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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Canadian literature is relatively new. The word ‘Canada’ is believed to have

originated from two Spanish words ‘aca’ and ‘nada’, which means nothing here. This notion

of absence in the name has been a haunting presence in Canada throughout its socio-cultural

history. Despite such an absence, Canada has a bewildering variety of literatures.

Although Canadian writing began as an imitative colonial literature, it has steadily

developed its own national characteristics. Because of the huge immigrations of New

England Puritans from 1760 and later of American Loyalists during the revolution,

Canadian literature followed U.S until the confederation in 1867. Before 1800, the rigors of

pioneering left little time for the writing of literature.

Canadian literature enjoys an international presence today, as a whole it developed

slowly. It began in the 17th century, achieved its distinctive character only after Canada

gained independence from Britain in 1867. From the beginnings of European colonization

in the 1600’s until national hood various factors affected cultural development in the

territory now known as Canada. From colonial times onwards, European Canadians were

divided into two distinct populations.

French speaking and English speaking, although many people were bilingual, the

partisanship of these two groups, coupled with large numbers of immigrants who spoke

other languages, proved to be divisive in any progress toward a single national literature.
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Canadians accepted plurality (diversity) as a workable alternative instead of committing

themselves to uniformity as the basis of their culture. Canadian literature may be divided

into two parts, based on their separate roots: one stems from culture and literature from

France; the other from Britain. Each is written in the language of its originating culture.

However, collectively this literature has become distinctly Canadian.

Canadian literature “goes from local humor through an early internationalism,

historical romances, stories of provincial and settled life, realism and a new nationalism in

the early 1940s” (Reddy 25) says Bruce King. Robert Kroetsch, an influential post-

modernist writer states that Canadian Literature evolved directly from Victorian during its

Colonial period and underwent a sudden progress as its literature broke open the narrow

frontiers of modernism thereby emerging as post-modernism when the country free from its

colonial identity. This led the Canadian writers to realize that the type of modern literature

they accomplished responded more to systemization and classification and therefore wanted

to liberate creative writing from additional sales of composition. They did not follow the

maxim that literature must reflect the social, political and historical reality of their age. On

the other hand, the reality they created was more or less independent of the impersonal

reality around. Their choice of characters from common folks and a less traditional aspect

of mythology are clearly described in their literature.

Though Douglas Le Pan perceives that Canada is a county without any mythology,

the Canadian writers have been attempting to discover its roots and to trace and interpret its

growth. Thus by examining the history of its inhabitants, the achievements of its pioneers,
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and its society, they are creating a mythology. Among these mythmakers who seek

knowledge about the origins, Margaret Atwood establishes her own stand.

Canadian women who were “astonished amused, and frightened in the period before

the First World War, (Salat 62) as Barbara Godard remarks, transformed themselves into

the “new women” (Salat 62) as a result of the Suffrage Movement in Canada during the late

nineteenth and early twentieth century This led more women to take up writing. They

sketched the strong desires of the “new women” (Salat 62) and their yearnings to be free

and liberated from their limited, restricted socio-cultural society.

In the year that followed the Second World War and in the post-war period of 1960 s

the Canadian women began to assert their feminine sensibility and their opposition to the

patriarchal system. The Women’s Movement in 1960s served as a catalyst and brought

about a greater awareness and contributed to strengthen their quest for cultural identity.

At the end of 15th century, the European settlers soon arrived with an interest in

trade or converting the indigenous people to Christianity. Unknowingly, the settlers began

to fashion a new society, but a literary dimension for this society grew slowly. By the early

17th century both Newfoundland and French territory in Canada were home to playwrights,

poets and culturally active church men and women. An Acadian culture developed under

French influence, and immigration from Scotland in the 1700’s brought Gaelic speakers and

a Gaelic tradition of oral poetry to the region.

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The late 18th century, brought the two main stimuli that put an end to English

language Canadian literature. The first was a British victory over French forces in Qeubec

in the battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759; the British’ takeover of most of the New

France which became official in 1763. The second was the outbreak of the American

Revolution in 1755, which soon drew many Americans who remained loyal to Britain to

Canada. Canadian fiction in English had its origin at this time. The History of Emily

Montague(1769) by English-born Frances Brooke is considered the first Canadian as well as

the first worthy American novel. The novel provides a portrait of 18th century Canada while

establishing a female literary voice early in English Canadian writing.

During the 19th century, Canadian writers grew more numerous and more attempting

new forms and addressing new subjects. At first, writers turned to narratives that recorded

exploration, settlement and survival. By the end of century, the range of genres and topics

has broadened considerably to encompass social issues of the day from the politics of

independence to the rights of women-historical romance, comedies of manners and lyric

poetry about the transcendence of nature.

