deal with Cat’s Eye and The Robber Bride in the same
chapter lies in their structural similarities. Indeed, in both narratives, the protagonists engage
on a first quest which results in failure because they somehow refuse to face their real
10 Shannon Hengen expresses the same idea when she writes: “Zenia’s foreignness, her difference, is precisely
what each of the other three main characters must come to understand, and that difference is as powerful as any
other force in their lives.” (Hengen “Zenia’s Foreignness” 278). However, Hengen highlights Zenia’s racial
foreignness, whereas my point is that “otherness” might also be found elsewhere in the protagonists’
background, for instance, in the traumas they experienced in their early formative years. As far as the question of
nationality is concerned, I favour Coral Ann Howells’s view of The Robber Bride as Atwood’s redefinition of
Canadianness in the postcolonial era (Howells “The Robber Bride; or, Who Is a True Canadian?” 100).
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problem. The reader then catches up with them years later, when events force them to begin
another, more successful journey towards self-knowledge. In this section, I shall briefly
examine the various stages of what I refer to as “a double quest.”
The opening lines of Cat’s Eye suggest the importance of time in the heroine’s
development, as well as the necessity to re-access one’s past in order to evolve. Atwood
introduces the idea of time travel, thus echoing the structure of the novel itself, which relies
on Elaine’s reminiscences of her childhood. To explain the process undergone by the heroine,
Atwood writes: “Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. If you can
bend space you can bend time also, and if you knew enough and could move faster than light
you could travel backward in time and exist in two places at once” (3). The latter exactly
happens to Elaine as she returns to Toronto and simultaneously rediscovers her long silenced
memories. As before in Atwood’s work, “surfacing” constitutes the key term. Once she has
started on her journey, the protagonist allows her memories to come to the surface (3), as in a
dream. She remembers her friend Cordelia, imagining what she might have become thirty
years later. Such thoughts prompt old compulsive habits to resurge: Elaine starts chewing her
fingers again (9). Elaine Risley’s return to Toronto constitutes the first stage of her quest. She
realises that she has reached the middle of her life. Although she should therefore feel more
confident, she does not. On the contrary, she considers herself insubstantial, about to dissolve
and to descend into the layers of her own self (13). She also mentions the reason of her stay in
Toronto: a retrospective exhibition (15, 16), i.e. another sort of flashback. Elaine then begins a
long parenthesis, in which she narrates her first, unsuccessful quest. Its aim was to acquire the
right to exist in the society of the time, despite her “otherness.” As in the present, Elaine
started her first quest by arriving in Toronto. There, she is confronted to the evil of other girls,
who take advantage of her ignorance of female relationships. Elaine’s brother plays the role of
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her green guide, initiating her to the mysteries of modern physics. He leads her through the
second stage of her quest, until, after a return from the summer vacations, Elaine meets
Cordelia, thus entering stage three, that of the encounter with the trickster. From then on,
Elaine silently endures Cordelia’s pesterings. Elaine’s sufferings culminate in two scenes. The
first one is a ritual scene of pseudo burial orchestrated by Cordelia in her backyard. The
protagonist experiences what might have been a moment of epiphany as the evidence of her
loss of power (112-113). Later on, her friends’ attempt to abandon her, tied to a tree, down in
the ravine, causes her to go through an almost mystic experience: a vision of the Holy Virgin.
Elaine obviously fails to achieve a more adequate inner knowledge, looking once again for
help from outside instead of relying on her own strength. Yet, the shock enables her to set
aside her victim status and to regain some strength in order to go on with her life. Though
Elaine has tried to live a normal life, the reader understands that her childhood experiences
still bother her. Her dreams, for instance, offer a clear expression of her general feeling of
helplessness. She confides: “I dream that I can’t move. I can’t talk, I can’t even breathe. I’m
in an iron lung” (268). Elaine evidently needs to find how to escape inertia.
Back in Toronto years later, Elaine restarts her quest from the beginning. Her cat’s eye
serves her as a token of power along her journey. Simultaneously, the ghostly presence of the
ten-year-old Cordelia and of her imaginary adult version compels her to tackle the problem of
her social inadequacies. Elaine remembers how she gradually traded places with Cordelia. 11
While she gained power and naughtiness, Cordelia slowly declined until she almost lost her
mind. However, Elaine’s quest remains incomplete, until she eventually realises her own
mother’s helplessness in the face of those childish tortures. In a moving scene, Elaine’s
11 Judith McCombs examines the politics of the relationships between self and other in Cat’s Eye, focussing on
the mirroring effect that takes place between Elaine and Cordelia (McCombs “Contrary Re-Memberings” 16).
Staels also analyses Elaine and Cordelia’s relationships in terms of sisterhood (twins) and mirror images. (Staels
“Metaphor and the Unconscious in Atwood’s Cat’s Eye and The Robber Bride” 10-11).
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mother, aware of her approaching death, empties the cellar with her daughter while
remembering her youth. She then confesses her former knowledge of the hardships Elaine
endured and apologises for her inability to help her at the time (417). At the end of the scene,
Elaine retrieves her marble. She says: “I look into it, and see my life entire” (420), indicating
that she has made a major step towards wholeness. However, her quest is not yet completed.
As she revisits her former school, Elaine exclaims: “Get me out of this, Cordelia. I’m locked
in. I don’t want to be nine years old forever” (422). She experiences her real moment of
epiphany at the art gallery. Facing one of her paintings, Elaine suddenly acquires knowledge.
She explains: “she is the Virgin of Lost Things. Between her hands, at the level of her heart,
she holds a glass object: an oversized cat’s eye marble, with a blue center” (430). She
understands that the loss of her alter-ego Cordelia pains her deeply. She secretly wishes to see
her enter the gallery on the opening night. She considers her absence as a loss. Later on, she
acknowledges that the Holy Virgin she has been searching for in all her trips abroad was a
construction of her own mind:
There was no voice. No one came walking on air down from the bridge, there was
no lady in a dark cloak bending over me. Although she has come back to me now in
absolute clarity, acute in every detail, the outline of her hooded shape against the
lights from the bridge, the red of her heart from within the cloak, I know this didn’t
happen. There was only darkness and silence. Nobody and nothing. (442)
In the last sentences of the novel, Elaine admits the sorrow caused by the failure of her
friendship with Cordelia: “This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but
something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea” (445). Elaine’s
quest thus ends on a mitigated note: on the one hand, she now knows the cause of her distress,
i.e. her difficulty to acknowledge the aggressive, wild aspect of her own personality,
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symbolised by her enigmatic doppelgänger Cordelia. Moreover, one senses that this discovery
will enable her to become a more serene individual. On the other hand, Cordelia remains
missing.
The Robber Bride exhibits an identical pattern of “double quest”. The difference lies in the
novel’s variations on the quest motif along three distinct lines. Indeed, three highly different
characters become united in a resolute fight against their common enemy, Zenia. These three
women have experienced a traumatic moment in their youth: Tony was abandoned by her
mother; Charis was abused by her uncle; and Roz was exposed to the other children’s
mockery because of her immigrant father. The women managed to obliterate their early
traumas: Tony became a brilliant academic; Charis turned to new age philosophy; whereas
Roz ended up as a wealthy and efficient business woman and a loving mother. In their attempt
to be appreciated, they all lost a man to Zenia, a multi-faceted “femme fatale.” As the novel
begins, the three protagonists meet at the Toxique to discuss a great disaster, Zenia’s return
from the afterworld. Indeed, they recall having attended Zenia’s burial. Zenia’s sudden
apparition surprises them in the extreme. Moreover, it forces them to reconsider the nature of
their relationship with her. Each then engages on a journey in the past in order to understand
why they were so easily fooled by Zenia. In the second stage of their quest, each of them
recalls a happy time in the company of their embodiment of the green-world lover (West,
Billie, and Mitch). They subsequently remember the third stage, namely their encounter with
the trickster, Zenia. The latter presented each of them with a different version of herself, most
likely to appeal to their weakness. Simultaneously an orphan, a severely ill gypsy, and a girl
persecuted on false pretences, she manages to steal each woman’s husband. The heroines
therefore examine their past more closely, searching for the reasons of their weaknesses.
Rediscovering their own hidden demons, in an epiphanic dream (chapter fifty), they come to
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grasp that their social shortcomings should be examined in relation to childhood events and to
their parents. This traditionally constitutes the fourth stage of the quest pattern, namely the
confrontation with parental figures, which, in this case, undoubtedly possesses an epiphanic
quality. They eventually find the strength to confront Zenia, thereby eliminating her
definitively. Although the character of Zenia eventually remains an enigma, one might
conclude that The Robber Bride offers a much more definite ending than Cat’s Eye, of which
the outcome remains uncertain. The Robber Bride thus constitutes an exception among
Atwood’s often open-ended narratives.
***
As I already mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, I regard Cat’s Eye and The Robber
Bride as the most representative illustrations of my theory concerning Atwood’s postcolonial
stance. Indeed, several elements require an examination from this point of view. The fact, for
instance, that Elaine Risley appropriates the work of European masters to produce her own
parodic reinterpretations provides us with one of the most convincing examples of
postcolonial rewriting of the cultural past. 12 Likewise, the twins’ feminisation of fairy-tales in
The Robber Bride strikes the reader as a highly effective and original way of introducing a
subversion of patriarchal values into the novel.
Likewise, both novels confirm my theory that deception plays a crucial role in
Atwood’s work. All main characters in both narratives rely on deceptive strategies, either to
conceal their “otherness,” or to denounce other people’s shortcomings. Moreover, they also
make extensive use of mimicry strategies in order to satisfy patriarchal demands. Even so-
12 See Brydon “The Thematic Ancestor.”
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called eccentric characters, such as Cordelia and Zenia, do not escape mimicry processes:
Cordelia does her best to please her particularly demanding father, whereas Zenia endeavours
to produce an image of herself that corresponds to male and female fantasies.
Magic realism pervades the two narratives, providing the heroine with an in-between
space of introspection. Elaine experiences several moments of epiphany: in the impressive
burial scene, where she becomes aware of her apathy; later in the ravine, where she finds a
way of returning to life, and ultimately, at the art gallery, where past and present merge in the
hysterical apparition of a Mrs. Smeath-like figure. Similarly, the heroines of The Robber
Bride eventually face their personal failures in dreams, before confronting the uncanny
character of Zenia. Throughout the novel, the latter succeeds in preserving her aura of
mystery. Regarded in turn as a ghost, a victim, an evil force, and an enigma, Zenia definitely
qualifies as a magic realist apparition, capable of crossing the boundary between life and
death.
Among their multiple personalities, Cordelia and Zenia easily identify as highly
powerful tricksters. For Cordelia, such a definition mostly applies in the first part of the novel.
Later on, she trades places with Elaine, who acquires part of her power. In The Robber Bride,
Zenia apparently remains powerful throughout. Further, one might conveniently interpret
Zenia as an embodiment of Evil. Yet, one must keep in mind that Atwood herself regards the
trickster figure as a potentially positive force which causes characters to evolve. Indeed, in an
interview with Hilde Staels about The Robber Bride, Atwood explains:
As we all know from watching the opera Tales of Hoffmann, you can’t do without
your shadow. We also know that trickster gods are the gods of thievery, the gods of
deception and they are also the gods of communication and for that reason the
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trickster is the messenger of the gods. Zenia is a shape changer, a protean character
as trickster figures are. Mercury is the fastest planet. People wonder why it is the
trickster god who is the messenger of the gods. Well, probably because the messages
are ambiguous. But such figures are also catalysts for change: they get the plot
going. Without Mercury there is no movement. 13
Thereby, Atwood considers Zenia – and the trickster figure in general – as essential elements
of her novels. Besides, the other three main characters of the novel embody various aspects of
the trickster: Tony displays its slyness; Charis, its knowledge of the supernatural; and Roz, its
sense of humour. Moreover, they were all confronted in their youth to a negative feature of
the trickster: Tony suffered from her mother’s deception; Charis endured her uncle’s sexual
appetite, whereas Roz had to cope with her father’s marginality.
Once again, most of the characters suffer from an undefined feeling of “otherness:”
Elaine’s early childhood in the bush alienates her from the world of little girls; Tony feels too
small and lacks femininity; Charis has completely silenced her alter-ego Karen; Roz shows
difficulties to adjust either to a Jewish or to a Catholic school. Zenia too astonishes the
readers with her assumed marginality. They all express their difficulty to cope with their
difference, because they refuse to acknowledge the hidden, hybrid part of themselves.
Therefore, both narratives are structured as a double quest: after a first failed quest started
years ago, the protagonists eventually come to face their real inner trouble in a present-day
search for explanations.
13 Atwood in an interview with Hilde Staels. (Staels, Margaret Atwood’s Novels. 210).
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Cat’s Eye further offers us another example of Atwood’s ecological concern,
expressed through the voice of Elaine’s father. Because Atwood regards the novel as a
fictitious autobiography, 14 she was certainly inspired by her own father’s personality when
portraying Elaine’s father. Both Elaine’s and Atwood’s fathers are scientists, who spend half
of the year in the bush conducting research. The father figure shows a great respect for nature,
which he tries to inculcate in his children at a very early age (23). His passion for the world of
insects leads him to condemn the harmful effects of insecticides. His admiration for nature
also turns him into a pessimist, who considers that mankind will cause its own destruction in
an atomic holocaust (70-71) or because of pollution (231, 307, 350, 418). The novel further
contains brief and ludicrous allusions to the dangers of cloning. Elaine’s father mentions, for
instance, the possibility of creating turkeys with four drumsticks, square tomatoes, or naked
chicken (139). He also regularly expresses his concern regarding the extinction of various
animal species and his fear of a new world epidemic (266). Though such comments in Cat’s
Eye constitute no more than a means of characterising Elaine’s father as a scientist and ex-
centric, these ideas nonetheless matter to Atwood. Indeed, in Atwood’s 2003 Oryx and Crake,
they constitute the main theme: this novel takes place against the background of the
destruction of the human kind by a megalomaniac scientist. Though it remains more
embryonic, one might consider Charis’s deep respect for nature in The Robber Bride as
another variation on this theme. Atwood’s subsequent novel, Alias Grace, abandons the
ecological theme to develop even further the theme of the supernatural, thereby allowing the
trickster figure to reach its full power.
14 Atwood scholar Nathalie Cooke has examined the implications of what she calls the “autobiographical
illusion” in Cat’s Eye (Cooke, “Reading Reflections: The Autobiographical Illusion in Cat’s Eye,” 162, 164). I
totally agree with her idea that Atwood fools readers, making them believe that Cat’s Eye gives an account of
her own childhood. Rather, Atwood presents us with a novel in which she challenges the traditional conventions
of autobiography. Simultaneously, she draws the reader’s attention to the status of the novel as a fictional
construct.
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Chapter 6. Deceptive Patterns in Alias Grace or the
Narrator as Quilter
“I was shut up inside that doll of
myself, and my true voice could not
get out” (295).
Alias Grace is of paramount importance to this study as a work of fiction which contains
elements drawn from historical reality. Indeed, it relies on the true story of Grace Marks, a
young servant who was judged for murder in nineteenth-century Canada. The novel addresses
various themes, such as class, gender, psychoanalysis, duplicity, history, and ethnicity. Alias
Grace constitutes an ideal subject for the study of deception in Margaret Atwood’s work,
because it features the series of five elements which have been identified above as constitutive
characteristics of my theoretical framework on deception: metafictional and parodic elements,
mimicry, magic realism, trickster figures, and hybrid characters. Some of these elements have
already been mentioned by other critics in relation to the novel. Sharon Wilson, for instance,
describes Alias Grace as follows: “a feminist, postmodern and postcolonial metafiction”
(Wilson, “Quilting” 122). Wilson further alludes to the existence of magic realism in the
novel. She also states that the novel criticises colonial attitudes in nineteenth-century Canada.
By using the quilting metaphor, Atwood draws our attention to the construction of a story,
which involves “sewing” together different pieces or versions of the facts. The quilting
metaphor thus proves highly metafictional as well. Wilson describes it as follows: “Atwood
uses the unique image of quilting to represent the piecing together of different stories into a
new pattern, in this case a pattern that questions master patterns and, by implication, all
patterns” (Wilson, “Quilting” 123). This quote introduces the idea that the narrative also
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functions as a criticism of patriarchy. Moreover, both Wilson and Rogerson point to the fact
that quilting constitutes a typically female activity and, traditionally, an occasion for women
to meet and exchange ideas, among which their frustrations in relation to a male dominated
society (Wilson, “Quilting” 125; Rogerson 11). Readers are equally expected to move through
the novel “quilting” their own interpretation of the story, a real challenge indeed. One could
regard the quilting metaphor as a unique expression of the female voice. Rogerson further
draws a link between this female voice and deceptiveness when she describes quilting as “a
language in which women’s secrets can be shared with other women but concealed from
men” (Rogerson 11). Quilting thus relates to deception and concealment. Rogerson further
mentions that Dr. Jordan, as a man, significantly fails to interpret these patterns (Rogerson
15). Further, quilting features a multiplicity of meanings and interpretations which makes it a
truly postmodern motif. As to the presence of trickster figures in the novel, Wilson mentions
that Jeremiah the Peddler’s intervention may be a mere trick (Wilson, “Quilting” 132); yet,
she does not analyse the character’s potentialities as a trickster figure. Part of my own study
of the novel will examine this feature, as well as Grace’s potential role as a trickster. These
aspects will be examined in the light of Linda Hutcheon’s previously mentioned concept of
historiographic metafiction, focusing on Grace’s duplicitous behaviour and on her trickster-
like qualities. Grace constantly plays on her duplicitous personality. Her behaviour is
encouraged by her doctor’s readiness to believe her, and by society, which has already judged
her. She thus constitutes an ideal trickster figure, her personality constantly verging on the
dividing line between reality and fantasy and featuring clear magic realist characteristics.
Another character should also be taken into account: Jeremiah the peddler, a fooler, who
accompanies Grace at significant moments of her life. This character could also be regarded
as a trickster. Further, I intend to provide a reading of the novel which draws attention to the
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underlying quest pattern undergone by the heroine, viewing it as a mode of expression of the
character’s hybridity.
1. Fictionalising Historical Documents
Alias Grace is indubitably Atwood’s most metafictional novel. Indeed, the author’s
manipulation of historical data appears quite logical, since the story contains numerous gaps
and possibilities for misinterpretation. The novel being no history book, Atwood, on the one
hand, naturally made use of a series of available documents about the person of Grace Marks
and about her history, but, on the other hand, she also had to invent a whole range of details,
which cannot be deduced from historical accounts, and, most significantly, she provides the
reader with her personal interpretation of the facts.
In her afterword to the story, Atwood situates her production as a work of fiction,
nevertheless based on reality. She underlines the sensational and scandalous character of the
murders, implying that much that was written on Grace Marks at the time of the facts was
biased information because of the popularity of the events and of Grace’s female condition.
For instance, Atwood alludes to Susanna Moodie’s portrayal of Marks and qualifies it as
“melodramatic”, erroneous and influenced by literary works. Of Moodie’s account, Atwood
writes: “Moodie can’t resist the potential for literary melodrama, and the cutting of Nancy’s
body into four quarters is not only pure invention but pure Harrison Ainsworth. The influence
of Dickens’ Oliver Twist – a favourite of Moodie’s – is evident in the tale of the bloodshot
eyes that were said to be haunting Grace Marks” (464). This quotation indicates Atwood’s
critical approach to historical documents.
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Yet, the author readily admits having “fictionalized historical events” (466). She
explains this by alluding to the contradictory character of the information available. Indeed,
Atwood mentions that many commentators of the time obviously indulged in the temptation
to fictionalise Grace’s story, and that, therefore, very few facts about Grace Marks are known
for sure (466-467). The writer claims having searched for the most likely course of events
every time this was possible, feeling free to invent each time she found gaps in the historical
records (467). Starting from this explanation by the author herself, the novel consists of a
mixture of historical documents and fictional events, which makes it very interesting to study
in relation to the notion of historiographic metafiction mentioned above. Yet, in examining
this blend of facts and fiction, this analysis will try to highlight that the author’s choice of
historical documents clearly aims at developing her own vision of Grace Marks as a female
marginal subject in a male-dominated society, thus revealing a feminist and postcolonial
interpretation of historical data. Therefore, Atwood’s depiction of Grace Marks remains above
all a literary production which illustrates the author’s personal thesis. Looking objectively, it
deceives the reader into adopting Atwood’s own opinion on Grace.
The first historical document used by Atwood in the novel is one of Susanna Moodie’s
accounts of Grace Marks, which serves as an introduction to the first chapter. Quotes of
Moodie’s work recur in the novel, Moodie representing the voice of society. This first account
strikes the reader because it emphasises Marks’ female condition, the notoriety of her case, as
well as the notion of guilt and of society’s established values such as morality. Moodie’s
comment clearly reflects society’s idea of Grace Marks. The next quote, a haiku
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poem by Basho, 1 alludes to the painfulness of the world. The flowers mentioned here can be
interpreted as a metaphor for Grace, since the chapter narrates her life in prison. Yet, the pain
alluded to should not be regarded as an expression of Grace’s feelings as a prisoner. Indeed,
according to one of the essential teachings of Buddhism, one should become free of human
desires in order to escape from pain and sufferings. 2 Therefore, Grace’s condition, which
keeps her away from human contact, should eventually induce the disappearance of pain. By
relating these two aspects so closely, Atwood indicates that the official version of the facts is
necessarily a biased one.
Two historical documents introduce the second chapter of the book: a newspaper
clipping commenting on McDermott’s execution and a list of punishments inflicted on the
prisoners of Kingston Penitentiary in the nineteenth century. Both documents reveal the
violence and cruelty of which women – both respectable and convicted ones – can be capable.
Indeed, the reader easily establishes a parallel between respectable women’s cruel attitude at
McDermott’s execution and convicted women’s violence. Further, the second document
highlights the hardships of life in prison by mentioning the severe punishment undergone by
women convicts. Finally, both documents, though highly different in kind, express that
nineteenth-century society’s common view of women might be erroneous: the bourgeois
women attending the execution lack delicacy and refinement. So does the convict’s offence of
“threatening to knock convict’s brains out” (9). Both documents convey an image of women
differing from the traditional nineteenth-century romantic vision of the “weaker” sex, and in
so doing, allude to the fact that this traditional conception might play a part in Grace’s
difficulties to fit in this world. The novel contains other allusions to the violence and cruelty
1 Matsuo Munefusa or Basho (1644-1694): seventeenth-century Japanese poet.
2 See definition of Buddhism in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (124-125).
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of women, for instance, the Governor’s wife’s scrapbook, which comprises a collection of
articles about murders and crimes of all sorts (24, 26).
The romantic portrayal of the heroine continues with the subsequent presentation of
Grace and McDermott’s portraits, which once again, might not correspond to reality. The
beginning of the chapter consists in a popular ballad narrating the scandalous murders, the
trial and its outcome. The tone of the song sounds overtly melodramatic: Grace becomes a
romantic heroine and the true initiator of the murders.
Reading the third series of quotations at the beginning of chapter three, one comes to
the idea that Atwood will systematically contrast excerpts of historical documents with
literary ones. Moodie’s account of her encounter with Marks provides the reader, once again,
with a biased, romanticised view of the character. Grace appears as simultaneously
transfigured by hopelessness and melancholy and as a deceptive person whose “eye never
meets yours” (19). Atwood intervenes from a metafictional point of view to distort alleged
facts and re-establish balance: her quote of Emily Brontë’s The Prisoner, although being
clearly romantic too, presents the heroine as an untouchable saint. In this case, Atwood is
leading the reader astray into believing in Grace’s sainthood.
The same contrast between historical and fictional documents introduces chapter four.
It features two historical quotations of Moodie and of the superintendent of the asylum, and a
poem by Emily Dickinson. The three quotes focus on the problem of sanity and provide the
reader with three different points of view on the subject: the first presents the over-
romanticised vision of madness, with its hysterical crises; the second the more objective,
medical point of view; and the last the poet’s introspective interrogations on the secrets of the
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human brain. The difference between these quotations is a means of showing that reality may
be multifaceted. No single version of the facts exists, which makes deception even more
problematic to detect. This last quote significantly refers to the notion of concealment, which
lies at the heart of Grace’s relationship with Dr. Jordan.
In this section, Atwood introduces a new technique, which confers some authenticity
upon the story. She imagines the possible written exchanges between Dr. Jordan and his over-
affectionate mother, and also his correspondence with fellow doctors. This technique allows
Atwood, on the one hand, to provide her readers with information on Dr. Jordan’s familial
and social situation as well as on his inner thoughts, and, on the other hand, to make us
acquainted with the scientific theories of the time. The letters feature a mixture of information
on the fictional characters of the novel and of allusions to real scientific experiments. This
mixture typifies historiographic metafiction. Moreover, the technique allows Atwood to
present us once again with various opinions on the same theory and thus to demonstrate the
multiple aspect of reality. Indeed, the reader is faced with Dr. Watson’s objective account of
Grace’s imprisonment (48), with Dr. Jordan’s feelings that Grace will be a difficult case to
resolve (54), and with bourgeois society’s view of asylums through the voice of Dr. Jordan’s
mother (50), i.e. three very different standpoints. The chapter further mentions the pamphlet
and portraits of chapter two, highlighting their sentimentalism (58), and shows how Dr.
Jordan’s first encounter with Grace was actually prejudiced because of such documents (59).
Moreover, the chapter contains allusions to Canada’s condition as a colony in the shape of an
introduction of Reverend Verringer and his English background (73), as well as references to
theories of the time such as Mesmerism (83). It also mentions the political climate of the time,
presenting Dr. Jordan as an Abolitionist (84).
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Chapter five consists in a flashback about Grace’s former life and logically starts with
a more intimate document referring to her family. The document once again relies on a
historical source, namely a newspaper transcription of Grace’s confession (95). Important is
the presentation of Grace as an Irish immigrant. The second quotation, a poem by Robert
Browning, echoes this theme in its description of the strange impression of “feeling
different”: “How very different a lot is mine / From any other woman’s in the world” (95)
offers a beautiful and effective way of drawing the reader’s attention to Grace’s condition of
exile.
The beginning of chapter six features the same contrast between a historical document,
here an excerpt from a book on household management, and a poem. The two quotes
introduce the main ideas dealt with in this chapter, namely madness and death. Indeed, this
section narrates Grace’s happy years in the company of Mary Whitney, which abruptly come
to an end with Mary’s death and Grace’s first fit. The contrast between the matter-of-fact and
lyrical tones of these two quotes once again serves to emphasise the discrepancies between
the romantic image of women at the time and the dreadful reality to which they were
confronted. The first section of this chapter further contains metafictional allusions to existing
theories of the time about amnesia (140-141), which aim at helping the reader understand the
way in which Grace’s case was studied. It also features Dr. Jordan’s reflections on the
notions of sanity and madness and on the difficulty of defining those unequivocally. The
second section of the chapter contains the first allusion to the Greek myth of Pandora’s box,
which will be developed later in the novel. Grace, acquainted with the expression, can provide
a simple explanation of its meaning. Significantly, Pandora promised not to look inside the
box, and all evil was originally caused by her act of deception.
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Quotations in chapter seven show a significant difference: they undoubtedly express
understanding for Grace’s situation and sympathy for her predicament. This change may
indicate that the quest has now thoroughly begun and that important events will take place.
The first section of chapter seven can be regarded as highly metafictional as it introduces the
real character of Susanna Moodie and discusses the value of her judgement of Grace, another
character taken from reality (190-191). The passage proves highly ironical, since two fictional
characters criticise the account of the facts provided by a real character. Indeed, Reverend
Verringer stresses the fact that Moodie’s description of Grace largely draws on Charles
Dickens and Walter Scott. Through the words of this fictional character, Atwood thus warns
the reader to question the validity of historical documents, which may be influenced by the
literature and philosophy of the time, thus proving highly unreliable.
Grace herself, in the next chapter, questions the value of documents when she tells Dr.
Jordan about McDermott’s confession: “Just because a thing has been written down, Sir, does
not mean it is God’s truth” (257). This comment on Grace’s part sounds highly ironical:
Grace’s words echo Atwood’s opinion, who, by presenting us with several sorts of
documents, makes us aware of the incredible diversity of truth, in the postmodern sense of the
word. Further, Atwood, through Grace’s words, denounces the injustice of the time and the
colonised situation of women, who entirely depended on men’s good will to insure their
position in society. Grace stigmatises the unfair character of what happened to her friend
Mary, when she compares Mary to Nancy, both being pregnant and unmarried: “Mary
Whitney had done the same as her, and had gone to her death. Why should the one be
rewarded and the other punished, for the same sin?” (276). The subsequent allusion to The
Lady of the Lake provides a romantic vision of female despair which stands in sharp contrast
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to Grace’s plain cry for justice. The fact that Mr Kinnear reacts ironically to the story adds to
the cruelty of the statement.
Chapter nine, devoted to Grace’s reminiscences of the murders, starts with two
contradictory quotes revealing McDermott and Grace’s opposite versions of the facts. The
following literary quote from Edgar Allan Poe should be regarded as the author’s ironical
comment on the romantic character often deceptively attributed to death. Section thirty-three
in this chapter ends on an interesting metafictional comment on the value of stories,
significantly located right after Grace’s recollections of the murders, in which the author
reflects on the notion of the story as a reconstruction of events, rather than the ultimate truth.
The passage reads as follows:
When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a
dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a
house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids,
and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like
a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else (298).
This quotation, which strikes the reader by its factual tone, can be interpreted as a form of
metafictional authorial comment. The reader is further impressed by the violence of its
images, which presents Grace’s story as a painful, destructive one, which will be hard to tell.
Section thirty-four provides us with an account of Dr. Jordan’s lecture in the Governor’s
wife’s salon, which allows Atwood to inform her readers about the ideas of the time
concerning amnesia, alterations of personality, and hallucinations. The passage further
contains allusions to well-known figures in the history of psychiatry, such as French specialist
Charcot (300). Ironical metafictional comment resurges through French philosopher’s Maine
de Biran’s quote, which refers to the unconscious as to a new world, supposedly waiting to be
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colonised (300)! Dr. Jordan’s later allusion to Bellini’s Sonnambula (321) constitutes another
metafictional allusion to Grace and to her own interpretation of events. Indeed, the opera
recounts the story of a simple girl denounced as a whore, but who in fact walks in her sleep.
The happy outcome of the opera echoes Dr. Jordan’s rising hope to save Grace and prove her
innocence, while he readily admits his doubts as regards the somnambulistic explanation. In
this passage, Jordan acknowledges the fact that he might have been tricked from the start.
The next chapter is introduced by a newspaper article on the trial, by Moodie’s
account of Grace Marks’ feelings of guilt, and by a quotation of Nathaniel Hawthorne on love
and horror. Moodie’s words strike the reader most as dubious, a feeling which will be
confirmed by the lawyer’s denial of Moodie’s description later in the novel. Once again, this
indicates that historical documents lack trustworthiness.
The end of the novel features a subplot which functions remarkably as an ironical and
inverted version of Grace’s story. Indeed, it repeatedly refers to Dr. Jordan’s liaison with his
housekeeper, who eventually thinks of murdering her husband in order to live with Jordan.
Simon then tries to imagine the various ways in which he could get rid of the embarrassing
husband (410), without ever intending to do so. The grotesque character of the whole scene
belongs to Atwood’s ironical comment on Grace’s situation. Jordan runs away at once,
because, as a gentleman, he cannot afford to spoil his future for such a woman. The situation
becomes really farcical when the housekeeper, trying to contact Jordan, receives his mother’s
cold and definite denial. Jordan himself, having fought in the American Civil War, comes
back having lost part of his memory, as Grace pretended to. Ironically, he calls his respectable
fiancée Grace, because he cannot even remember her name (430-431). All these elements
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indicate that the novel contains authorial comment criticising nineteenth-century Canada and
its bourgeois, narrow-minded, hypocritical, male-dominated society.
If we look at the quotes introducing the last chapter of the novel, we understand that
opinions about Grace still diverge and that no resolution of her mystery will be offered. The
first historical document remains negative towards Grace, the second being more neutral. As
to the poem, it does not mention the possibility of Grace’s innocence, but emphasises the
notion of forgiveness (439), as do the last pages of the novel. The latter do not solve the
question of Grace’s guilt, but leave us instead with a character who has come to terms with
her own complexity.
2. Grace’s Deceptive Mimicry
Much has been written on the mysterious character of Grace Marks. She has been described
as a heartless murderess, a lunatic, a simple girl, and conversely as a beautiful, literate one, a
victim, a cunning and manipulative person. Atwood herself, in her afterword to the novel,
writes that “the true character of the historical Grace Marks remains an enigma” (465). The
character’s multiplicity makes her an interesting heroine in a postcolonial context. Indeed, I
contend that the character’s inherent ambiguity allows the writer to use her as an illustration
of the Other’s strategy of mimicry. Grace, in her fictional Atwoodian version, constantly
resorts to deception in order to survive amid the social patriarchal conventions imposed on
her, facing society’s negative opinion of her. Grace must use deception in order to produce an
image of her which society will accept. In other words, she constantly mimics what society
wants her to be: either a deeply repentant murderess or an infuriated lunatic. Between these
two extremes, Grace has no voice of her own; she simply does not exist. Being regarded
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either as a model prisoner, who dutifully sews for the Governor’s wife, or as an unbalanced
individual, who could at any time indulge in a fit of madness, Grace has been denied any
capacity to think for herself. Atwood’s depiction of the character underlines her cunning,
deceptive attitude in order to prove that Grace is a person. She is allowed to develop her own
voice. As such, the novel also functions as a postcolonial claim of the subaltern’s need to
express him/herself. Indeed, Grace symbolises the inferior, victimised, colonised subject,
searching for her place in society. She is engaged in a process in which she deceives her
environment (the Governor’s wife, Doctor Jordan, the guards in the asylum, the people who
come to see her in prison) into thinking that she belongs to one of the categories which they
want her to fit in. Grace’s quest to be accepted will nevertheless evolve into a quest for her
own acceptance of her hybrid nature, as will be demonstrated in the analysis of the novel’s
quest pattern. Given her situation, Grace indulges in two modes of deception: a conscious one,
which tends to deceive anyone who might endanger her survival, and an unconscious process
of self-deception, which has caused the erasure of (part of) her memory.
The very title of the novel already alludes to Grace’s deceptiveness. Indeed, the word
“alias” commonly refers to the idea of taking a false name or a false identity and clearly warns
the reader: Grace may not be who we think she is. Deception further resurges in the novel’s
first motto by William Morris, which reads as: “God knows I speak truth, saying that you lie.”
This second allusion to deception indicates again that the facts narrated in it should not be
taken at face value.
The novel starts with Grace’s poetic reminiscences of Nancy and with a factual
description of herself in the first person. Grace introduces herself saying:
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I’m a model prisoner, and give no trouble. That’s what the Governor’s wife says, I
have overheard her saying it. I’m skilled at overhearing. If I am good enough and
quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and
good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over;
you don’t seem to be moving , just dangling them, and yet it is taking all your
strength (5).
This quotation contains several interesting elements. First of all, Grace presents us with the
image of herself that society most wants her to conform to: that of an obedient prisoner. Yet,
Grace’s overhearing skills undermine this role. This quality already reveals part of her
deceptive character: her lack of obedience. Even more so, she adds that she is being quiet and
obedient in order to be set free, which differs from our image of the repentant prisoner.
Indeed, from the very first page of the novel, Grace displays a quality to mimic what society
expects her to be. Moreover, the end of the quote underlines the instability of her condition:
she strives to appear different. She wants to give the impression that she is still hanging on to
the bridge – to society – while in fact, she has already fallen over – lost her place.
Grace goes on describing her memories of – or daydreaming about – Nancy’s murder,
of which she presents an altered version, which focuses on her wish for a different outcome
(6). At this point, the reader starts believing in Grace’s feelings of guilt; yet, the chapter’s last
sentence generates a totally different impression: “This is what I told Dr. Jordan, when we
came to that part of the story” (6). Through this last comment, Atwood skilfully introduces
into the reader’s mind the idea that Grace’s version of the facts might as well prove but
another fictive, manipulative account, due to her alienated condition.
In the second chapter, Grace is further presented as a deceiver, having tried to escape
under the name of Mary Whitney (13). She further denies any implication in the murders (14),
while wearing the victim’s dress (15). Chapter three, written in the first person again, provides
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the reader with a more thorough depiction of Grace’s character. Grace takes pride of her
notoriety as a murderess. She stands out as a sensitive, educated person whose reflection on
her condition defies simplistic definitions (22). Grace, dusting the mirror, suddenly observes
her reflection. Apart from the Lacanian implications of the passage, Grace’s thoughts offer a
summary of the diverse opinions about Atwood’s protagonist: Grace is at once a demon, a
victim, an ignorant girl, an animal-lover, a handsome woman, a thief, a smart person, a
quarrelsome being, and so on. This multiplicity of characteristics makes it difficult for Grace
– and for the reader – to know who she really is. As she says: “I am cunning and devious, (…)
I am soft in the head and little better than an idiot. And I wonder, how can I be all of these
different things at once?” (23). She further adds that making her appear as an idiot, her
lawyer’s idea, saved her life. Deception has contributed to Grace’s survival. Yet, she will
have to get rid of her deceptive strategies in order to become aware of her own hybridity.
Grace further demonstrates her intelligence by showing a critical attitude towards her
lawyer’s tactics. She ironically concludes: “I wonder if he ever believed a word he said” (23).
Grace further reports the ladies’ comments on her: she appears as “a wonderful seamstress,
quite deft and accomplished,” yet, as someone who “talks to herself and sings out loud in a
most peculiar manner” (24). This description befits the two main kinds of behaviour enacted
by Grace in her mimicry process. Grace’s rendering of her conversation with the Governor’s
two young daughters further bears this out:
Miss Lydia tells me I am a romantic figure; but then, the two of them are so young
they hardly know what they are saying. Sometimes they pry and tease; they say,
Grace, why don’t you ever smile or laugh (…) But if I laughed out loud I might not
be able to stop; and also it would spoil their romantic notion of me (25).
Clearly Grace consciously projects a certain image of herself, concealing the aspect of her
personality which would not be accepted by society. She restates this opinion in another
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darker, more frightening remark: “There are some things that should be forgotten by
everyone, and never spoken of again” (26).
Grace’s deceptive behaviour further develops in relation to the Governor’s wife’s
scrapbook. While having publicly repented, Grace admits her interest in newspaper articles
directly concerning her deeds. She claims that these articles lie when they refer to her as
illiterate. On the contrary, she argues she has a clear understanding of society’s real concern:
discovering the truth about her relationship with McDermott (27). This shows that Grace, far
from being an idiot, is conscious of society’s manipulation of truth and would be ready to
resort to the same kind of strategies. Further, she understands the stereotypes of her time,
reflecting on the difference between man and woman as far as age is concerned: while Dr.
Jordan and herself are approximately the same age, she regards him as a young man, whereas
she already considers herself an old woman (37).
The details which Grace provides about her captivity indicate that she quickly learnt
how to mimic certain kinds of behaviour, more likely to keep her out of trouble. For instance,
she comments: “You can have your own thoughts then, but if you laugh you must pretend you
are coughing or choking; choking is better, if choking they hit you on the back, but if
coughing they have the doctor” (62). This example clearly demonstrates that deception
determines Grace’s survival strategy. The sections of chapter five devoted to Grace’s arrival
in Canada also mention the necessity for her to lie in order to survive: from the very start,
Grace had to lie about her age in order to get a job (127). Much later in the novel, when Grace
must narrate the murders to Dr. Jordan, she seems to remember the events accurately and to
keep some of them to herself:
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What should I tell Dr. Jordan about this day? Because now we are almost there. I
can remember what I said when arrested, and what Mr. MacKenzie the lawyer said I
should say, and what I did not say even to him; and what I said at the trial, and what
I said afterwards, which was different as well. And what McDermott said I said, and
what the others said I must have said (…) (295)
This quote indicates that Grace has been highly influenced by people around her, be it her
lawyer or public opinion. To a large extent, she said what people expected or wanted her to
say. Once again, such a behaviour deceives those in power by providing them with a
satisfying, acceptable version of reality. The deceptive strategy constitutes the heroine’s way
of survival in a society in which she cannot find her place. After that quotation, the reader
discovers the essential part of Grace’s story in lyrical, dream-like passages. Such episodes
reflect the multiplicity of truth and tend to give credence to Grace’s version: she claims she
fell unconscious because someone else had taken possession of her (297). Grace sticks to that
version of the facts, which the subsequent session of hypnotism somehow confirms. Of this
episode, one does not know whether it belongs to the realm of fantasy or to reality. Yet, Grace
herself, in the last chapter, comments on the Spiritualists, uttering her own scepticism on the
subject: “I fear there is a great deal of cheating and deception” (455). The presence of
Jeremiah the Peddler as the hypnotist should also induce the reader to regard the whole scene
as an example of Grace’s deceptive talents.
At the very end of the novel, Grace is still involved in a mimicry process, because she
mentions the fact that she and her husband had to make up a story about their marriage and
could not, of course, tell people the truth about Grace’s past. Yet, the final image of the quilt
uniting pieces of cloth from important moments and people in her life also suggests that Grace
has acknowledged her past – be it that of an innocent victim, or that of a heartless murderess.
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3. Deceptive Magic Realism
Grace is at times so much taken in by her deceptive attitude that she no longer clearly knows
who she is. These moments of delirium display a grotesque quality, typical of the magic
realist atmosphere, in which fantasy and reality coexist for a moment. Indeed, when in a fit of
madness, the unbearable character of Grace’s situation most strikingly comes to light. These
moments of grotesque magic realism emphasise the impossibility for Grace to conform to
social demands and point to the necessity for her to develop a position of her own, as a hybrid
person. The uncanniness of these moments undoubtedly demonstrates the impossibility for
Grace, as a colonised subject, to develop an independent personality. Thereby, such moments
help convey the postcolonial implications of Atwood’s Alias Grace.
The grotesque, the supernatural, the uncanny clearly appear every time Grace lets her
imagination run free. The first of these moments takes place when Grace recalls Nancy just
after the murder. In this daydreaming, Grace imagines Nancy smiling, her face hidden in
blood and hair (6). The grotesque character of this vision – mixing the images of the dead and
the living Nancy – as well as the abrupt transition to the description of the prison cell with its
threatening male figure, produce a mixture of imagination and reality, symptomatic of
Grace’s instability, of her hybrid condition.
Magic further interferes in the ballad narrating the murders and their consequences.
This overtly melodramatic and romantic retelling of the facts contains the following allusion
to Nancy and Kinnear’s everlasting love: “From Nancy’s grave there grew a rose,/ And from
Thomas Kinnear’s a vine,/ They grew so high they intertwined,/ And thus these two were
joined” (15). The grotesque romantic character of the quote alludes to the social conventions
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ejected by Grace. The end of the song, further emphasising this aspect, describes innocent
Grace admitted to paradise, because she agreed to repent and live up to society’s expectations.
Chapter three contains Atwood’s first comment on the Spiritualist Circle, who
converses with the dead (22). The writer introduces this information, because it establishes the
atmosphere of the time, such meetings being very popular among the nineteenth-century
bourgeoisie. Further, it enables the supernatural to enter an until now mostly realistic
depiction of Grace’s world.
The scenes involving doctors constitute particularly uncanny moments. Indeed, Grace
has an extreme fear of doctors, which makes the reader believe that she might have been
abused by one of them during her prison years (29). This might account for the way in which
she likes to fool Dr. Jordan, who, after all, as a doctor of the mind, does not appear
particularly threatening. Apart from Simon Jordan, Grace often mentions doctors with full
bags of shining knives and needles (29). This frightening, surreal vision of doctors, which
literally pervades the novel, recurs in section number four, when Grace admits having been
abused by Dr. Bannerling (34).
Grace’s description of her life at the asylum provides us with more uncanny
descriptions of madwomen calling the names of dead family members, seeing the ghosts of
their dead children, or becoming religious fanatics (31). Such episodes clearly establish the
atmosphere of distress in which those women have to survive. In relation to this context,
Grace experiences her first fit in which she claims that someone else committed the murder:
“I did nothing! It was her, it was her fault!” (32). Grace’s explanation for madness makes way
for frightening scenes in which she might claim a double personality. Indeed she says: “when
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you go mad you don’t go any other place, you stay where you are. And somebody else comes
in” (33). She later comments that her fit made the Governor’s wife afraid of her (64), which
can be interpreted as one more survival strategy.
Grace’s belief in superstition tends to stress her innocence and naive character. This
allows the fantastic to enter the novel at several moments, such as the description of Grace
and Mary’s game on All Hallows Eve, when the girls indulge in superstition. They throw the
peel of their apple to discover the initial of the man whom they will marry. The episode
assumes all its uncanny dimension later in the novel, when we discover that Grace will
eventually marry Jamie Walsh, and that Mary will never find a husband since she will suffer a
tragic death (166). Moreover, it emphasises the unusual destinies of the two girls and the
frightful notion that these destinies may be written and impossible to alter. Right after this
passage the reader is confronted to one of Grace’s dreams, in which she claims to see an
unknown woman (167). This woman functions as a symbol of Grace’s hybridity: she
represents Grace’s desperate quest for self-discovery. Grace expresses this desire to find her
hybrid self soon after the magic realist moment devoted to superstition, as if this occurrence
of magic in reality allowed her to perceive herself more fully.
Similarly, the events following Mary Whitney’s tragic death present this intrusion of
magic into reality. Indeed, for the first time, Grace recalls having heard a strange voice,
supposedly that of Mary, asking her to let her in. Grace wrongly interprets this utterance as
the soul’s wish to exit the room, while later events rather suggest another interpretation: that
of Mary Whitney taking possession of Grace. The crisis ends with Grace fainting and
remaining unconscious for ten hours. When she finally wakes up, Grace significantly
questions her own identity, another way of showing that she rejects her hybrid nature (178-
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180). The episode of the voice and the fainting acquire a capital role in the plot: the heroine
actually claims that someone took possession of her soul when committing the murders. This
would explain why she cannot remember anything. Once again, magic enters the plot at a
crucial time of the heroine’s development, i.e. when circumstances bring Grace to make a
decision, leave her situation, and continue on her quest. Magic recurs in the next chapter,
when Jeremiah confides in Grace that “he’d seen death in Mary’s face” (197), yet another
uncanny moment when superstition enters the realm of reality.
Another episode during which Grace hears voices happens some time before the
murder. During a storm – which adds to the gloomy character of the event – Grace suddenly
hears a voice whispering “it cannot be” (279), referring to the possibility of a marriage
between Nancy and Mr Kinnear due to Nancy’s pregnancy. As usual, the fit ends with
Grace’s fainting. The atmosphere of magic realism lingers on in the next sequence which
describes one of Grace’s dreams: Grace lies in a man’s arms and seems to enjoy this
closeness, when she suddenly becomes aware of the presence of Death, in the form of a rider
(280). The reader will later understand that the man is McDermott and that the dream
functions as a warning addressed to Grace. The whole dream seems to happen on the edge of
reality and once again, this magic realist moment draws the reader’s attention to a major event
in the novel, i.e. the murders and their consequence (Grace’s flight with McDermott).
Furthermore, magic realism pervades one of the most significant episodes of the novel.
In order to discover the truth about the murders, Dr. DuPont wants Grace to attend a session
of hypnotism. When introduced to the assembly, Grace recognises DuPont as Jeremiah the
Peddler and agrees to be hypnotised, in spite of Dr. Jordan’s reluctance. From then on, the
novel will constantly oscillate between factual accounts and uncanny descriptions of Grace’s
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dreams and hallucinations, such as Mary Whitney’s last visit (312) and the recurrent image of
Nancy with blood running down her face and hair (313-314). The magic realist quality of
these moments constitutes the very enigma of Grace: she claims having committed the
murders in a dream, while the dream actually turned out to be true (314). Indeed, magic realist
moments occur when two irreconcilable events temporarily coexist, as do Grace’s guilt and
claims of innocence.
Grace’s ominous vision of a dark, empty sky, soon after the murders, also bears magic
realist undertones (335). It suggests the impossibility for Grace to be forgiven and stresses the
horrible nature of her deed. Grace’s account of her flight with McDermott records several
moments at which Grace does not seem to remember what she had previously said or
promised. Doubts subsist because of McDermott’s own reputation as a liar; yet, he repeatedly
pretends that Grace intended to have sexual intercourse with him, while she seems to regard
him as a madman (335). Indeed, such an episode comforts the reader in thinking that Grace
might possess a double personality.
As to the climax of the novel, which consists in Grace being hypnotised, it is equally
pervaded by a magic realist atmosphere. The vision of Grace, walking as a sleepwalker – “as
if blind, but her eyes are wide open” (396) deeply impresses Dr. Jordan, who expected
trickery and deception (395). The frequent comparison between Grace’s head, covered with a
light grey veil, and a shroud adds to the uncanny character of the scene. Dr. DuPont – whose
name means “bridge” and refers to the crossing between different realms of reality – then
offers Grace to travel back into the past. The scene becomes utterly grotesque, i.e.
unbelievably overdone, interrupted by heavy knocks, suggesting the intervention of a spirit.
At this point, Dr. Jordan, totally taken aback by Grace’s behaviour, still thinks he is being
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deceived. Grace becomes ironical, insulting even, and displays an unknown crude voice. She
then confesses the murders in cold blood and with appalling cruelty, before claiming not to be
Grace, but Mary Whitney’s spirit. She adds that Grace was not conscious at the time of the
murders, which totally convinces Dr. Jordan of Grace’s innocence and of the existence of
another personality within her (398-403). The voice further admits having driven Grace mad
in the asylum. When awakening, Grace declares having no recollection of the events: she
feels as if she had been sleeping and dreaming of her mother, who is finally at peace. This
dream could be interpreted as a sign that the session of hypnotism has had a soothing,
cathartic effect on Grace, because unconsciously, she was brought to face her own hybridity.
The passage is followed by the expression of different, diverging opinions on the nature of the
events, some characters interpreting them as a clear case of possession (Reverend Verringer),
others as a form of psychological illness (DuPont and Jordan), and others still as a perfect
case of deception (Bannerling in chapter fourteen). Truth will, in fact, never be revealed.
4. Two Trickster Figures: Grace Marks and Jeremiah the Peddler
Two characters in particular, namely Grace Marks herself and Jeremiah the Peddler, function
as alter-egos and alternatively embody the trickster figure in the novel. Grace is constantly
tricking people around her, that she has built up a false self in order to find an – albeit
temporary and unbalanced – place in patriarchal nineteenth-century Canadian society. I also
contend, from their first encounter onwards, that Grace acknowledges Jeremiah as “one of her
kind”, an equally deceptive character who functions as an alter-ego for her, as a secondary
trickster figure who will help her progress on her quest for hybridity.
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A first look at chapter titles reveals striking elements which can be associated to the
trickster figure : first of all, the fact that the first title contains the word “edge”, the trickster
having often been described as a character on the edge, on the margin of society. Such is
equally the case for Grace as a convicted murderess and for Jeremiah as a homeless
vagabond. Some other titles significantly refer to secret, even esoteric knowledge (“Secret
Drawer”, “Pandora’s Box”, for instance). The titles also contain the names of animals which,
like the trickster, are reputed to be cunning, such as the fox or the snake. Finally, the last title
“The Tree of Paradise,” can be regarded as an allusion to the trickster’s half human, half
divine nature, a hybrid nature which parallels Grace’s situation as well.
Apart from the many instances in which Grace’s tricks the world into believing that
she is either a repentant convict or a potential lunatic, Grace fully functions as a trickster in
her relationship with Dr. Simon Jordan. Throughout the novel, the reader often has the
impression that she is fooling him. Dr. Jordan first appears in chapter three, at the end of
section three (29). The feelings of fear which he arouses in Grace account for her subsequent
use of her most efficient tricks. Moreover, Dr. Jordan first appears just after an allusion to
Jeremiah the Peddler, which shows that Atwood has literally surrounded her major male
character with trickster figures.
From the very beginning of his visits to her, Grace tricks Jordan: she does not trust
him and decides to act as an idiot, as shown in the examples below:
And he looks at me, to see if I understand.
I know it is the Book of Job, before Job gets the boils and running sores, and the
whirlwinds. It’s what Satan says to God. He must mean that he has come to test
me. (…)
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But I don’t say this. I look at him stupidly. I have a good stupid look which I have
practised (38).
I stand holding the apple in both hands. It feels precious, like a heavy treasure.
(…)
Aren’t you going to eat it, he says.
No, not yet, I say.
Why not, he says.
Because then it would be gone, I say.
The truth is I don’t want him watching me while I eat. I don’t want him to see my
hunger. (…)
He gives his one laugh. Can you tell me what it is, he says. (…)
An apple, I say. He must think I am simple; or else it’s a trick of some sort; or else
he is mad and that is why they locked the door – they’ve locked me into this room
with a madman. (…)
What does Apple make you think of? he says. (…)
I give my stupid look. Apple pie, I say. (…)
And is there any kind of apple you should not eat? he says.
A rotten one, I suppose, I say. (…)
The apple of the Tree of Knowledge, is what he means. Good and evil. Any child
could guess it. But I will not oblige.
I go back to my stupid look (39-40).
Many elements can be inferred from these two excerpts. From the first one, we can say that
Grace refuses to take part in Dr. Jordan’s game. She deliberately adopts the attitude of an
illiterate woman, so as to reveal as little as possible about herself. She has often used this
strategy, probably with other doctors, because she adds that she has practised that stupid look
of hers. The second example is even more blatant: throughout the whole dialogue, Grace
voluntarily negates the symbolic content of the discussion and takes everything at its face
value. She also mentions that she refuses to show the doctor her weaknesses, namely that she
is hungry and thirsty, and demonstrates that she controls the situation. The dialogue becomes
thoroughly ironic when she assumes that this doctor conceals either a trickster or a madman,
attributing her own roles to him. This comment functions as an ironic metafictional
intervention on Atwood’s part. Further, both excerpts are concerned with the problem of good
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and evil. In the first one, Dr. Jordan clearly embodies Satan, while Grace would
metaphorically play the part of God. In this respect, we should keep in mind that the trickster
figure has often been associated with the divine. The second part alludes to the Tree of
Paradise. Here again, Dr. Jordan offers Grace the apple, which turns Grace into a victim,
Jordan being the embodiment of evil. This inversion clearly reveals Atwood’s scheme: the
author wants us to feel sympathy for Grace and presents her as an intelligent woman,
threatened by yet another doctor. Once again, Grace’s deception finds a parallel in Atwood’s
manipulation of the reader. It should also be mentioned that Jeremiah the Peddler makes a
brief apparition between these two excerpts, indicating that we are once again in the realm of
the trickster.
Regarding the murders themselves, Grace uses a well-known trick, frequently
observed among Atwoodian heroines, namely the loss of memory. After giving stupid
answers to Jordan’s questions, Grace simply tells him to look for more information in the
newspapers, because she herself has forgotten all about the events (41). Another sentence in
the dialogue implies that Grace enjoys tricking Dr. Jordan. Indeed, she even goes so far as
mentioning that she might be lying:
Perhaps I will tell you lies, I say.
He doesn’t say, Grace what a wicked suggestion, you have a sinful imagination. He
says, Perhaps you will tell lies without meaning to, and perhaps you will tell them
deliberately. Perhaps you are a liar.
I look at him. There are those who have said I am one, I say.
We will just have to take that chance, he says (41).
At this point, Dr. Jordan explicitly agrees to play by Grace’s rules. Indeed, he clearly states
that he is ready to work with Grace in spite of her deceptive behaviour. This attitude will
certainly influence Grace positively, although she only begins her quest and fails to admit
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this. She then goes on dispensing as little information as possible. Indeed, she describes her
subsequent sessions with Dr. Jordan as follows: “at the beginning of each talk he asks me
what I think about this thing he has brought, and I say something about it just to keep him
happy, and he writes it down” (66). Yet, the interviews gradually take on a more intimate tone
when both characters mention their mother (68). Right after this passage, Grace indicates her
growing trust in Jordan when she admits feeling as if he were “drawing on her skin” (69).
Still, she remains a trickster because she stresses the importance for her to avoid being “torn
open” (69): she remains on the defensive. On several occasions, she restates her refusal to
reveal all about herself, such as in chapter six: “I should not speak to him so freely, and
decide I will not” (161). In chapter seven, she pretends not to remember where she stopped
telling her story, in order to check on Jordan’s attention and interest (197). And further: “But I
do not say any of this to Dr. Jordan. And so forth, I say firmly, because And so forth is all he
is entitled to. Just because he pesters me to know everything is no reason for me to tell him”
(216), which clearly shows that Grace may at times be intentionally mischievous. However,
she can also prove benevolent, although still deceiving, when she decides to give information
out of pity for her “forlorn” doctor: “as I suspected that not all was going well with him, I did
not say that I could not remember. Instead I said that I had indeed had a dream” (242). Yet, in
her subsequent description of the so-called dream, Grace confides in the reader that she does
not reveal the whole truth, and that the flowers which she describes were nothing else than
patches of blood on Nancy’s dress! Later in the chapter, she adds that she will try to make her
story interesting and rich in incidents (247), which completely differs from Dr. Jordan’s
expectations. There, the reader cannot help thinking that Grace (and Atwood) must be fooling
everybody, including himself, in pretending to act that way innocently. Indeed, at this point,
Grace comes to lose her innocence, realising that Nancy is no less than Kinnear’s mistress.
Grace admits being ashamed of her innocence, of having been blind and foolish (255), which
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ings the reader to the conclusion that she has lost her innocence when she tells Dr. Jordan
the “whole” story.
Jordan, for his part, realises Grace’s unreliability, for instance when he mentions to
Reverend Verringer, who believes in her innocence: “Grace appears to have told one story at
the inquest, another one at the trial, and after her death sentence had been commuted, yet a
third” (78). Verringer emphasises her loss of memory. Jordan eventually comes to the
conclusion that it will be necessary to try and restore Grace’s missing memory through
suggestion (84). Grace, for her part, will voluntarily resist the process and try to preserve
some of her secrets. This is the case for her dreams, of which she says: “I have little enough of
my own, no belongings, no possessions, no privacy to speak of, and I need to keep something
for myself” (101). She then indulges in telling Dr. Jordan about her life, specifying that the
lawyers and journalists all too gladly distorted it. She feels particularly reluctant to talk about
her only friend Mary Whitney, whose name she usurped during her escape with McDermott.
Grace is further depicted as a trickster in prison when, faced with doctors, she
experiences a fit. The keepers then say to her: “That’s enough of your tricks Grace, you just
wanted the attention” (30). Following this, Grace comments on how easy it is to trick people
in order to be regarded as mad: for instance, she mentions the case of a woman who pretends
to be mad to remain in the asylum, far away from her husband’s abuse, and of another who
feigns madness in order to have a home in winter times (31). Moreover, at the asylum, Grace
decides to opt for a deceptive attitude. When she realises that people come to look at her as if
she were an animal in a zoo, she says: “At last I stopped talking altogether” (32), and
comments ironically on the gentlemen and doctors who made a mistake in judging her mad.
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Dr. Bannerling insists on Grace’s deceptiveness too, when he calls her “a devious
dissembler” (34) and further, in his letter to Dr. Jordan, “a sham”, “attempting to pull the
wool over my eyes”, “an accomplished actress and a most practised liar”, who “managed to
deceive not only the worthy Mrs. Moodie, (…) but also several of my own colleagues” (71).
Bannerling will stick to this opinion until the end, since he restates it in reply to Reverend
Verringer’s request for Grace’s pardon. Bannerling then calls Grace a “cunning woman”,
violently criticises hypnotic trance, and qualifies Moodie’s testimonies as fairy tales (434-
435).
Later in the story, when she is living at Mr. Kinnear’s, Grace comments on her
freedom to use her imagination as she pleases and refers to a biblical episode to account for
her tendency to lie. She talks of “the deceptions and disguises that were practised, which God
did not mind at all but the contrary” (238). Clearly, Grace’s life at Kinnear’s residence has
brought about a change in her character which causes her to resort to deception in order to
survive. Grace is gradually moving away from reality, indulging in fantasies that make life
bearable and concealing things in order not to get in trouble with Nancy. As a reader, we are
of course impressed by Grace’s growing unreliability and do not know whether we can still
give credence to her allegations. Indeed, the very structure of the novel is based on Grace’s
unreliability, on her numerous discordant versions of what happened at Mr Kinnear’s, and on
her misleading attempts at a reconstruction of reality.
In order to discover the truth about Grace’s story, Dr. Jordan promises to believe
whatever she will tell him (307), which causes Grace to give him a detailed account of what
happened on the day of the event. She narrates the dream which she had that night about Mary
Whitney letting a firefly escape from a tumbler (312). Grace interpreted this as Mary’s soul
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finding its way to heaven; yet, we immediately suspect another alteration of Grace’s own
personality and are strengthened in our suspicions in the next passage, which echoes the
magic realist description of a blood-stained Nancy in the first pages of the novel (313). Grace
eventually gives Dr. Jordan her own interpretation of the facts: she believes that the murders
belonged to a dream, later turning into reality. On this subject, Grace comments: “I know
these are odd thoughts to confess to, Sir, but I will not lie and conceal them, as I could easily
do, having never told this to anyone before” (315). In this excerpt, Grace clearly admits her
ability to deceive people and commits herself to stop tricking Dr. Jordan. Whether she may be
trusted or not remains for the reader to decide. Grace’s subsequent recollection of the facts
remains fragmented and incomplete (317). Later on, Dr. Jordan doubts to be able to discover
the truth. For the first time, he acknowledges the fact that Grace may be a trickster and may
deliberately conceal things. As he puts it : “She’s told him a great deal; but she’s told him
only what she’s chosen to tell. What he wants is what she refuses to tell; what she chooses
perhaps not even to know. Knowledge of guilt, or else of innocence: either could be
concealed” (322). Indeed, Grace could be amnesiac, guilty, or simply insane. In chapter
eleven, Dr. Jordan comes to the conclusion that his whole analysis consists in a battle of will
between Grace and himself, and that she, consciously or not, is using all her strength to resist
his intrusion (362). Later, when Grace is about to be hypnotised, she even confesses, as
regards her memory: “I was not at all sure I wanted to have it back” (382). She reflects that
one should not only remember the good things in life, otherwise this would be a form of
deception too (382).
When visiting places mentioned by Grace about her past, when facing the grave of
Mary Whitney (387), Dr. Jordan for a second feels convinced of Grace’s innocence. Yet, he
readily discards this thought and has to admit that Grace keeps her secret. He also gradually
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ealises that he is under her spell (389). From the comments of her lawyer to Dr. Jordan, we
soon come to understand that the former did not believe in Grace’s innocence – “she was
guilty as sin” (378), he says – she simply tricked the audience. Indeed, the lawyer also
mentions interesting thoughts about the value of Grace’s testimony. He claims that deception
constitutes a strategy, not an aim and compares Grace to Sheherazade. He then concludes that
Grace tells what she needs to tell in order to reach her goal (377). Indeed, Grace’s main goal
is not to lead Dr. Jordan astray, but to tell her story to someone who will accept it as a hybrid
story, on the edge between reality and fantasy. This story constitutes all that Grace has to
offer, considering her reluctance to admit what hides behind the story, namely her own hybrid
nature.
Finally, the end of the novel acknowledges Grace’s deceptive character. When sewing
her own quilt, Grace mentions that she is “changing the pattern a little” to suit her own ideas
(459), as she has been doing during the whole story. The end suggests that Grace has
integrated the evil part of her personality, which confirms that she had been acting as a
deceiver from the start.
The character of Jeremiah the Peddler first appears in the ballad retelling the murders
and their consequences. The peddler significantly appears right after Thomas Kinnear’s
assassination and is chased away by Grace, a metaphorical way of expressing that Grace, at
this stage of the life, cannot face her hybrid condition yet. In the next chapter, Jeremiah recurs
in relation to the murders. Indeed, Grace says that McDermott was arrested wearing a shirt
bought from the peddler. She adds: “Jeremiah always wished me luck, but he did not wish any
to James McDermott” (28). Thereby Grace acknowledges her kinship to the peddler and his
benevolence towards her. Each time, Jeremiah will be referred to as a friendly character who
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accompanies Grace on her journey. Grace narrates her first encounter with Jeremiah in
chapter six. The emphasis lies on Jeremiah’s hybrid nature, “a Yankee with an Italian father”
(154), and on his seduction tricks, which remind us of the traditional characteristics of the
trickster as a character endowed with a huge sexual appetite. Jeremiah further imitates
someone, which constitutes another form of deception. Likewise, he tells fortunes (155),
which has to do with the Devil, a figure traditional tricksters supposedly embody. Most
importantly, before leaving, the peddler strangely certifies to Grace: “You are one of us”
(155), which, according to Grace, means that she is equally homeless, although this can also
be an acknowledgement of her trickster-like qualities. Jeremiah, in chapter seven, alludes to
his connection with the supernatural when he tells Grace that he might have predicted Mary’s
death (197). Yet, at that time, Grace does not believe him. The trickster figure will from then
on be more and more present. Indeed, Grace meets him on her way to the Kinnear residence.
On this occasion, Jeremiah once again proves to be of salutary help for Grace by delivering
her from nasty company (206-207). When Grace later meets him at Mr. Kinnear’s, Jeremiah
strikes the reader with his supernatural divining powers: he seems to know all that happened
to Mary Whitney and to be able to read Grace’s thoughts. When Grace tells him the whole
truth about Mary’s death, he seems to know about it too. Atwood once again stresses
Jeremiah’s capacity to literally cross boundaries (he refers to a recent trip to the States) and to
his living on the edge of society and its legal system (“Laws are made to be broken”). He then
advises Grace to follow him and leave this dangerous place. He offers to teach her medical
clairvoyance, i.e. acknowledges her as a fellow trickster. When Grace argues that this would
be a form of deception, he replies that deception out of human kindness is totally acceptable,
avowing his trickster-like nature. Grace feels truly tempted to follow Jeremiah, but the
influence of patriarchal values still dominates her, since she cannot accept to do so without
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eing his wife. Marriage, of course, looks completely impossible given Jeremiah’s marginal
social position (265-268).
When she later recognises Jeremiah under the guise of hypnosis specialist Dr. DuPont,
Grace admires Jeremiah for his capacity to perform “a conjuring trick” (306) and agrees to
collaborate with him and be hypnotised. This confirms that the figure of Jeremiah the Peddler
appears each time that major information is released or whenever Grace needs genuine help.
When Grace’s trial begins, she regrets Jeremiah’s absence (360).
Some years after Dr. Jordan’s departure, Grace addresses Jeremiah a letter, in which
she expresses her genuine feeling of friendship for him and her desire to see him again. She
claims to have recognised him in spite of his disguise on a poster for a divining show. She
further mentions that no one wants to reveal to her what happened during the session of
hypnotism, so that she still does not know anything about her condition (425). She wishes to
know whether he told her the truth when he read her future in her hand, which stresses her
naive character, but may also be ironical, knowing that a trickster as Jeremiah would never
disclose the truth, and neither would she. The character of Jeremiah further remains
mysterious because Grace mentions having received a bone button from him, but without any
signature to confirm that. This object functions as a sign to tell Grace that the trickster is still
present, and, as a result, that her quest has not come to an end yet. Grace herself alludes to the
double meaning of the button: it both serves to close or to open something – her memory
perhaps – but she remains at a loss as to what to do. Ironically, she also mentions Dr. Jordan’s
habit of bringing her objects to help recover her memory, which clearly establishes the link
with the button (428).
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In the last chapter of the book, after a clear allusion to the deceptiveness of mediums
of all sorts, Grace mentions her last encounter with Jeremiah the Peddler. She confesses
concealing the meeting to her husband, in order not to upset him. Yet, we soon understand
that she has now settled in her marital life and no longer wishes to run away. However, when
Jeremiah recognises her and makes a sign to her, it reassesses their kinship. It identifies them
both as similar trickster figures, as deceivers.
5. Grace’s Quest for Hybridity
The titles of the chapters in Alias Grace require careful analysis in relation to the development
of the quest pattern in the novel. Indeed, by entitling her first chapter “Jagged Edge”,
Atwood’s intention was to highlight her heroine’s marginal condition in society, a position
which causes Grace to undertake a quest for her place as a hybrid self in society. This quest
will not necessarily find its conclusion in Canadian society, since, at the end of the story, the
protagonist suffers another exile and starts out on a new life in the United States. In this first
chapter, the reader already encounters Grace and notices her instability: standing on the edge
of a bridge, apparently about to fall over, Grace tells us she already fell over a long time ago.
The second chapter, entitled “Rocky Road”, suggests the beginning of Grace’s
journey, which might be rendered difficult by the presence of numerous obstacles. The
graphic representation of the quilt pattern, namely a cross, can be regarded as an allusion to
Grace’s own hybrid situation, at the crossroads between two realms. Chapter three introduces
an important element of the quest pattern: it places emphasis on the heroine’s isolation, a
necessary condition for her to engage on her quest. Indeed, she must be free from familial or
social influences. The title of the chapter, “Puss in the Corner,” stresses this isolation, while
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simultaneously introducing an ambivalent image of the heroine: hiding in a corner, either out
of fear, or as an animal waiting for its prey. The immediately following quotation from
Moodie, which depicts Grace both as a hopeless figure and as a cunning, furtive creature (19),
confirms this interpretation. The first section of this chapter (section 3) contains the first
allusion to Grace’s state of exile. Indeed, Grace mentions “the long sad journey across the
ocean” (21-22). In so doing, she reveals that she emigrated to Canada, i.e. the exiled condition
which she suffers from: the journey is univocally qualified as “sad”, negative. This absence of
roots leading to Grace’s feeling of alienation functions as the trigger of her quest. Chapter
three, in alluding for the first time to Grace’s “otherness”, confirms the necessity of the quest.
Grace further states that she has been suffering from her condition for a long time: “When I
was younger I used to think that if I could hug myself enough I could make myself smaller,
because there was never enough room for me, at home or anywhere, but if I was smaller then
I would fit in” (33). This passage perfectly conveys Grace’s feelings of uneasiness and
inadequacy, which constitute the departure point of her quest. The image of the corner is
echoed further in the novel in section four, when Grace imagines that she has been forgotten
in her cell, will starve to death. Years later, someone will find her bones and sweep them into
the corner of the room (35), another image symbolising Grace’s utter feeling of isolation and
loneliness.
Chapter four, “Young Man’s Fancy,” clearly moves on to the second stage of Grace’s
quest in focusing on Dr. Jordan, who will serve as a kind of guide on her journey. The title of
the chapter refers to Dr. Jordan himself and to his sentimental adventures, as well as to his
growing interest in Grace’s case. Chapter five and the following chapters constitute a
flashback retelling Grace’s life before the murders. It depicts Grace’s fragmentation, referred
to in the title, “Broken Dishes.” Moreover, it contains the first full description of the activity
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of quilting, presented as a female occupation of primary importance. Atwood makes use of
this passage to emphasise the symbolic function of quilting and its significance in female life.
Grace also mentions her own favourite quilt: the Tree of Paradise, which functions as the aim
of her quest. Indeed, paradise can be regarded as a symbol of harmony, a feeling which hybrid
Grace is desperately lacking. I therefore chose to devote peculiar attention to the titles of the
chapters, which all refer to quilting patterns, as indications of Grace’s progress in her quest.
The excerpt about quilts further alludes to Grace’s hybrid nature, when she claims that her
own quilt will be different because made of contrasting colours : “mine would be an
intertwined border, one light colour, one dark, the vine border they call it, vines twisted
together” (98). The whole passage reveals highly symbolic significance. Grace equally
mentions the existence of other, different patterns. Yet, when Dr. Jordan takes that
opportunity to question Grace, about other, underground, uncanny facts she might mention,
she once again refuses to take part in his game. In a later reference to quilts, Grace confuses
the pattern “Attic Windows” with the words “Attic Widows” (162). This can be regarded as
one more reference to the condition of women in the Canadian society of the time: indeed, the
expression implies that women, once they have lost their husband, are relegated to the attic,
i.e. lose their social status.
Another interesting aspect of the novel consists in Grace’s dreams, which are but
another symbolic representation of her hybridity: Grace meets a peddler, i.e. a trickster figure
who wants to sell her something, which means that he wishes to make her discover something
about herself. Yet, such a discovery is not given for free, and Grace cannot afford it at the
time. When she finally agrees to deal with him, she realises that she possesses a third hand, a
symbol of her difference, of her hybrid nature (100-101). Further, frequent allusions to her
Irish origins, presented as a crime (103), refer to Grace’s hybridity. In section thirteen, Grace
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describes her poor childhood in Ireland. The section ends on the family’s decision to emigrate
to Canada, where free land is distributed (110). Grace expresses extreme unhappiness about
this decision. She further recalls the voyage as the most awful event of her early life, which
climaxes with the death of her mother. Grace’s first reaction to this death reads as follows: “it
was not really my mother under there, it was another woman” (121), which demonstrates
Grace’s tendency to indulge in self-deception whenever events become too hard for her to
bear. A recurring motif in relation to death is the image of the soul of the deceased which
wants to escape through the open window, a motif linked to the character of Mary Whitney as
well. The story goes on mentioning Grace’s settlement in Canada and emphasising the
multicultural aspect of the place (124).
The next chapter, “Secret Drawer”, carries on with the flashback to Grace’s life before
the murders. It concerns her time as a servant in Toronto and introduces the character of Mary
Whitney, Grace’s only friend. The word “secret” in the title could refer to Grace’s
concealment of the truth in her discussions with Dr. Jordan, to Simon’s dream about his
childhood, during which the secrets of adulthood were kept away from him, or to Mary
Whitney’s dreadful secret about her pregnancy. Grace’s admiration for her friend’s ideas and
boldness can soon be noticed. Mary Whitney, a native-born Canadian, is clearly the kind of
girl that Grace would like to become. This explains why the dreadfulness of Mary’s death
shocks Grace so much. Mary was herself a hybrid person: “She claimed that her grandmother
had been a Red Indian” (150), which means to Grace a fun-loving individual, who enjoys life.
Yet, Mary’s tragic death brings Grace to the conclusion that a happy life is not possible for
those of her kind, for hybrid individuals. Therefore, the image of Mary Whitney’s soul will
stick with Grace as long as her quest needs to be fulfilled. Chapter six further narrates Grace’s
first encounter with Jeremiah the Peddler, which indicates that the quest has entered its third
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stage, that of the trickster who will help the heroine on her quest. Chapter six ends on Grace’s
thought: “And so the happiest time of my life was over and gone” (180), which indicates that
the quest has become inevitable and that Grace must move on.
Chapter seven, “Snake Fence”, contains in its title both the idea of danger and evil,
and that of an obstacle, which confirms that Grace’s quest is now moving forward. The quotes
introducing the chapter cast a new light on Grace: the historical document for the first time
focuses on the heroine’s innocence, while the poem by Christina Rossetti alludes to sad
remembrances. This change of atmosphere in the style of quotation indicates that the quest is
now evolving quickly. At the beginning of the chapter, Dr. Jordan provides a realistic
explanation, giving his interpretation of Grace’s fainting as a fit of hysterics. He then meets
Reverend Verringer, one of Grace’s partisans, to discuss the value of fits, fainting, amnesia,
superstition, somnambulism and haunting, which creates a distance between the present
situation and the previous narration of the dramatic event of Mary’s death. It allows the reader
to have another, more rational vision of the facts. Chapter seven further briefly alludes to
Mary’s burial, which however contains an interesting element: indeed, Grace mentions that
she could not stop crying because this burial reminded her of her mother’s death. This
moment constitutes the stage in the quest when the heroine has to confront parental figures. It
announces the quest’s climax. Significantly, chapter seven contains another allusion to
Jeremiah the Peddler, who tells Grace that he could have predicted Mary’s death (197). Grace
further struggles to find a stable job, a situation which echoes the hybrid subject’s difficulty to
find its place in society. Moreover, the chapter contains several allusions to Grace’s naive
character and to her innocence : indeed, she repeats that she would like, one day, to be able to
sew quilts for herself and get married (218), and mentions that she could not bear killing an
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animal (219). This emphasis on Grace’s innocence can be regarded as a hint to the reader that
the murders may have another, more symbolic significance.
The next chapter, with the title “Fox and Geese”, stresses the possibility of a
confrontation with enemies. In this chapter, Grace will have to face the malevolence of both
Nancy and McDermott. The fox, which is an animal renowned for its slyness, may be yet
another embodiment of the trickster figure. The poem by Robert Browning as an introductory
quote significantly features the words “mischief” and “trick”. Yet, at this point, the reader
does not know whether evil is meant to allude to Grace or to her enemies. The end of the
chapter alludes to the eminent character of the climax with the appearance of Jeremiah the
Peddler, who, though he remains benevolent to Grace, warns her against the danger of the
place.
Chapter nine constitutes the climax of the novel, i.e. the murders themselves, as they
are narrated by Grace to Dr. Jordan. The title, once again, can be regarded as a clear allusion
to the main events in the chapter, the heart and the gizzard being both parts from animals
associated with blood. The reader’s feeling of getting closer to the climax of Grace’s story is
confirmed in a third person narration focusing on the character of Dr. Jordan: “at last they are
approaching together the centre of Grace’s narrative. The are nearing the blank mystery, the
area of erasure; they are entering the forest of amnesia, where things have lost their names”
(291). Indeed, Dr. Jordan thinks that he is about to discover Grace’s secret by forcing her to
dive into her unconscious. As Atwood sums it up: “She may not know that she knows, but
buried deep within her, the knowledge is there” (291). Yet, Dr. Jordan remains lost in the
labyrinth of Grace’s deceptions. “He has been travelling blindly, whether forward he cannot
say, without learning anything except that he has not yet learned anything, unless he counts
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the extent of his own ignorance” (293). When Grace later wonders what she should actually
tell Dr. Jordan about the facts, she remembers her trial as a moment when she was not allowed
to speak. This reflection should be regarded as an expression of the colonial subject’s need for
a voice, as such the aim of Grace’s quest. Indeed, Grace expresses her painful situation as
follows: “I was shut up inside that doll of myself, and my true voice could not get out” (295).
These words express Grace’s wish to be able to give a voice to her hybrid self. Grace
subsequently reveals her own version of the facts to Dr. Jordan. This constitutes a major step
in her quest. However, the fact that she claims not to possess the truth about the events
indicates that the quest still has to be completed, that the dive into the unconscious has not
taken place yet. Indeed, Grace readily admits that the person she sees in the mirror does not
resemble her at all, which shows that she gradually becomes aware of her hybrid nature.
Nevertheless, she immediately adds that she does not fancy that face, which indicates that she
has not accepted the notion of hybridity.
Chapter ten, with its overtly romantic title, “The Lady of the Lake”, focuses on Grace
and McDermott’s escape. Yet, we soon discover that the occasion is devoid of any
romanticism. The title refers to a quilt pattern (340). Simultaneously, we witness Grace’s
understanding of the pattern, which functions as a metaphor for her growing awareness of the
necessity of her quest. Another detail signifies that Grace’s quest progresses: the passage in
which she burns her clothes (333) functions as a purification symbol, which indicates that a
crucial metamorphosis will take place. The same idea recurs when Grace mentions Jeremiah,
who explains to her how to cross borders (341), what she is about to do physically and
psychologically. At the end of section thirty-nine, Grace metaphorically expresses the same
idea when she says:
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And it was as if my own footsteps were being erased behind me, the footsteps I’d
made as a child on the beaches and pathways of the land I’d left, and the footsteps
I’d made on this side of the ocean, since coming here; all the traces of me, smoothed
over and rubbed away as if they had never been, like polishing the black tarnish
from the silver, or drawing your hand across dry sand (342).
This poetic description of Grace’s situation may be interpreted in different ways. The image
of the erased footstep might infer that Grace will become someone else. However, the clear
allusion to her native country and to her crossing of the ocean might as well refer to her state
of exile, to her hybridity and to the negative way in which she has been experiencing it so far:
indeed, Grace resembles the tarnish on silver, something one wishes to get rid of, or as dry
sand, i.e. sterile material.
The chapter ends on a dream expressing Grace’s wish to find a home, while the next
chapter, “Falling Timbers,” contradictorily alludes to the collapse of a construction. The
chapter is devoted to the trial and the way in which it destroyed Grace’s confidence in justice
(354). Indeed, Grace feels shocked by the journalists’ distortion of the story (355), by
people’s testimonies against her (356), by her lawyer’s decision to make up a more plausible
story than that which she at first came up with (357), and by Moodie’s fictionalised vision of
the murders (359).
The following pattern referred to, Solomon’s Temple, strikes us by its design: it looks
like a series of interwoven squares. Apart from narrating the conclusion of the trial, it also
mentions Dr. Jordan’s visit to the place of the murders. The pattern therefore indicates that
there is more to the story than the reader may think, or that a square may be hiding another
square, as Grace may be concealing another, altogether different personality. Moreover, a
temple traditionally conceals knowledge and secrets of divine nature. The following mottoes
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efer to Grace as a devilish woman and allude to the exploration of the unconscious. We thus
experience the feeling of approaching Grace’s secret. This idea is reinforced by section forty-
six, with its explanation of the choice of Grace’s first name, it being a reference to the well-
known hymn Amazing Grace (379). Apart from the fact that the name itself alludes to
salvation, it also mentions that someone blind finally sees, which brings Grace to comment
that she would like to see – i.e. to discover the truth about herself. Further, it contains the
word “maze”, undoubtedly alluding both to Grace’s abilities as a deceiver and to her confused
state of mind.
The next chapter, entitled “Pandora’s Box”, clearly indicates that the reader has
reached the moment when Grace might reveal her secret. Yet, one should keep in mind that
the opening caused much misery, and that Grace’s dive into her unconscious might as well
bring about more sufferings instead of a clear resolution. Indeed, Grace will remember
nothing about that session of hypnotism, while Dr. Jordan will be so shaken that he decides to
flee to Europe and abandon the case altogether, because it could bring his career to an end
(412). The first two quotes which introduce the chapter refer to communication with the
spirits, which add even more mystery to the story (393). The third one, a poem by Emily
Dickinson, directly alludes to Grace’s alleged multiple personality, or, from a postcolonial
point of view, to her hybridity (394).
The last chapter but one features a series of letters by different characters, meant to
point to the multiplicity of possible interpretations of reality. The title of the chapter itself –
“The Letter X” – traditionally refers to the unknown, meaning that Grace’s mystery will not
be solved. The quotations introducing the chapter illustrate the same idea: the first one, dating
from 1863, refers to her condemnation, the second, from 1908, to her pardon. Finally, the
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quote from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem suggests that the letters which we will read
may contain some elements of proof.
“The Tree of Paradise,” the title of the last chapter, suggests that Grace discovers some
elements of truth after all, or that she might at least find some sort of harmony. The last of the
four introductory quotations proves the most important in this respect because it unexpectedly
associates paradise with the imperfect (440), which would sustain our idea of a temporary
state of harmony, brought about by Grace’s acknowledgement of her hybridity. In this
chapter, Grace learns that her pardon has come through. She will be able to live freely in the
United States, where some unknown man will provide her with a home. She soon discovers
this man to be Jamie Walsh, who wants to be forgiven for having sent her to jail. She agrees
to marry him, aware of the limitation of her choices.
The end of the novel features the central metaphor of quilting. Grace mentions having
two quilts in the house: a wheel of mystery, which can be understood as a reference to the
mystery of her own life and being, and a Log Cabin, a symbol of her having found a home at
last. Significantly, she adds that she has bought them from people moving West, i.e. from
immigrants like herself (454). The very last section of the novel shows Grace sewing her own
quilt. This part features three elements which should be carefully examined. The first is the
quilt pattern, called the Tree of Paradise, which suggests that Grace might have found some
harmony at last. She further reflects that the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life may be
one and the same, such as good and evil, which might imply that she has accepted the
hybridity of her own nature: she can be at once a simple girl and a cunning murderess. The
second element consists in the differences that Grace voluntarily introduces in that quilt: the
vines form a clear allusion to the victims’ graves, while the snakes function as a common
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symbol for evil. Both details can therefore be interpreted as acknowledgements of guilt.
Third, Grace also chose to include pieces of cloth that symbolise important parts of her life
and of her self: a piece of Mary Whitney’s petticoat, of her prison nightdress, and of Nancy’s
floral dress. These can be interpreted as a sign that Grace has finally integrated the various
aspects of her life: the murders which her unconscious allowed her to commit as Mary
Whitney, the fact that she was convicted and that she is a murderess, and her feelings of
injustice towards society, epitomised in the character of Nancy. Each piece of cloth will be
sewn to the other with red stitches referring to blood (459-460).
6. Quilting One’s Way Towards Self-Knowledge
In order to present my interpretation of the novel’s quest pattern in an even clearer way, this
section will feature a graphic representation of the different chapters and of their meaning
within the context of the quest novel.
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Structure of the Quest Pattern in Alias Grace
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4
STAGE STAGE
1 2
marginality hybridity
journey
isolation guide
F
L
A
S
Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11
H STAGE STAGE
B
A
3 4
C exile – quilting danger confrontation ANTI-CLIMAX CLIMAX flight trial
K trickster Mary’s death with mother trickster’s warning murders wish for a home collapse
Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15
STAGE
5
end of trial secret – hypnosis mystery hybridity
Jordan’s quest CLIMAX

