My Atwood Project, Part 6: Cat's Eye

Cat's Eye (1988) is the book I was most looking forward to rereading for this project, and it turns out it may well be Atwood's most autobiographical novel. Almost every piece of the plot can be traced back to her own life as she presents it in the memoir, except that the protagonist Elaine is a painter rather than a writer. There is the girlhood spent frequently in the northern wilderness with her parents, her older brother who shares his comic books, the early failed marriage. But most important, the bullying that happened when Atwood was in grade school. She avoided naming names when the book came out, because the perpetrator was still alive. Now she is dead. The ringleader of the bullies, Cordelia, was a girl named Sandra, and her second, Grace, was actually named Muriel. I too was bullied, but in a far less systematic way, and sympathize painfully with the 9-year-old girl bullied by her only friends.

According to the memoir, just about everything that the girls do to Elaine was really done to young Margaret, including many terrifying walks on a weak wood bridge over a threatening ravine. Her coping mechanisms came from her real life as well: peeling the skin from her feet, and finally just ignoring her tormentors. After that “Alice in Wonderland moment” -- “Why, they’re only a pack of cards after all” -- the protagonist seems to block out the memory of this bullying and actually becomes friends again with the main perpetrator in high school. Years later, adult Elaine is helping her mother clean out the basement and finds the cat's eye marble that was her protective talisman during that time and all the memories come rushing back. 

The pretext for the flashbacks is Elaine’s return to Toronto, where the harassment happened, for a retrospective exhibit of her art. I love the descriptions of all the paintings, many of which feature the horrible mother of one of the girls. I also love Elaine’s refusal to be pigeonholed by the young interviewer, resulting in the headline “Crotchety Artist Still Has Power to Disturb.”

All in all it’s one of my favorite Atwood books, and now that I’ve read the memoir, perhaps it is because so much of it is true, or just because I can relate.

Next up, more short fiction: Wilderness Tips and Good Bones. 

My Atwood Project, Part 5: The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments

I’ve read Atwood’s most famous novel several times. I can’t remember the first, but it made such an impression on me that I insisted on teaching it in a novel-reading elective at an Episcopalian school in the early 2000s. What better place? Show young people from religious families the unethical lengths to which religion can be pushed. Then I reread it at least once again, before the long-awaited sequel The Testaments came out, in 2019. 

I view The Handmaid’s Tale as a breakout for Atwood because of her world-building. The previous novels, set in contemporary times, focused on characters, primarily women, and their relationships, primarily to men. The cities fade into the background. Here, Handmaid Offred is a rat in a maze, so the maze becomes very important. Where are the exits? Where are the traps? This novel takes on an extra dimension as the new rules of the new society render the protagonist’s every interaction fraught. We see this world-building again most clearly in the speculative MaddAdam series, but also in her Booker Prize-winning Blind Assassin. In all of these, Atwood steps out of the genre of “women’s fiction” and incorporates the influence of the comic books and pulp novels she and her brother read as children. This hybridization makes these novels truly original. 

Another element that struck me this time through was the transactionality: in a society based on removal of choice, very little can be freely given, but there is a lot of trade. The Commander’s Wife, Serena Joy, tells Offred from the outset that she views their relationship as a “business transaction.” Offred sees in small infractions of the rules the hopeful existence of a black market and opportunities for trade. When the Commander summons her for an off-the-script meeting, she immediately wonders both what he wants, and what she can get. This tit-for-tat mentality is strongly tied to the strict pecking order. Everyone’s status is obvious thanks to their prescribed clothing color, which reminded me of Brave New World. Seeing everyone’s value at a glance is also so helpful in maintaining order. 

[Spoilers! Beware!]

Another motif that I noticed was how haunted Offred is by the suicide of her predecessor, and how strongly her own will to live prevails, driving her to have an affair with chauffeur Nick despite the danger involved. 

I realized at the end that my perception of the book’s ending had been clouded by the 1990 movie adaptation, in which Offred kills the Commander before escaping to a trailer in parts unknown to record her memoir. The novel actually ends with Offred simply being picked up by a black van, for unclear reasons, urged on by her lover Nick, who assures her it’s safe. We can assume the van was operated by the Mayday resistance, as Nick said, not the all-seeing Eyes, because the next chapter takes the form of an academic conference examining the memoir which Offred must have written outside of Gilead. 

This frame story element returns in The Testaments, which consists of the confessions of Aunt Lydia, and of Offred’s two children, one liberated with her and raised in Canada, the other raised in Gilead. I’m deviating from the chronological aspect of my project here, because these two books came out over 30 years apart, but I could not resist reading them "in order” again. 