The second half of the 20th century witnessed increasingly rapid cultural ferment and

social transformation as access to media communication introduced into the Canadian

scene, a growing multiplicity of voices, languages and perspectives. Various modes of

debate, dissent, alliance and identification-combined with vigorous experimentation with

forms and styles-led to the emergence of a distinctively Canadian multiculturalism. Instead

of forcing a unified national consciousness of diversity, as happened in the United States,

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multiculturalism in Canada produced a literature that challenged and reassessed ways in

which nation can accommodate that diversity.

The literary achievement of the last decades of the 20th century is firmly rooted in

Canada’s literary past. It is the harvest of many decades of thoughtful cultivation. Most

Canadian literature is written in English or French, other language which it appears include

Gaelic, German, Icelandic, Ukrainian, Yiddish and many languages of Canada’s original

inhabitants among them Cree, Haida, Inuktitut and Ojibwa.

No man or woman can be strong, gentle, pure and good without the world

being better for it and without someone being helped but comforted by the

very existence of that goodness.

-Philips Brooks

Canada’s literature, whether written in English or French often reflects the Canadian

perspective on nature, frontier life and Canada’s position in the world, all three of which tie

into the garrison mentality. Canada’s ethnic and cultural diversity are reflected, with many

of its most prominent writers focusing on ethnic life. The two early important novelists

were Morley Callaghan in English and Gabrielle Roy in French. Failure is one of the themes

in Canadian literature. Failure and futility feature as themes in many notable works for

instance Not Wanted on the Voyage (1984) by Timothy Findley is the best example. Humor

is often laced with serious subject matter. Often Mid anti-Americanism, in the form of

gentle satire is the main theme. Sometimes perceived as malicious, often presents a friendly

rivalry between two nations.

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Since World War II, multiculturalism has been an important theme. Writers using

this theme include Mordecai Richler and Margaret Laurence. Reference to nature is

common in Canada’s literature. Nature is sometimes portrayed as an enemy and sometimes

like a divine force. Satire is one of the main elements in Canadian literature. Canadian

culture reflected in Canadian literatures shows self-deprecation.

Some Canadian novels revolve around the theme of the search for self identity and

need to justify one’s existence. The most common hero of Canadian literature is an ordinary

person who must overcome challenges from a large corporation, a bank, a rich tycoon, a

government, a natural disaster and so on. Another variant theme involves a conflict between

urban and rural culture, usually portraying the rural characters as morally superior.

Canadian literature has focused on nationalistic and regional themes. Canadian literature is

sociologically oriented. Canadian literature is the literature of every nation, is influenced by

its socio-political contexts. Canadian writers produced all variety of genres. Influence on

Canadian writers are broad, both geographically and historically.

Though the Canadian novel began to take off (Reddy 25) during 1950s with Mavis

Gallant, Robertson Davis, Mordecai Richler Watson, it took an altogether new form with

the emergence of women novelists like Margaret Atwood in 1960s along with Mice Munro,

Norman Levine and Michael Ondaatje, Susanne Moodie, Sara Jeanette Duncan, Martha

Ostenso, Ethel Wilson, Mazo de Ia Roche and Aele Wiseman are few other women writers,

who have made significant contributions to the growth and development of Canadian

literature.
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The first Canadian novelist of note was John Richardson whose Wacousta(1832)

popularized the genre of the national historical novel. With The Clockmarker(1836) J.C.

Haliburton began his humorous series on Sam Slick, the Yankee peddler. Historical

novelists writings in 1900 included William Kirby, author of The Golden Dog(1877) and Sir

Gilbert Parker, author of The Seats of the Mighty(1896). The novels of Sara Jeannette

Duncan, such as A Social Departure(1890) were noted for humour and satire. The

Rev.C.W.Gordon produced Black Rock(1898) a series of novels on pioneer life in West

Canada. Animal stories became popular in the works of Ernest Thompson and Margaret

MarshalSaunders.

Fiction writers struggled with some of the same tensions as poets during the 19th

century. When the Canadian audience was small and publication of Canadian writing took

place elsewhere-namely in the United States or Britain-Canadian writers tried to satisfy

foreign readers Many fiction writers, like Susanna Moodie, Julia Catherine and Beckwith

Hary, wrote conventional adventures that featured murder, love and suspense using foreign

characters and settings.

Since the late 19th century, we may say, Canadian fiction follows more or less the

same development as other Commonwealth fiction. As Bruce King points out, it goes from

local humor through an early internationalism, historical romances, stories of provincial and

settler life, realism and a new rationalism in the early 1940’s. The Canadian novel, however

begins to take off in the 1950’s with Robertson Davies, Mordecan Richler, Mavis Gallant

and Shelia Watson portraying the tensions of growing up in Canada’s urban immigrant

communities, dismissive of nationalism and national culture.

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The Canadian novel takes an altogether new turn in the 1960’s with the appearance

of women novelists like Margaret Atwood and Margaret Laurence who tend to write more

as women. Since 1900, Canadian novels have tended towards stricter realism, but have

remained predominantly regional and many writers have been women. Some critics found

the major developments in 19th century Canadian fiction in the romance, a form that

typically glorifies the deeds and personalities of the past. In the late 19th and early 20th

century, however the dominant pattern in Canadian fiction was the depiction and

celebration of the wilderness – a depiction that denied the new society’s increasingly urban

face.

