A Multidisciplinary Research Journal - Devanga Arts College

Body as Raw Material: An Analysis of Margaret Atwood’s Bodily Harm
N. Kowsalya Devi
Assistant Professor of English
Devanga Arts College
Aruppukottai.
Bodily Harm (1981) is a powerful novel in which Atwood depict the horrifying status of
women in the post-feminist era. Atwood in Second Words: Selected Critical Prose, comments
on the state of women’s liberation movements: “ The goals of feminist movement have not been
achieved, and those who claim we’re living in a post-feminist era are either sadly mistaken or
tired of thinking about the same subject” (370). For Atwood, novel is a vehicle for looking at
society and this social function of art is effectively fulfilled in this novel.
The concept of female body being treated as raw material for male consumption is a
dominant theme in Atwood’s writings. In Bodily Harm, Atwood depicts the mutilation and
dismemberment of female body due to patriarchal oppression. Barbara Hill Rigney states that,
“Oppression in all its manifestation, both physical and psychological, is Atwood’s subject in
Bodily Harm and The Handmaid’s Tale and in the poems entitled True Stories (103-04).
Ranata Wilfore, the narrator of Bodily Harm is a Canadian freelance journalist who witnesses
and experiences the various ways in which female body is invaded violated and abused. While
travelling through Caribbean island, she gets an opportunity to see by herself, the way in which
the crusaders for liberty are tortured. She understands that oppression is prevalent everywhere
and as a journalist; she should wield her pen as a weapon to fight against these injustices. The
novel is a protest against the female body being treated as a raw material under the system of
male power and authority.
11 ISSN 0976-8130
In Bodily Harm, Atwood depicts Rennie as existing in a diseased landscape that is her
body is infected with malignant disease, cancer. This illness subjects her to extreme physical and
psychological mutilation. The partial mastectomy which Rennie undergoes affects her psyche so
much that she suspects her efficacy to be a wife and to nurture a child in future. She feels as if
some part of her body has been missing and is reduced to a “damaged, amputated” (BH 198)