When I first read The Testaments, I was not thrilled with the idea that Aunt Lydia was a secret rebel (click link for my first review). How could she have filled her role so convincingly, when she never truly believed? How could she lie so low, so long? It seemed like a cop out to redeem someone who seemed such a total villain.

This second time, though, I paid closer attention to Aunt Lydia’s backstory, as a judge, an ambitious single woman who was given the opportunity to pursue that ambition right to the top of a new society. She had the patience and cunning to wait to bring the whole of Gilead down, rather than ruin her chance too early in a weak, partial rebellion. I am more willing to buy into Aunt Lydia’s character now. 

And I am still convinced of the plausibility of Gilead. It is far too easy to imagine those with the “they’re gonna take our guns” mentality turning those guns on others. Atwood takes great pains at the end of The Testaments to show the archives of articles she collected in researching the first book: everything she wrote, including the crazed “Particicution,” was based in reality. Let it not become so.

My Atwood Project, Part 4: The Early Short Fiction

Part 4: The Early Short Fiction

Dancing Girls and Other Stories was published in 1977, Bluebeard’s Egg and Other Stories in 1982, and Murder in the Dark in 1983. Many of these stories appeared in small literary magazines, others in publications as well known as Ms. or Harper’s. Rereading these stories showed me how much Atwood was inspired by real-life events from her past, and gave me tantalizing glimpses forward into her more future-oriented speculative fiction.

Strangely, Dancing Girls has no entry in the index to the memoir, though Atwood does describe the antics of a resident of a boarding house in which she lived, on whom she based the title story (p. 225, Book of Lives). In the story, the nosy owner of the boarding house is intensely curious about a foreign male student. One night, he invites “dancing girls” to his room, and she chases them all out, including the boarder. Also set in the starving-student milieu is “The Man from Mars,” about another foreigner, a Vietnamese man who begins stalking a female student. These stories illustrate Canada’s uneasy attitude toward immigrants, as people to be officially welcomed, but who'd better fit in quickly or be ousted.

Other stories in this collection hark back to Atwood’s rural childhood, such as “Betty,” about a woman in a failed marriage, and young Margaret’s incomplete comprehension of the situation. “When it Happens,” while also set in a self-sufficient rural household straight out of Atwood’s childhood, is a precursor to her imminent dystopias and speculative works. A woman canning the harvest envisions a future wartime in which her husband disappears and she must survive on her own. 

Bluebeard’s Egg is bookended by more stories inspired by Atwood’s and her parents’ lives: the first two, “Significant Moments in the Life of My Mother,” and “Hurricane Hazel,” about an early boyfriend of Atwood’s; and among the final three, “In Search of the Rattlesnake Plantain” and the “Unearthing Suite” are both about her parents’ approaching the end of life.  

“Bluebeard’s Egg” is about a woman of leisure who is obsessed with her husband Ed, and what she calls his “stupidity,” or seeming obliviousness to other women. The title comes from an evening writing class she is taking (taught by a woman who could be Atwood herself): the students must rewrite a classic folktale from a different point of view, and she chooses the egg that the heroine must not let out of her sight, equating it with Ed. In fact, it is the wife, not the husband, who has been oblivious.

Murder in the Dark is a whole other genre: ultra short fiction that resembles prose poems, and meta-musings on writing. The title piece, for example, is about a game that becomes a metaphor: is the writer the murderer, or the detective? Who is the victim, book or reader? See my entry here for more detail on other pieces.

Whether you prefer the more conventional stories of the first two collections, or the experiments of the third, Atwood stories are always polished gems. 

Next up, I re-read her most famous novel, The Handmaid's Tale.

My Atwood Project, Part 3: Bodily Harm

Atwood’s fifth published novel, Bodily Harm, returns to the formula? pattern? established in the first three. A woman, Rennie, is torn between two men: boyfriend Jake, similar to the bland and egotistical Peter of The Edible Woman, and Daniel, the doctor who operated on her breast cancer. While her relationship with Jake focuses on the physical, with dark allusions to the violent options that men have over women, her relationship with Daniel is chaste. The good doctor is married, and won’t have the affair Rennie desperately wants. 