As Atwood says, “Women cannot be ignored in Canadian Literature. You can’t

ignore them” (Salat 62).

Atwood is a writer worth reading…because she is complex enough to sustain

varied interpretative approaches which can elucidate, but not finally delimit

the free-play of the work of the poet, novelist, short story writer and critic.

(Davidson and Cathy 14)

Margaret Eleanor Peggy Atwood is a novelist, poet, critic and a pioneer of Canadian

women writer. She is noted for her feministic ideas and mythological themes. Atwood’s

work has been regarded as a barometer of feminist thought. She is acclaimed for her talent

for portraying both personal and worldly problems of universal concern.

Atwood was born in Ottawa to Carl Atwood and Margaret Dorothy Killam on
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November 18, 1939 at the Ottawa General hospital, Canada. In 1959, she graduated from

the Leaside High School with an English award, a university-entrance scholarship, and an

award for good citizens. Having won the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, she became a

graduate student at Radclife College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, from where she received

her master degree in Arts in 1962. She has held a variety of academic posts and has been

writer-in-residence at numerous Canadian and American universities.

Atwood has been regarded as a barometer of feminist thought. Several of Atwood’s

novels can be classified as a science fiction, although her writing is above the normal

formulae of the genre. A close study of Margaret Atwood’s novel reveal that their focus is

so much on the inner world of feeling and sensibility that even the impact of feminist

movements has generated more of poetic or lyrical articulation of the inner tensions of

women than social documentaries voicing the cause of women.

Atwood’s novel moves steadily towards the discovery of the self, the landscape

across which the journey takes place can never really either be geophysical or cultural but

the interior landscape which transcends all local, regional, nationalistic or cultural concerns.

Her novels have well-defined spatio temporal settings, reflecting the Canadian social scene

in all its color, variety and complexity. Atwood like Jane Austen tends to show little interest

in the great socio-cultural question of the day like Anita Desai withdraws into their inner

selves. Her protagonists are often a kind of every woman characters or weaker members of

the society. Atwood’s novels are lyrical than documentary more psychological than

sociological.
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Atwood’s creative development was perfected during her involvement in college

dramatic productions. She wrote for ActaVictorianna, the college journal of Victoria

College and, The Strand a college literary magazine. Besides providing political cartoons

for This Magazine under the name Bart Gerard, she authored volumes such as The Journals

of Susanna Moodie and the first children’s book, Up in the Tree.

As an established author by 1972, she is profiled as a celebrity in many popular

magazines and daily newspapers. Amidst literary revival and intellectual ferment, she

became a role model and for some, a spiritual leader considered as “the reigning queen of

Canadian literature” (Rosenberg 135). She achieved a great position in January 1977 that an

entire issue of The Malahat Review was devoted to her personality, her work, and her public

image.

Atwood, the first woman poet to address the Empire club of Canada, is also the first

Canadian writer to be honoured in a cultural exchange program in Soviet Union, which she

later declined. Discussion on her works became a fixture at annual meetings of the modern

association of America. She was made an officer of the order of Canada in 1973 and by

1981 she became the chairman of the writers’ union of Canada establishing a strong

political role more officially. She is politically active in PEN and in Amnesty international

Holding myriad responsibilities, she stopped being just a writer and transformed herself,

according to her own words, as “a thing .... a culmination of being an icon, that is something

that people worship, and being a target, that is something that the shoot at” (Rosenberg

134). Being a personality as well as an artist, she became “The first Canadian writer in our

generation” says Dennis Lee, “to have become public property” (Rosenberg 134).
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Margaret Atwood is the proud recipient of the E.J.Pratt medal for her privately

printed book and the Canadian governor General’s award for her poetry collection The

Circle Game in 1966. Her novel The Handmaid’s Tale, which was shortlisted for the

Governor General’s Award, won the 1987 Atheist. C.Clarke Award. Alias Grace, a novel

published in 1996 won the 1996 Giller prize while The Blind Assassin (2000) is the winner

of the 2000 Booker Prize and the 2000 Governor General’s Award. Her eleventh novel

Oryx and Crake was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2003.

Atwood’s novel ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, championed by former Canadian

Prime Minister Kim Campbell in 2002, and ‘Oryx and Crake’, championed by

Toronto city councilor Olivia Chow in 2005, has been chosen for CBC Radio’s

Canada Reads competition. The novel The Handmaid’s Tale was filmed by

Volker Schlonedorff from a screenplay by Herald Pinter in the year 1990.

