My Atwood Project, Part 2: Life With Man

 At first read, Life Before Man (1979) appears to be a  devastating indictment of open marriage. 

*Spoilers ahead* 

At the center of the novel are Elizabeth and Nate, who are married, have two children, and also each have a lover. As the book begins, we learn that Elizabeth's lover Chris has committed suicide, and we later find out it's because she won't leave Nate for him. Nate's relationship with Martha has fizzled out and he starts a new liaison with Lesje (pronounced Lashia). Things go downhill from there. When Nate moves in with his new girlfriend, Elizabeth begins to manipulate the situation: dropping off the children without warning, demanding money that she knows Nate does not have, etc. While Nate and Lesje are living in poverty, Elizabeth is not exactly happy either. In fact, no one is, and the message seems to be that open marriage is a bust.

When I read Atwood's memoir, I learned that this is a fictional version of her real experience with Graeme Gibson. Graeme was married to Shirley, and they had two boys. And Shirley actually did these, and other, manipulative, narcissistic things to Atwood and Gibson. I wonder how Gibson, a novelist, felt when he saw himself portrayed as Nate, the former lawyer who becomes a toy maker, then must return to law to support himself and Elizabeth and Lesje. In real life Shirley eventually granted a divorce, but Gibson never married Atwood, claiming that he did not want to add “another Mrs. Gibson” to his life. They did have one child together, though Atwood would have liked a second. 

This novel is a departure from the previous three novels. Though it does contain the motif of a woman between two men, Elizabeth does not have a magical moment of madness and recover her pre-man identity: she is pure, cold calculation throughout. If we consider Lesje the central figure, because of the title (she's a paleontologist) and the parallel of her story to Atwood’s, her moment of madness resembles the one in Surfacing: pregnancy out of spite. She is so frustrated with her situation that she decides to get pregnant behind Nate’s back, in order to wrench his attention away from Elizabeth and back to her. Quebecois separatism lurks in the background as in Surfacing, as well. The title might imply that Lesje's (Atwood’s?) life was better before she got involved with Nate. At any rate, Atwood and Gibson remained a loving couple for many years until he passed away.

The only comic relief in this sad tale is Elizabeth's evil Aunt Muriel. As I mentioned in my last blog post, you could write a thesis on the aunts in Atwood's work. The next novel, Bodily Harm, returns to the model of the first three novels, and introduces elements that would evolve in Atwood’s next and most famous work, The Handmaid’s Tale. Stay tuned!