LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 15:11 November 2015
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Canadian Feminist Consciousness in Margaret Atwood’s
Bodily Harm and The Handmaid’s Tale

S. Banupriya, M.A., B.Ed., M.Phil.


Abstract

Canadian women’s writing played a key role in setting in motion many radical ideas in terms of women’s individuality and power and politics through own language. The aim of Canadian women’s fiction is to make women critically conscious of their own roles in conventional social structures. Many of the women’s stories narrated by these writers are about the lives of girls and women. They are concerned with the exploration and survival, crossing boundaries, challenging cultural and psychological limits and glimpsing new prospects. Thus, women’s writing in Canada is committed to bring about remarkable changes in the lives of Canadian women and society. Margaret Atwood is one of those few modern Canadian novelists in English, who have tried to understand intimately the predicament of their female protagonists. Her writings are based on the feminist consciousness of her female protagonists through her novel. Margaret Atwood’s fiction is often organized thematically around images of both cultural and individual issues of survival; she has sought to portray the entrapment of women in patriarchy. In this paper I will try to present the above factors through the analyzing of two of her novels.

Keywords: Margaret Atwood, Canadian women, cultural and psychological limits, feminist consciousness.

Women’s Encounter with the World

Margaret Eleanor Atwood throws light on the women’s encounter with the world in Bodily Harm and The Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood places her female protagonists in conflict with the patriarchal or sexist society with prejudices on the basis of gender, depicts her struggle to assert her individuality and to gain acceptance. In her fictional world, Atwood reflects various modes of gender victimization of women in the name of tradition, modernity, technology, and marriage. The protagonists in the two novels which form part of this study emerge from the elite section of the society. In the course of their interaction with the world around them - nature, men and women their experiences are enriched; their enlightenment is sharpened and their horizons of understanding are widened. Thus they open “the doors on their prisons, and take truer control of their images of self and their future directions.”(Anna parsons 109) They learn the cruel lessons of life and subject themselves to a careful scrutiny in order to derive lessons for their future. The rebellious streak in each of the protagonists checkmates effectively the designs of male-centered society to manipulate and exploit her.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

S. Banupriya, M.A., B.Ed., M.Phil.
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