Though widely accepted as a fiction writer, Atwood has published poetry also. Her

poems are often short and witty like epigrams. She commonly employs techniques like

internal rhyme, extended metaphor, assonance, and alliteration that are split and used in

separate lines to produce an echo effect. As one of Toronto’s new voices in 1960s, she ranks

as a predominant figure in Canadian poetry also, along with Michael Ondaatje, Gwendolyn

Mac Ewen and Dennis Lee. She also rose as a literary critic with the publication of

Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian literature (1972) by the House of Anansi Press.

Besides her literary criticism, she has published quite a few informal essays on varied topics

such as the Toronto Zoo, Canadian Zoo and Canadian Nationalism.

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Atwood’s novels and short stories project her as skilled and versatile stylist capable

of working with success in a variety of genres. Critics appreciate her fictions as they found

her poetic versatility and her venture into prose style to be a happy combination.

As a writer, Atwood made her debut at the age of nineteen with Double Persephone

(1961) a collection of poems. Her first novel The Edible Women appeared in the year 1969.

Presently, she has written eleven novels and is the author of more than twenty five volumes

of poetry. Her eleven novels are The Edible Women (1969), Surfacing (1972), Lady Oracle

(1976), Life Before Man (1979), Bodily Harm (1981), The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Cat’s

Eye (1989), The Robber Bride (1993), Alias Grace (1996), The Blind Assassin (2000), and

Oryx and Crake (2003). Her poetry collection including Double Persephone (1961), The

Circle Game (1964), Expeditions (1965), Speeches for Doctor Frankenstein (1966), The

Animals in That Country (1968), The Journals of Susanne Moodie (1970), Procedures for

Underground (1970), Power Politics (1971), You Are Happy (1974), Selected Poems

(1976), Two-Headed Poems (1978), True Stories (1981), Interlunar (1984), Morning in the

Burned House (1996), Eating Fire: Selected Poems, 1965 — 1995 (1998), Dancing Girls

(1977), Murder in the Dark (1983), Blue Beard’s Egg (1983), Wilderness Tips (1991),

Good Bones and Simple Murs (1994) belongs to Atwood’s short fiction collections.

The New Oxford of Canadian Verse (1982), The Canlit Foodbook: from Pen to

Palate — A Collection of Tasty Literary Fare (1987), The Oxford Book of Canadian Short

Stories in English (1988), The other American short stories include Unearthing Suite

(1983), When it Happens (1983), Free for All (1986), The Labrador Fiasco (1986),

Homelanding (1989), Daphne and Laura and so forth (1995), Half Hanged Mary (1995),
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Shopping (1998), Up in the Tree (1978), Anna’s Pet (1980), For The Birds (1990) and

Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut (1995) are Atwood’s books for children. Her non -

fictions include Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972), Days of the

Rebels 1815-1840 (1977), Negotiating with the Dead, A Writer on Writing (2002) and

Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature (1995).

A weaver uses fragments of silk, wood, raw yarn and even feathers and twigs to

make a tapestry of colors, shape and form. Atwood selects individuals, images and ideas to

create new, fascinating, believable pictures from which stories can unfold and weaves

stories from her own life in the bush and cities of Canada. In an attempt to focus on

Canadian experiences, she populates her stories with Canadian cities and its people.

Atwood is known for her humanism and her insight into the landscape of the country

as well as into the landscape of human mind. She focuses on feminist issues and concerns,

problems of family, sexuality and political identify, and examines these through multiple

branches such as science fiction, comedy, ghost story and southern Ontario Gothic. She

voices her expressions on radical nationalism, which characterized much of the Canadian

life in the early 1970s through her writings on alienations and women’s liberation.

“Atwood’s fiction concentrates on the essential situation, on the individual essential

isolation: all relationships are at the best tenuous and tentative; the self is radically dated

both when it withdraws from, and when it returns to society. The emphasis is predominantly

subjective and psychological, we tend to remember the voices of an emotional landscapes

rather than the events of her novels, which nevertheless offer a wide-longing criticism of
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contemporary western society.” (Toye 580-581) Although Atwood’s works deal with

murder, visions of spiritual ecstasy and emotional cruelty she is never sensational.

One of the recurring themes in Atwood’s fiction is the search for identity and

survival of the self in a society whose public and personal relationship are characterized by

alienation, exploitation and domination.

Atwood’s protagonists, usually female, are often a kind of every woman character, a

weaker member of society. Atwood creates situation for these protagonists who burdened

by the rules and inequalities of their societies realize that they must discover and regain

courage, self-reliant person in order to survive; they struggle to overcome and change the

systems that inhibit their security and survival.

Atwood who neither burdened nor restricted her “contemporary female” (Goldblatt

275) dealt with “One transformation of female characters from ingénues to insightful

women” (Goldblatt 275) by examining how these protagonists cope up in society and

discovers the ability that reconstructs our existence.