The scheme indicates that the novel starts on the usual first stage of a quest, which is the
isolation process. Indeed, Grace is depicted from the start as a marginal being and allusions
are made to the beginning of a journey. Chapter four introduces the second stage, i.e. the
intervention of a guide, who will help the heroine during her quest, namely here Dr. Jordan.
Grace is then able to proceed on her quest, which subsequently takes the form of a long
flashback, from her arrival in Canada as a child to her trial for murder. This flashback
contains several important stages of the quest pattern: chapter five restates Grace’s hybrid
nature as an unwilling immigrant and introduces the metaphor of quilting. It also features
Grace’s first encounter with the trickster figure, i.e. the third stage of the quest pattern as
developed by Pratt. Later, right after Mary’s death, Grace reaches stage four, that of the
confrontation with parental figures, in the form of her memories of her mother’s burial, which
deeply moves her. From then on, Grace loses control on the events. In chapter eight, before
the murders take place, she encounters the trickster again, who, in an anti-climactic scene,
warns her against the dangers and offers her to escape. Grace refuses and consequently gets
involved in the murders. The flashback then ends on her flight with McDermott, her wishes to
have a home of her own, and her collapse after the trial. In chapter twelve, past and present
intertwine since it narrates the end of the trial as well as Dr. Jordan’s investigation,
introducing the idea that we might discover more about Grace. Stage five is reached when
Grace participates in a hypnotism session which, supposedly, causes her to dive into her
unconscious and to reveal her secret. However, the result of this session is disappointing,
because both the characters and the readers end up with the feeling that they have once again
been deceived by Grace. Chapter fourteen expresses the fact that Grace remains a mystery.
This does not prevent the novel from ending on a positive note, Grace being presented as a
free woman, who seems to have, albeit for a moment, accepted her hybridity.
***
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A close look at the title of the chapters and their symbolic value of the previous analysis.
Indeed, each chapter bears the name of a quilt pattern, which evokes an aspect of the
heroine’s quest. One might for instance recognise the various steps of the heroine’s inner
journey in her needle work: the second chapter entitled “Rocky Road” aptly alludes to the
obstacles the protagonist encounters when engaging on her quest. Chapter four, ‘Young
Man’s Fancy” directly points to Grace’s encounter with the doctor, who serves as a guide
during part of her self-discovery. He therefore represents the second stage of the traditional
quest pattern developed by Pratt, namely the “green-world guide or token.” In chapter six, the
heroine is confronted to danger as her best friend Mary tragically loses her life. From then on,
Grace exhibits a double, treacherous nature, of which Mary embodies the dark side. The
chapter entitled “Secret Fence,” symbolises Grace’s secret deviousness and her dangerous
flirtations with the afterworld. This part of the book clearly examines Grace’s qualities as a
trickster figure. In chapter seven, the heroine remembers her mother, thus accessing the fourth
stage of the quest pattern, i.e. the confrontation with parental figures. Of utmost importance,
this stage leads to the novel’s climactic murder scenes. For this reason, chapter seven and the
following sections display titles alluding to Grace’s trickster nature: the titles of the
subsequent chapters mention a snake and a fox – both famous for their slyness. Finally,
chapter thirteen, which initiates the heroine’s acceptance of her hybrid nature, is
symptomatically entitled “Pandora’s Box,” thus alluding to the heroine’s moment of
epiphany.
Further, the titles of the chapters point to the main theme of the heroine’s quest,
namely the discovery of hybridity. Indeed, a title such as “Jagged Edge,” for the first chapter
clearly points to the marginality of Atwood’s heroine. “Puss in The Corner,” as name for the
third section alludes to Grace’s alienation, as she stands in a corner of her cell. Finally, the
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last chapter, “The Tree of Paradise,” aptly conveys the idea that the protagonist has reached –
though only temporarily – a certain balance by accepting her “otherness.” She mentions
possessing two quilts: a “Wheel of Mystery,” symbol of her strange destiny, and a “Log
Cabin,” (454) representing the quiet home she has found. Her last creative quilt and her
deviation from the classical pattern indicate that Grace is now ready to be openly different.
Indeed, she confesses to the reader that her own “Tree of Paradise” is slightly different
because she has included small snakes in the pattern. She then adds: “without a snake or two,
the main part of the story would be missing” (460), a sentence which might be interpreted
both an acknowledgement of guilt and as a disclosure of her trickster-like nature.
Grace Marks strikes the reader as one of Atwood’s most fully accomplished deceiver.
Apart from The Robber Bride, in which Zenia’s death provided a sense of closure, most
Atwoodian novels end on an ambivalent notes casting doubts on the heroine’s ability to
benefit from her experience. Alias Grace introduces a change in that pattern. Indeed, whereas
the novel starts in a gloomy, depressing atmosphere, it closes on a more positive note,
suggesting that the protagonist has discovered a way of surviving. Grace’s act of sewing a
new, hybrid quilt, points to a clear acknowledgement of her hybrid self. Further, her last,
friendly allusion to Jeremiah the Peddler, implies that Grace has also accepted the evil that
lies in each of us. For the first time, Atwood presents us with a fully developed, mature
trickster character, who does not only – as do Cordelia and Zenia – embody evil. Iris Chase,
the narrator of Atwood’s next novel, The Blind Assassin, also displays this mixture of positive
and negative trickster-like qualities.
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Chapter 7. The Blind Assassin’s Criminal Deception
And when did the one become the
other? Where was the threshold,
between the inner world and the
outer one? We each move
unthinkingly through this gateway
every day, we use the passwords of
grammar – I say, you say, he and she
say, it, on the other hand, does not
say – paying for the privilege of
sanity with common coin, with
meanings we’ve agreed on. (537)
The Blind Assassin certainly qualifies as one of Atwood’s most complex novels. Its length and
intricate structure forces the reader to experience it as a puzzle which slowly takes shape, to
reveal the existence of not one, but several “blind assassins.” At a first level, the novel
primarily deals with the life story of an old woman, Iris Chase. Desperately hoping to re-
establish contact with her granddaughter, Sabrina, Iris writes the story of her life.
Simultaneously, she portrays her fragile and eccentric sister, Laura, whom she presents as the
author of the novel entitled “The Blind Assassin,” hereafter referred to in inverted commas for
the sake of convenience in order to distinguish it from Atwood’s published novel. The
narrative is regularly interrupted by passages of this work of fiction. It also contains
newspaper clippings which provide the reader with an external view of Iris’s social life. At
one point, facts and fiction intertwine, as the reader comes to understand that “The Blind
Assassin” was not written by Laura, but by Iris herself. The scandalous love affair depicted in
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the book also turns out to be that of Iris. Finally, within the fictional structure of “The Blind
Assassin,” another work of fiction is mentioned. Indeed, as she narrates her encounters with
her mysterious lover, Iris retells her lover’s science fiction story. This tale, which takes place
on a far away planet, echoes Iris’s desires for a romantic plot. Yet, when she discovers her
lover’s final published work, she notices that the romantic episodes have intentionally been
removed from the final draft.
As to Iris and Laura’s story, it starts with the girls’ golden childhood. However, as
their father gradually loses his wealth, the family runs into difficulties. Both girls fall in love
with the same mysterious, handsome stranger, Alex Thomas, who causes their father’s
downfall. While Laura entertains a platonic relationship with the young man, Iris, who suffers
from a violent and unhappy marriage, engages in a passionate love affair with the same man.
When she eventually reveals her liaison to her weak sister, it causes the latter to break down
totally and commit suicide by riding over the railing of a bridge.
1. Atwood’s Metafictional Reflections
The Blind Assassin’s peculiarity lies in its description of writers’ figures. Indeed, the novel
contains several fictitious writers: Alex Thomas, who entertains Iris with his science-fiction
story; Laura, who embodies the young tormented artist and eventually turns out not to be a
writer at all; and Iris whom the reader gradually identifies as the author of the scandalous
novel entitled “The Blind Assassin.” This title thus simultaneously refers to Atwood’s work
and to her narrator’s production. This allows Atwood to supply interesting comment on the
writer’s trade. She regularly mentions the importance of using accurate sources, even in the
case of a totally imaginary story. For instance, Alex Thomas explains that the behaviour of his
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science-fiction characters finds its inspiration in Ancient Mesopotamia, among the Hittites
(21, 37). Alex further draws the reader’s attention to other ingredients of a novel: he insists on
the importance of writing a story that sells well and mentions some of the necessary elements:
death, violence, women, aliens (305, 337). He alludes to the numerous clichés of science
fiction stories: the monosyllabic hero, the endangered blonde, the frightening alien (305, 337).
As the narrator of the novel, Iris regularly comments on the necessity of writing. She
often wonders for whom she writes – for herself, a stranger, no one at all (53)… Likewise, she
frequently reflects on the necessity of writing, in order to bear witness. She thinks: “We can’t
stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down” (118). This
may be why Iris feels such an urge to write down her story: getting older and weak, she
absolutely wants to confess what really happened in the love triangle involving herself, her
sister and Alex. While telling her story, she regularly highlights the writer’s tricks: she is
“thickening the plot” (147); she deliberately leaves her male character unnamed, as if to
symbolise any man at all (146). She points to several quotations from famous authors: Ovid
(153), Fitzgerald (190). She also draws parallels between her story and that of famous
fictional characters: Helen of Troy, Circe, Medea, the Queen of Sheba (221). 1 Among such
allusions, I regard Atwood’s recurring allusions to Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” as crucial to the
novel’s interpretation. Indeed, one should pay particular attention to Iris’s commentary on the
poem:
1 Cooke provides a range of possibilities of intertextual readings of The Blind Assassin. Among other literary
allusions, she mentions Ovid, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Virgil, Sophocles. She analyses the references to the
Arthurian legends in relation to the name of the family home, Avilion. Cooke also compares the novel with the
work of other Canadian women writers: Carol Shields’s The Stone Diaries, Margaret Laurence’s The Stone
Angel, and Alice Munro’s short-story “Something I’ve Been Meaning To Tell You” (Cooke, 151-155). I prefer
to focus on the allusions to Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” as a possible clue as to the interpretation of Iris’s quest.
404

