‘A manifestation of being human?’ : a study of identity, myth, and genre in Margaret Atwood’s writing

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to evaluate Margaret Atwood’s portrayal of identity, myth, and genre in her novels; three notions which the author brilliantly combines together. By looking at Atwood’s literary career and dividing it into two phases, the study moves chronologically so that it covers three novels published in the first period (1969-1985) namely, The Edible Woman (1969), Lady Oracle (1976), and The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), and three novels from the second period (1996-2018), namely Alias Grace (1996), The Penelopiad (2005), and Hag-Seed (2016), together with an evaluation of other works which were produced in 2017 and are still in the works, which highlight Atwood’s interest in exploring different generic mediums, in this case that of the television series with the production of The Handmaid’s Tale, whose first season aired in April of 2017, and the second season aired on the 26th of April of 2018, as this dissertation was in its final stages, and the mini-series Alias Grace, aired in 2017. By moving in a chronological manner, this dissertation aims at highlighting Atwood’s portrayal of a sense of a quest for identity, a notion which is also depicted through the use of several intertextual allusions from myth and fairy-tales, together through the use of different literary genres. This intermeshing of different genres, and intertextual references helps to portray Atwood’s quest for identity; an identity which she proves can be fragmentary and divided through the combination of these three elements which break the novels away from the conventions of the traditional text which embraces wholeness. In this way, one can say that Atwood’s novels depict our identity as human beings; an identity which is anything but simple and linear, proving her remark that writing can be a ‘manifestation of being human’ . The author projects this pattern not only in the first phase of her literary career, but also in the second phase as in this period, she continues this trend of combining this sense of a search for identity, together with myth and genre, by going back to the past and re-writing it, giving greater importance to the allusions which she referred to in the novels from the first phase, and by writing e novels which centre on these myths. Moreover, in this phase, Atwood shows as greater interest in depicting, not only different literary genres in one text, but also her interest in other generic mediums as she refuses to limit her creativity solely to the traditional novel, thereby widening the definitions of the term ‘literature’ by moving past the edge of print.