Her novels protest against patriarchal structures of power and dominion questions on

mankind and gender roles. Within a predominantly feminist framework, she brings feminine

search for identity that exposes the will power. By portraying the protagonists’ quest for

identity, Atwood’s nationalist concerns and Canada’s quest for identity are pictured,

acknowledging that a novelist is a socio-political being she says: “Far from thinking of

writers are totally isolated individuals, I see them as inescapably connected with their
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society one writer may unconsciously reflect the society, he may consciously examine it and

project ways of changing it; and the connection between writer and society will increase in

intensity as the society becomes the ‘subject’ of the writer.” (Salat 61)

Atwood, through her novels, symbolizes her concern for the status of women in

society and to assert a distinctive Canadian identity for them. Having believed that “Fiction

is one of the few forms left through which we may examine our society not in its particular

but in its typical aspects” (Salat 68), her fiction not only paints society but also re-structures

it by exposing.

Atwood, a prolific writer, cannot be labeled as first feminist or a nationalist or a

modernist or a postmodernist. Atwood’s ability to encircle varied visions has led duties to

place her in different categories; “She has been called a feminist writer, for her incisive

commentaries on sex roles; a religious writer, for her visions of spiritual ecstasy; a gothic

writer, for her images of grotesque misfits, and surreal disorientations of the psyche; a

writer of the Canadian wilderness; a nationalist writer; a regionalist.” (Rosenberg 15)

Atwood’s first novel The Edible Women (1969), a funny and terrifying story, is a

journey into the interior landscape of the protagonist, Marian Mac Alphin. The novel is

about this woman who does not know what to do with life, and ever since her engagement

she can’t eat meat, then eggs, vegetables ... everything. She feels being consumed eaten.

This serves as the novel’s metaphor, substantiating the title, that a woman is food and an

object. The novel focuses on the woman’s attempt for a human identity, a space in

patriarchal society. Through Seymour surveys, a market research firm where Marian works,
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Atwood satirically attacks the consumer society of its time. By throwing light on Marian’s

victimization, Atwood highlights the idea of Americanization of Canada.

Surfacing (1972), her second novel, created waves in Canadian literature. It is partly

a psychological thriller and partly a detective novel; it surveys human foibles; gives many

glimpses of the urban and rural scenes in Canada. The novel’s concern is with psychic

tension of the woman striving for a discovery of an identity and finally rediscovers herself

during a mythic journey to a remade island in northern Quebec in searching of her missing

father. The protagonist’s search for her father symbolizes the Canadian search for their roots

and her rediscovery constitutes her search for human identity. The novel “records a woman

stripping her of social mask, defenses and ideals to discover her essential self’ (Reddy 26).

The Feminists found the novel as a Woman’s novel while the nationalists found it a

Canadian Classic. Atwood’s feministic and nationalistic concern, her socio-political vision

are all expressed in Surfacing.

In Lady Oracle (1976) Atwood shows how Joan Foster, the heroine of the novel, a

bored wife takes off overnight as Canada’s new poet; the self-destructiveness caused by

being passive. This novel is a book of many facts; a comedy, a parody of the gothic

romance, poignant anatomy of childhood terror, alienation in the late 1940s and 1950s and a

satire on Canadian nationalism of the 1960s and early 1970s. As a political writer, she not

only portrays society but also reforms it by exposing it.

Atwood who easily widens the boundaries of a traditional realism and moves

between fantasy and satire present a bleak, dreamy and harsh view of human in her fourth
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novel, Life Before Man (1979). The novel relates the story of how the three characters-

Elizabeth Schoenhof, a special projects administrator at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum;

Elizabeth’s husband, Nate, a lawyer once now a toymaker and Lesje, a museum

paleontologist are imprisoned in crisis by walls of their own construction. As Sherrill Grace

points out, “these lives mirror the monotony and emptiness surrounding them” (Salat 69).

Through the novel, Atwood crystallizes the gloomy features of the modern and the urban

world and by depicting social realism, she examines power in interpersonal relationships.

A brilliantly crafted novel, Bodily Harm (1981) builds upon the turmoil of an

innocent journalist Rennie Wilford, a writer of travel and fashion articles. Having found that

a sadist who may return broke her apartment, she flies from Toronto to the Caribbean

island. Rennie, who then decides to write a travel piece for her magazine there, is threatened

by a world of the tiny island of St. Antonio because her rules for survival no longer apply.

The novel focuses on the inner life of the protagonist as she lives in the inner world

of nostalgia and dream fading to adjust to the new cultures and ways of life. Situations that

reduce individuals to being virtually dispensable commodities, murders, rapes and tortures

depict gender-politics and the process of self-discovery is brought out in the novel. The

disturbing vision of a totalitarian state in the novel is developed into a chilling and dystopia

vision in Atwood’s sixth novel, The Handmaid’s Tale published in the year 1985.

Her seventh novel, Cat’s Eye (1989) is the story of a middle-aged painter, Elaine

Risley, who returns to Toronto, the city of her youth, after many years, for a retrospective of

her art. Enveloped by intense and strong images of the past, she must come in terms with
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her own identity and must escape from her haunting memories. The central metaphor of the

novel is the retrospective of Elaine’s art as it depicts the retrospective of her own life.

Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Budge published in 1993 draws its inspiration from

the Brothers Grimms. While an evil groom, in Brother Grimm’s tale, attracts three maiden

into his den and devoices them, Atwood structures it into a new form. The evil focus is

reshaped into a monster Zenia and then set loose in views of their friends, Tony, Chares,

and Roz.

Alias Grace is Atwood’s ninth novel published in the year 1993. Atwood found her

story from Susanne Moodie’s Life in the Clearings (1853). The novel is about the

Protagonist Grace Marks. She is an accomplice in the murders of her employer, Thomas

Kinnear, and Nancy Montgomery, his house keeper. She is imprisoned in 1843, at the age

of sixteen for almost thirty years. Considered as peril, insane and even innocent by others,

Grace claims to have no memory of the murders for which she has been convicted; her case

interests journalists and researchers.

The Blind Assassin (2000), winner of the Booker Prize is a blending of three

narratives interspersed with newspaper clipping, a letter, and society announcements. The

novel is about two sisters Laura Chase and Liris Grace Griffen. It is Griffen who knows the

circumstances behind the death of her sister, Laura Chase, who dies in a car accident in

1945, and her husband, Ammee Griffen, a prominent industrialist who dies of a broken

neck. This Multiphase story develops a novel-within a novel. The novel within a novel deals

with an affair between a wealthy young woman and her lover and contains a fantasy in
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which a child who weaves carpet become assassins as they become blind by the art of

weaving.

Oryx and Crake is a novel following the tradition of Orwell, Bradbury, Huxley and

Atwood’s own The Handmaid’s Tale. The novel features a male protagonist for the first

time. The narrator of the novel Jimmy, who later, calls himself Snowman mourns for the

loss of his best friend Crake and his lady love Oryx. The novel is set in the future surveying

man-made biological catastrophe. The presence of Snowman in a world devoid of human

race except for the green-eyed children of Crake is the result of the advanced gene splicing

and other technological development. The biotech companies control over the world,

presence of the idea of pornographic sites and the pathetic condition of Snowman among

the Crackers not knowing what the future holds, all contribute to Margaret Atwood’s

dystopia vision. The victimized protagonist Snowman is thrown into an unimaginable world

where everything is bad as his struggle portrays him as a defenseless, disabled, incapable

and complete hapless character.

Atwood’s popular poetry collections include Double Persephone(1961), The circle

game (1964)-Winner of the Governor General’s Award, Expeditions(1965), Speeches for

Doctor Frankenstien(1966), The Animals in that Country(1968). The Journal of Susanna

Moodie(1970), Procedures for Underground(1970), Power Politics(1971), You are

happy(1974), Selected Poems(1976), Two headed Poems(1978), True stories(1981), Love

Song of a Terminator(1983), Interlunar(1984), Morning in the Burned House(1996), Eating

Fire Selected Popems, 1965-1995(1998), The Door(2007).

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Margaret Atwood gained recognition for her poetry in the 1960’s. Her poetry

collections have drawn on themes such as myth, language, the natural world, politics,

national identity, the experience of women in a patriarchal society and relation between men

and women. They display striking imagery and unexpected turns. The Door published in

2007 deals with the passage of time, loss and making of poetry itself. It also reflects on

political situations and mediations on ‘the dull thick weight of being human’. Atwood’s

poems as a whole exhibit an extraordinary, magical imagination, a deadly natural wit and an

exceptional intelligence.

Atwood alternated prose and poetry throughout the career. Her poems represent

“private” myth and “personal” expression and novels are more public and “social”

expression and there has been continual interviewing and cross-connection between the

prose and her poetry. “Nature” in her poems is haunted, showing Canadian wilderness in

which man is the predator and terror to the “animals of that country” including himself.

Atwood’s poetry work with myths, public and private; metamorphosis. Most of the fiction

has been translated into foreign languages. Atwood novel becomes Canadian, American,

and international best seller.

Atwood’s short fiction collections include Dancing Girls (1977)-Winner of the

St.Lawarence Awarded for the fiction and the Award of the Periodical Distributors of

Canada for short fiction, Murder in the Dark(1983), Bluebeards Egg(1983), Through the

One way Mirror(1986), Wilderness Tips(1991)-finalist for the 1991 governor Generals

Award, Good Bones(1992), Good Bones and Simple Murders(1994), The Tent(2006),

Moral Disorder(2006)
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Atwood’s Anthologies edited include The New Oxford Book of Canadian

Verse(1982), The Canlit Food book: From Pen to Palate-A Collection of Tasty Literary

Fare(1987), The Oxford Book of Canadian Short stories in English (1988), The Best

American Short Stories(1989) (with Shannon Ravenel) The New Oxford Book of Canadian

Short stories in English (1995).