What was a demon-lover, she wanted to know? Why was the sea sunless, why was
the ocean lifeless? Why did the sunny pleasure-dome have caves of ice? What was
Mount Abora, and why was the Abyssinian maid singing about it? Why were the
ancestral voices prophesying war? I didn’t know the answers to any of these
questions. I know all of them now. Not the answers of Samuel Taylor Coleridge –
I’m not sure he had any answers, since he was hopped up on drugs at the time – but
my own answers. Here they are, for what they’re worth. The sacred river is alive. It
flows to the lifeless ocean, because that’s where all things that are alive end up. The
lover is a demon-lover because he isn’t there. The sunny pleasure-dome has caves of
ice because that’s what pleasure-domes have – after a while they become very cold,
and after that they melt, and then where are you? All wet. Mount Abora was the
Abyssinian maid’s home, and she was singing about it because she couldn’t get back
to it. The ancestral voices were prophesying war because ancestral voices never shut
up, and they hate to be wrong, and war is a sure thing, sooner or later. Correct me if
I’m wrong. (410)
While Laura’s innocence is underlined by her numerous questions to her elder sister, the
latter’s final answer to them can be read as a metaphor of her life. The sacred river symbolises
Iris’s life, 2 from which the “demon-lover” remains significantly absent, as does Alex Thomas.
The pleasure-dome represents the life of wealth and opulence Iris has chosen by marrying
Richard Griffin. Its icy caves, on the contrary, refer to the unhappiness of Iris’s marriage.
Mount Abora stands for Iris’s childhood house, Avilion, which she longs to return to. The
parallel is stressed all the more as Iris dresses as an Abyssinian maid (404) at one of Richard’s
parties. However, one should be careful in interpreting this literary allusion.
2 One should keep in mind that the common interpretation of the River Alph is the embodiment of a destructive
force. Indeed, Coleridge’s dream vision in “Kubla Khan” is never far remote from a nightmare. The same can be
said of Iris’s life as a married woman: on the surface, her marriage looks like a life of luxury and entertainment,
while it turns out to be a painful relationship of violence and abuse.
405

