Margaret Atwood as a Feminist

Abstract

Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa, Ontario. When she was seven years old, her family moved to Toronto. Her father, an entomologist and professor of zoology, studied tree-dwelling insects. Atwood\'s passion for Canada\'s wilderness is present in most of her writings. Atwood is famous for the outspoken feminism in her books. From her first novel, The Edible Woman, to the dark masterpiece, The Handmaid\'s Tale (1985), which cemented her international reputation, Atwood demonstrated deeply concerned with the constraints society places on women and the facades they adopt in response. . The Handmaid\'s Tale, which Atwood refuses to call \"science fiction\", depicts a society in which women are stripped of all rights except those to marry, run a household, and reproduce. After The Handmaid\'s Tale made Atwood an international celebrity, she wrote a series of novels dealing with relationships between women, including Cat\'s Eye (1988) and The Robber Bride (1993). In 1992, she published Good Bones, short, witty articles about women\'s body parts and the limitations that have been placed on them throughout history. Atwood explores the historical role of women in other works including her famous poetry collections, the Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970) and her novel Alias Grace (1996). Both recreate the lives of famous feminism women in Canadian history.

Introduction

I. INTRODUCTION

Margaret Atwood, a highly acclaimed Canadian poet, novelist, critic, activist and environmentalist, was born in Ottawa, Canada, in 1939. She articulates the dilemmas, contradictions and ambiguities of the late 20th century with all their complexity and endings. . Presenting his vision of life in countless forms, his techniques and themes know no bounds. Widely known as a poet and novelist, Atwood is also a critic, short story writer, essayist, cartoonist, and children's book author. A versatile genius, Atwood, through his novel, explores various social, physical and psychological anxieties of humans. She is also known to be a famous feminist writer who stated that men fear women will laugh at them while women fear men will kill them. Atwood depicts female characters oppressed by patriarchal ideology in her novels. Atwood's novel shows how everyday life gradually exhausts women. Small battles, won or lost, reduce women's resilience. Urban decay plays an important role in Cat's Eye, which highlights the contrast between Toronto and the northern bush. Most protagonists suffer because of the distorted attitude of the Urbanization. This living style and its spoilage lead to physical and psychological violence against women. The housewives in Cat's Eye should love out their marriages where divorce is possible but frowned upon leading to impoverishment. The main character of Cat's Eye looks back on an unpleasant childhood in Toronto. She had difficulty learning to fit in with other children who were not as vulnerable as she was. By learning to manage his childhood, the main character learns to enjoy the present. She accepts the bad things that happened to her and accepts the bad things she has done to others. Understanding these actions helps him refuse to be a victim. Margaret shows the rejection of victimization by breaking away from the society. The origins of feminism stem from women's desire to achieve equality and justice between the sexes. This paper attempts to use a feminist approach to present the fall of women under the siege of a world of men asserting their dominance over women, keeping them locked up and helpless. have a voice. The study also examines the rise of women in breaking the chains of the male world through the awakening of feminist instincts in Margaret Atwood's Surface. It attempts to reveal the consequences of glorifying the world of men while humiliating the world of women and presents how women rise up through their feminist awakening. The narrator's submissive nature and his lack of strength to give in to abortion depict the voiceless woman whose decision men have made according to their convenience. The brutal exploitation and abuse of is reflected. The unnamed narrator recalls how her former lover prevented her from becoming a great artist. Atwood emphasizes how men put women at a financial and economic disadvantage, depending on them to maintain control and power over them. She also made it clear that being an artist is a man's privilege. It is also said that men are unhappy when they see women achieving higher levels of success, even if that woman is the one they love. She also emphasized that society's erroneous beliefs require women to continue to be intellectually disabled compared to men, leading to women being excluded from various opportunities. She expressed, in her feminist and truly sensitive way, the true genius of women that remains tragically undiscovered and undiscovered, deep within them, in complete darkness.

