The subversion of fairy tales and myths in a selection of works by Margaret Atwood

Abstract

This study examines Margaret Atwood's subversion of fairy tales and myths in a selection of her works, including novels such as Surfacing (1972), Lady Oracle (1976), The Handmaid's Tale (1985), Cat's Eye (1988), The Robber Bride (1993), The Blind Assassin (2000), and the novella The Penelopiad (2005). It further looks at some of her short-fiction collections, namely, Dancing Girls (1977), Bluebeard's Egg (1983), The Penelopiad (2005), and The Tent (2006), as well as collections of poetry including The Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970), Good Bones and Simple Murders (1994), and Eating Fire: Selected Poems 1965-1995 (1998). A prominent and versatile writer, Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) is, by far, one of Canada's most acclaimed artists, renowned for her novels, poetry, and short fictional works. Similar to Angela Carter, Jeanette Winterson, Angela Sexton, and A. S. Byatt, amongst other 'women writers', Atwood draws on a number of fairy tales, myths, and legends, where she manipulates the original plot in a way that entices the readers to see these oft-repeated tales with a complete set of new eyes. Having been a student of Notrhrop Frye, Atwood attributes a sense of mystical and mythical interpretation to these tales, where, having had read an unabridged collection of the Brothers' Grimm fairy tales, she positions her fairy-tale heroines as the main protagonists who, more often than not, overcome challenges through their intelligence and wit. The dissertation consists of three chapters. Chapter One, 'The "Escape Artist" as the "Female Artist"', looks at Atwood's reconfiguration of Joan (in Lady Oracle), Offred (in The Handmaid's Tale), and Iris and Laura (in The Blind Assassin), into several fairy tale and mythological female figures, such as: the Little Mermaid, Snow White, Lady Shallot, Rapunzel, the ballerina in Hans Christian Andersen's tale of 'The Red Shoes', Sleeping Beauty, and the Little Red Riding Hood. All these figures have something in common: they have endured several dilemmas and misfortunes that seem to have befallen them due to their gender and sexuality. Atwood perceives these 'magical' fairy tale figures to be enshrouded in an ideological, or even, in a mythical idea of the Woman - this being a paradigm to which women must conform to fit the many societal expectations, which are undeniably biased. Atwood's protagonists often strive to escape from this phallocentric anxiety, where art seems to pave the way both for their escapism, and yet also their exile (Joan), or even their death (Laura).