Indeed, Atwood has repeatedly revealed her own deceptive way of writing. The overt allusion
to Coleridge might be a trap, compelling the reader to view Iris as the female victim of her
demon-lover. Personally, I would rather regard the presence of this far too obvious literary
interpretation as one more instance of Atwood’s ironic intent, denouncing Iris’s complicity
with her victimiser.
Iris realises the power of the writer who can make time stand still or move forward, as
in this excerpt: “Where was I? I turn back the page: the war is still raging. Raging is what they
used to say, for wars; still do, for all I know. But on this page, a fresh, clean page, I will cause
the war to end – I alone, with a stroke of my black plastic pen. All I have to do is write: 1918.
November 11. Armistice Day” (93). This passage points to the artificiality of the written work.
Moreover, like many of Atwood’s narrators, Iris highlights the illusion of truth achieved in
literature. Indeed, she comments: “The only way you can write the truth is to assume that
what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at
some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself” (345). Later, Iris underlines that she
has chosen knowledge over ignorance in her decision to write down her story (602). Yet, she
also emphasises the elusiveness of the concept of truth. Indeed, according to Iris, what she
imagines becomes her truth: it has the value of truth itself, because it expresses her own
version of her story (626). In fact, when Iris writes “I think the story about you telling me the
story about wolves isn’t about wolves” (424), Atwood implies that the book itself is not about
“assassins.” Rather, it illustrates Iris’s process of self-discovery.
Further, the narrator examines the question of the author’s fame every time she is
confronted with the public’s admiration for Laura (57). She mentions Laura’s novel as a
separate object which has a life of its own: it now belongs to the public domain (345). As
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such, it can be published by anyone. The implications of this are enormous, as the reader
learns that Iris actually wrote the book. Indeed, her deceptive attitude has caused Iris to lose
control over her own work. Similarly, she denounces the intervention of critics who classify
Laura as a “modernist.” They imply that the author of “The Blind Assassin” underwent the
influence of several other writers, whereas Iris, as the real author of the book, knows for a fact
that she never read their work (345-346). The ironic and condescending tone prevails in Iris’s
answer to an academic who wishes to write Laura’s biography. She replies:
Dear Professor Z., I have noted your opinion that a biography of Laura Chase is long
overdue. She may well be, as you say, ‘among our most important female mid-
century writers.’ I wouldn’t know. But my co-operation in what you call ‘your
project’ is out of the question. I have no wish to satisfy your lust for phials of dried
blood and the severed fingers of saints. Laura Chase is not ‘your project.’ She was
my sister. She would not have wished to be pawed over after her death, whatever
that pawing over might euphemistically be termed. Things written down can cause a
great deal of harm. All too often, people don’t consider that. (350)
This ultimate sentence echoes the harm caused to Iris by the novel she wrote. Indeed, because
of that novel, her daughter turned away from her. It also prevented her from raising her
granddaughter. Moreover, the fact that Richard committed suicide with a copy of the novel in
his hands, implies that he was driven to it by the thought that Laura – the alleged author – was
in love with the mysterious Alex Thomas. Written words can indeed cause a great deal of
harm.
Finally, The Blind Assassin, like all Atwoodian narratives, contains fairy-tale motives.
The most obvious one is the inverted Little Red Riding Hood intertext which parallels Iris’s
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search for her granddaughter. Iris’s writing process echoes Little Red Riding Hood’s trip to
her grandmother – i.e. her symbolic discovery of the male. The same process takes place as
the reader witnesses Iris’s exploration of male-female relationships. Alluding to the famous
tale, Iris thinks: “And off I set, step by step, sideways down the stairs, like Little Red Riding
Hood on her way to Granny’s house via the underworld. Except that I myself am Granny, and
I contain my own bad wolf. Gnawing away, gnawing away” (449). The quotation clearly
inverts the roles. On her way to self-discovery, Iris realises that every human being possesses
a dark side.
2. Three-Tiered Deception
In The Blind Assassin, deception develops itself on three levels. First, Iris, and, to a lesser
extent, her sister Laura, both regularly resort to deceptive strategies. Second, in Iris’s novel,
both protagonists use treachery as well: the woman uses a series of disguises to hide her
adultery, while her lover displays an aura of mystery. Finally, within the novel imagined by
the male character, deception appears as a quality rather than a flaw.
Iris strikes the reader as a highly effective liar. Indeed, she succeeds in concealing for
years that she is the real author of “The Blind Assassin.” She often lies to avoid scandals: for
instance, when she claims that her sister’s death was an accident instead of a suicide (4). She
even pretends that her sister suffered from “severe headaches affecting her vision” (6).
Previously, she already fantasised that her sister had made holiday arrangements, while Laura
actually ran away and remained missing for days (314, 405). In doing so, she becomes an
accomplice in her husband’s lies. Concealing discreditable behaviour is a tradition in her
family. Even her grandmother Adelia had a “secret life” (613). Iris alludes to rumours
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concerning her uncles and their unwanted children (79). She gets to know those episodes
through the gossiping of her governess. She notices that the versions of her family history
vary according to her age and to her governess’s state of mind. She concludes: “in this way I
collected enough fragments of the past to make a reconstruction of it, which must have born
as much relation to the real thing as a mosaic portrait would do the original” (83). Indeed,
Reenie’s stories about Iris’s family and the Griffins lack credibility (214, 217).
Iris starts lying at an early age. When Laura throws herself voluntarily into the lake,
Iris covers up for her, telling Reenie, the governess, that it was an accident (184). Both sisters
fool their authoritarian teacher, pretending to be stupid (185, 196). Iris uses the same
technique much later when she displays a blank look to conceal her irritation and anger from
her sister-in-law, Winifred. Further, both little girls enjoy wearing hats, in order to be
“invisible” (187). Pretending even constitutes an aspect of their education: their idealistic
female teacher encourages them to think they are “lowering trees, butterflies, the gentle
breezes” (189). They learn how to cheat: they spend hours in the library, writing down Latin
translations, making them look like their own, by adding some sensible mistakes (199). She
then comments: “We didn’t learn very much Latin, but we learned a great deal about forgery.
We also learned how to make our faces blank and stiff” (200). Later, she adds: “In addition to
lying and cheating, I’d learned half-concealed insolence and silent resistance. I’d learned that
revenge is a dish best eaten cold. I’d learned not to get caught” (203). Iris therefore qualifies
as a highly gifted and efficient liar.
As she becomes accustomed to the politics of social relationships, Iris learns deception
even more skilfully. She realises that she must answer questions in a satisfactory way. She
invents a hobby – gardening (47). She learns how to evade questions or render them foolish
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(317). She also succeeds in concealing her growing fear of her husband’s violence (366). She
gradually starts to behave as expected from the wife of an influential businessman (372, 454,
499). Further, she stresses the importance of disguise in this artificial social circle, describing
at length the sumptuous balls organised by her husband. She explains: “It was a costume ball
– such functions mostly were, because people at that time liked costumes. They liked them
almost as much as they liked uniforms. Both served the same end: to avoid being who you
were, you could pretend to be someone else. You could become bigger and more powerful, or
more alluring and mysterious, just by putting on exotic clothes” (408). Indeed, the ball
functions as an ideal place to either reveal or conceal oneself (409), depending on the kind of
disguise people choose. Further, she often alludes to the necessity of hiding one’s emotions
(409), which is echoed in Alex’s science-fiction narrative. In a harsh discussion with her
sister-in-law, Winifred, Iris explains how she learned to adopt the requested behaviour. She
tells Winifred: “I did what you wanted. I kept my mouth shut. I smiled. I was the window-
dressing. But Laura was going too far. He should have left Laura out of it” (453). Indeed, Iris
agrees to play the role imposed on her as long as Laura remains unharmed. When she realises
that her sister has become the victim of Richard’s lust, she decides to publish her novel. The
scandal caused by this publication ruins Richard’s hopes for a political career. Moreover, Iris
frequently professes her distrust of her husband. She hesitates before telling him about her
pregnancy (520). She feigns sickness, so as to escape his sexual lust (538). She insists on his
cunning (538). She also lies to him when she needs to find Laura, who has run away. She then
pretends that Reenie is severely ill and wants to see her (541). She realises that Richard
prevented her from receiving Laura’s letters (543). On her way back, she invents other lies: an
old lady needed rescue; she brought her to the hospital (562, 565). She also lies to Richard
when she gets the news of her lover’s death and acts as though she does not know him (570).
Finally, she once again invents a story to explain why Laura committed suicide with her car:
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she tells Richard she left her car at the garage and Laura came to pick it up (596). She tells her
daughter it was an accident (602).
As a narrator too, Iris often alludes to her own unreliability. She considers that her
version of the facts has become the truth because she is the last witness (266). She thinks: “I
look back over what I’ve written and I know it’s wrong, not because of what I’ve set down,
but because of what I’ve omitted. What isn’t there has a presence, like the absence of light”
(484). Indeed, Iris’s version of her life is only one aspect of the events. When the reader
reconstitutes the puzzle by adding the information contained in her published novel and the
metaphorical content of the science-fiction story, he gets a fuller – though still incomplete –
picture of the protagonist. Iris meditates on the human being’s need for deception and secrecy:
I wonder which is preferable – to walk around all your life swollen up with your
own secrets until you burst from the pressure of them, or to have them sucked out of
you, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of them, so at the end you’re
depleted of all that was once as precious to you as hoarded gold, as close to you as
your skin – everything that was of the deepest importance to you, everything that
made you cringe and wish to conceal, everything that belonged to you alone – and
must spend the rest of your days like an empty sack flapping in the wind with a
bright fluorescent label so that everyone will know what sort of secrets used to be
inside you? (547)
From this passage, the reader understands the importance of secrecy in the character’s life.
Deception is an everyday process which takes place in the smallest and most trivial of deeds.
Both sisters are secretive (285); they often hide under pieces of furniture (73). Though
she remains less deceptive than her elder sister, Laura frequently uses lies as well. She says
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she wants to learn photography in order to steal the negative of a picture of Iris and herself
with Alex Thomas (225). She often takes on a “virtuous expression” to secure what she wants
(243). Similarly, when she decides to hide Alex in the attic, she pretends not to be hungry, in
order to save food for him (254, 261). Iris soon becomes her accomplice in this deceptive plan
(260). Laura gives Alex her father’s coat, then pretends to have given it to a tramp (267).
When Laura gets involved with charity missions, Iris suspects her of being somewhere else
(272). Laura often makes use of treachery to escape a situation that has become unbearable.
For instance, she forges letters and imitates her sister’s signature in order to get out of school
(460). When she tells Iris that she saw her shopping during one of her escapades, the reader,
intrigued by Iris’s sense of panic, comes to understand that she is the mysterious woman
involved in an extra-marital love affair (462). Deception can therefore be regarded as a crucial
element of plot development. Iris’s daughter, Aimee, deeply resents the family’s attitude,
which consists in hiding the truth from her: she believes Laura to be her real, secret mother
(531). Indeed, deception pervades the book so much that it deeply affects all characters,
including minor ones.
In Iris’s novel, the female protagonist invents a series of excuses to conceal her love
affair. She pretends to go shopping, for instance, in order to find the time to meet her lover.
The latter encourages her to adopt a dog, so as to have a reason to sneak out of the house (22).
She often changes appearances: she covers her hair with a scarf (130, 417), she steals a coat in
a restaurant and frumps up her hair, to “emerge as a different woman” (317). She speaks of
camouflage (561). She also lies to her lover: when he notices the traces of her husband’s
abuse, she claims she bumped into a door (335). She describes her love affair as both an act of
treachery and one of courage (393). The male protagonist is even more deceptive. He
possesses several names, displaying various identities (309). Yet, the woman unconsciously
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enjoys this atmosphere of secrecy. As Iris writes: “She goes to him for amnesia, for oblivion.
(…) To exist without boundaries” (319). Therefore, I regard deception as a crucial component
of the novel’s main love affair.
In Alex’s science-fiction story, cities possess a mythology based on acts of “deliberate
forgetting” (14). City names are purposefully erased by conquerors; each tribe pretends to
have won the war (14). Even destroyed cities are said to be preserved by magic charms
elsewhere (15). The inhabitants of this strange world value the art of deception as a virtue. For
example, the aristocrats, called the Snilfards, constantly wear masks. The laws require them to
conceal their emotions at all times (158). They also pretend not to know about extra-marital
relationships (20). The poorer social class, the Ygnirods, use deception too: their resent their
lower condition and pretend to be stupid (21). This civilisation derives its wealth from the
hard work of child slaves, a fact kept secret as well (33). Further, deception is ubiquitous in
this world: mothers dress their boys as girls so as to avoid jealousy; prostitutes imitate the
distinctive body marks of nobility; rich families offer foundlings instead of their own children
to ritual sacrifices (35). They wrap slave girls in veils (37) Their religious rituals are pervaded
with lies: for example, the feared Lord of the Underworld happens to be a mere nobleman in
disguise (143); neither do people really believe in their popular “Broken God” (158). Sakiel
North’s blind assassin uses deception to accomplish his plan: dressed as the sacrificed girl, he
must kill the King (147). The “blind assassin” himself confesses that “he’s learned how to
flatter, how to lie plausibly, how to ingratiate himself” (311). He performs his worst treachery
when he decides to modify the plan: he refuses to kill the victim, runs away with her (326),
and becomes a traitor to his own country (422). The high degree of deception described in the
science-fiction interlude clearly functions as a metaphor for the large amount of social lies
used by the novel’s protagonists.
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However, the novel written by Iris and attributed to Laura shocks respectable society
in that it fails to comply with the usual processes of deception and secrecy. In a world where
people attempt to conceal their otherness by resorting to constant mimicry processes, Laura
and “her” novel represent a form of escape, a rejection of commonly accepted social
practices. Iris recalls: “What people remember isn’t the book itself, so much as the furor:
ministers in church denounced it as obscene, not only here; the public library was forced to
remove it from the shelves, the one bookstore in town refused to stock it. There was word of
censoring it” (48). Indeed, the scandalous book reveals a love affair otherwise kept secret. Iris
suggests that many things remain “unsaid” (86). Iris and Laura were educated in an
atmosphere of secrecy. Several examples testify to this: their mother wants their father to
“keep his atheism to himself” (96); she does not want people to know about his scandalous
mistresses (98). Iris also intimates that Laura’s so-called difference lies in her inability to keep
things hidden. She thinks: “perhaps Laura wasn’t very different from other people after all.
Perhaps she was the same – the same as some odd, skewed element in them that most people
keep hidden but that Laura did not, and this was why she frightened them” (110-111). Iris
resents her mother’s idea of herself. Indeed, the mother wants her eldest daughter to be the
wise one who looks after her younger sister (117): Iris feels unable to mimic the behaviour
requested from her - a feeling she will often experience in her future life (126). When she
later enters the social world after marrying Richard, she often daydreams about her
grandmother Adelia. She idealises her unknown ancestor, believing she would have taught her
how to behave in society (205). This desire to fit in, this urge to display an accepted behaviour
subsequently dominates Iris’s marital life. Yet, she secretly hates that attitude. She comments:
“We shouldn’t have to lay ourselves out for people, court them with coaxings and wheedlings
and eye-battling displays” (285). In order to become a perfect lady, Iris has to master several
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disciplines: she must learn how to dance, how to invent acceptable excuses, how to look bored
or hide one’s fear, how to ignore insults (287-288), what to wear (367). Yet, throughout her
mimicry process, Iris – more than any Atwoodian heroine – remains aware of the sacrifices
she makes. Thinking of her granddaughter and her friends she says: “Already they were
making attempts to alter themselves, to improve and distort and diminish, to cram themselves
into some impossible, imaginary mould, plucking and pencilling away at their faces. I didn’t
blame them, having done the same once myself” (359). In The Blind Assassin, mimicry had
clearly become a conscious process, one of the heroine’s personal choices.
3. Iris’s Disruptions of Reality
Although The Blind Assassin strikes the reader as a highly realistic novel, it also contains
brief moments where reality and fantasy interact. Such moments usually point to the
character’s inner trouble. Iris frequently alludes to sudden impressions of not being in the
right place. She has the feeling that another woman will come in and claim the territory for
her own. This feeling of “trespassing” (70) in her own environment indicates the artificiality
of her behaviour. Indeed, instead of acting naturally, she constantly tries to correspond to the
image of a respectable lady. Conscious of the dishonest nature of her commitment to Richard,
Iris experiences an almost mystic vision. Left alone in a magnificent hotel, she suddenly feels
observed by God himself. The whole scene exhibits an uncanny atmosphere. Iris describes her
experience as follows: “There was no floor to my room: I was suspended in the air, about to
plummet. My fall would be endless – endlessly down” (279). The passage focuses on Iris’s
combined feelings of guilt and failure, which both indicate that she is dissatisfied with what
she has become. Further, the novel contains several examples of strange dreams. Their
strangeness lies in their temporal irregularities. In one of those, Iris first believes that she is at
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her husband’s ball. Yet, she soon realises that she stands in the ruined glass conservatory at
Avilion. She focuses on details that denote desolation: the stone sphinx, the hole in the glass
roof, and darkness (404). In comparison with those gloomy details, Iris’s fancy dress suddenly
looks grotesque and terribly out of place, which echoes the heroine’s own feeling in society.
The scene unsurprisingly calls up Laura, who, unlike her sister, definitely belongs to that
deserted place. The desolate nightly setting strikes the reader with its undeniable gothic
quality.
Particularly uncanny is the scene of the miscarriage – a frequent episode in Atwood’s
fiction. Iris and Laura witness their mother’s miscarriage from a distance, wishing to find out
about what happened. What they first mistake for a kitten, turns out to be the unborn foetus.
Laura’s reaction to this sight, her instinctive understanding of the foetus’s condition, makes
the scene even more uncanny. It endows Laura with a knowledge of nature that stands in
sharp contrast with her innocence. Looking at the unborn baby, she exclaims: “It’s a baby,”
(…) ‘It’s not finished.” (…) “The poor thing. It didn’t want to get itself born.” (113-114).
Laura’s reaction denotes a highly sensitive response to natural events. It points to her fragility:
her ability to react in such an unexpected way makes her stand out as “other.” The passage
displays an undeniable gothic quality.
Further, Iris’s old age causes her to become insecure in her own house. The treachery
of that once familiar place is described in an utterly uncanny way. The house suddenly
appears as a trap, which Iris experiences as a void:
On the floor at the bottom there was a pool of darkness, deep and shimmering and
wet as a real pool. Perhaps it was a real pool; perhaps the river was welling up
through the floor, as I have seen happen on the weather channel. Any of the four
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elements may become displaced at any time: fire may break from the earth, earth
liquefy and tumble around your ears, air beat against you like a rock, dashing the
roof from over your head. Why not then a flood? (449)
The overwhelming character of Iris’s fear indicates that she has reached a point where she can
no longer escape the feeling of growing older. It climaxes when Iris almost falls down the
stairs, then decides to turn back upstairs (450). Old age has definitely won the race.
Moreover, Iris describes a dream, which regularly haunts her: she stands outside her
house, with a mysterious stranger approaching her. Once again, the uncanniness of the scene
lies in its inconsistencies. This time, spatial elements do not correspond. Iris notices: “I was
aware that there shouldn’t be a chestnut tree there: that tree belonged elsewhere, a hundred
miles away, outside the house where I had once lived with Richard. Yet there it was, the tree”
(484-485). The same scene recurs later on, albeit with some variations. This time, dream and
reality intertwine, as Iris mentions actually getting out of her bed and watching racoons she
mistook for her mysterious stranger (485-486). When a similar scene eventually takes place in
the mind of the female protagonist in Iris’s book, the reader definitely identifies Iris with the
mysterious heroine, and simultaneously understands that she is the author of the scandalous
work (572). In the subsequent scene, Iris lives an ultimate fictional encounter with her lover.
Once again, fiction and reality are mixed up, as they simultaneously witness the burning of a
city – probably caused by the war – associating it with the destruction of planet Zycron (573).
This brief encounter allows Iris to leave behind the remembrances of her love affair and
acknowledge her lover’s death (574). Further, she identifies the war as a circumstance which
transcends reality and accounts for a sudden disruption of the ordinary (583).
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In addition, The Blind Assassin contains an example of grotesque magic realism in a
scene which brings together human and alien elements. In the science-fiction story written by
Alex, the encounter between the heroine and the extra-terrestrial displays a ludicrous and
fantastic character. The heroine herself claims to have an “uncanny feeling.” She feels in a
“drowsy state,” when the alien slowly escapes from his icy prison and captures her (338-339).
The scene appears as both eerie and grotesque, through its emphasis on the clichés of the
genre – the at once frightening and seducing alien, the pulpous heroine, the nightly attack, the
glowing, melting ice, etc. Nevertheless, this example of grotesque magic realism remains an
exception in The Blind Assassin, which is largely imprinted with a gothic quality. 3
4. Are All Tricksters “Blind Assassins?”
Although none of them commits a murder as such, all characters in the book can be regarded
as the “blind assassin” mentioned in its title. Iris, though she first presents herself as a victim,
is largely responsible for her husband’s and her sister’s suicides. Richard’s attitude towards
Laura, equally encourages her to kill herself, as does Alex Thomas’s ambivalent attitude. All
those characters possess characteristics of the trickster figure. Yet, I contend that Laura,
presented by many critics as the most innocent protagonist, functions as a trickster as well.
The most obvious trickster figures in the novel are Richard and Alex, who trifle with
the feelings of both Laura and Iris. Alex strikes the reader with his independent spirit and his
3 Karen F. Stein explains that Atwood’s use of gothic elements should be studied in the light of feminist
criticism, which regards gothic literature as a stereotyping of the female role. (Stein “A Left-Handed Story” 136-
138). Personally, I consider Atwood’s use of gothic imagery as another postcolonial element which allows the
writer to utter a critique of patriarchy.
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attraction for the forbidden. While narrating his science-fiction story to Iris, he repeatedly
indicates that he sides with the assassin. He says, for instance: “I’m on the side of the throat-
cutters. If you had to cut throats or starve, which would you do?” (29). The story further
stresses the connection between life and death (34). It contains numerous examples of ritual
sacrifices (34). In the science-fiction story, the blind assassin presents several characteristics
of Alex Thomas himself: a traveller, “rumoured to be a thief,” a foreigner, a beggar (144-
145). In Iris’s novel, the woman describes her lover – whom we later identify as Alex – as a
bandit (323). Alex confesses living “by his wits” (229), as befits a trickster. The story further
contains the following advice: “If they turn out to be divine emissaries, it’s best to give them
food and wine and the use of a woman if required, to listen respectfully to their messages, and
then to let them go on their way” (145). In relation to this passage, one must keep in mind that
Laura and Iris hide the stranger in the cellar and feed him, until he eventually wanders away
too. Both girls also fall in love with him. The way Alex is treated by the two sisters indicates
his role as a “divine emissary.” As to the message he conveys, it undoubtedly concerns Iris’s
mistake in committing herself to Richard’s life style. The list of words abandoned by him in
the cellar, looks like a mysterious, foreign language to Iris (268), a cryptic message again. He
is presented as a scavenger, more precisely a “corpse fly” (229), and later as a hyena, a jackal,
a raven (351). He confesses: “I have a wolf side to me” (424). All those quotations confirm
Alex’s animal nature and his role as a predator.
Alex shows a deep connection with death, as tricksters often do. As a child, he was
found in the middle of a burned house, among dead people (231). Iris further evokes his
divine character when she describes her encounter with him on a street: “He was illuminated,
as if a shaft of light were falling on him from some invisible source, rendering him
frighteningly visible” (393). Alex thus knows the underground world, the spiritual, the
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invisible. Moreover, Alex Thomas tricks Iris in making her believe that he constitutes a real
escape for her. His science-fiction story echoes the young girl’s distress: trapped in a marriage
contracted for money, she resembles the story’s innocent maid. In his first version of the
narrative, Alex gets carried away by his lover’s romanticism: he thus imagines the blind
assassin’s flight with his victim, whom he refrained from killing. In the published version,
though, Iris desperately looks for romantic elements. She then realises that they have been
omitted altogether and feels that Alex has somehow fooled her (326, 330, 331). Alex himself
alludes to the presence of tricksters in his stories and in real life, as he explains the following
to Iris: “I like my stories to be true to life, which means there have to be wolves in them.
Wolves in one form or another” (423). He performs a last joke on Iris when she receives the
news of his death in the presence of her husband and is therefore forced to conceal her grief
(570).
Iris’s husband, Richard, also strikes the reader as a potential trickster. Iris’s first
description of Richard, on their wedding photograph, reveals his deceptiveness: “He looks
substantial, but at the same time quizzical: one eyebrow cocked, lower lip thrust a little out,
mouth on the verge of a smile, as if at some secret, dubious joke” (292). The defiant, joking
aspect of the trickster dominates the character. Later on, Richard becomes less appealing, as
he repeatedly lies to his wife: during their honeymoon, he hushes up her father’s death,
preventing her from receiving any phone call (376); he also conceals Laura’s letters. Laura
immediately recognises Richard’s dubious nature. She calls him “a lying, treacherous slave-
trader, and a degenerate Mammon-worshipping monster” (524). In her ultimate allusion to her
husband, Iris compares him with a “large rodent,” connected with the underground world. He
destroys people by “chewing off their roots” (585). In the science-fiction story, Richard takes
the form of the Lord of the Underworld, a sinful nobleman, who deprives the innocent maid
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from her virginity (142). Yet, his ultimate victim is not his own wife, but Laura. Indeed, Iris
considers Richard responsible for her sister’s death, thus obliterating her own feeling of guilt.
Iris, too, functions as a highly effective trickster. As a child, she already describes
herself as “a renegade, and a bit of a fool” (99), two qualities she claims having inherited from
her father. She further displays a sixth sense as far as danger is concerned. She remembers
having a premonition of her mother’s illness and subsequent death (108-109). She insists on
her ability to see in the dark (138). Repeatedly, Iris also intimates that she is not a likable
person: to Laura, she does not act as a caring elder sister (116): for instance, she tries to keep
Laura away from Alex Thomas, although she knows her sister loves the boy (223). Iris also
feels connected with death, first because of her old age, second, because of her numerous
rituals in relation with her dead sister, Laura: she visits her sibling’s funeral monument (233).
She also frequently hints at her own animal nature: in a dream, she imagines her legs are
covered with fur; she will soon hibernate. Iris experiences the whole dream as something she
has already known before, bathed in a déjà-vu feeling (271). Her dreamlike descent into the
cellar conveys the same underground atmosphere (323). During her marriage, Iris hides her
duplicity by adopting stupidity as a disguise. Years later, her sister-in-law Winifred comes to
realise Iris’s mischief, as appears from the following excerpt: “Winifred thought I was
innocuous. Put another way, she thought I was a fool. Later – ten years into the future – she
was to say, over the phone because we no long met in person, ‘I used to think you were
stupid, but really you’re evil’” (452). Indeed, Iris’s trickster-like nature reveals itself in her
sudden need to tell the truth. The trickster’s ex-centric position in society allows him or her to
reveal the truth about the society. Iris concludes: “I offer the truth, (…) I’m the last one who
can. It’s the only thing in this room that will still be here in the morning. (536). In the last
pages of her confessions, Iris leaves no doubt about her trickster identity. She claims:
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Wolves, I invoke you! Dead women with azure hair and eyes like snake-filled pits, I
summon you! Stand by me now, as we near the end! Guide my shaking arthritic
fingers, my tacky black ballpoint pen; keep my leaking heart aflow for just a few
more days, until I can set things in order. Be my companions, my helpers and my
friends; once more, I add, for haven’t we been well-acquainted in the past? (607)
Through these words, Iris confesses her kinship with the world of animals and spiritual forces.
She also implies that this power gives her the strength to write her confession.
Finally, I regard Laura as the novel’s most developed trickster entity, though her power
remains hidden under the mask of innocence. Iris gives us a clue as to her sister’s nature,
when she remembers a picture in a book she read right before Laura’s birth. This powerful
image consists in a werewolf covered in fire. Iris remembers how the character’s power,
mischief, and apparent invincibility impressed her. She intuitively connects it with the
imminent birth of her sister (101-102). She mentions that Laura took a long time to be born,
as if she did not really want to come into this world (104). Such a comment reinforces Laura’s
connection with the world of death, which is established from the beginning of the novel:
indeed, the narrative starts with an allusion to Laura’s suicide, thus identifying her at once as
a shadowy character. As a child already, she deliberately tried to drown into the lake: death
does not frighten her; on the contrary, she seems willing to negotiate her own death in
exchange for her mother’s return (183). Iris describes at length how Laura differs from other
children. She has “unaccountable crises” and an “uncanny resistance to physical pain” (106).
Everything she does is carried “to extremes” (106), as befits a trickster: for instance, she steals
tints from the photographer she works with. Subsequently, she colours family portraits with
them, in order to show the real hues of people’s souls (237). After her mother’s death, Laura
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takes on the habit of hiding into her mother’s fur coat, thus acknowledging her animal side
(167). At school, she shocks her teachers with her blasphemous attitude: she overtly regards
God as a liar (459-460). When Iris informs Richard of Laura’s conduct, he admires her
rebellious reactions, stressing the correlation between them: he too hated school (461).
Subsequently, Iris insists on Laura’s need to defy people, to denounce their hypocrisy (517).
In reviews of the book, Laura is often regarded as an innocent creature. 4 Yet, Iris
frequently hints at her sister’s well-concealed treachery. For instance, she ponders: “Laura
had such a direct gaze, such blankly open eyes, such a pure, rounded forehead, that few ever
suspected her of duplicity” (239); or “I came to feel that Laura was making a fool of me,
though I couldn’t specify how, exactly. I didn’t think she was lying as such, but neither was
she telling the entire truth” (244). Laura’s attitude at Iris’s wedding reveals the trickster side
of her personality, as she manages to ruin all the wedding pictures (293). On one of them, Iris
gets an indication of Laura’s hidden power. She recalls: “there must have been a defect in the
film, because there’s an effect of dappled light, falling not down on her but up, as if she’s
standing on the edge of an illuminated swimming pool, at night” (293). Iris describes her
sister as “sly,” “brittle,” “insouciant,” “reckless” (519), “old,” “knowing” (520). She adds:
“Laura had always had one enormous power: the power to break things without meaning to.
Nor had she ever been a respecter of territories. What was mine was her” (538). Iris clearly
implies that Laura is a “crosser of boundaries,” a character who does not respect limits. This
4 Nathalie Cooke, among other, after mentioning Myra, the housekeeper, as a truly benevolent character,
describes Laura as “the only other character untainted by deception” (Cooke, Critical Companion, 142).
Evidently, I totally disagree with this assessment of the character. Indeed, in my view, Laura’s otherness sets her
apart in various ways. Yet, as far as deception and tricksterism are concerned, she displays such types of
behaviour as much as any other Atwoodian figure.
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also applies to men: Laura has a relationship with Alex, her sister’s lover, and an
unwanted sexual intercourse with Richard, Iris’s husband. The messages she leaves to her
elder sister are cryptic, yet perfectly understandable to someone who shares her trickster
nature. In order to denounce Richard’s mischief, Laura colours a series of wedding
photographs, thus revealing to her sister the nature of people’s intentions. Winifred’s lurid
green colour exposes her mischief, whereas Richard’s dark grey face and red hands symbolise
his evil nature and his attempts at abusing Laura (550-551). Using colour symbolism, Laura
illustrates the trickster’s ability to denounce social and personal abuse. Indeed, Winifred and
Richard represent social constraints as well as sexual ones. They limit Iris’s personal
development. Worse, they destroy Laura’s life, because they resent her refusal to obey their
laws.
Alex, Richard, Iris and Laura reflect different aspects of the trickster. Alex possesses the
sexual attraction of the trickster. He appears as a joker; an ex-centric character who manages
to remain on the edge of society. Richard, for his part, functions as evil incarnate. He does not
hesitate to lie and act violently. He abuses Laura sexually. He harasses his wife morally and
physically. A sly businessman, he continually flirts with evil, entertaining commercial
relationships with nazi Germany. Iris becomes a trickster because her position as Richard’s
wife compels her to do so. Unable to develop a personality of her own, she is condemned to
use deception as a survival strategy. Yet, she also intimates that tricksterism is one of her
innate qualities. She repeatedly points to her animal nature and to her inner mischief. Laura,
her sister, though she may appear as an innocent victim, has also inherited trickster features:
she displays an animal sensuousness, an extraordinary intuition, as well as an ability to
deceive even those who are close to her. She possesses a power of vision, a connection with
death, a willingness to position herself as an outsider. As such, she becomes an observer of
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society, as well as someone who can denounce its shortcomings. Therefore, I consider Laura
as the most gifted trickster of the book, though she is not one of its “blind assassins.” The
assassins are Richard, who destroys Laura’s life; Alex, who ruins Iris’s belief in love; and Iris.
The latter both causes her husband’s suicide – because of the book she publishes under
Laura’s name – and Laura’s death – after Iris reveals her personal love affair with Alex. One
could read the following excerpt as Iris’s conclusion about her own and the other
protagonists’ tricksterism: “I didn’t see the danger. I didn’t even see they were tigers. Worse:
I didn’t know I might become a tiger myself. I didn’t know Laura might become one, given
the proper circumstances. Anyone might, for that matter” (403). Indeed, throughout the novel,
Iris changes her opinion about herself and other characters. She comes to realise that both
Alex and Richard harmed her, though differently. Likewise, she must admit that neither
herself, nor Laura are totally innocent.
5. Hybrid Sisters
Several characters strike the reader with their “otherness:” Iris and her younger sister, Laura,
undoubtedly constitutes the most obvious examples of this. Iris often claims that she does not
recognise her own voice (32, 100). She sees her possessions as belonging to someone else
(70-71). As a child, Iris felt happy not to go to school. Yet, she also mentions that she felt
excluded and different from the other children (187). As a married woman, she feels erased
and featureless (288), because her social position compels her to conceal the violence she
endures. Symptomatically, her marriage feels like an “empty space” (291). The following
excerpt describes Iris’s growing sense of alienation:
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I say “her,” because I don’t recall having been present, not in any meaningful sense
of the word. I and the girl in the picture have ceased to be the same person. I am her
outcome, the result of the life she once lived headlong; whereas she, if she can be
said to exist at all, is composed only of what I remember. I have the better view – I
can see her clearly, most of the time. But even if she knew enough to look, she can’t
see me at all (292).
The quotation definitely expresses the split that takes place within Iris’s personality. On the
one hand, she becomes the perfectly well-behaved wife, on the other, a concealed part of
herself remains conscious of how desperate her life is. This split causes Iris to seek happiness
elsewhere, in an extra-marital relationship. Her portrait of this love affair in her scandalous
novel puts the stress on the transgression of boundaries which takes place during those
discrete, elusive encounters (308). Yet, in this context too, the woman protagonist still feels
she is wrongly dressed (316). Her relationship with Alex does not bring her satisfaction. Iris
constantly refers to the feeling of emptiness that obsesses her in her role as a respectable wife.
She thinks: “She’s the round O, the zero at the bone. A space that defines itself by not being
there at all. That’s why they can’t reach her, lay a finger on her. That’s why they can’t pin
anything on her. She has such a good smile, but she doesn’t stand behind it” (501). She also
realises that her lover offers her only escape from the “sheltered life” he accuses her of living
(501). Iris’s fundamental trouble lies in her inner feeling of “otherness.” She repeatedly points
to her homelessness (546), and her foreignness (588). Even motherhood fails to reconcile her
with herself: she regards her baby as a changeling, a gypsy baby, exchanged for her more
smiling true daughter (539). She explains how Winifred gradually succeeds in keeping her
away from her daughter, portraying her as “a lush, a tramp, a slut, a bad mother” (625). Once
again, she feels excluded, not worthy of finding her place within society.
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Laura is the most obvious illustration of “otherness” in the novel. Iris notices: “As for Laura,
she was not selfless, not at all. Instead she was skinless, which is a different thing” (91). The
word “skinless” points out that Laura lacks protection against society’s attacks. As a child,
already, Laura seems different, i.e. strange (110). As already mentioned, she proves to provide
the requested answers (537). She colours her photographs according to what she thinks of the
people in them. Iris adds: “The colours never came out clear, the way they would on a piece
of white paper: there was a misty look to them, as if they were seen through cheesecloth. They
didn’t make the people seem more real; rather they became ultra-real: citizens of an odd half-
country, lurid yet muted, where realism was beside the point” (236). Iris makes a direct
allusion to hybridity. Indeed, she implies that Laura’s choice of colours transforms real people
into hybrids. Laura harbours strange and definite ideas about colours: trees are blue or red, the
sky pink or green (191). This indicates that Laura allows her imagination to dominate her
vision of reality. This aspect of her personality can sometimes cause Laura to face dangerous
situations. She ignores limits: she might enter someone’s car or house. Iris explains: “she
didn’t draw lines, or not where other people drew them, and you couldn’t warn her because
she didn’t understand such warnings. It wasn’t that she flouted rules: she simply forgot about
them” (211). Throughout her life, Laura repeatedly expresses her solidarity with marginalised
people: unemployed workers (240), sick people – “derelicts: old women with dementia,
impecunious veterans down on their luck, noseless men with tertiary syphilis and the like”
(514) – what Iris calls “hopeless cases” (515). Winifred regards this tendency as another proof
of the fact that Laura looks “bizarre” (515) or “more than a little odd” (516). Eccentricity
often qualifies Laura (381): she goes barefooted (381); some pupils find her “funny” or
“odd;” others describe her as “a Bolshevik (460); she is “singled out” (509). The headmaster
of her school sums it up as follows: “In any case, she attracts the wrong kind of attention”
(460). Laura even goes so far as to literally express her desire to be “other” (401-402) –
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something she never totally succeeds in. She looks “incongruous,” “surreal” in the
surroundings created by Winifred (521). She becomes “unknown,’ even to her own sister.
Moreover, she often utters sentences that take on a strange significance. For instance, when
Iris wants to talk to her about future prospects, she dismisses her saying: “If you were a
blindfolded tightrope walker crossing Niagara Falls on a high wire, what would you pay more
attention to – the crowds on the far shore, or your own feet?” (519) Laura thus expresses how
her vision of life differs from that of other people. Yet, the two sisters are not so different
from one another. They simply have chosen to negotiate their otherness differently. When she
comments “And when did the one become the other? Where was the threshold, between the
inner world and the outer one?” (537), Iris underlines the similarities that exist between
herself and her sister.
Iris’s conclusion about the novel she wrote under the name of her sister gives us a clue as to
how to interpret their “otherness.” Indeed, Iris emphasises the fact that neither of them has
authored the book. As she puts it: “a fist is more than the sum of its fingers” (626). She goes
on claiming: “Laura was my left hand, and I was hers. We wrote the book together. It’s a left-
handed book. That’s why one of us is always out of sight, whichever way you look at it”
(627). This quote indicates how much the sisters share this hybridity. The frequent allusions
to the picnic photograph on which the hand of the missing one of them remains visible (631)
echo the bond between Iris and Laura. Hybridity, a quality that seems to have embarrassed
Iris and Laura throughout their lives, though in very different ways, suddenly becomes an
advantage as Iris decides to pass on her story to her granddaughter. She then writes:
Since Laura is no longer who you think she was, you’re no longer who you think
you are, either. That can be a shock, but it can also be a relief. For instance, you’re
no relation at all to Winifred, and none to Richard. (…) Your real grandfather was
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Alex Thomas, and as to who is own father was, well, the sky’s the limit. Rich man,
poor man, beggarman, saint, a score of countries of origin, a dozen cancelled maps,
a hundred levelled villages – take your pick. Your legacy from him is the realm of
infinite speculation. You’re free to reinvent yourself at will. (627)
When reading this excerpt, one clearly understands that hybridity might be interpreted as a
quality, as an opportunity. Iris hopes that her granddaughter, liberated from the constraints of
bourgeois society, will be able to transform her hybrid origin into an asset rather than a flaw.
6. A Three-Tiered Variation on the Quest Pattern
The three-fold structure of the novel presents the reader with an interesting variation on the
quest pattern. Within the novel, Iris’s desire for truth, the unknown heroine’s search for love,
and the blind assassin’s quest for freedom are strongly related. They constantly intertwine as
passages of the three narrative levels succeed one another. The blind assassin decides to go
against society’s ritual by saving the maid and running away with her, thus endangering a
whole civilisation. This decision echoes that of the woman in Iris’s novel, who abandons
herself to the love of a heartless stranger. Similarly, Iris’s role as the narrator of the book
forces her to engage on a quest. In a long narrative process, she eventually comes to
acknowledge her guilt – for the loss of her sister, for the broken contact with her
granddaughter. Furthermore, she learns to accept that her sister was not so different from her.
Indeed, they both suffered from a similar inability to integrate their “otherness” into their
personality. Iris chose to play the role of the dignified wife, whereas Laura, refusing to fit into
any of the social roles provided to her, was soon regarded as crazy, as unable to care for
herself.
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Several details in the narrative indicate that the quest takes place on three levels. The
woman in Iris’s novel claims to be “peering into a well or pool – searching beyond her own
reflection for something else, something she must have dropped or lost, out of reach but still
visible, shimmering like a jewel on sand” (8). This quotation poetically points to the fact that
the character stands at the beginning of a quest. Further, she evokes “a gift box at the bottom
of which, hidden in layers of rustling tissue paper, lay something they’d always longed for but
couldn’t ever grasp” (49). Iris herself claims to be desperately looking for her lost
granddaughter (50, 58, 351), though this obvious search might conceal another, more secret
kind of quest. Indeed, Iris simultaneously engages on a journey for self-knowledge: while
telling her story, she examines why so many people were hurt. Also, she tries to determine her
own degree of guilt and involvement. Now that she has abandoned her long lasting role of
bourgeois wife, she can see her past as it really was, i.e. as a desperate journey to be accepted
with her differences. One should notice that each important event in Iris’s life, each stage of
her quest is underlined by the presence of a newspaper article relating the facts in an objective
and mundane tone. Similarly, minor episodes in Iris’s novel and in her lover’s science-fiction
narrative echo situations in Iris’s life. Iris often emphasises the fact that she lives in darkness
(51). She also adds that an “old wound has split open” (51), thus indicating the necessity for
her to act. Avilion, the place where she spent her childhood, recurs as a leitmotiv, punctuating
Iris’s journey in her past (71-72). Her mother’s death marks a turning point in Iris’s life. This
event constitutes the departure point of Iris’s alienation – or the first stage of her quest. She
comments: “This event changed everything” (107). When her mother asks her to care for her
younger sister, Iris suddenly feels herself endowed with a role she cannot assume. This will be
the case for the rest of her life. Within this sad context of her mother’s death, Iris’s meeting
with the mysterious Alex functions as the traditional second stage of the novel, i.e. the
encounter with the green-world lover. Her marriage constitutes her entrance into the
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trickster’s world (stage 3): indeed, Richard represents a strong evil figure, whom Iris
eventually challenges and defeats by writing her scandalous novel. Along the way, Iris has to
face her father’s death (stage 4). When the reader discovers the protagonist, she is already
engaged in the last stage of her quest. As the narrator of The Blind Assassin, Iris experiences a
moment of deep introspection. Telling her story enables her to distance herself from it. By the
end of the narrative, she has reached a fuller understanding of her own behaviour.
***
The Blind Assassin clearly constitutes Atwood’s most metafictional novel. Far from simply
containing various allusions to famous literary works – Ovid’s work and Coleridge’s “Kubla
Khan,” among the most famous ones, it also highlights the mechanics of the writing process.
Indeed, the novel significantly narrates a writer’s experience: it explores her reasons for
writing; it comments on the elusiveness of truth and on the writer’s loss of control over her
creation. Further, it examines the politics of the relationship between reality and fictions as it
mentions the numerous implications “The Blind Assassin” bears on the characters’ lives.
Deception once again stands at the centre of such relationships. Indeed, the reader
gradually comes to understand that Iris has lied to all: she is the actual author of “The Blind
Assassin,” a narrative which reveals her scandalous love affair with the mysterious Alex
Thomas. By lying about the identity of the writer, Iris has caused much harm to occur: her
daughter believes Laura to be her real mother; her granddaughter has chosen to avoid contact
with the family altogether; her husband has committed suicide because he assumed Laura to
be the heroine of the book and could not bear the thought of her liaison. What matters most is
The Blind Assassin’s process of conscious deception. Indeed, the ageing protagonist strikes
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the reader as being perfectly aware of the sacrifices she had to make to be socially accepted:
deception fully becomes part of the heroine’s process of mimicry. It influences even her most
futile actions. In a word, it dominates social relationships both in real life – in Iris’s
biographical account – and in fiction – in Iris’s scandalous novel and in her lover’s science-
fiction narrative. Deception functions as a crucial process at all levels of narration. 5
Further, the novel exhibits an undeniably gothic quality which best comes to light in
its magic realist disruptions. Indeed, Iris’s narrative is punctuated with flagrant disruptions of
the space-time continuity: events then seem to take place in a surreal, slow-motioned, dream-
like atmosphere. Such moments point to the narrator’s unreliability, thus allowing the reader
to understand what lies behind the surface. Indeed, such temporal and/or spatial disruptions
reveal the connection between reality and fiction. They enable the reader to realise that Iris
and the scandalous woman in “The Blind Assassin” are in fact one and the same person.
Although all protagonists display trickster qualities, contrary to many critics, I regard
Laura as the most treacherous character for two reasons. First, her innocent look enables her
to hide her trickster qualities better than any other person in the narrative. Second, Laura
possesses a highly intuitive approach of the world, which sets her apart from other people.
Throughout Iris’s descriptions of her younger sister, the reader comes to grasp Laura’s
rebellious attitude: realising that her high degree of sensibility makes her stand out as “other,”
Laura chooses to deliberately endorse the role of trickster. She voluntarily shocks people
through her weird behaviour. Similarly, she enjoys occupying an ex-centric position in
society, which enables her to express sharp comments about it.
5 Stein’s article on Atwood recent fiction provides interesting comments on the characters’ and the writer’s
deceptive strategies in The Blind Assassin (Stein “A Left-Handed Story” 145-153).
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Both female protagonists share a hybrid quality. While they make a very different use
of it throughout their life, Laura and Iris both display an “otherness” which influences the way
in which they deal with social relationships. Iris chooses to conceal her otherness, mimicking
the social behaviour expected from her. On the contrary, Laura remains unable to comply
with social demands: rather, she chooses to adopt a weird behaviour. She stands out as an ex-
centric character who lives on the edge of the social world. Apparently, hybridity seems to
have ruined the life of these two women. However, Atwood suggests that the integration of
one’s hybridity is a process that might develop in the course of several generations. Indeed,
the novel ends on a positive note, implying that Iris’s granddaughter might be able to deal
with her hybridity in a better way than her mother and her aunt. From this point of view, Iris
and Laura’s sacrifice of their own life might enable Sabrina to grasp the dangers of social
requirements. She then might become able to free herself from them.
While the reader immediately notices the extreme complexity of the plot of The Blind
Assassin’s plot, he or she also perceives the link between all events and levels of narrations.
Indeed, the reader discovers a three-tiered quest pattern. Iris’s quest for her lost granddaughter
clearly conceals another important process. As she remembers the past, Iris clearly
endeavours to acknowledge her responsibility for the main tragic events of her life. The reader
notices the classical stages of the quest process – separation, encounter with a helper,
discovery of the trickster, confrontation with parental figures, epiphanic moments of
introspection – present in Iris’s narrative, and echoed by more romanticised versions in the
novel she writes and burlesque inversions in her lover’s narrative. In this way, Atwood
succeeds in intricately linking the disparate elements of her plot. She also enlarges the scope
of the quest, pointing to the flaws in Iris’s reasoning. Indeed, the reader should keep in mind
that Iris, as any of Atwood’s narrators, is a manipulator of facts. As such, she might not be
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sincere in her description of her experience. Nevertheless, as Iris repeatedly mentions, she is,
after all, the only remaining witness, which allows her to modify her story at will. The last
novel in this study presents the reader with a protagonist that, like Iris, is the last witness of
the facts he narrates, since he claims to be the last human being on earth. In Oryx and Crake,
Atwood develops the fascinating story of an average individual, forced to accept hybridity as
the only way to survive.
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Chapter 8. Oryx and Crake: Hybridisation and
Colonisation
From tree to tree he limps, elusive,
white, a rumour. In search of his
own kind. (372)
Oryx and Crake tells the story of the last human being alive on earth. “Snowman,” as he
deliberately calls himself, first appears to the reader as a dirty, dishevelled, lonely man hiding
away in the trees. Snowman tells his life story, as he engages on a dangerous quest for food
and other necessities. He explains that he once was Jimmy, the son of two scientists. As such,
he lived in a sterilised compound, protected and supervised by the company of genetic
engineering for which his parents worked. Revolted by the kind of research she became
involved in, Jimmy’s mother soon ran away, leaving him with a hard-working and uncaring
father. At school, Jimmy meets another boy of his age, Crake. The latter turns out to be a
genius, who initiates Jimmy into the world of computer games and porn sites. Later, Crake’s
talent for genetics turns him into a top scientist. Crake hires Jimmy as his assistant, who
gradually discovers Crake’s awesome project: the creation of a new human race. In his
ambition he is seconded by Oryx, a woman Jimmy recognises from one of the child abuse
sites. In the most secret quarter of the compound, Jimmy first encounters the result of this
experiment: the Crakers or Children of Crake. Those naked individuals singularly differ from
human beings: their skin reflects various, stunning colours; they possess the power to heal one
another through purring; they are strictly vegetarian; and they perform strange territorial and
mating rituals. Jimmy soon understands that Crake’s genetic research is part of a larger, far
more dangerous project. By disseminating a so-called pleasure pill – the “BlyssPluss pill” –
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all over the world, Crake wishes to eradicate the human race and replace it with his “perfect”
creatures. However, Oryx and Crake die in the middle of that enterprise, leaving
Jimmy/Snowman as the only human being in charge of the Crakers. In search of food,
Snowman revisits the compound. He then remembers his past, reflecting on how he came to
be the last of his kind.
This novel, which Atwood calls a “speculative fiction,” 1 to distinguish it from science-
fiction, primarily presents us with the writer’s interrogation about the future of our world.
Worried about our continuous experiments with genetics, as well as with our tendency to
destroy the natural environment with our intensive pollution, Atwood warns about the future
of the human race in a frightful, yet highly plausible “what if” scenario. The postcolonial
concern for ecology lies at the core of this narrative. However, postmodern aspects are also
discernible: for instance, the novel contains a high amount of intertextual references. First of
all, Atwood has clearly made use of scientific writings such as Janine M. Benuys’s
Biomimicry as a source. Yet, Oryx and Crake can further be read as an inverted Frankenstein
story. Moreover, Snowman definitely resembles Shakespeare’s Caliban in The Tempest, a
character which undeniably enriches the postcolonial significance of the novel. Indeed, lost as
he is in an apocalyptic no man’s land, the way Snowman’s blames Crake reminds the reader
of Caliban’s rejection of Prospero as a master. Both are cursing creatures, unable to handle
their future, which has inevitably been altered by the intervention of a powerful, dominant
figure. Further, one soon understands that deception and mimicry strategies once again
pervade Atwood’s work: in this case, Jimmy’s need for mimicry can be read as one of the
causes of the human race’s downfall. Magic realism appears in Jimmy’s numerous soliloquies
1 See website http://www.oryxandcrake.co.uk, consulted on 19 October 2006.
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and reminiscences: in moments of deep introspection, the protagonist mixes fantasy and
reality, past and present, in an attempt to avoid taking responsibilities for his deeds. Oryx and
Crake turn out to be highly powerful characters: Oryx’s simple knowledge of the world, her
intuitive connection with nature, allows us to regard her as a positive trickster figure, whereas
Crake, with his hubris and longing for death, embodies the dark side of the trickster. Finally,
the novel tackles the topic of hybridisation on two levels: on a literal level, it contains
numerous allusions to various cloning experiments, of which the Crakers themselves are the
most manifest examples. The Crakers’ natural candour, their state of dependence, turns them
into a powerful metaphor of the colonised subject. From a symbolic point of view, Snowman,
the last of his kind, also resembles a hybrid creature who does not know where he belongs.
Snowman’s practical quest for food can thus metaphorically be interpreted as a quest for the
survival of the human race: returning to the site of the catastrophe, Snowman seeks to
understand how humanity came to an end. Moreover, the novel’s ending, as Snowman is
watching a fire on the beach, leaves the possibility of a positive outcome. After all, humanity
might survive.
1. Snowman: An Inverted Frankenstein or an Apocalyptic Caliban?
As in many other Atwoodian novels, Oryx and Crake displays numerous intertextual
overtones. If one carefully reads Snowman’s inner thoughts, allusions to colonialism abound.
In his attempt to grasp his new condition as a singled out individual, Snowman recalls some
former readings, among which an obsolete work teaching European colonials how to run
plantations (4). The condescending tone and strict morality of those reminiscences echo the
way Jimmy was treated as a child in the compounds, thus establishing a link between the early
colonisers and the scientists of the twenty-first century. In one of his explanations, Jimmy’s
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father completes this parallel, comparing the scientists’ position with that of dukes or knights.
He regards the scientific complex as a castle to be defended (28). The comparison
immediately establishes scientists as the new rulers of a world in which progress and
production have become the dominant mottoes. In this world of numbers, statistics, and
experiments, Jimmy appears as a rarity. His love of words – most of them obsolete – makes
him stand out as odd. He is aware of his “otherness,” when he reflects: “When they’re gone
out of his head, these words, they’ll be gone, everywhere, forever. As if they had never been”
(68). Indeed, in the twenty-first century, science has overcome all other disciplines. Without
Crake’s intervention, Jimmy’s studies in the literary field would have excluded him from a
successful career. However, Crake’s wish to hire Jimmy as his assistant is far from
disinterested. Indeed, Crake needs to be aided by someone he thinks he can dominate. This
control over his collaborator finds its roots in Jimmy’s adolescence. Through the depiction of
various computer games performed by the boys, Atwood establishes the superiority of Crake
over his friend. The games themselves are highly metaphorical. “Barbarian Stomp,” for
instance, opposes wealth and poverty (77). Once again, colonial overtones abound. The
game’s motto – “See If You Can Change History!” – denotes the contempt of the twenty-first
century for historical development. As such, it also forebodes this civilisation’s disastrous
ending. “Blood and Roses,” a trading game based on Monopoly, displays a similar lack of
respect for human history: in this game, players exchange atrocities (massacres, genocides,
murders, etc.) for human achievements (artworks, scientific discoveries, inventions, etc.) (78).
Once again, human history resembles a video game, in which the victory of the negative side
is nothing more than a possible outcome. Crake’s amusing idea of naming his creatures after
historical figures – Abraham Lincoln, Madame Curie, Benjamin Franklin, Eleanor Roosevelt,
etc – reveals the same parodic attitude towards human history (100, 160-161). Jimmy’s wish
to defend humanity against all odds makes him stand out as “other.” Crake intentionally
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teases him, questioning the value of art (166-167). Jimmy answers quoting Byron: “‘When
every civilization is dust and ashes,’ he said, ‘art is all that’s left over. Images, words, music.
Imaginative structures. Meaning – human meaning, that is – is defined by them. You have to
admit that.’” (167) Jimmy’s choice to defend art against destruction strongly contradicts
society’s belief in science as the only value. In the world of the compounds, art has no place
of its own. Likewise, in this heartless universe, Jimmy is deprived of his voice.
A close analysis of Atwood’s documents reveals how much the novel is based on
current scientific developments and on social matters. Among Atwood’s manuscripts
preserved at the Fischer Library of Rare Books in Toronto, one finds a series of books and
newspaper articles used by the author as a resource for writing Oryx and Crake. 2 Janine M.
Benuys’s Biomimicry, for instance, demonstrates the current reality of some of the novel’s
experiments in cloning. In her introduction, Benuys blames human beings for their hubris:
constantly trying to produce more, they come to forget natural laws, thereby endangering
man’s future (Benuys, 16-17). The book reads as a plea for a more respectful treatment of
natural resources. Moreover, Atwood has used some of its described experiments in cloning in
Oryx and Crake: the hard-to-imagine goat/spider hybrid frequently mentioned in the novel,
certainly finds its origins in Benuys’ description of the scientists’ attempt to recreate spider
silk in order to exploit its natural strength (Benuys, 129-139). Further, Atwood made use of
several newspaper clippings providing a scientific analysis of the consequences of computer
games on the psychological development of the individual. 3 A particularly important source is
Time’s interactive supplement of June 4, 2001 4 : it explores the latest technological
developments and their dangers for human beings. The file mentions several topics which
2 Collection 335, Box 111.
3 Collection 335, Box 111, File 14:9.
4 Collection 335, Box 11, File 14:16.
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ecur in the novel: computer games, porn on the net, and interactivity. In a note to her
assistant Phoebe Larmore, Atwood points to the article on a South Korean on-line game,
comparing it to her own Extinctathon. She further states the parallel between her virtual
MaddAddam character and its Korean real-life alter-ego Choi Jae Sum, a computer game
grandmaster (See Appendix IV). 5 Atwood’s apocalyptic vision of our close future is therefore
deeply rooted in current scientific development.
Some of the novel’s literary allusions underline the decline of human civilisation. For
instance, Jimmy mentions discovering Shakespeare through Anna K.’s rendition of Macbeth.
He recalls: “Anna K. was a self-styled installation artist with big boobs who’d wired up her
apartment so that every moment of her life was sent out live to millions of voyeurs” (84).
Other literary references crop up in Jimmy’s description of porn sites. He compares
paedophiles and their little victims with Gulliver and Lilliputians (90). If we consider this
comparison in the light of the novel’s motto, 6 also taken from Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels,
Atwood’s intention immediately becomes clear. Indeed, the motto insists on the fact that
though the author might have created an imaginary world, he rather chose to depict reality as
it is. If one applies such a statement to Oryx and Crake, it entails that Atwood regards the
facts narrated in the novel as a possible result of our current attitude towards nature. Indeed,
the novel reads as a warning against genetic manipulations for medical or nutritional
purposes. Moreover, it pleads for a more respectful attitude towards the environment. As
Atwood explains, the novel is not science-fiction; she calls it speculative, and therefore
5 Collection 335, Box 11, File 14:16. Typed introductory note by Atwood. Also read Michelle Levander’s article
“Where Does Fantasy End? as a source for the Extinctathon game in the novel (Time, June 4, 2001, 78-80).
6 “I could perhaps like others have astonished you with strange improbable tales; but I rather chose to relate plain
matter of fact in the simplest manner and style; because my principal design was to inform you, and not to amuse
you.”
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plausible. The Crakers themselves question the value of reality, as they learn how to deal with
images. According to Snowman, their simple minds experience difficulties to understand the
difference between an image and a real object. Echoing the Crakers’ questions, Snowman
ponders: “Not real can tell us about real. And so forth” (102). This exactly takes place in the
novel: this fictional piece focuses on a situation that is not real, but might become our future.
Further, the novel’s setting directly alludes to Milton’s Paradise Lost. In his
megalomaniac vision of a new human race, Crake decides to name the experimental complex
“Paradice,” punning on his god-like ability to create human life and on the role of hazard in
this new race’s future development (151). The little voice in Jimmy’s head, saying “Paradice
is lost, but you have a Paradice within you, happier far” (308), reiterates Jimmy’s
involvement in the catastrophe, while stressing his ability to find comfort within himself.
The novel includes puns and parodic quotations alluding to the novel’s dichotomy
between science and conscience, such as, for instance, “Siliconsciousness” or “Little
spoat/gider, who made thee?” (209). The latter, parodying William Blake’s The Lamb, 7 once
again questions the responsibility of those scientists, who, through their experiments in the
cloning of new animal species, attribute themselves god-like powers.
More than once, Snowman refers to himself as Frankenstein (169, 257). His very
name, “Snowman,” points to a mythical monster, the abominable snowman. In this case, the
snowman, far from being abominable, strikes the reader as a lonesome, pathetic creature.
Therefore, the novel could be regarded as an inverted Frankenstein story. The scientist has
7 William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, 8. John Beer’s book, entitled Blake’s Humanism, points
to the poet’s celebration of human virtues such as mercy, pity, peace, and love in the Songs of Innocence (Beer,
71). The allusion to Blake’s Lamb can therefore be regarded as highly ironic because Atwood precisely
denounces the gradual disappearance on those virtues in the scientifically ruled world of Oryx and Crake.
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ecome his own creature. Jimmy, far from being scary, has simply become a poor, desolate,
marginalised human being. The mythical figure of the monster is of paramount importance in
this story. Marina Warner’s analysis of the Frankenstein myth in Managing Monsters
provides us with an interesting insight (Warner, 20-21). After presenting the Frankenstein
story as one of the major myths of our times, which has undergone numerous parodies of all
kinds, Warner draws the reader’s attention towards Mary Shelley’s dominant message. Far
from being a mere condemnation of the perversion of science, the novel suggests that the
monster resides within ourselves. Jimmy must accept a similar message: by positioning
himself as Snowman, he temporarily eludes taking responsibilities for his deeds. However, a
closer look at the novel’s development proves Jimmy’s degree of involvement in the
catastrophe. His boundless admiration for Crake’s charismatic personality, as well as his own
passivity, has simply caused humanity’s downfall. In this sense, I definitely agree with
Warner’s conclusion that “monsters are made, not given” (31). Snowman is the product of a
society, which has ignored its limits. Society’s lack of respect for nature, its boundless
experiments, made the catastrophe possible. Moreover, it has shaped Jimmy’s personality in
such a way that he became unable to sense impending danger. Atwood suggests that our
Western civilisation bears the embryonic potential of a similar outcome.
Snowman can also be regarded as a reincarnation of Shakespeare’s Caliban in The
Tempest. Indeed, this monstrous figure has become a key symbol, a mythic creature in the
discussion of colonialism. 8 Several recent critiques offer a postcolonial reading of The
Tempest, in which Caliban is regarded as a symbol of intercultural mixings (Retamar, 9-11;
8 In Managing Monsters, Marina Warner briefly summarises the postcolonial interpretation of the Calibanfigure,
dating it from Mannoni’s 1950 interpretation (Warner, 75-76). This postcolonial discussion of a character
is in similar ways applicable to Atwood’s Snowman. For other postcolonial interpretation of Shakespeare’s The
Tempest, the reader may consult Paul Brown’s article, “‘This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine,” or
Barker and Hulme’s critical essay, ‘ “Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish”: The Discursive Con-texts of The
Tempest.’
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Loomba & Orkin, 8), “an allegory of colonial relations (Hawkes, 171) or “the emblem of
morphological ambivalence” (Brown, 61). Beyond the everlasting debates about his origins –
African, Amerindian, Asian, or even Irish 9 – Caliban simply constitutes a symbol of
otherness. Critics usually decode Caliban as a product of colonisation. Jimmy’s unconditional
admiration for Crake echoes the monster’s submission to Prospero. Similarities between the
two figures abound: both live in the midst of wild nature. Moreover, Caliban’s poetic and
musical sensibility finds its parallel in Jimmy’s fascination with language. For the colonised
subject, the dichotomy between the native tongue and the coloniser’s language becomes a
symbol of fragmentation. Snowman’s refusal to admit his responsibilities for the destruction
of the human kind resembles Caliban’s challenge against Prospero when he cries “The red
plague rid you for learning me your language!” (Act I, Scene 2). Snowman significantly uses
the same words when he discovers the consequences of Crake’s experiments. On the phone
with Crake, he shouts: “It’s a worldwide plague! It’s the Red Death!” (326). The similarities
between the two characters are numerous: in the second scene of Act Two of The Tempest,
Caliban utters his rage at Prospero for teaching him the aspects of his culture that turned him
into a slave. In Act Two, Scene Two, Caliban repeatedly curses Prospero. Snowman shows
the same attitude, regularly cursing and insulting Crake (10-12). Further, when Jimmy
becomes Snowman, he simultaneously turns into a monster, who displays an earthly physique
comparable to Caliban’s. Atwood repeatedly insists on his dirtiness, thereby identifying him
as an animal-like figure. Like Caliban, who would reveal the secrets of his island to Stephano