Atwood’s short stories include Death by Landscape, Rape Fantaises (1977),

Unarthing Suite(1983), When it Happens(1983), Free for all(1986), Homelanding(1989),

Daphne and Lura and so forth(1995), Half-Hanged Mary(1995), The Labrador

Fiasco(1996), Shopping(1998), Bread, Happy Endings.

Atwood to her credit has written Children’s books which include Up in the tree

(1978), Anna’s Pet(1980) with Joyce C. Bark house, For the Birds(1990) (with Shelley

Tanaka), Princess Prunell and Purple Peanut(1995), Rude Ramsay and the Roaring

Radishes(2003), Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda(2006).

Atwood has also written non-fiction that include Survival:A Thematic Guide to

Canadian Literature(1972), Days of the Rebes 1815-1840(1977), Second words: Selected

Critical Porse (1982), Strange Things :The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature(1995),

Negating with the Dead:A Writer on Writing(2002), Moving Targets:Writing with Intent,

1982-2004(2004) Writing with Intent:Essays, Reviews Personal Prose 1983-20005(2005)

Atwood has won an international audience with her fiction. Her characteristics are

placed in complex, challenging situations, moving with skill from the particular to the
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universal. All her protagonists remake themselves, to achieve courage and independence in

their attitudes, relationships with others and the world around them. Atwood might write of

pain, suffering and the cruelty of human behavior, but her present sense of absurd rescues

her from an evident and distressing somber. The ends of her stories are untied. Another

feature of Atwood’s fiction is the use of memory.

Being poet Atwood’s novels have a lyrical quality. They are appreciated for their

rhythms, puns and delicious. As a passage from The Blind Assassin demonstrates, ‘He was

putting on weight, he was eating out a lot; he was making speeches, at clubs, at weighty

gatherings, substantial men met and pondered, because-everyone suspected-there was heavy

weather ahead’. The pleasure is seen in repetition and tongue in chock accumulation of

synonyms.

Atwood has been criticized for the way in which her books are constructed.

Narrative convention is seen in The Handmaids Tale, Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin.

Use of multiple narrators, novels within novels, fake newspaper articles and time shifts are

never confusing but require close reading. Her stories are enigmatic and need analysis. She

is an analyzer of the mysteries of the creative impulsive, being suggestive and reflective.

Atwood is known as a very accessible writer. The official Margaret Atwood website

is edited by Atwood herself and updated frequently. Her literary works have been

recognized in forms of artistic endeavour. In 1981, Atwood worked on a television drama,

Snowbird (CBC) and her children’s book Anna’s Pet (1980) Adopted for stage (1986).

Some of her novels have been adapted for the cinema and the theatre such as The Edible
 23

Woman (1969), The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) (also staged as an opera) Alias Grace (1996)

and The Blind Assasin (2000).

Margaret Atwood has received 60 Awards for her writing and 14 honorary degrees.

Winner of the 1977 Canadian Booksellers Association Award, Toronto Book Award 1978

St. Lawrence Award for fiction (Canada) for Lady Oracle(1982), Arts Council of Wales

International Writers Prize for Bodily Harm(1987), Commonwealth Writers Prize

(Caribbean and Canada Region, Best Book), Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Fiction) and

short listed for Ritz Hemming way Prize (France) for The Handmaids Tale 1989 Canadian

Booksellers Association Award and Toronto Book Award for Cat’s Eye 1993 Canadian

Authors Association Novel of the Year and 1994 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Caribbean

and Canada Region, Best Book) and Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence for The

Robber Bride (1997).

Canadian Booksellers Association Author of the year 1997. National Arts Club

Medal of Honor for Literature (USA) 1997 Premio Mondello (Italy) for Alias Grace and

short listed for 1998 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for Alias Grace. 2000

Booker Prize and 2001 Crime Writers Association Dashiell Hammett Award for The Bind

Assassin and shortlisted for 2001 Orange Prize for fiction for The Bind Assassin and once

again short listed for 2002 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for the same novel.

Short listed for 2003 Man Booker Prize for Fiction Oryx and Crake and once again short

listed for 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction for Oryx and Crake short listed for 2005. Man

Booker International Prize and short listed for 2006 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult
 24

Literature and once again short listed for 2007 Man Booker International Prize. Winner of

the 2008 Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature (Spain).

Atwood has received honorary doctorates from several universities, such as

Cambridge, Oxford, Leeds, Toronto and Montreal, and is Chevalier of the French Order of

Arts and Literatures, as well as a companion of the Order of Canada. She has also been

awarded the Order of Ontario and the Norwegian Order of Literary Merit and is a member

of the Royal Society of Canada.

Margaret Atwood’s creative power is never diminishing and has not a unique talent

which is astonishingly versatile and profile, exquisite timing, formidable narrative gift and

lyricism enlivened by wit. She has brought Canadian writing to international attention and is

widely recognized as one of the first writers working today. Atwood’s style in writing is an

exact, vivid, witty and often sharply discomforting both in prose and poetry. Atwood’s

writings are often grotesque, unsparing in gaze at pain and unfair.