I want to dispel the notion that this is a “romance” novel, or at least not as I understand the genre, though that’s the genre insisted upon by the cover and blurb on my mass market paperback copy. Rennie has had part of a breast removed. Boyfriend Jake makes a valiant effort to continue to want her, but fails. Dr. Daniel is unwilling to provide physical connection. Finally Jake leaves and a stalker leaves a coiled rope on Rennie’s bed. Rennie, a freelance writer, proposes a low-cost working escape: an article about (fictional) Caribbean island St. Antoine. There, she does indeed have a fling, and finds physical connection -- but also much more that no one really wants to find on vacation, or in a romance novel.

(As usual, SPOILERS AHEAD)

Rennie makes her first connection on the plane, to another good doctor, Dr. Minnow. She soons learns that “They’re having an election, the first since the British pulled out,” and the local doctor is running for office. Rennie’s hopeful jaunt becomes a menacing trip to an impoverished island divided over politics, and it gets worse. I won’t try to sum up the details of the election, but suffice it to say that nearly everyone is playing Pin the Tail on the CIA.  

Rennie does hook up, with Paul, a drug runner. Then the election happens, and the post-election mob, and Rennie is thrown in prison with Paul’s accomplice and former lover, Lora. Rennie is in shock and denial at first: this can’t be happening! To a Canadian journalist! But it is. And now the portions of Lora’s backstory scattered throughout the narration make sense: these are stories that Lora shares with Rennie in prison. 

Perspective shifts. The vague political unrest of the first three novels now takes center stage. Two white women become cellmates; Lora is raped and beaten. Rennie’s man problems and breast problem shrink in the shadow of her “am I going to get out of this prison alive” problem. Atwood visited the Caribbean island of St. Vincent many times, and based this novel on stories she was told by a man who became Prime Minister. Rennie is lucky to get out alive. 

This novel, to me, is a precursor to The Handmaid’s Tale. Not only are the women imprisoned and abused by the “natives,” but even “good guy” Jake makes a joke of how vulnerable women are. The women must create their own solidarity, sharing their stories and caring for each other. Both are stories of government gone wrong, both inspired by real-life events.

Next up, the early short stories. 

My Atwood Project, Part 2: Life With Men

 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!

My Atwood Project, Part 1: Before The Handmaid’s Tale

My Atwood Project, Part 1: Before The Handmaid’s Tale

I just finished reading Margaret Atwood’s delightful Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts. (Thanks, hubby, for the holiday gift!) Delightful, because it’s a balanced mix of her real life with the lives of her novels. Also, because she takes a light and playful approach to her enemies: there are more “You know who you are’s” than names. 

The whole experience inspired me to re-read Atwood’s fiction oeuvre in chronological order, which I have never done. I’ve lined up the novels and short story collections on my shelf; there is only one I don’t have, a serially published e-book co-authored with her mentee Naomi Alderman, The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home. I may pursue the poetry and non-fiction later, but this is a pretty hefty project as it is, 18 novels and 12 novellas or collections of short stories.

BEWARE, SPOILERS AHEAD.

Let’s begin with the first three novels, of which I had only the vaguest memories. I started noticing some patterns right off. The Edible Woman (1969) is the story of Marian, who ever since she became engaged to her conventional boyfriend Peter, is able to eat less and less, while she spends more and more time with hapless graduate student Duncan. Tellingly, Peter lives in the model apartment of an unfinished building, signifying perhaps the incomplete and superficial nature of their relationship. 

The most interesting technique to me here is the shifting perspective: not between characters, as Atwood experiments with later, but from first to third and back again. In the first part of the book, Marian speaks confidently enough from the “I” perspective. In the middle of the book, where she becomes Peter’s almost accidental fiancée, she becomes a passive “she,” acting by turns like a future Stepford wife and like a woman on the edge. In the final section, she reclaims her identity by seizing the “I” again, and also by the memorable baking of a woman-shaped cake, which she offers Peter in place of herself. I feel I hardly need to explain, but I will: to me, this scene means that Peter was basically consuming her like food, not engaging (haha) with her as a person, so he might as well eat her in effigy. Whether he understands the significance of the cake or not, Peter freaks out and flees the scene. Duncan, on the other hand, eats some of the cake, and pronounces it delicious. Their future is ambiguous.

The motif of a woman discovering herself between two men recurs in Surfacing and Lady Oracle as well, where the territory gets more exotic: the northern Canadian wilderness of Atwood’s childhood in Surfacing, and a small town in Italy in Lady Oracle. Also, the idea of political unrest, connecting the personal and the political, is introduced. 