for some more alcohol, Snowman expresses his need to drink. Both characters are tormented
by voices: Prospero controls Caliban’s spirit, whereas Snowman constantly hears echoes from
the past (10-12), which remind him both of happy moments and of his guilt.
9
John Gillies’s book, Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference explores at length the issue of Caliban’s
origins (39-69, 99-155).
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In Atwood’s work, the critique of colonialism often takes the form of the individual’s
state of exile, as for her latest hero, Snowman, singled out as the last human being. In Oryx
and Crake, the traditional colonial dichotomy between “here” and “there” expresses itself
through the opposition between nature and culture. Jimmy, who simultaneously respects
nature and brought about the destruction of mankind, appears as a hybrid creature, who lives
in-between these two spheres. So does Caliban, at once the son of a powerful witch and a
naïve savage. In the third Act, Caliban deeply wishes to kill Prospero. Jimmy literally
performs this deed when he refuses to let Crake enter the sealed area. However, Snowman
clearly remains in a Caliban-like situation. Despite Crake’s death, Snowman remains in his
control, as indicated by his need to present Crake to his innocent creations as a god-like
figure. Snowman therefore reflects: “Crake, King of the Crakery, because Crake is still there,
still in possession, still the ruler of his own domain, however dark that bubble of light has
now become. Darker than dark, and some of that darkness is Snowman’s. He helped with
it”(333). Snowman thus remains a Caliban-like figure, a dispossessed, exiled individual,
deprived of voice, yet perpetually raging against the coloniser. Moreover, he also reminds the
reader of a trope-like figure, namely that of the false messiah, who despite his charismatic
aura and his convincing discourse, fails to offer redemption.
2. The Dangers of Mimicry
In Atwood’s novels, characters regularly use deception and mimicry as defence strategies.
Oryx and Crake forms no exception to this pattern. However, it contains a further dimension:
in this case, deception may have lethal consequences. By mimicking Crake’s self-assured
behaviour and deceiving other characters, Snowman reveals himself as a danger for humanity
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at large. When Jimmy introduces himself to the reader, he deliberately calls himself
Snowman, leaving out the adjective “abominable” (8). Yet, as the reader discovers his
responsibility in the recent events, which caused the destruction of the human race, he readily
admits that Snowman deserves this qualification. Likewise, Snowman uses deception to
introduce himself to the Crakers, in a way understandable to them: he calls himself a bird
which has lost all its feathers. Therefore, he must cover himself with a cloth. (8-9). While he
presents Crake as a god-like figure, he pretends to be able to communicate with him, listening
to his broken watch (9, 97). As he proceeds on his mythological creation, Snowman stresses
the gullibility of his audience (96): he gives them a series of orders, supposedly emanating
from Crake (156, 160, 359, 362). His way of dealing with the Crakers is inspired from an old
book on colonialism, from which Snowman regularly quotes (97). A sentence such as “When
dealing with indigenous people, (…) you must attempt to respect their traditions and confine
your explanations to simple concepts that can be understood within the contexts of their belief
systems” (97), both denigrates the Children of Crake, and endows the book with clear colonial
implications: Crake’s, and later Snowman’s attitude to the new race, is unacceptable because
of its paternalistic, condescending discourse. Refusing to answer all of the Crakers’ numerous
questions, Snowman prefers to keep them in a state of semi-ignorance that allows him to keep
them in control. He often invents fake definitions to explain words they do not understand
(98). Among his mythological tales, he persuades the innocent creatures to offer him a fish
once a week, and to clean the place after he has eaten (101-102). He presents the whole
process as an order emanating from Oryx, the Crakers’ female instructor, whom he has
elevated to the rank of natural goddess. Snowman sums up his talent at inventing tales as
follows: “The Crake they’re praising is his fabrication” (103-104). Snowman realises that his
need to be listened to has turned him into a fake prophet of the Crakers’ new religion.
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Like many Atwoodian characters, Jimmy had to mimic a requested behaviour at an
early age. He repeatedly utters his mother’s dissatisfaction with him, explaining the various
strategies he uses to please her: acting stupid (21), inventing funny anecdotes to make her
laugh (31). He soon realises that his mother’s attitude proves fake too: she constantly tries to
mimic what she believes to be the perfect motherly tone (30). Her sudden attempts to cook a
real lunch frighten him, resulting in fake, over-enthusiastic reactions on his part (32). Jimmy’s
father displays a similarly artificial attitude, which Jimmy describes as a “hearty way of
talking (…) as if his father were auditioning for the role of Dad, but without much hope” (52).
Jimmy’s father subsequently tries several strategies with his son: treating him like an adult,
for instance (55). Jimmy further comments that he “had done enough faking himself so he
could spot it in others, most of the time” (52). Imitation becomes a skill for which Jimmy is
praised by his schoolmates: he mimics chimpanzees; he simulates vomiting, chocking, etc
(54); he even goes so far as to produce a hand-puppet comedy featuring Evil Dad and
Righteous Mom (60), as a way of expressing his unhappiness at home. School further
encourages this form of deception: like Iris in The Blind Assassin, the narrator of Oryx and
Crake mentions that his teachers taught him how to pretend (39-40). Several comments
suggest that other characters use similar patterns of mimicry. For instance, one of his father’s
collaborators, a highly gifted woman, talks like a model in a shower-gel advertisement (25);
Jimmy’s girl-friend Barb Jones constantly reinvents herself in an attempt to subvert her
parents’ expectations (241). Numerous things are kept secret: suicides among top scientists,
for instance, as happened to Crake’s father (183); subversives, like Jimmy’s mother (284); or
the inhabitants of the pleeblands (the non-sterilised suburbs) regarded as mentally deficient
people (288). Jimmy feels out of place in this highly scientific environment. He makes it clear
that words interest him more than science, simultaneously intimating that this fondness for
words is regarded as a flaw: his studies in communication do not guarantee any interesting
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job. To fit into a highly technocratic world, Jimmy, as a communication expert, sometimes
invents new words, which sound convincing through their scientific tone (248-249).
Mimicry constitutes a key concept in Jimmy’s civilisation. Even the characters’ houses
imitate past architectural styles (26, 53). Deception also stands at the core of scientific
research: the top scientists in the compounds constantly feel afraid of industrial espionage that
might ruin their efforts (27). This fact causes Jimmy’s mother to become paranoid: he thinks
that the family’s phone and e-mail are controlled and imagines housecleaners to be spies (54).
Interesting is Atwood’s introduction of Alex the parrot. This subject of behavioural
experiments functions as a powerful metaphor for the characters’ mimicry. Alex’s ultimate
reaction, as he turns away from the experiment, utterly moves Jimmy (54). From then on,
Alex the parrot, with its famous sentence “I’m going away now” serves as a leitmotiv in the
novel. It frequently recurs in Jimmy’s dreams, moving him to tears. This inordinate reaction
can be interpreted as a clue to Jimmy’s guilt. Indeed, Jimmy himself has proved incapable of
moving away from Crake’s freaky world. It also reminds us of the stunning disappearance of
Jimmy’s mother.
Jimmy’s mother gives him a practical example of how deception works. Succeeding in
running away from the compound, she manages to fool all the guards: she pretends she is
going to a dental appointment (62). Jimmy even suspects her of concealing a whole secret life
(64, 216). He feels cheated because his mother, who promised to keep in touch with him, only
sends him a few trivial postcards. Lying again, so as not to be identified by the authorities, she
signs those cards as “Aunt Monica” (67). Jimmy mistrusts her so much that he believes she
asks other people to mail those cards for her so as not to be traceable (68). Clearly, Jimmy’s
mother is referred to as a professional liar. She eventually teaches Jimmy how to lie
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effectively. Indeed, since his mother’s disappearance, the secret police regularly interrogates
Jimmy in order to find her. They hope she will somehow try to enter in contact with him.
When Jimmy helplessly watches her execution on a video tape, he has become so good at
deception that he manages not to react at all (258). In the highly deceptive context of life in
the compound, Jimmy imagines that his mother’s execution might be faked as well (259).
As a skilled liar, Jimmy’s mother immediately notices Crake’s own mimicry
techniques. She claims to appreciate him much because he is “more adult than a lot of adults”
(69), thereby pointing to one of Crake’s ways to exert power on Jimmy. Yet, Jimmy
constantly remains aware of Crake’s unreliability: he mentions his doubts about “Crake’s
honourableness, intellectual or otherwise” (70). The reader then learns about Crake’s real
name, Glenn (70). Crake becomes Jimmy’s best friend: together they play computer chess
instead of doing their homework (77). On these occasions, Crake introduces Jimmy to
different kinds of digital fallacies visible on the internet (82): false incidents, fake suicides or
rehearsed executions (83). This tendency to display rehearsed or fake events has a definitely
postmodern undertone, in that it somehow parodies a real situation. Crake concludes that one
never knows what reality is (83), a theory which allows him to become insensitive to all forms
of violence (86). When the same question turns up again in relation with cloning (200),
Jimmy refuses to discuss it with Crake, due to the latter’s megalomaniac attitude. Indeed,
science has likewise become highly deceptive: scientists have created animals that look like
dogs, but attack like wolves (205); they disguise hostile viruses as vitamins (211); the inside
of the Paradice Dome displays a fake sky with imitation rain or a false moon (302, 326);
Crake himself has offered his scientists a new identity, to hide their involvement in the
forbidden Extinctathon game (299). The structure of the highly guarded compounds
themselves is deceptive: the research centres look like gigantic labyrinth with lethal dead-ends
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to trap subversive individuals (217). Jimmy becomes an accomplice in this impressive
deception process, when he accepts Crake’s offer to design the advertisement campaign for a
new medicine, the BlyssPluss pill. The medicine lends people an impressive libido, while
protecting them from any known sort of sexual disease. However, it also secretly causes
sterility, while propagating a deadly virus (294). In accepting to promote this medicine,
Jimmy unconsciously becomes guilty of the extermination of the human race. Such is the
consequence of his deceptive attitude.
The boys also watch porn shows, which they regard as the happy counterparts of
violent television programmes (85). In order to access the most forbidden sites, Crake uses his
stepfather’s code and a complicated method he calls the “lily-pad labyrinth” (85-86). It
consists in the creation of a series of false tracks which make it impossible to identify an
internet user. Once again, Crake thus uses deception, in this particular instance to satisfy his
instincts. In this context, Crake reveals to Jimmy his personal situation: being under the
authority of his stepfather, Uncle Pete, a man he secretly loathes, Crake has learned how to
mimic the attitude of the perfectly respectful adolescent so as to keep out of trouble (89).
However, when Crake later mentions his stepfather’s unexplained death, the reader soon
comes to the conclusion that Crake killed him (253). In contact with Crake, Jimmy gradually
understands the fake quality of porn sites. He notices that the giggles must be recorded,
because the little girls are not smiling at all (90). He becomes highly interested in the false
messages conveyed by porn images. He comments: “There were at least three layers of
contradictory make-believe, one on top of the other” (90). This sentence can be applied to the
novel as well, which presents us with Snowman’s partial version of the events.
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Oryx herself lies when Jimmy believes he recognises her on one of those shows (91).
Snowman later insists on the unreliability of Oryx’s biography which consists of fragmentary
episodes told by several protagonists (114). Significant, however, is that deception once again
presides over that character’s life. Though she was extremely young when a foreigner bought
her from her village, Oryx recalls that man’s fake smiles and deceptive discourse: he claimed
everyone would be happy; the children would sell flowers to the tourists; they would be well
treated; they would be fed and kept in a safe place (118). Mothers participated in the
deception process, affirming that the children could come back after they had worked enough
(121). However, no child ever came back. Oryx confesses she cannot fully remember her trip
to the city (122). Yet, she recalls some of the details: for instance, how the authorities were
involved in the treachery: police officers knew very well that those children were not the
man’s nieces and nephews. However, they chose not to intervene (125). She remembers how
that man manipulated her: he gave the children a new name and told them how to act with
tourists (129); so as to be regarded as a protective father figure. Likewise, the older girls were
kept hidden in garages: when discovered, they frenetically stand up for their kidnapper,
presenting him as their benefactor (254). Oryx, who developed her adult personality in this
context, thus cannot help being a liar: Jimmy defines her as “the best poker-faced liar of the
world” (314). However, Oryx has been fooled as well: when the epidemic starts spreading,
she realises that the virus was hidden in the pills Crake asked her to disseminate around the
world (325). Like most Atwoodian characters, Oryx thus functions simultaneously as a
deceiver and as a victim of deception. Jimmy too becomes the victim of Crake’s numerous
lies. However, his own capacity to lie serves him as an ally in his fight for survival:
subsequently lying to guards and to the security man, he manages to remain alone in an
uninfected area (327). In his eventual message to posterity, he omits to mention his own role,
blaming Crake instead. The graphic presentation of this message, in which words are literally
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crossed out (346), points to the manipulation of truth performed by Jimmy throughout the
story in order to minimise his own involvement.
The end of the novel highlights the contrast between Snowman, the last human being,
and the Crakers. As the former presents himself to the latter, he insists on the need for him to
create a new identity – that of “Snowman” – to forget the past, to lose his sense of guilt (349).
At the same time, he mentions the Crakers’ total ignorance of deception. He thus reflects: “No
point in telling them not to lie, steal, commit adultery, or covet. They wouldn’t grasp the
concepts” (366). As Snowman takes on his role of leader of this incongruous people, he
marvels at his own talent: he describes himself “dancing gracefully around the truth, light-
footed, light-fingered” (350). Indeed, even as the last human being on earth, Snowman prefers
to lie rather than to face his responsibilities.
3. Snowman’s Magic Realist Fantasies
Left alone as the last human being, Snowman often dreams away, imagining the presence of
benevolent female creatures or frightful hybrid animals. Snowman repeatedly alludes to the
voices he often hears. Those voices generate a series of fantastic dreams, as in this episode:
Pretty soon he’ll be seeing beautiful demons, beckoning to him, licking their lips,
with red-hot nipples and flickering pink tongues. Mermaids will rise from the waves,
out there beyond the crumbling towers, and he’ll hear their lovely singing and swim
out to them and be eaten by sharks. Creatures with the heads and breasts of women
and the talons of eagles will swoop down on him, and he’ll open his arms to them,
and that will be the end. (11)
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The eerie quality of Snowman’s visions endows them with an undeniable gothic character. In
his dreams, imagination takes over reality. However, one must admit that his current situation
appears as a nightmare too. In other awesome visions, Oryx visits Snowman. Her presence
overwhelms him with a terrible fear: he knows that they are both in great danger (43).
Most of Snowman’s dreams convey a sense of fear: something seems terribly wrong
(265); a threatening presence is constantly watching him (261). Such feelings can be
interpreted as a sign of Snowman’s remorse – often associated with the character of Oryx, as a
metaphor for the victim condition (113). Refusing to admit his implication in the catastrophe,
Snowman is regularly bothered by dreams, in which fiction has become reality. Oryx herself
believes in people’s ability to communicate through dreams. In her village, she mentions,
some people learn how to leave their body and let their spirit wander. She describes this talent
to Jimmy:
The birdcalls were familiar, they were part of what she knew. She imagined that one
of them – the one like a bell – was her mother’s spirit, sent out in the shape of a bird
to keep watch over her, and that it was saying You will come back. In that village,
she told him, some of the people could send their spirits out like that even before
they were dead. It was well known. You could learn how to do it, the old women
could teach you, and that way you could fly everywhere, you could see what was
coming in the future, and send messages, and appear in other people’s dreams. (124)
Oryx’s analysis of her own dreams invites the reader to pay careful attention to them. Indeed,
these dreams, as formulated, resemble psychic magic realist moments of revelation. Reality
and fiction interact, making it possible for the protagonist to become conscious of
impenetrable aspects of reality.
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Similarly, the narrator regularly points to scientific developments which seem unreal
to us, yet are definitely grounded in current research. The scientific background of the novel
allows for fictional elements to be mixed with real scientific breakthroughs. For each of those
examples, Atwood starts out from an existing scientific discovery. However, she carries its
applications to extremes, thus introducing fictional elements. This blend of reality and
imagination also bears marked affinities to magic realism. It results in the creation of all kinds
of hybrid animals: pigoons, rakunks, wolvogs, bobcats, etc (51, 55). These hybrid species,
which turn out to be far more dangerous than the scientists think, possess a grotesque magic
realist quality: they consist in the association of otherwise incongruous elements. For
instance, animals which look like harmless puppies in fact prove voracious beasts, capable of
attacking a young child. The discrepancy between the animal’s friendly appearance and its
aggressiveness introduces magic realist overtones.
However, the animal undeniably embodying Snowman’s guilt, is Alex the Parrot. In a
certain way, Alex too possesses a hybrid quality. As a subject of scientific experiment, he has
acquired a human behaviour (336). Alex frequently appears in Snowman’s dreams, in
association with the figure of his mother. The parrot’s decision to move away from the place
where experiments are conducted deeply moves Snowman because it reminds him of his
mother’s sudden escape (84). The aesthetics in which the parrot fits therefore possesses a
psychic magic realist quality: in Snowman’s mind, it symbolises far more than
experimentation with animals, it rather embodies his attempts to justify his mother’s
departure.
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4. Oryx, Crake, and Snowman: Three Aspects of Tricksterism
The very title of the novel mentions two characters that the protagonist decides to transform
into gods. Through their unconventional life style and their assimilation as godlike creatures,
Oryx and Crake both can be regarded as impressive trickster figures. However, they embody
different aspects of the trickster character. Crake strikes the reader as an ex-centric being,
singled out because of his genius. He is a cold-hearted joker who plays with the fate of
humanity as with a computer game. Crake embodies the ex-centric dimension of the trickster,
his scientific ability making him an almost divine outcast. Oryx, on the contrary, reflects a
more human aspect of the trickster figure. She represents the trickster’s connection with
nature, becoming the embodiment of a nature goddess in the Crakers’ mythology.
A closer look at the text clearly establishes those characters’ above-mentioned
qualities. In Jimmy’s first description of him, Crake appears as a dubious figure: Jimmy
identifies him at once as “a master of the sideways leap” (40). When first encountering his
new schoolmates, Crake acts in a secretive way: he volunteers “no information about himself”
(72). Moreover, his potential energy impresses the other children (72, 76). Later, Crake’s
attitude when playing computer games with Jimmy foreshadows his megalomaniac ambitions:
indeed, Jimmy suspects him of wanting to become a grandmaster at their favourite game,
Extinctathon (81). Crake eventually makes his wish come true: in association with most of the
Extinctathon grandmasters, whom he recruits to form his lab team, he causes humanity’s
downfall. Further, Crake is a joker, as reflected in the numerous parodic quotations glued on
his fridge. His fridge magnets allude to several of his trickster qualities: they refer to his
divine position, his secrecy – “there are two moons, the one you can see and the one you
can’t” –, his wish for change, his rejection of limits, his animality, and the power of his
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thoughts (301). He insists on the value of breaking rules when necessary (310), thereby
revealing his subversive attitude. Oryx confirms Crake’s divinity when she tells Jimmy:
“Crake lives in a higher world, Jimmy (…) He lives in a world of ideas. He is doing important
things” (313). Crake therefore represents the trickster as voicing socially unacceptable ideas.
Indeed, experimenting with human genetic potential has become common place in recent
scientific development. Crake’s story therefore expresses Atwood’s concern for our future.
Jimmy’s virtual first encounter with Oryx equally impresses the reader. As a child on a
porn show Jimmy watches on the internet, Oryx intensely looks at him in the eye, thus
revealing her ability to transcend virtuality (91). She deeply moves Jimmy, hinting at the
perversity of his frequent porn watching activity. Therefore, Oryx functions as a kind of moral
agent, denouncing our society’s decline. After the catastrophe, when Snowman wishes to eat
more fish, she maliciously laughs at his despair (96). She often humours him, playing on her
different versions of her past (316), thus bringing about confusion in his mind. Jimmy
mentions her fondness for disguises of all kinds, as befits a trickster. He recalls: “She liked to
dress up, change her appearance, pretend to be a different woman” (231). Jimmy calls her “a
casketful of secrets” (314). He insists on her power of revelation: “Any moment now she
would open herself up, reveal to him the essential thing, the hidden thing at the core of life, or
of her life – the thing he was longing to know. The thing he’d always wanted. What would it
be?” (314). A survivor of child abuse, Oryx conveys another of Atwood’s messages to her
readers. Oryx represents the perversity of our modern society. The Crakers’ innocence stands
in sharp contrast to her childhood. Once again, the character is used as a messenger to the
reader, denouncing another potential danger of technological progress.
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Finally, the reader notices that Snowman regularly alludes to both characters as though
they were divinities. His vocabulary abounds in religious or ritualistic words. This
characteristic of Snowman’s personality proves highly ironic: indeed, one of Crake’s aims in
giving birth to a new human race was to eradicate some aspect of the human civilisation he
disapproved of. Religion belonged to those characteristics. The Crakers’ tendency to regard
Crake, their creator, and Oryx, his assistant, as godlike figures, therefore functions as an
ironic counterpoint to Crake’s original idea. Religious and ritual allusions voice Atwood’s
own concern about the consequences of this mad scientist’s experiments. Snowman regularly
mentions his broken watch, which he allegedly uses to communicate with Crake. He regards
this watch as a talisman (3), enabling him to maintain his social position as an emissary of the
gods. This function both causes him to be included in the Crakers’ world as a necessary
element – he teaches them stories about their gods – and to remain on the edge of society,
precisely because of his role. He therefore describes himself as a “creature of dimness, of the
dusk” (6). He is a “weird” person, feeling “deformed” (42). He regularly utters his impression
of being “out” (45). At school, his habit of imitating teachers places him in the same
intermediate position between the instructors and his fellow pupils (74, 75). Snowman
constitutes essentially an in-between character. Even concerning his love life, he regards
himself as a joker among his girlfriends’ other, more serious lovers (251). We might therefore
regard Jimmy/Snowman as another version of the trickster figure: that of the ex-centric
outcast, whose position allows him to express social criticism. Several elements point to
Jimmy’s potential tricksterism: one of his girlfriends, Amanda Payne, brings him closer to the
world of death. As an artist, Amanda practices what she calls “vulturizing,” i.e. arranging
dead-animal parts, waiting for vultures to come and feast on them, and filming or
photographing the whole scene (244). Jimmy insists on the fact that this form of art is a life
creation and destruction process, thus a sort of divine power. Once again, Jimmy appears
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closely related to that power (245). Further, he frequently hints at his own animality. He
thinks that he might be a “danger, a fanged animal gazing out from the shadowy cave of the
space inside his own skull” (261). When he later becomes Crake’s assistant, he describes his
function as “the jackal position” (300), once again adopting the in-between position of the
helper of those in power. Jimmy’s relations to Oryx and Crake give him an impression of
helplessness. He wonders: “Had he only been some sort of toy-boy for Oryx, a court jester for
Crake?” (322). This reaction perfectly illustrates one of the most important contradictions of
the trickster: to others – here, the Crakers – he appears as a powerful creature, whereas from
the inside, he remains at a loss, constantly looking for some balance. Snowman realises this
when he returns from his expedition. He then faces the Crakers’ representation of himself: “a
grotesque-looking figure, a scarecrowlike effigy” (360). As he eventually abandons the
Crakers to their fate in his attempt to find other people of his kind, Snowman leaves them this
laconic message: “Crake is watching over you (…) Oryx loves you” (367). Regarding the
Crakers as children, Snowman leaves them with two principles to guide them: Crake’s
vigilance, preventing them from performing evil and Oryx’s love of nature. However,
Snowman himself remains a hybrid creature, who refused to accept Crake’s authority – the
reign of science – yet cannot stand the idea of becoming fully integrated into nature.
5. The Hybridity of the Colonised Subject
Oryx and Crake equally reads as an enlightening fable about colonisation. Indeed, Oryx, as a
victim of pornography, embodies the woman as a colonised subject within patriarchal society.
Similarly, the Crakers’ gradual discovery of their creator, their tendency to regard him as a
god, metaphorically suggests issues of colonialism. Among those characters, Snowman can be
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considered a hybrid: indeed, for a while, he abandoned himself to Crake’s power, thereby
causing the human race to disappear. However, his desire to help the Crakers survive shows
that he respects life.
Jimmy’s first description of the Crakers highlights their “otherness.” He mentions their
stunning green eyes and the different skin colours that make them so attractive (8). As the
story develops, the readers discover the characteristics distinguishing the Crakers from human
beings: male Crakers have no beard (9); it only takes them four years to become adolescents
(158); they have a strange vegetarian diet (158-159), as well as weird mating rituals (164).
Moreover, several references to cloning experiments prompt the readers to admit the
possibility of creating a new human race. Snowman iteratively mentions the pigoons – or pigs
used to store transplantation organs (22, 25). In addition, he compares himself with the
pigoons: like them, he has nothing to say about what is going on (24). As he discovers
Crake’s college, he also mentions the goat-spider, a hybrid which produces milk containing
silk filaments (199), particularly useful to produce bulletproof vests. Further allusions to the
dangers of extinction occur in the names of the Extinctathon grandmasters: they bear the
names of extinct animals (298). As Snowman proceeds to explain the creation of hybrids
(302-303), one is reminded of the novel’s main concern: the destruction of the human race.
Interestingly, Atwood uses Oryx as the symbol of female empowerment. Oryx’s first
occurrence in the novel consists in an image on a screen:
This was how the two of them first saw Oryx. She was only about eight, or she
looked eight. They could never find out for certain how old she’d been then. Her
name wasn’t Oryx, she didn’t have a name. She was just another little girl on a
porno site. None of those little girls had ever seemed real to Jimmy – they’d always
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struck him as digital clones – but for some reason Oryx was three-dimensional from
the start. (90)
At that crucial moment, Jimmy becomes aware of the individuality of the little girls he
stupidly watches on porn sites. Atwood’s message, her condemnation of sexual empowerment
can hardly be missed. Oryx’s possesses dubious memories of that period of her life. She has
been deprived of a voice for so long, that she talks about the past with difficulty. She suffers
from an obvious alienation too: she cannot remember the language she spoke as a child (115).
She cannot express herself easily. She comments: “She did remember that: the clumsiness of
the words in her mouth, the feeling of being struck dumb” (115).
Atwood frequently draws the readers’ attention to Snowman’s difference. At the
beginning, the reader does not know who the Crakers are. He believes them to be children or
the members of an isolated tribe. Yet, they are well aware of Snowman’s “otherness,” of his
“monstrousness” (101): he belongs to “a separate order of being” (101); he is “so unlike
them” (7) that they constantly want to look at him. They ask him to remove his glasses to
show them that he has two eyes, like them (7). Snowman’s choice of his name similarly
underlines his alterity. According to Crake’s rule, taking over the name of a mythic creature
without physical equivalent is forbidden. However, after Crake’s death, Jimmy subversively
opts for a mythical name:
It’s given Snowman a bitter pleasure to adopt this dubious label. The Abominable
Snowman – existing and not existing, flickering at the edges of blizzards, apelike
man or manlike ape, stealthy, elusive, known only through rumours and through its
backward-pointing footprints. Mountain tribes were said to have chased it down and
killed it when they had the chance. (7-8)
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Snowman’s new patronymic stresses his in-betweenness, while metaphorically alluding to
another of the novel’s main themes: extinction. Later, as he reflects on the Abominable
Snowman’s comic potential, Snowman comes to the following conclusion: “Maybe that’s the
real him, the last Homo sapiens – a white illusion of a man, here today, gone tomorrow, so
easily shoved over, left to melt in the sun, getting thinner and thinner until he liquefies and
trickles away” (224). Allusions to Snowman’s loneliness are numerous (10). Even the Crakers
realise his sadness. They comment: “Snowman is sad because the others like him flew away
over the sea, and now he is all alone” (9). Because of his “otherness”, they do not fully
understand him (9). Snowman regards himself as a “castaway” (41). He explains that, as the
last man alive, he cannot even possibly leave an account of what happened, because none of
the Crakers can read (41). The disappearance of his fellow human beings has deprived him of
his voice. Snowman sums up his “otherness” in the following passage:
He feels excluded, as if from a party to which he will never be invited. All he’d have
to do is step forward into the firelight and there’d be a ring of suddenly blank faces
turned towards him. Silence would fall, as in tragic plays of long ago when the
doomed protagonist made an entrance, enveloped in his cloak of contagious bad
news. On some non-conscious level Snowman must serve as a reminder to these
people, and not a pleasant one: he’s what they may have been once. I’m your past,
he might intone. I’m your ancestor, come from the land of the dead. Now, I’m lost, I
can’t get back, I’m stranded here, I’m all alone. Let me in! (105-106)
The words “excluded,” “doomed,” “contagious” aptly describe Snowman’s situation among
the Crakers. He no longer finds his place in the present: he lives only as an ancestor. He
further compares himself with an infectious leper (153), a hairy animal (169), and a mutant
(174). Despite his desperate situation, Snowman still hopes to discover other survivors of his
kind (222).
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Yet, Snowman already feels as an outcast when he is young: no one is aware of the
secret person within him (58). As an adolescent, he avoids any contact with his parents and
has only one friend, his pet rakunk Killer (59). He feels invisible (66), unable to please his
mother (68, 69); he wants to be someone else (109); he sometimes totally avoids human
relationships (284). His fondness for obsolete words emphasises his oddity: he fancies words
as “awesome,” “bogus” (83, 261). Moreover, his mother’s sudden disappearance makes him
suspect (182): he constitutes a security risk. This prevents him from getting an interesting job,
as no company wishes to hire him. From then on, he feels like a rejected individual, whose
field of study is devoid of interest (195). His sentimental life proves a failure as well: he soon
notices that his successive girlfriends try to cure him from his obvious state of alienation
(190). Also, Jimmy feels attracted to the world of the pleeblands – the unprotected suburbs –
peopled with social outcasts (196). As a student, he is often seen in the company of students
from those neighbourhoods (242). He frequently visits public places to give himself the
illusion that he belongs to a group (253). However, what characterises Snowman is his
loneliness. He ponders: “He’s humanoid, he’s hominid, he’s an aberration, he’s abominable;
he’d be legendary, if there were anyone left to relate legends” (307). When he eventually
learns that there might be other human beings still alive, Snowman feels frightened (372):
once again, he fears being unable to meet those people’s expectations.
The novel thus presents us with three situations illustrating the consequences of
colonialism. In a first episode, the Crakers, as a new race, experience the world with
innocence. Their gullibility enables Snowman to exert power over them, presenting them with
an invented mythology of his own. In his tales, Snowman functions as the emissary of the
creator, Crake. As such, he is respected, yet singled out. Through his position as the only
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human being left on earth, he influences the Crakers’ development with his tales: though they
were basically intended as non religious people, Snowman’s disappearance creates in them
the desire to build a kind of idol representing him. Through his mystic tales, Snowman forces
the Crakers to bring him a fish a week. This trivial deed may be interpreted as a form of
empowerment, especially as Snowman considers asking for more. Patriarchal society is
another form of supremacy criticised in the novel. As a victim of child abuse, Oryx qualifies
as an example of the damage caused by patriarchal empowerment. When the reader discovers
Oryx as an adult, he immediately realises that her submission to Crake echoes her obedience
to the author of porn movies as a child. While she has become a superb woman, Oryx still
behaves as a little girl, obeying Crake, the dominant male figure. The strength of the pattern
imposed on her as a child, makes her blind to the dangers of Crake’s megalomaniac projects.
In a sense, Jimmy suffers from the same kind of behaviour. Realising his position as an
outcast, he would endure anything to fit in. Thus, when Crake asks him to become part of his
team, he feels flattered, failing to grasp the danger of the situation. He constantly oscillates
between his commitment to Crake and the necessary acknowledgement of his responsibilities
in the destruction of the human kind.
6. Atwood’s Ecological Stance
Atwood’s concern for nature, ecological matters, should undeniably be related to her
fascination for the trickster spirit. Indeed, the trickster commonly embodies nature, the
animal, instinctive aspect of human psychology. The trickster’s wolfish appetite and
sensuousness proves his connection with nature. It also connects him to another of Atwood’s
major themes, survival. Atwood’s plea to preserve our natural environment should therefore
be regarded as another aspect of Atwood, the trickster-writer. Survival once again occupies a
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central position in Atwood’s novel. This time, the narrative deals with no less than the
survival of the human race as a whole. Atwood repeatedly voices her concern for our future
through the description of stunning yet totally plausible scientific developments. As she
explains on the internet site about the novel, 10 those scientific breakthroughs already exist
nowadays. Transplants, genetic researches, artificial nutrients can be found in current
scientific research. The novel abounds in descriptions of current deteriorations of those
resources. For instance, several passages allude to the dangers of global warming. The
narrator claims that severe droughts brought about a lack of meat affecting humankind as a
whole (24). He mentions the climatic changes which caused the destruction of the crops (118,
173, 253). Further, he makes recurring allusions to dangerous viruses, which might kill people
in only a few hours (176, 216, 253, 324, 325); to the destruction of forests (179); to the
pollution of the air (287); to the increasing lack of food supplies (295) to extinct species (293,
311), among which mankind (344).
Similarly, the boys’ computer games echo this destruction of our planet: after a game
of “Blood and Roses” – in which competitors exchange human achievements for atrocities –
Crake concludes that “winning meant you inherited a wasteland” (80). Likewise, the boys’
favourite game, Extinctathon, offers its participants the privilege of discovering extinct
species (80). The message is that those species have become so numerous that they make the
10 See http://www.randomhouse.com/features/atwood/interview.html. Atwood says: “Like The Handmaid's
Tale, Oryx and Crake is a speculative fiction, not a science fiction proper. It contains no intergalactic space
travel, no teleportation, no Martians. As with The Handmaid's Tale, it invents nothing we haven't already
invented or started to invent. Every novel begins with a what if, and then sets forth its axioms. The what if of
Oryx and Crake is simply, What if we continue down the road we're already on? How slippery is the slope?
What are our saving graces? Who's got the will to stop us?”
See also Catherine Keenan’s internet article, entitled “She Who Laughs Last.” Keenan mentions that Atwood’s
fiction is deeply rooted in reality. For instance, when Atwood checked the names she uses in the novel on the
internet, she found out that several among them already existed. Moreover, at the same time, scientists
announced the threat of anthrax contagion and the outbreak of the SARS. I therefore think that Oryx and Crake
should be read as a realistic speculative fiction, rather than a pure fantasy on recent environmental issues.
(http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/02/1051382088211.html).
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game extremely difficult. Yet, the novel contains other, less obvious details pointing to the
destruction of our natural and food resources. Jimmy, for example, mentions a TV game, the
“Queek Geek Show, which had contests featuring the eating of live animals and birds, timed
by stopwatches, with prizes of hard-to-come-by foods” (85). He then comments: “It was
amazing what people would do for a couple of lamb chops or a chunk of genuine brie” (85),
implying that such kinds of food have become precious. Likewise, he mentions a series of
genetically modified substitution products, such as the Happicuppa Coffee, “designed so that
all of its beans would ripen simultaneously” (179). Later, as Snowman, he eats the fish
offered to him by the Crakers, commenting on its lack of taste and on the toxins it possibly
carries (100). Moreover, Jimmy repeatedly hints at the dangers of genetic manipulations: he
mentions the “luminous green rabbits,” which slip out of their cages and eventually become a
nuisance (96); the ChickieNobs, organisms meant to produce more than the normal amount of
chicken parts; the wolvogs, cute yet highly aggressive dog-wolf crossings (206); snats – a
crossing between snakes and rats (229). Crake expresses how easy it would be to destroy life
on earth. He remarks: “All it takes (…) is the elimination of one generation. One generation
of anything. Beetles, trees, microbes, scientists, speakers of French, whatever. Break the link
in time between one generation and the next, and it’s game over forever” (223). Jimmy’s
fellow students display an analogous, highly pessimistic view of humanity: they regard human
society as a monster, mainly producing corpses and rubble, as a self-consuming, disgusting
life form doomed to extinction (243). They envision the future of mankind in the following
terms: “Soon (…) there would be nothing left but a series of long subterranean tubes covering
the surface of the planet. The air and light inside them would be artificial, the ozone and
oxygen layers of Planet Earth having been totally destroyed” (243).
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Finally, Snowman’s mythological narrative, addressed to the Crakers, metaphorically
hints at the current disrespect for nature. Snowman invents:
The people in the chaos were full of chaos themselves, and the chaos made them do
bad things. They were killing other people all the time. And they were eating up all
the Children of Oryx, against the wishes of Oryx and Crake. Every day they were
eating them up. They were killing them and killing them, and eating them and eating
them. They ate them even when they weren’t hungry. (103)
Though this depiction of our future sounds apocalyptic, the novel still ends on a positive note.
Indeed, Atwood writes; “After everything that’s happened, how can the world still be so
beautiful? Because it is” (371). One should also keep in mind that the trickster has a peculiar
connection with nature, that allows him to act as a messenger in-between life and death. The
novel can thus be regarded as the message of the trickster-author to an audience that seems to
have forgotten the importance of nature. Therefore, the novel remains open-ended:
Snowman’s eventual discovery of footsteps in the sand implies that mankind might have
survived. At the end of the book, everything remains possible.
7. Snowman’s Quest for Humanity
Like most of Atwood’s narratives, Oryx and Crake can be read as a quest novel. Stuck in the
midst of a hostile environment, Snowman engages on a quest for rudimentary means of
survival (149-151). As he engages on this quest, Snowman gradually remembers his past,
thereby experiencing the five stages of the quest pattern, as mentioned in the previous
chapters. The narrative constantly alternates between Snowman’s current desperate situation
and Jimmy’s unsatisfactory adolescence. From then on, Snowman’s reminiscences of his life
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as a boy and adolescent parallels the Crakers’ gradual discovery of their environment. The
reader notices that they ask more and more questions, while slowly creating the basis of a new
mythology. Their religious development echoes Jimmy’s rising admiration for Crake, which
eventually causes him to support his apocalyptic design. After a section describing
Snowman’s relationship with the Crakers, the narrative logically mentions Jimmy in relation
to his parents. In the fourth section, devoted to the description of genetically engineered
animals, a sentence points to the fact that this novel can be read as a quest: “Each one of us
must tread the path laid out before him, or her, says the voice in his head, a man’s this time,
the style bogus guru, and each path is unique. It is not the nature of the path itself that should
concern the seeker, but the grace and strength and patience with which each and every one of
us follows the sometimes challenging…” (23). Indeed, Snowman engages on a unique,
challenging path, trying to cope with his guilt, while understanding how his current disastrous
situation came about. Listening to the various voices that regularly pester the protagonist, the
reader becomes aware of Snowman’s deep distress. This state of mind is highlighted by his
subsequent allusions to his mother’s depression when she decided to leave her job. When
Snowman remembers her as a “strange, insufficient, miserable mother” (67), one realises that
those adjectives can be applied to himself. Like the leader of a cult, Crake appears to Jimmy
at the time when the latter is the most vulnerable. He soon becomes Jimmy’s friend. Together,
they discover Oryx as a child on a porn site. Oryx can be regarded as the green guide –
traditionally the second stage of the quest: she helps Jimmy find his place among the scientists
of the inhuman Paradice Dome. On the contrary, Crake’s influence on Jimmy represents the
third stage of the quest – that of the trickster figure. In this novel, stages two and three are
deliberately inverted because of Crake’s importance in the narrative development. The novel
then switches back to Snowman’s recent experiences with the Crakers: how he convinces
them to offer him a fish once a week, and how, on the other hand, he drinks up his last supply
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of alcohol, thus attempting to forget his dreadful situation. As if to draw the reader’s attention
to the subject of human misery, Atwood chooses to focus on the character of Oryx: she
depicts Oryx’s youth, her departure for the city, and, eventually, Jimmy and Crake’s
discovery of her on their computer screen. This aspect of the story subtly introduces the theme
of guilt, of responsibility for one’s deeds, which pervades the novel. Soon after that,
Snowman expresses his need to start out on a quest for food – a seemingly practical journey –
which, however, also has a highly symbolical value. As Snowman gradually acknowledges
his guilt, at the same time, the Crakers innocently discover religion. They associate the
character of Oryx – who taught them simple things in Paradice – to a nature goddess. Quite
naturally, when one of their infants gets bitten by a wild animal – the Crakers perform their
healing rituals, turning to Oryx in search of divine support (157). Snowman secretly enjoys
their devotion as the proof that Crake, who wanted to annihilate religious belief, might
sometimes be wrong. Subsequently, he quickly disappears on his quest journey. To the
Crakers, he explains that he needs to ask things to Crake in person (159). Once again, the
author emphasises Snowman’s vulnerability: “He’s barefoot (…) he walks cautiously” (163).
During his journey, Snowman reminisces his teenage years. This sequence may also be
regarded as the fourth stage of the traditional quest pattern. Indeed, it mainly deals with
Jimmy and Crake’s relationships with their parents. For years, Jimmy remained in need of this
mother who ran away from him. Singularly, Crake’s father escaped to the pleeblands too
(182). Several details regularly point to this lack: Jimmy spots his mother in a crowd
demonstrating against transgenic coffee beans (181). He eventually regards her as a sort of
“mythical being” (191). His mother’s violent reaction against scientific misuse of all kinds
reminds Jimmy of his own passivity: faced with Crake’s harmful inventions, he fails to thwart
his projects. He thinks: “There had been something willed about it though, his ignorance. Or
not willed, exactly: structured. He’d grown up in walled spaces, and then he had become one.
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He had shut things out” (184). This isolation, voluntarily created by Crake through the regular
practice of computer games such as “Extinctathon” allows him to empower Jimmy. The
control Crake exerts on Jimmy is prolonged, even after Crake’s death. Jimmy sums up this
feeling:
So Crake never remembered his dreams. It’s Snowman that remembers them
instead. Worse than remembers: he’s immersed in them, he’s wading through them,
he’s stuck in them. Every moment he’s lived in the past few months was dreamed
first by Crake. No wonder Crake screamed so much. (218)
Indeed, Snowman’s life among the Crakers involves all kinds of perils: wild animals might
attack him; the Crakers might reject him if they came to suspect his lies; and he desperately
lacks food supplies. He therefore points to the danger of his quest. During his expedition, he
must cross open spaces without shelter and face terrible heat (225). He overcomes several
obstacles: barricades, checkpoints (225), formerly electrified walls, a rampart, numerous,
gates, sentry boxes, watchtowers (227, 279, 280), doorways (267), locked doors, flights of
stairs (269); he creeps into an emergency air vent (279). These obstacles emphasise the
difficulty of Snowman’s endeavour. On his way, he comes across objects dropped by the
people in panic after the outburst of the epidemic (226). He visits an abandoned house, where
his image in the mirror deeply shocks him: “A stranger stares back at him, bleary-eyed,
hollow-cheeked, pocked with bug-bite scabs. He looks twenty years older than he is. He
winks, grins at himself, sticks out his tongue: the effect is truly sinister” (231). Among a
series of utilitarian objects, he finds a flashlight, candles, matches (233). All those instruments
metaphorically indicate that he is searching for a better understanding of himself: they might
throw some light on the darker sides of his personality. Symptomatically, this house suddenly
brings his memory back to “his own house from twenty-five years ago, himself the missing
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child” (233), indicating that there is more to his quest than a simple material lack: Snowman
obviously remains incomplete from a psychological point of view. His subsequent assumption
“I haven’t grown as a person” (237) confirms this. This conclusion brings him back to his life
after graduation, when he accumulates unsatisfactory love relationships, simultaneously
accompanying Crake in his perverse virtual hobbies. Jimmy confronts his mother one last
time when the security guards make him watch the video of her execution (258). Yet,
Jimmy’s reaction once again points to his inability to face reality: he refuses to accept his
mother’s death, implying that the images might have been faked. The sudden discovery of a
radio offers a possibility of a positive outcome: other human beings might have survived
(272). First, he hears a very distant Russian voice, then, at last, an English one (273). As he
settles down for the night, Snowman finally reflects on his own responsibility:
Night falls. He lies down on one of the cots in the bedroom, the bed that’s made.
Where I’m lying now, a dead man used to sleep, he thinks. He never saw it coming.
He had no clue. Unlike Jimmy, who’d had clues, who ought to have seen but didn’t.
If I’d killed Crake earlier, thinks Snowman, would it have made any difference?
(276)
One might go as far as to regard Snowman’s sudden realisation as Atwood’s message to her
readers. Indeed, if one considers the current concern about global warming, one might also
read Oryx and Crake as a metaphor for our own predicament. As polluters and consumers, we
resemble Snowman, who refuses to face the consequences of his actions. Snowman then
proceeds to explain how he started to work for Crake. He wonders: “What the fuck did he
need me for? (…) Why didn’t he leave me alone?” (283). He describes the creation process of
the pill that brought about the destruction of the human race – the BlyssPluss pill – generated
by the Extinctathon grandmasters (298). He mentions his first glimpse at the Crakers, whom
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he calls “Crake’s life’s work” (302): “They were naked (…) they were so beautiful. Black,
yellow, white, brown, all available skin colours. Each individual was exquisite. ‘Are they
robots, or what?’ he said” (302). At first sight, Crake’s invention looks like a total success.
However, the reader feels the apocalyptic end approaching, as Snowman reiterates the
expressions of his guilt: “If only haunts him. But if only what? What could he have said or
done differently? What change would have altered the course of events? In the big picture,
nothing. In the small picture, so much” (318). For the first time, Snowman admits that he
might have changed the course of events. However, he never goes as far as to imagine what
he might have done to stop Crake. Instead, he narrates the outburst of the plague, with Oryx’s
and Crake’s subsequent deaths. Meditating on Crake’s “achievement,” Snowman concludes:
“Crake’s emergency storeroom. Crake’s wonderful plan. Crake’s cutting-edge ideas. Crake,
King of the Crakery, because Crake is still there, still in possession, still the ruler of his own
domain, however dark that bubble of light has now become. Darker than dark, and some of
that darkness is Snowman’s. He helped with it” (333). Snowman’s climactic arrival at the
core of Crake’s kingdom forces him to face his responsibilities once again. Inside, he sees the
scattered bones of Oryx and Crake (335), then heads for the storeroom. One can regard this
sudden consciousness as the fifth stage of Snowman’s quest. Confronted to the remains of
Oryx and Crake, Snowman has to acknowledge his guilt. In a moment of introspection, he
realises that he might have changed the course of history, had he been less passive and more
courageous. He then remembers the events following Crake’s death: how he shut himself up,
then waited for the death of all the other inhabitants of the compound. He then took it as his
mission to lead the Crakers to a safe place along the sea shore (350-353). After his expedition
to Paradice, Snowman turns back to the Crakers. They cure the cut in his feet. He then realises
that the fire comes from the shore, simultaneously understanding the necessity for him to join
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his own species. Then, after a last message to the Crakers – “Crake is watching over you (…)
Oryx loves you” (367) – he sets out to the seashore.
***
Oryx and Crake symptomatically differs from Atwood’s earlier production. For the first time,
Atwood depicts a male protagonist. So far, all the main characters of Atwood’s novels were
intricate, tortured female figures. Thus, the presence of a male protagonist in this last novel
indicates the amplification of Atwood’s discourse. The writer here shows how humanity as a
whole becomes paralysed by environmental decadence.
Further, like The Handmaid’s Tale, Oryx and Crake presents us with an apocalyptic
vision of our near future. However, events in The Handmaid’s Tale were inspired by abuses
during World War Two, or current abuses of women in distant countries. In Oryx and Crake,
Atwood finds her inspiration in already existing scientific developments that gradually shape
our Western world in the present. The dangers described in the novel are therefore far closer
to us than in The Handmaid’s Tale. However, the narrative also offers an optimistic note. Like
many Atwoodian novels, it presents the reader with an open ending: Snowman decides to join
his fellow human beings, not knowing their intentions. However, while the many of the
previous novels presented the quest pattern as a circular one, Snowman, in Oryx and Crake,
definitely makes a step forward. While the other Atwoodian heroines remained in an elusive
state of balance, Snowman both has acknowledged his guilt and made the decision to return
towards humankind. Therefore, I regard the novel as a positive message to the reader:
although our civilisation clearly moves towards a self-destruction process, we might still, as
Snowman does, choose to alter this by changing our own behaviour. However, if we go on
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letting things happen, as Snowman did with Crake, we might end up with destroying our own
life resources. In this world, we play the part of the colonisers, exploiting natural resources.
At the same time, we also position ourselves as the victims of an empowerment performed by
the worlds of science and consumption. We must therefore both resist this hegemony and
behave as responsible inhabitants of the planet Earth. As human beings living in the world of
technology and internet communication, we have become hybrids: we desperately long to
preserve nature, while continuing to consume its resources. Hence the message of respect for
nature conveyed by a trickster-writer.
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Conclusion : Exploring the Labyrinth.
The true story lies
among the other stories,
a mess of colors, like jumbled clothing
thrown off or away
like hearts on marble, like syllables, like
butchers’ discards.
The true story is vicious
and multiple and untrue
after all. Why do you
need it? Don’t ever
ask for the true story.
Poems 1976-1986. p. 58.
As a conclusion to this study, one might wonder whether Atwoodian protagonists
experience the labyrinth in the same way. In Lady Oracle, Joan exclaims: “in any labyrinth I
would have let go of the thread in order to follow a wandering light, a fleeting voice” (152).
Keeping in mind that the maze, the central metaphor of this thesis, represents the heroine’s
inner confusion, one might interpret this quotation as an utterance of complete helplessness.
Joan feels lost: unable to encompass the diversity of her own personality, she fails to
acknowledge her hybrid self. Consequently, by the end of the novel, she resorts to another
form of escapism, becoming a science-fiction writer instead of an author of gothic romances.
She no longer wishes to defy men’s expectations or to be acclaimed as a poetess. When
examining Oryx and Crake, one notices that the protagonist’s situation has become totally
different. After having wandered through the desolate compounds in search for food,
Snowman comes to face the consequences of his attitude. He realises his responsibilities for
the almost total destruction of mankind. Simultaneously, he understands the necessity for him
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to survive. Emerging slowly from a maze of ruins, Snowman, takes the risk of joining other
human beings and start anew.
One might therefore argue that the recurring themes in Atwood’s work have evolved
throughout her career. Deception, for instance, reveals highly diverse forms. In the early
narratives, heroines use deception to convey the requested image of themselves: Marian wants
to be regarded as a perfect wife; the “Surfacer” uses deception as a strategy to hide her
“otherness.” Surfacing also introduces the notion of the deceptiveness of language, a concept
which runs through Atwood’s entire fictional work, up to Oryx and Crake, in which Jimmy
invents new words. In Lady Oracle, deception already adopts a more complex form. It
expresses Joan’s artificially constructed personality, which gives birth to different selves. Joan
constantly mimics female stereotypes, thus underlining their grotesque character. Yet, these
early narratives confront the reader with rather innocuous lies. While the heroines fail to
evolve in a positive way, they neither cause much harm to their fellow human beings.
Inversely, Atwood’s subsequent novels display a rising awareness of the dangers of deception
strategies. In Life Before Man, Lesje’s extensive use of mimicry almost causes her to commit
suicide. The protagonist of Bodily Harm risks losing her life in a Caribbean jail. Finally, in
The Handmaid’s Tale, every single character resorts to deception as a survival strategy, which
means that a slip of the tongue might condemn a character to death. Deception also plays a
prominent role in Cat’s Eye: having spent her whole childhood deceiving relatives and
friends, Elaine Risley indulges in self-deception as well. She refuses to admit the
consequences of childhood events upon her present life. The same can be said of the three
heroines of The Robber Bride, whose ultimate confrontation with Zenia, reveals their
weakness inherited from childhood: Tony remembers her heartless mother; Charis faces her
forgotten double, Karen, left behind with her memories of child abuse; whereas Roz finally
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succeeds in integrating her mixed origins. The consequences of deception evolve towards a
more dangerous outcome: Cordelia’s growing insanity and Zenia’s eventual death attribute to
deception far more harmful connotations than the trivial lies in Atwood’s earlier novels.
Grace Marks’s use of deception functions as one more example of a survival strategy. Grace
effectively mimics a rather simple, slightly insane girl, in order to avoid capital punishment.
The strategy obviously pays off, as the story gradually evolves towards a positive outcome.
Finally, The Blind Assassin and, above all, Oryx and Crake also indicate that Atwood’s
deceivers provoke more and more dramatic events: Laura’s suicide, in the first novel, and the
destruction of mankind, in the latter, are the ominous consequences of Iris’s and Snowman’s
deceptive tricks. In The Blind Assassin, Atwood’s most convincing variation on deception, the
reader identifies three levels of treachery: Laura and Iris’s lies; the deception taking place in
the power politics between the sexes in Iris’s scandalous novel; and inverted deception,
regarded as a quality rather than a flaw in the science-fiction story. Atwood thus reveals the
multiplicity of the concept of deception. Oryx and Crake explores yet another aspect of the
phenomenon: it confronts the reader with Jimmy, a character who desperately seeks to mimic
dominant behaviour: Jimmy associates with Crake, a megalomaniac genius, and comes to
play an active role in the destruction of mankind. The reader easily understands that Atwood
here describes the most lethal consequence of deception, the theme having clearly undergone
a serious evolution throughout her work.
Atwood also produces interesting variations on the quest pattern. While her first
novels again display a rather simple quest pattern, consisting of five stages, Atwood, from
Life Before Man onwards, explores the possibilities of deconstructing and multiplying the
quest pattern. In The Edible Woman, Surfacing, and Lady Oracle, the five-sequence quest
goes through the following stages: separation from the usual environment, help received from
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a guide or magic token, encounter with the trickster, confrontation with parental figures,
moment of introspection. Sometimes, as in Surfacing, the order of some of these elements
may vary to emphasise some aspects of the heroine’s development. However, the outcome
remains similar: by the end of the narrative, one doubts that the heroine might change or
evolve in more than a temporary way. In Life Before Man, Atwood starts experimenting with
the quest process. Splitting the narrative between her three protagonists in the form of diary
entries, she deconstructs the various stages of the quest pattern, taking advantage of the
discrepancies between the characters’ background to hint at the possible variety of
experiences: Lesje’s inability to communicate with her parents differs widely from
Elizabeth’s idealisation of her lost mother and rejection of her caricatural Aunt Muriel. The
quest pattern plays the role of a kaleidoscope, enabling the reader to discover the multiple
facets of the characters’ psychology. The more intimate quest in Bodily Harm parallels
Rennie’s struggle against cancer. As in many of Atwood’s early narratives, it evolves towards
an elusive outcome: one even wonders whether Rennie actually escaped from the jail and
from her inner torments. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood provides us with an interesting
alternation of night and day sequences, which enrich the traditional five-stage quest. While
Cat’s Eye evolves towards an open ending – the so-deeply wished confrontation with Cordelia
never takes place –, it also marks Atwood’s first attempt at multiplying and superimposing
quest patterns. Elaine abandons her first childhood journey towards self-knowledge for years,
before starting out on a new quest. Longing to encounter the adult Cordelia, she recalls her
childhood experience and slowly comes to understand that evil resides in all human beings,
including herself. The same awareness strikes the protagonists of The Robber Bride, as they
confront Zenia, the embodiment of evil. Tony realises the sadism of her passion for great
historical battles; Charis helplessly attends the resurfacing of her long repressed evil double
Karen; and Roz comes to terms with her gender prejudices. The three protagonists experience
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common moments of self-discovery, which the three-fold structure of the quest pattern clearly
highlights. While the novel seems to reach closure with Zenia’s death, it also remains open as
to the way in which the other three women will benefit from their experience. Alias Grace
constitutes an exception in Atwood’s treatment of the quest motif. Indeed, Grace’s quest,
carefully structured along the central metaphor of quilting evolves towards a positive
outcome. In continuing to sew her quilts, adding slight personal adaptations of the pattern,
Grace hints at the acknowledgement of her hybrid self. Though it eventually results in its
narrator’s death, one might regard The Blind Assassin as another example of positive
outcome. This time, the writer intertwines three different stories, to underline Iris’s desperate
need for self-knowledge. By the end of the narrative, old Iris leaves a message to her lost
granddaughter, suggesting that her grandfather was not Richard, but the enigmatic Alex
Thomas. In so doing, she acknowledges hybridity as a force, which her granddaughter might
inherit. Likewise, in Oryx and Crake, Snowman, the last of his kind, lost in the forest with the
members of a new cloned race, becomes aware of his hybridity, as he realises his
responsibilities for mankind’s evolution. After a long introspective journey, the quest
concludes on Snowman’s return towards mankind, once again an open yet potentially positive
outcome. Atwood’s experiments with the quest motif have consequently led to a difference in
vision. She first presents us with simple quest patterns evolving towards a negative or rather
vague ending. Later, after several attempts at deconstructing and multiplying the quest motif,
Atwood opts for a still open, but more positive kind of resolution.
In the course of Atwood’s writing career, the figure of the trickster has also undergone
major alterations. From a simple, almost caricatural, secondary figure, it has developed into a
fully-developed character. Duncan, the ghostly father figure in Surfacing, the Royal
Porcupine in Lady Oracle, the frightful Aunt Muriel in Life Before Man, the enigmatic Lora in
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Bodily Harm, and the borderline Moira in The Handmaid’s Tale strike the reader with their
one-dimensionality. Each of them illustrates one aspect of tricksterism: knowledge, the
supernatural, ex-centricity, villainy, mysteriousness, and sensuality. Cat’s Eye marks the
occurrence of more fully-developed trickster figures, which become main characters. Cordelia
and Zenia function as two brilliant examples of the “villainess fatale” – to borrow Heilmann’s
terminology. Although Atwood presents Grace as a likeable character, one might also qualify
her as a “villainess fatale,” both a seducer and a murderess. The less engaging Iris Chase and
Snowman can both be regarded as tricksters, although they do not play the major trickster part
in their respective narrative: I personally find Iris’s sister Laura, and the frightening Crake, far
more effective tricksters. Indeed, their determinacy and ex-centricity provides them with an
aura of mystery that befits a trickster figure. I would like to add that Atwood’s later tricksters,
though more impressive and more fully developed, fail to achieve stability: Cordelia becomes
insane; Zenia dies, as do Laura, and Crake, all in an extremely violent way. Atwood’s later
tricksters undoubtedly strike the reader because they appear larger than life. However, their
function remains the same, i.e. leading the protagonist in his journey for self-discovery. Their
death or progressive madness does not impede the development of the quest. On the contrary,
it even pushes the protagonist further along by prompting his/her reflection. I regard the
character of Grace Marks as the only multi-dimensional trickster figure managing to survive.
Grace is also the only Atwoodian heroine who achieves some balance, probably because she
succeeds in integrating the trickster’s characteristics while remaining within society.
However, one should also mention the peculiarity of Oryx and Crake, which for the first time
in Atwood’s production, introduces a discussion of the trickster figure in relation to religion.
Snowman’s elaboration of Craker’s mythology as he narrates it to the new race provides the
Atwoodian trickster with an added sacred dimension that previous Atwoodian tricksters lack.
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A common point between Atwoodian heroes and heroines lies in their sense of being
different from other people. This “otherness” expresses itself in various ways. Marian, in The
Edible Woman, finds it difficult to accept an boring job and an ordinary social position as
Peter’s wife. She struggles against society’s conventions, rejecting marriage and
empowerment, but eventually gains only a limited awareness of her “otherness.” The
“Surfacer” regularly reminds the reader of how she felt as a stranger in the French speaking
village of her childhood. Joan Foster’s obesity caused her to be rejected as a child. Lesje, in
Life Before Man, constantly wonders whether she acts as requested because of her Lithuanian
origins. Rennie, in Bodily Harm, feels different because of her illness. In The Handmaid’s
Tale, unmarried women like Offred are voluntarily singled out and selected for procreative
purposes. Atwood’s later heroines suffer from other forms of alterity. In Cat’s Eye, Elaine
Risley remembers how other girls rejected her as a child, because of her ignorance of social
games and religious practices. In The Robber Bride, the three female friends feel “other”:
Tony mentions being of a particularly small size; Charis appears as a highly absent-minded
girl, while, in fact, she experiences a difficulty to feel the boundaries of her own self. As to
Roz, she resents being called a “displaced person” like her father, while feeling equally out of
place among the Jewish community of her mother. Grace Marks’s Irish origins and murderous
deeds classify her as a marginal character. Laura Chase, in The Blind Assassin, suffers from a
state which reminds the reader of Charis in The Robber Bride: her extreme sensitivity makes
her vulnerable to common social practices, which she violently resists. Finally, Atwood’s last
hero, Jimmy/Snowman remains an outsider during his whole life. As a young boy, he lacks
the talent for science required by the highly technological world he lives in. Later, as a
survivor of a chemical poisoning, he realises how ex-centric he has become. Atwood’s
numerous ways of expressing “otherness,” transcend traditional visions of alterity as an
equivalent of ethnicity or marginality. While some of Atwood’s characters clearly represent
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marginality (Zenia, the Royal Porcupine, Laura Chase), others derive their differences from
their mixed origins (Lesje, Roz, and Zenia again). Nevertheless, Atwood’s most convincing
“others” are ordinary people confronted to empowering circumstances: the villagers’
prejudices in Surfacing, children’s bullying in Cat’s Eye, jealousy among servants in Alias
Grace, the social conventions of the bourgeoisie in The Blind Assassin, a competition between
boys in Oryx and Crake. My analysis of the concept of “otherness” in Atwood’s work
highlights the way in which the author broadens the scope of postcolonial theory. Otherness
no longer limits itself to matters of nationality or gender. It concerns any individual in a
society that exerts a form of empowerment. When Bhabha develops the concept of
“otherness,” he mainly stresses the racial, sexual, and cultural aspects of such difference. I
contend that “otherness” in Atwood’s fiction constitutes a social phenomenon, siting hybridity
in the discrepancy between the individual’s personal aspirations and social requirements.
However, in Atwood’s novels, the protagonists’ feeling of inadequacy makes their status as
colonised individuals undeniable. One might thus infer that a postcolonial reading of a
mainstream writer such as Atwood enriches postcolonial debates by transforming “otherness”
into a concept applicable to all disenfranchised subjects, and not only to the racially, sexually,
or culturally different.
Atwood’s novels have clearly undergone an evolution from simple comedies and
drama’s towards highly intricate puzzle narratives. Early works, either comical, like The
Edible Woman and Lady Oracle, or darker and dramatic – Surfacing, Life Before Man, Bodily
Harm, and The Handmaid’s Tale – present the heroines’ timid attempts at coping with their
“otherness.” From Cat’s Eye onwards, narratives become more intricate, intertwining
numerous intertextual allusions, metafictional comments, rich symbolism, and multi-layered
quest processes. Progressively, Atwood approaches a more intuitive, nuanced vision of her
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heroines’ hybridity. For the first time, in The Robber Bride, the writer identifies hybridity as a
positive force, gradually integrated by the protagonists. Atwood suggests a similar resolution
when she depicts Grace Marks sewing a “hybrid” quilt, or when Iris reveals her “hybrid”
origins to her grand-daughter, thus offering her the possibility of free choice. Finally, Oryx
and Crake strikes the reader as different from Atwood’s previous work. Its futuristic setting,
its highly imaginative creation of new species, its technologically controlled world offers us a
gloomy incarnation of the near future. Yet, despite Atwood’s sometimes comical inventions,
the plot appears as frightening but plausible. It demonstrates that Atwood, who draws on
existing scientific developments, bases her writings on current concerns. The author has
obviously moved from an interest in women’s condition and victim/victor relationships
towards a more global perspective. Significantly, the young female heroine of her early
narratives has therefore made way for an average man, an “everyman,” representing humanity
faced with current preoccupations such as global warming, species extinction, or the
excessive exploitation of natural resources.
Postcolonial theory offers a link between the various issues examined in this study.
Hybridity, tricksterism, magic realism, and Atwood’s plea for nature share a common concern
for the individual’s place in our modern world. In her depiction of the trickster figure, Atwood
repeatedly insists on its hybrid nature, in-between life and death, occupying a liminal space
between the animal and the human realm. Atwood supplies numerous examples pointing to
the trickster’s semi-animal nature: the fish-like appearance of the father’s corpse in Surfacing,
Aunt Lou’s talking fox fur and the Royal Porcupine in Lady Oracle, Zenia’s wolfish nature,
the fox’s quilt pattern in Alias Grace. Similarly, the author often creates grotesque magic
realist scenes. In these episodes, antagonist worlds such as the human and the animal, the
animate and the inanimate collide for a brief instant. One recalls, for instance, the hilarious
481

