Margaret Atwood

“It always Takes a Long Time/to Decipher Where You Are”: Uncanny Spaces and Troubled Times in Margaret Atwood’s Poetry

“…Both poems feature a refusal of that imagined identity of a quiet and unassuming child, later to become a docile, malleable, and acquiescent woman, and offer instead images of metamorphoses that liberate the subjects from those stereotyped roles. As with Atwood's prose narratives, where identity is mostly represented as constructed and heterogeneous (see Wilson 2003;Howells 2005Howells , 2006, her poetry too insists on the notion of identity as fictive.…”

“…In both early and late works, rationality and reassurance can recede abruptly and give way to secret or unconscious fears. These crevices reveal unpredictability, fragility, uncertainty, and the absence of truth, a familiar concern in Atwood (see Howells 2005Howells , 2006Gorjup 2006). In the texts discussed here, persistent anxieties and fears belie representations of the everyday, the ordinary, and the seemingly secure spaces of home.…”

Blindness and survival in Margaret Atwood’s major novels

“…In addition to the narrator's perspective in particular scenes, the actual eye references are significant in her ritualistic anti-quest towards survival, which is actually anti-survival in the sense that she reacts against the consumerism and disrespect for the natural world that seem to define urban survival, erase the cultural myth of survival in the wilderness, 22 and leave us in open, undefined space at the end. In addition to the narrator's perspective in particular scenes, the actual eye references are significant in her ritualistic anti-quest towards survival, which is actually anti-survival in the sense that she reacts against the consumerism and disrespect for the natural world that seem to define urban survival, erase the cultural myth of survival in the wilderness, 22 and leave us in open, undefined space at the end.…”

Dying in a state of grace: memory, duality, and uncertainty in Margaret Atwood'sAlias Grace

“…This syllepsis is a simultaneity of analepsis and prolepsis, and is contrasted with the structure used by Henry James in what Atwood cites as an influential kind of ghost story. 4 The instability in Grace Marks's position is figured through encounters with death, with Atwood deploying generic elements from both ghost and detective stories. The contrast with James demonstrates a changed attitude to authorial unity.…”