In Surfacing (1972), the unnamed protagonist is seeking her father, who’s gone missing, at their summer home in the Canadian wilderness. She gets a ride there with her boyfriend Joe and another couple, Anna and David. She is as ambivalent about Joe as Marian was about Peter. In addition, David treats Anna abusively and tries to sleep with the protagonist. So again, we see a woman between two men, and again, she claims her own identity after a brief bout of mad-looking behavior.

The title refers, I think, mostly to the return of a suppressed or reframed memory: the heroine has referred to an ex and a baby, and implied that the two are together, away from her. In fact, he coerced her into an abortion. During her brief feral episode, she has sex with Joe and plans to raise the eventual baby on her own. The political issue lurking in the background is Quebecois separatism, echoing the woman’s desire for independence. However, by the end, her relationship with Joe, while still unclear, appears more optimistic than that with Duncan at the end of The Edible Woman.

Finally, Lady Oracle is the most enjoyable of the three, for me. Joan Foster is a woman of many identities: formerly obese, now thin; a romance writer using her late aunt’s name to publish -- and now to hide. She’s gotten herself into quite a predicament, between her depressed husband Arthur, and her eccentric lover Chuck, aka The Royal Porcupine, harking back to Peter and Duncan of The Edible Woman, and presaging Nate and Chris of Life Before Man. 

(Please don’t think that Atwood’s love triangles are easy plot devices. Each book is so rich with subplot and backstory, I’m sure theses have been written just about the aunts.)

At any rate, political unrest becomes a device that allows Joan to fake her death -- perhaps as the father in Surfacing may have done? We also have the strongest, so far, story within a story, as Joan’s latest romance novel turns into a way for her multiple selves to meet. This device recurs in The Blind Assassin, and perhaps I’ll rediscover others as I reread.

Again, these are complex novels, and I’m only pointing out some of the more obvious trends. I enjoyed them all more this second time around, with the background of Atwood’s life shedding light here and there. Stay tuned for my take on the painfully autobiographical Life Before Man. 

Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff

 As a comparatist, one of the highest compliments I can give a piece of writing is to say "This reminds me of…." Delicate Edible Birds, a 2009 collection of short stories by Lauren Groff, prompts me to reminisce on several of my favorite writers.

The first story, “Lucky Chow Fun,” is redolent of Margaret Atwood, especially her own collection Bluebeard’s Egg: they share the same fascination with fairy tales, and with the fates of young women. Lollie, the main character, is at that liminal age between high school and college, much like Atwood’s Stephanie in “My Last Duchess,” from the collection Moral Disorder. The narrator looks back on herself as a young woman: how oblivious she was! Young girls “work” at a Chinese restaurant; the protagonist’s little sister goes birdwatching with the richest man in town. But which situation is actually dangerous? 

The story of “L. DeBard and Aliette” reminds me of F. Scott Fitzgerald's “Head and Shoulders,” itself O’Henryesque. In the Fitzgerald story, a man starts off earning a living with his head, but switches to his shoulders (as a gymnast), while his beautiful dancer wife takes the opposite route, becoming an intellectual. Here in Groff's story, a precocious girl whose legs have been weakened by polio strengthens them with the help of her swim coach and eventual lover, who gives up swimming to become a renowned poet. I’m still scratching my head over their son’s name, Compass.

“Sir Fleeting,” with its impoverished but seductive aristocrat, reminds me of the many unsanctified relationships in Anais Nin’s erotica: aristocrat and agrarian, in this story, but also young woman and older (“Fugue”), or young man and boss's daughter (“L. DeBard and Aliette,” “Majorette”). 

Finally, the title story is a retelling of Guy De Maupassant’s “Boule de Suif,” or “Ball of Lard.” Maupassant’s story takes place during the Franco-Prussian war. The title character in the French story is a prostitute with a heart of gold, and a well-fed stomach. She and others are fleeing the Prussians in a coach, and she is the only one who has brought food, which she kindly shares. The haughty passengers have no qualms partaking of her picnic. When the Germans catch up with them, Ball of Lard refuses on principle to sleep with the German commander. The others pressure her until she breaks down, then disparaging the woman who generously fed them -- and freed them. 

In Groff’s story, the protagonist Bern is a female journalist during World War II with a reputation for “giv[ing] it away for free.” She and four male colleagues are fleeing Paris in a Jeep. She’s not the type to pack a  picnic but she did “liberate” a bottle of whiskey. When they run out of gas, they stop at a farmhouse. Unluckily, the farmer is a Nazi sympathizer, and Bern reminds him of his dead wife. He locks the group in a barn waiting for Bern to succumb. Will it play out the same way as Maupassant’s cynical tale?