“mothball” scene in Lady Oracle, Mrs. Smeath’s portrait coming to life in Cat’s Eye, or the
parrot, in Oryx and Crake, as embodiment of Jimmy’s lost mother. These fleeting moments
represent the protagonists’ growing awareness of their hybridity. Atwood’s books illustrate
Delbaere’s three distinctive notions of magic realism as a “hyperbolic distortion” of reality
due to the confrontation and “interpenetration of different realms” (Delbaere, “Magic
Realism” 256). Personally, I interpret Atwood’s recurrent use of grotesque realism in
association with gloomy details borrowing on the gothic tradition yet another maze of magic
realism, which I identify as “gothic magic realism.” Significantly, gothic magic realist
moments often coincide with the protagonist’s understanding of the trickster’s message or
with a growing awareness of his/her hybridity.
Atwood’s growing concern for ecology should be read in the context of hybridity as
well. Indeed, man’s increasingly more tenuous link with nature enables him to remain aware
of the artificiality of social rules. Through their connection with the natural world, through
their wish to let the trickster alter their life, Atwoodian characters allow liminality to become
part of their everyday experience. Average characters suddenly become confronted with
frightening marginalising experiences. They discover what it means to be “other,” or
eventually recognise as theirs a long latent feeling of inadequacy. As a mainstream writer,
Atwood’s complex statement in terms of postcolonial theory sounds as follows: hybridity
does not concern only the racially or culturally “other.” “Otherness” lies in each of us. It
constitutes a force, a subversive power that ensures the individual’s survival and leads him on
towards self-knowledge.
As to Atwood herself, she continues to write in a trickster’s way. Playing with
language, presenting her readers with multi-layered characters, enriching her novels with
482