In her mysterious poem “This is a Photograph of Me,” Atwood utilizes several aspects of nature observed in a photograph to symbolize the dominance of men over women in our oppressive society. She demands society as a whole to see through the stereotypes placed on women and observe the true importance and significance women have in history and our present lives. The symbolism is shown through the blurriness of the photo, tree branches, slope, house, Lake Surface and light reflected from the lake surface. The distortion of images in the photo represents negative labels for women. We must go beyond this distortion to see those images for what they are or to observe the true nature and importance of women. Everything in the photo, literally and symbolically, is affected by the distortion of the photo. For Atwood, second wave feminism has three main dilemmas. The first Second-Wave Feminism that troubled Atwood was the lack of female solidarity. Though all Second-Wave Feminists worked to end de facto inequalities and, therefore, often pursued complementary purposes, they were most frequently at odds with one another. Instead of embracing the myriad issues confronting women across socio-economic lines, Second-Wave Feminists tended to advance a single agenda, issue, or cause at the expense of all others. 21 This resulted in resentment and distrust as well as self-segregation. The origins of feminism stem from women's desire to achieve equality and justice between the sexes. This paper attempts to use a feminist approach to present the fall of women under the siege of a world of men asserting their dominance over women, keeping them locked up and helpless. have a voice. The study also examines the rise of women in breaking the chains of the male world through the awakening of feminist instincts in Margaret Atwood's Surface. It attempts to reveal the consequences of glorifying the world of men while humiliating the world of women and presents how women rise up through their feminist awakening. The narrator's submissive nature and his lack of strength to give in to abortion depicts the voiceless woman whose decision men have made according to their convenience. The brutal exploitation and abuse of is reflected. The unnamed narrator recalls how her former lover prevented her from becoming a great artist. Atwood emphasizes how men put women at a financial and economic disadvantage, depending on them to maintain control and power over them. She also made it clear that being an artist is a man's privilege. It is also said that men are unhappy when they see women achieving higher levels of success, even if that woman is the one they love. She also emphasized that society's erroneous beliefs require women to continue to be intellectually disabled compared to men, leading to women being excluded from various opportunities. She expressed, in her feminist and truly sensitive way, the true genius of women that remains tragically undiscovered and undiscovered, deep within them, in complete darkness.

Atwood's first novel, The Edible Woman, at first glance seems like a simple realist novel. But its feminist and anti-consumerist politics are actually expressed through the articulation of postmodern contradictions in the metafictional themes and forms with which we often associate think of the more narcissistic and formalist impulses in the novel. This tension is precisely what determines the plot and structure of the novel. When his friend Duncan informs the protagonist Marian that hunger is more fundamental than love, he repeats the idea that the entire functioning of world is driven by these two desires. This creates paradoxical poles that order the entire novel, a novel about different forms of consumption. George Woodcock sees this as the theme of “emotional cannibalism”. Like many feminist theorists, Atwood questions men's definitions of individuality as applied to women. It destabilizes and distorts conventional notions of subjectivity. For women, identity is often defined primarily by relationships. However, Atwood makes “in love” a most problematic state. It becomes the centre of all motifs in the novel. Marriage is presented as a trap, even a swallow. Images of the coldness of unnatural death and stagnation are associated with love and marriage. Images of dynamic warmth have completely different associations. From her limited perspective, Marian initially thought that cold was better than warm. This keeps his “ego” intact. But totality in this novel also means fixed, static, isolated - an object, like Ainsley's doll, with which Marian cannot help but identify. The final image of the woman with the edible cakes is clearly the image of the most consumable object in the novel. It is also the figurative coming together of the poles of hunger and love. Surfacing is a novel whose importance lies in exploring the errors in human perception in modern times. In Margaret Atwood, the main character of is always a woman. The woman is still young, but old enough that her experience of the modern world has caused her to fall into some kind of life crisis. There is no crone like Margaret Laurence's Hagar Shipley among Atwood's heroines. In reality, these were women who adopted the customs of 20th century consumer society and lived according to those customs. Marian in Edible Woman is actually a consumer research analyst, like Margaret Atwood in period. The unnamed narrator and main character of Surfacing is a commercial artist. Rennie Wilford in Bodily Harm is what she calls a “life style journalist” making her living by writing on food and fashion. This in a way implies a support of the consumer-oriented society and an acceptance of its values. In Surfacing the individual is led towards liberation to self-understanding and self-realization. With the publication of Surfacing Margaret Atwood became recognised as a woman novelist speaking for and to women. A parody of the traditional ghost tale, Surfacing tells of a coming to terms with the haunting, separated parts of the narrator's self, including her aborted child. More than the predicament of women, the matter of the environment is the great theme of Surfacing.