Atwood is also a talented photographer and watercolorist. Her paintings are very

much illustrative of her prose and poetry and she did on occasion, design her own book

covers. Her collages and cover for the journals of Susanna Moodie bring together the visual

and verbal media.

Atwood is known as the “Octopus” and as a ‘Medusa’ by critics for her wit and her

biting sense of humor. She is concerned with the creation and function of art as well as its

importance in both the political and social world. Atwood considers that art is an issue of
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mortality, her writing provide a way to look at the world critically, to witness the worlds’

short comes and to offer solutions for redemption. She believes that ultimately art must

function as an agent of truth and that the artist should provide both knowledge and

confirmation.

Atwood enjoys a career of remarkable distinction internationally and success not

only as the highly prolific author of volumes of poetry, novels, literary criticism, short

stories, children’s book, editor of anthologies as well as author of uncollected journalism

but also a major public figure. At present, she lives at Toronto with her husband Graeme

Gibson. They have three children and a cat.

The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopia influenced by Orwell’s classics 1984. The novel

is set in future time in the Republic of Gilead, USA. It opens up an inconceivable, frightful

cosmos of a worst kind. The futuristic vision depicts the women’s search for identity in a

suppressed Gilead society. The idea of dystopia is framed when women are reduced to

being mere objects, as men’s possessions. The vision is heightened when they lose their

identity and are considered to have only a function. Due to a chemical pollution many men

have become sterile and women infertile. This results in women being considered with

prime importance. A commander has a Handmaid since his wife is barren. The novel

revolves around Offered the heroine who is such a Handmaid. As a result of victimization,

these Handmaids are sketched as weak, inefficient, incompetent and utterly helpless. The

horrifying unexpected story of The Handmaid’s Tale is a satire and a dire warning.
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Atwood’s female protagonists are impossible to label themselves as strictly feminist.

They are, however, all female, which ties them together and must have significance. The

importance lies in the struggle that these women face with society. Atwood as a female

writer and her protagonists are victimized by patriarchal society. It is imperative to note that

Atwood’s women in these novels Surfacing, The Handmaid’s Tale, Cat’s Eye, and The

Edible Woman are able to ameliorate their situations through personal, creative expression.

Goldblatt states, “The creative aspect that fortifies each woman enables her to control her

life; it is the triumphant tool that resurrects each one” (Goldblatt 282). The importance of

creative expression is stressed in Atwood’s novels. It is not merely the fact that Atwood’s

protagonists are female that is important; rather, it is the fact that they struggle and

ultimately survive through creativity that is significant.

This dissertation is based on the hypothesis that though the women of the past have

been oppressed; there lies an awakening in the minds of the women at present. The women

have started to emerge from the dark room of ignorance and have come out of the shocks

which finds its depiction in almost all the literary genres.

The Struggle of Atwood female characters and a need for survival, which they need

to emerge, is fulfilled with an investigation of her novels: Surfacing, The Handmaid’s Tale,

Cats Eye and The Edible Woman. The emergence of these women symbolically signifying

the entire womanhood is the focus of this study.

The dissertation entitled “Emerging Women in Margaret Atwood’s Select Novels”

attempts in bringing out the varying forms of female artists who are victimized by
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patriarchal societies. It is imperative to note that Atwood’s women in these novels

Surfacing, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Edible Woman and the Cat’s Eye are able to

ameliorate their situations through personal and creative expression.

Chapter one entitled “Introduction” gives an account of the socio cultural and

literary background of Canada. It also gives a comprehensive assessment of Margaret

Atwood and her works of fiction giving a short summary of her novels.

Chapter two is an analysis of the novel “Towards Survival in Surfacing” in which

the protagonist has overcome many obstacles and surfaced as a survivor. She has regained

the ability to feel and hopefully love again. She found that she was seeking her father. She

has recovered and repaired some of her lost language and ultimately the use of language is

one sign that the protagonist is on the road to recovery. She has basically refused to play the

role of a victim any longer.

Chapter three is a study of the novel “Identity search in The Handmaid’s Tale”

which gives a shared experience of a class of women in Gilead. Offered the protagonist of

the novel is in this sense a spokesperson for The Handmaid’s of Gilead. The debate of

freedom runs right through the novel.

Chapter four focuses on Atwood’s “Gradual Emergence in Cat’s Eye” in which

Elaine Risley in order to survive becomes a creative non-victim. A person must recognize

not only his victimization but the powers to victimize as well. In other words, victims must

learn to relinquish their beliefs in the traditional victim or victimizer dichotomy and
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acknowledge their own personal responsibility. Elaine Risley eventually succeeds in this

manner.

Chapter five entitled “Victimization in The Edible Woman” focuses on Marian‘s

exploration in the society. Victim –Victor Syndrome is brought out through Marian’s

character.

Chapter six entitled “Summing Up” presents the findings of the previous chapters

and concludes with a few suggestions for humanity.