highly meaningful intertext, and allowing reality and fantasy to coexist briefly, she surprises
and fascinates her readers with each new work. Atwood’s last novel to date, The Penelopiad,
a reinterpretation of Odysseus’s adventures, narrated by his wife Penelope, offers Atwood’s
audience another example of postcolonial rewriting of a male myth from a female point of
view. Once again, the narrative reads as a “trickster text,” presenting Odysseus as the
embodiment of tricksterism. This might be the reason for Atwood’s ever growing success
among readers: they enjoy the complexity of Atwood’s novels, willingly taking part in the
trickster-writer’s game. Penelope herself describes her relationship with Odysseus as follows:
The two of us were – by our own admission – proficient and shameless liars of long
standing. It’s a wonder either one of us believed a word the other said. But we did.
Or so we told each other. (173)
Likewise, Atwood and her readers become accomplices in the process of deception. Atwood
carries us along in a maze of intricate literary allusions and multiple selves, as we, readers,
accept, for a moment, to suspend our disbelief.
483

Bibliography
This bibliography contains both the works which have been quoted in this thesis and those
which have enriched my reflection during my research. However, due to the ever expanding
amount of essays and books devoted to Margaret Atwood’s writings, this bibliography cannot
achieve exhaustiveness; rather it offers the reader a selection of interesting and multi-faceted
points of view on the writer’s production, thus suggesting further clues for its interpretation. It
also includes the files I was able to consult at the Fischer Library of Rare Books in Toronto.
Ahern, Stephen. “ ‘Meat Like You Like It’: The Production of Identity in Atwood’s Cat’s Eye.” Canadian
Literature 137 (1993 Summer): 8-17.
Anderson, Michele E. “Two Cultures, One Consciousness: A Comparative Study of Canadian Women’s
Literature in French and in English.” Dissertation Abstracts International 51(10) (1991 Apr): 3415A.
Anonymous, http://www.randomhouse.com/features/atwood/interview.html, consulted on September 1, 2006.
_____________. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/02/1051382088211.html, consulted on September 1,
2006.
_____________. http://www.oryxandcrake.co.uk, consulted on October 19, 2006.
_____________. “Hand-and-I Co-ordination: Review of The Blind Assassin.” The Economist (2000, 23 Sept.):
125-126.
_____________.“Interactive Special” Time Magazine (2001, June 4): 51-95.
Ashcroft, Bill. “Excess. Post-Colonialism and the Verandahs of Meaning.” De-scribing Empire. Post-
Colonialism and Textuality. Chris Tiffin & Alan Lawson, Eds. London: Routledge, 1994. 33-44.
Ashcroft, Bill; Griffiths, Gareth; Tiffin, Helen. The Empire Writes Back. London: Routledge, 1989.
_____________. The Post-colonial Studies Reader. London : Routledge, 1995.
_____________. Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies. London: Routledge, 1998.
Atwood, Margaret, Double Persephone. Toronto: Hawkshead Press, 1961.
_____________. The Circle Game.1966. Toronto: Anansi, 1969.
_____________. The Animals in That Country. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1968.
484