When we abandon the roles of dominators and destroyers, we recognise the place and pattern, and then we release ourselves from the perils that threaten us as is emphasized by the recurrence of metaphors involving drowning: Her (the narrator's) brother is almost drowned as a child; her father, she discovers, drowned searching for Indian paintings on a rock wall falling sheer to the lake; her own crisis is precipitated when, diving to locate the painting, she encounters he father's floating corpse; her surfacing becomes almost literally a rising from death into life. It is a surfacing which in the end represents a journey through and beyond the primitive mystical participation in nature. In Bodily Harm, the theme of violation forms the heart of Atwood's challenge to universal masculinity. Atwood's feminism and her Canadian nationalism were very closely related political concerns that she held close to her heart. According to many feminist and post-colonial theories, the real danger today lies in revealing a tendency to ignore gender, social class and race. The theme of the delicate connection between bondage and bondage takes to a new level in this novel. Although it is the fifth novel, Body Harm can be considered an extension of The Edible Woman. All other novels of Atwood deal with one or other aspect of women's identity. Surfacing explores the protagonist's quest for self. Lady Oracle deals with Joan's defiant attitude: “accept me for what I am.” Life Before Man deals with problems of modem marriage. It is Bodily Harm which answers the question about women in totality. In the novel Atwood starts with Rennie, a free-lance journalist. Rennie knows that being meek and obedient is being a victim. His idea is that love is like running barefoot down a street full of broken bottles. She lives with Jake with many options open, which is better than having to commit to a miserable marriage. Rennie chooses to leave away from a cramped and restricted environment so that can have a free life. A visit to the Caribbean to recuperate takes him on a journey into another consciousness - that life is unstable, that the body is erratic and unpredictable, that people are unpredictable. Rennie discovered that women are still in the same position as a century ago. 4,444 speeches about freedom and identity are an illusion. The final scene where Lora is sexually assaulted horrifies Rennie. The realization that women are still in the same position as they were a century ago leaves Rennie helpless. The brutality inflicted on Lora is a real physical injury that surpasses the minor mastectomy inflicted on Rennie. Lora's brutal mutilation is symbolic of the limited role of women in society. Previously, Rennie would have been haunted by her cancer scar, but now she was relieved to realize that she was unharmed. The Handmaid's Tale is an important novel in Atwood's canon. Here again, femininity is associated with speech and masculinity with writing. The simultaneous combination of implication and distance creates this postmodern novel. Be aware of the fact that it is a dystopian vision created from words laced with feminist rhetoric, consumerist advertising, literal fundamentalist ramblings; The Handmaid's Tale gives us a world taken to the extreme. This gives us insight into the meaning of current ideological trends. Here, men always dominate and women always collude. It would not be difficult to read this novel in terms of the extreme imposition of a certain type of feminine order. Women are respected first of all for their motherhood function. Women burn pornography and punish deviations from the norm. There is an underground passage for women. Gilead may be patriarchal in form, but its content is largely matriarchal. Atwood's feminist sensibility is expressed through the clear binary established between the wounded protagonist and the desolate landscape. The nature and helplessness of women in the face of strong repression and harassment from the male world is forecast. The destruction of nature is a metaphor for the violation of women by men. Additionally, being assertive also demonstrates the protagonist's desire to reclaim his identity and free himself from the shadow of male domination. The title appears to show the narrator emerging from the dark, oppressive darkness of men and shedding the stereotypical image of women shaped by the society that has stifled her. Diving into the underwater lake, she experiences a moment of awakening and self-discovery. The narrator moves from a victim's soul to an enlightened journey of discovery, freed from the grip of patriarchal society. The unnamed narrator emerging from the darkness of the male world reveals herself when she can no longer bear being a man's sexual object and accepts her sexuality. She begins having sex with Joe, where she feels empowered.

Conclusion

Since winning the Governor General\'s Award for The Circle Game, Margaret Atwood has produced a substantial body of writing - poetry, fiction and criticism - that has brought her international fame. The first phase of Atwood\'s writing, beginning with The Circle Game and moving through Susanna Moodie\'s Journal and Power Politics as well as through the novels The Edible Woman, Surface, and Lady Oracle, using a raw, emotionless style can surprise readers beyond normal expectations. And lead them to new ways of understanding. Often written from the perspective of alienated individuals, sometimes on the verge of a nervous breakdown, these poems and novels express anguish about the everyday world as a place of deceptive appearances. lies and superficial emotions. Against this world, Atwood contrasts \'s statements about dreams, hallucinations, and visions, showing readers \'s need to take a journey within and suggesting that this it is only through entering the psyche and rediscovering the primordial and mythical dimensions of the mind and world where we can experience wholeness. For Atwood, the issue of in authenticity is a central theme, especially in relation to women, as seen in Edible Woman and Surfacing. From this, Atwood came to the conclusion that men and women differed in the level and scope of their threats. It is this threat, the victim-perpetrator relationship that Atwood explores in her novel. His new wife refuses to be a victim, but in the process of refusing, she faces the indignities that women face. Another important feature of Margaret Atwood\'s novel is that it is postmodern in its use and abuse of traditional literary conventions, including fictional realism. Additionally, as someone \"trained\" in the 1960s, Atwood was comfortable with the political aspect of postmodernism. In the early 1970s, she was best known for her Canadian nationalism and feminism.

References

[1] Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid?s Tale. 1985. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1986. Print. [2] The Surfacing. New York: Anchor, 1998. [3] Serpa, Luciana Labatti Teixeira. \"An Inner Trip: Women and Nature in Surfacing.\" EMTESE Belo Horizonte 8 (2004): 139-145. Web. 7 May. 2017. [4] Negotiating With the Dead. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. [5] Cat?s Eye. New York: Anchor, 1998. [6] Malak, Amin. “Margaret Atwood The Handmaid?s Tale and the Dystopian Tradition.” [7] Survival. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1972. [8] Canadian Literature 112.1 (1997) : 25. Print.

Copyright

Copyright © 2023 Dr. Anita Devi. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.