_____________. The Edible Woman. 1969. London: Virago Press, 1990.
_____________. The Journals of Susanna Moodie. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1970.
_____________. Procedures for Underground. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1970.
_____________. Power Politics. Toronto: Anansi, 1971.
_____________. Surfacing. 1972. London: Virago Press, 1988.
_____________. Survival. 1972. McLelland and Steward, 1996.
_____________. You Are Happy. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1974.
_____________. Selected Poems. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1976.
_____________. Poems 1965-1975. 1976. London: Virago Press, 1991.
_____________. Lady Oracle. 1976. London: Virago Press, 1990.
_____________. Up in the Tree. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1978.
_____________. Two-Headed Poems. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1978.
_____________. Dancing Girls. 1978. London: Virago Press, 1989.
_____________. Grace. A Play in Two Acts. Unpublished.
_____________. Life Before Man. 1980. London: Virago Press, 1989.
_____________. True Stories. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1981.
_____________. Bodily Harm. 1982. London : Virago Press, 1989.
_____________. Second Words: Selected Critical Prose. Toronto: Anansi, 1982.
_____________. Interlunar. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1984.
_____________. Murder in the Dark. 1984. London: Virago Press, 1994.
_____________. The Handmaid's Tale. 1985. London: Virago Press, 1995.
_____________. Bluebeard’s Egg. 1987. London: Virago Press, 1989.
_____________. Poems 1976-1986. 1987. London: Virago Press, 1994.
_____________. Cat's Eye. New York: Bantam Books, 1989.
_____________. Wilderness Tips. 1991. New York: Bantam, 1993.
_____________. Good Bones. 1992. London: Virago Press, 1993.
_____________. The Robber Bride. 1993. London : Bloomsbury, 1994.
_____________. Bones and Murder. 1994. London: Virago Press, 1995.
_____________. Strange Things. The Malevolent North Canadian Literature. 1995. London: Virago Press,
2004.
485

_____________. Morning in the Burned House. 1995. London: Virago Press, 1995.
_____________. Alias Grace. London : Bloomsbury, 1996.
_____________. The Blind Assassin. 2000. London : Virago Press, 2002.
_____________. Negotiating with the Dead. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
_____________. Oryx and Crake. London : Bloomsbury, 2003.
_____________. Bottle. Toronto: Hay Festival Press, 2004.
_____________. The Penelopiad. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005.
_____________. The Tent. London: Bloomsbury, 2006.
_____________. “Canadian Monsters. Some Aspects of the Supernatural in Canadian Fiction.” The Canadian
Imagination. Ed. David Staines. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977. 97-122.
_____________. “Atwood on Pornography.” Chatelaine (September 1983): 61, 118, 126-128.
New York : G.K. Hall & Co, 1988. 251-253.
_____________. “Masterpiece Theater.” Los Angeles Times (January 25, 1998): 2.
Atwood, Margaret; Beaulieu, Victor-Lévy. Two Solicitudes. Conversations. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart,
1998.
Atwood, Margaret; Barkhouse, Joyce. Anna’s Pet. Toronto: James Lorimer & Co, 1980.
Augier, Valérie. “An Analysis of Surfacing by Margaret Atwood.” Commonwealth Essays and Studies 11(2)
(1989 Spring): 11-17.
Baer, Elizabeth R. “ ‘The Pilgrimage Inward’: The Quest Motif in the Fiction of Margaret Atwood, Doris
Lessing, and Jean Rhys.” Dissertation Abstracts International 42(8) (1982 Feb): 3606A.
_____________. “Pilgrimage Inward: Quest and Fairy Tale Motifs in Surfacing.” Margaret Atwood: Vision and
Forms. Eds. Kathryn VanSpanckeren & Jan Garden Castro. Carbondale : So. Illinois UP, 1998. xxxi, 24-34.
Bakhtin, M.M. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1981.
Banerjee, Chinmoy. “Alice in Disneyland: Criticism as Commodity in The Handmaid’s Tale.” Essays on
Canadian Writing 41 (1990 Summer): 74-92.
_____________. “Atwood’s Time: Hiding Art in Cat’s Eye.” Modern Fiction Studies 36(4) (1990 Winter): 513-
522.
Barbour, Douglas. [“Review of Two-Headed Poems.”] Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith
McCombs. New York : G.K. Hall & Co, 1988. 208-212.
Bardolph, Jacqueline, ed. Telling Stories: Postcolonial Short Fiction in English. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001.
486

Barzilai, Shuli. “Atwood’s Female Quest-Romance: A Psychoanalytical Approach to Surfacing.” Approaches to
Teaching Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Other Works. Eds. Sharon R. Wilson, Thomas B. Friedman &
Shannon Hengen. NewYork: MLA, 1996. 161-166.
_____________. “Who Is He? The Missing Person Behind the Pronoun in Atwood’s Surfacing” Canadian
Literature 164 (2000 Spring): 57-79.
Baughman, Cynthia. “The Handmaid’s Tale.” The Pinter Review (1990): 92-96.
Becker, Susanne. “Celebrity, or a Disneyland of the Soul: Margaret Atwood and the Media.” Margaret Atwood.
Works and Impact. Ed. Reingard Nischik. Rochester: Camden House, 2000. 28-40.
Beer, John. Blake’s Humanism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1968.
Bennett, David, Ed. Multicultural States. Rethinking Difference and Identity. London: Routledge, 1998.
Bennett, David; Bhabha, Homi K. “Liberalism and Minority Culture: Reflections on Culture’s in Between.”
Multicultural States. Rethinking Difference and Identity. Ed. David Bennett. London: Routledge, 1998. 37-47.
Bennett, Donna; Cooke, Nathalie. “A Feminist by Another Name: Atwood and the Canadian Canon.”
Approaches to Teaching Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Other Works. Eds. Sharon R. Wilson, Thomas
B.Friedman, & Shannon Hengen. New York: MLA, 1996. 33-42.
Benton, Carol L. “The Comic Impulse in the Poetry of Margaret Atwood.” Dissertation Abstracts International
50(10) (1990 Apr): 3105A.
_____________. “Reading as Rehearsal in a Communication Class: Comic Voicings in Atwood’s Poetry.”
Approaches to Teaching Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Other Works. Eds. Sharon R. Wilson, Thomas B.
Friedman & Shannon Hengen. New York : MLA, 1996. 84-89.
Benuys, Janine M. Biomimicry. Innovation Inspired by Nature. NewYork: HarperCollins, 2002.
Beran, Carol L. “The Canadian Mosaic: Functional Ethnicity in Margaret Atwood's Life before Man.” Essays-
on-Canadian-Writing 41 (1990 Summer): 59-73.
_____________. “George, Leda, and a Poured Concrete Balcony: a Study of Three Aspects of the Evolution of
Lady Oracle.” Canadian Literature 112 (1987 Spring): 18-28.
_____________. “Images of Women’s Power in Contemporary Canadian Fiction by Women.” Studies in
Canadian Literature 15(2) (1990): 55-76.
_____________. Living over the Abyss: Margaret Atwood’s Life Before Man. Toronto: ECW Press, 1993. 16.
487

_____________. “The End of the World and Other Things: Life Before Man and The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Approaches to Teaching Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Other Works. Eds. Sharon R. Wilson, Thomas B.
Friedman & Shannon Hengen. New York : MLA, 1996. 128-134.
_____________. “Strangers within the Gates: Margaret Atwood’s Wilderness Tips.” Margaret Atwood’s Textual
Assassinations. Ed. Sharon R. Wilson. Columbus : The Ohio State University Press, 2003. 74-87.
Besner, Neil. “Beyond Two Solitudes, After Survival: Postmodern Fiction in Canada.” Postmodern Fiction in
Canada. Eds. Theo D’haen & Hans Bertens. Amsterdam: Rodopi/Antwerpen: Restant, 1992. 9-25.
Beyer, Charlotte. “From Violent Duality to Multi-Culturalism: Margaret Atwood’s Post-Colonial Cultural and
Sexual Politics.” O Canada: Essays on Canadian Literature and Culture. Ed. Jorn Carlsen. Aarhus: Aarhus
UP, 1995. 97-108.
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London : Routledge, 1994.
_____________. “Culture’s in Between.” Multicultural States. Rethinking Difference and Identity. Ed. David
Bennett. London: Routledge, 1998. 29-36.
Blake, William, Songs of Innocence and of Experience. London: Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd., 1967.
Blakely, Barbara. “The Pronunciation of Flesh: A Feminist Reading of Atwood’s Poetry.” Margaret Atwood :
Language, Text and System. Eds. Sherrill E. Grace & Lorraine Weir. Vancouver: University of British
Columbia Press, 1983. 33-52.
Bloom, Lynn Z.; Makowsky, Veronica. “Zenia’s Paradoxes.” Litterature 6(3-4) (1995): 167-179.
Bloom, Lynn Z.; Makowsky, Veronica; Hollenberg, Donna Krolik. “Reading Together and Apart: Feminism
and/versus Ethnicity in Margaret Laurence and Margaret Atwood.” American Review of Canadian Studies
29(1) (1999 Spring): 165-180.
Blott, Ann. “Journey to Light.” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. New York : G.K.
Hall & Co, 1988. 275-279.
Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron. London: Everyman’s Library, 1930.
Bök, Christian. “Sibyls: Echoes of French Feminism in The Diviners and Lady Oracle.” Canadian Literature
135 (1992 Winter): 80-93.
Bontatibus, Donna. “Reconnecting with the Past: Personal Hauntings in Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride.”
Papers on Language and Literature 34(4) (1998 Fall): 358-371.
Bouson-Brooks, J. Brutal Choreographies. Oppositional Strategies and Narrative Design in the Novels of
Margaret Atwood. Amherst : The University of Massachusets Press, 1993.
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_____________. “Slipping Sideways into the Dreams of Women: the Female Dream Work of Power Feminism
in Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride.” Litterature 6(3-4) (1995 Dec): 149-166.
_____________. “A Feminist and Psychoanalytic Approach in a Women’s College.” Approaches to Teaching
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Hengen. New York : MLA, 1996. 122-127.
Boutelle, Ann Edwards. “Margaret Atwood, Margaret Laurence, and Their Nineteenth-Century Forerunners.”
Faith of a (Woman) Writer. Eds. Alice Kessler-Harris & William McBrien. Westport: Greenwood, 1988. 41-
47.
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311.
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301-315.
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G.K. Hall & Co, 1988. 35-36.
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Summer): 111-130.
Bromberg, Pamela S. “The Two Faces of the Mirror in The Edible Woman and Lady Oracle.” Margaret Atwood.
Vision and Forms. Eds. Kathryn VanSpanckeren & Jan Garden Castro. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1988. 12-23.
Brönte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1986.
Brown, Jane W. “Constructing the Narratives of Women’s Friendship: Margaret Atwood’s Reflexive Fictions.”
Litterature 6(3-4) (1995 Dec): 197-212.
Brown, Lyn Mikel. “The Dangers of Time Travel: Revisioning the Landscape of Girls’ Relationships in
Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye.” Analyzing the Different Voice. Feminist Psychological Theory and Literary
Texts. Eds. Jerilyn Fischer & Ellen S. Silber. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998. 27-43.
Brown, Paul. “ ‘This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine.’ ” Political Shakespeare. New Essays in Cultural
Materialism. Eds. Jonathan Dollimore & Alan Sinfield. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985. 48-
71.
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York : G.K. Hall & Co, 1988. 213-228.
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Browne, Pat, (ed.) Heroines of Popular Culture. Bowling Green: Popular, 1987.
Brydon, Diana. “Caribbean Revolution and Literary Convention.” Canadian Literature 95 (1982 Winter): 181-
185.
_____________. “ ‘The Thematic Ancestor’: Joseph Conrad, Patrick White and Margaret Atwood.” World
Literature Written in English 24(2) (1984 Autumn): 386-397.
_____________. “Atwood’s Postcolonial Imagination: Rereading Bodily Harm.” Various Atwoods. Essays on
the Later Poems, Short Fiction, and Novels. Ed. Lorraine M. York. Toronto: Anansi, 1995. 89-116.
_____________. “Beyond Violent Dualities: Atwood in Postcolonial Contexts.” Approaches to Teaching
Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Other Works. Eds. Sharon R. Wilson, Thomas B. Friedman & Shannon
Hengen. New York : MLA, 1996. 49-54.
_____________. “Atwood’s Global Ethic: The Open Eye, The Blinded Eye.” Unpublished.
Brydon, Diana; Tiffin, Helen. Decolonizing Fiction. Sydney : Dangaroo Press, 1993.
Bryson, Scott J. (ed.) Ecopoetry: A Critical Introduction. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2002.
Buchbinder, David. “Weaving Her Version: The Homeric Model and Gender Politics in Selected Poems.”
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Southern Illinois University Press, 1988. 122-141.
Bühler Roth, Verena. Wilderness and the Natural Environment. Margaret Atwood’s Recycling of a
Canadian Theme. Tübingen; Basel: Francke, 1998. 53-54.
Cameron, Elspeth. “Famininity, or Parody of Autonomy: Anorexia Nervosa and The Edible Woman.”
Joumal of Canadian Studies 20(2) (1985 Summer): 45-69.
_____________. “In Darkest Atwood.” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. New York :
G.K. Hall & Co, 1988. 254-255.
Caminero-Santangelo, Marta. “Moving Beyond ‘The Blank White Spaces’: Atwood’s Gilead, Postmodernism,
and Strategic Resistance.” Studies in Canadian Literature/Etudes en littérature canadienne 19(1) (1994): 20-
41.
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490

Carrera-Suarez, Isabel. “ ‘Yet I Speak, Yet I Exist’: Affirmation of the Subject in Atwood’s Short Stories.”
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247.
Carrington, Ildiko de Papp. “ ‘I’m Stuck’: The Secret Sharers in The Edible Woman.” Essays on Canadian
Writing 23 (1982 Spring): 68-87.
_____________. “Another Symbolic Descent.” Essays on Canadian Writing 26 (1983 Summer): 45-63.
_____________. “Demons, Doubles, and Dinosaurs: Life Before Man, The Origins of Consciousness, and ‘The
Icicle.’” Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Ed. Judith McCombs. New York : G.K. Hall & Co, 1988. 229-
244.
_____________. “Definitions of a Fool: Alice Munro’s ‘Walking on Water’ and Margaret Atwood’s Two
Stories about Emma: “The Whirlpool Rapids” and “Walking on Water.” Studies in Short Fiction 28(2) (1991
Spring): 135-149.
Castro, Jan Garden. “An Interview with Margaret Atwood. 20 April 1983.” Margaret Atwood. Vision and
Forms. Eds. Kathryn VanSpanckeren & Jan Garden Castro. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,
1988. 215-232.
Chen, Zhongming. “Theorising about New Modes of Representation and Ideology in the Postmodern Age: The
Practice of Margaret Atwood and Li Ang.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue canadienne de
littérature comparée 21(3) (1994 Sept.) : 341-354.
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41-53, 119-131.
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513

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_____________. “The Social Construction of Identity and the Lost Female Imaginary in M. Atwood’s
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ARIEL 19(2) (1988 Apr.): 73-85.
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1994.
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Tuttle-Hansen, Elaine. “Fiction and (Post)Feminism in Atwood’s Bodily Harm.” Novel 19(1) (1985 Fall): 5-21.
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Reality. Living Author Series n°6. Ed. Beatrice Mendez-Egle. Edinburg, Texas: Pan American University,
1986. 1-13.
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Illinois University Press, 1988.
Verduyn, Christl. “No Tongue in Cheek: Recent Work by English Canadian Poets Daphne Marlatt, Lola Lemire
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519

Wall, Kathleen. “Representing the Other Body: Frame Narratives in Margaret Atwood’s ‘Giving Birth’ and
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_____________. Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time: The Reith Lectures 1994. London: Vintage, 1994.
_____________. From the Beast to the Blonde. London: Random House, 1994.
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_____________. “Meridians of Perception: A Reading of The Journals of Susanna Moodie.” The Art of
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_____________. “Atwood in a Landscape.” Margaret Atwood : Language, Text and System. Eds. Sherrill E.
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Whitlark, James; Aycock, Wendell, (eds.) The Literature of Emigration and Exile. Lubbock: Texas Tech UP,
1992. 131-142.
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10(1-2) (1985): 136-145.
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520

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York : MLA, 1996. 55-62.
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57.
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_____________, ed. Margaret Atwood’s Textual Assassinations. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press,
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Textual Assassinations. Ed. Sharon R. Wilson. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2003. 121-133.
_____________. “Fiction Flashes: Genre and Intertexts in Good Bones.” Margaret Atwood’s Textual
Assassinations. Ed. Sharon R. Wilson. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2003. 18-41.
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1995.
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Atwoods. Essays on the Later Poems, Short Fiction, and Novels. Ed. Lorraine M. York. Toronto: Anansi, 1995.
229-252.
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Handmaid’s Tale and Other Works. Eds. Sharon R. Wilson, Thomas B.Friedman, & Shannon Hengen. New
York: MLA, 1996. 43-48.
Zamora, Lois Parkinson; Faris, Wendy B. Magical Realism : Theory, History, Community. London: Duke
University Press, 1995.
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Research Material
Atwood Papers, Thomas Fischer Library of Rare Books, Toronto.
Consulted files:
Collection 200:
Box 10: File 10.14: Double Persephone.
Box 16: Drafts of Atwood’s first, unpublished novel Up in the Air So Blue.
Boxes 18-19: Drafts of The Edible Woman.
Box 21: File 21.1: early drafts of Surfacing.
Box 22: Drafts of Surfacing.
Box 23: File 23.12: early drafts of Lady Oracle.
522

Boxes 24-26: Drafts of Lady Oracle.
Box 27: File 27.1: Atwood’s handwritten notes on Lady Oracle. File 27.9: literary sources for
Lady Oracle. File 27.10: map and photographs of the Villa d’Este.
Boxes 30-31: Drafts of Life Before Man.
Box 32: File 32.6: concerns Life Before Man and the question of Lesje’s foreignness. File
32.7: on the literary and real sources of Life Before Man (The Wizard of Oz and newspaper
articles on the history of Ukraine and Lithuania); on the origin of Lesje’s name.
Boxes 33-39: Bodily Harm: Drafts and research material.
Boxes 72-73: Drafts of The Handmaid’s Tale.
Box 86: File 86.2: Atwood’s unpublished play on Grace Marks.
Box 90: File 90.25: Atwood’s article “Atwood on Pornography,” related to Bodily Harm.
Boxes 90-91: Atwood’s Speeches.
Box 92: Correspondence 1965-1985.
Boxes 93, 125: Critical works.
Box 96: File 96.3: material for The Handmaid’s Tale: newspaper articles on Nazism
Box 99: Files 99.1, 99.4, 99.5, 99.6: early material for Cat’s Eye.
Boxes 100-104: Drafts of Cat’s Eye.
Box 125: File 125.9: on hybridity.
Boxes 131-140: Drafts of The Robber Bride.
Box 153: File 153.25: critical work on Bodily Harm.
Box 166: Files 166.13, 166.14, 166.16: research material for The Robber Bride. File 166.15:
The Robber Bride. Articles on stereotypes and left-handedness.
Box 169: File 169.17: explanations concerning Zenia in The Robber Bride.
Box 180: File 180.5: sources for Alias Grace. References of books on quilting, possession,
Mesmerism and the Spiritualists.
523

Boxes 181-191: drafts of Alias Grace.
Collection 335:
Box 26: Files 26.1, 26.2: material for Bodily Harm: Documents about St. Vincent and the
Grenadines. File 26.8 establishes the link between True Stories and Bodily Harm. Contains
sources for Bodily Harm.
Box 33: File 5.3: contains the text of Atwood’s speech “Spotty-Handed Villainesses”: on evil
female characters; File 5.22: Atwood’s review of Marina Warner’s From the Beast to the
Blonde.
Boxes 58-70: Drafts of TheBlind Assassin.
Box 90: contains a satirical cartoon by Atwood on her course “Southern Ontario Gothic.”
Boxes 98-111: Drafts of Oryx and Crake.
Box 108: File 11.21: sources for Oryx and Crake.
Box 111: Files 3, 14.8, 14.9, 14.10, 14.14, 14.15, 14.16: sources for Oryx and Crake.
Box 118: File 6.2: contains the notes concerning Atwood’s course on “Southern Ontario
Gothic.”
Box 123: File 11.5: Atwood’s review of Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World.
524