Margaret Atwood Criticism
Margaret Atwood's work has long been the subject of extensive critical scholarship, reflecting her prominent role in contemporary literature. Her incisive social and political commentary, often characterized by shocking imagery and irony, has sparked diverse critical responses. Some critics view her work as ideologically driven and pessimistic, yet others have lauded her narrative depth and feminist insights. For instance, Barbara Hill Rigney discusses themes of descent and return in Surfacing, while Carol P. Christ explores Atwood's refusal to depict her characters as mere victims.
Atwood’s narrative prowess is also reflected in critiques that emphasize her engagement with speculative fiction. The exploration of dystopian futures in works such as The Handmaid’s Tale has led scholars like Eleanor Ty to examine how Atwood addresses the issues of power and control. Her storytelling often blurs the lines between reality and fiction, challenging readers to reconsider their perspectives on societal norms.
Furthermore, Atwood's exploration of identity and survival is a recurring theme in her novels. Her portrayal of complex female protagonists is analyzed in depth by critics like Sharon R. Wilson, who delves into Atwood's use of myth and fairy tale motifs. These elements contribute to a broader understanding of her work as both a reflection and critique of contemporary gender roles.
Atwood's environmental concerns emerge as significant motifs in her oeuvre, notably in the MaddAddam Trilogy. Scholars such as Coral Ann Howells address how Atwood's speculative narratives provoke thought about humanity's relationship with the natural world, emphasizing the urgent need for ecological awareness.
Contents
- Principal Works
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Atwood, Margaret (Vol. 84)
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'After the Failure of Logic': Descent and Return in Surfacing
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Rigney discusses the theme of discovering the self through descent and return in Atwood's Surfacing. It is inevitable for Margaret Atwood's nameless protagonist of Surfacing that there should occur a 'failure of logic,' for her journey 'home' is an exploration of a world beyond logic. Her quest, like that of Jane Eyre, Clarissa Dalloway, and Martha Quest Hesse, is for an identity, a vision of self. She must find that self—not only through the father for whom she searches the Canadian backwoods, but also through the mother for whom she must search in the depths of her own psyche.
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Refusing to be a Victim: Margaret Atwood
(summary)
In the following essay, Christ offers an analysis of Surfacing, focusing on the protagonist's quest for self-discovery and Atwood's focus on nature and power in the novel. The spiritual quest of the unnamed protagonist begins with her return to the Canadian wilderness, where she had lived as a child. Ostensibly, the protagonist is in search of her missing father, who is presumed dead. But the search is really for her missing parents, her mother having died a few years earlier, and for the power she feels it was their duty to have communicated to her. The external detective story of the protagonist's search for her father is paralleled by an internal search—half obscured by her obsession with her father—to discover how she lost the ability to feel. The unraveling of her father's mystery awakens her to the powers that enlighten her, but the unraveling of her own mystery is the key to the redemption she seeks.
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Margaret Atwood: Remythologizing Circe
(summary)
In the following essay, Lauter examines Atwood's revision of the myth of Odysseus and Circe in her 'Circe/Mud Poems.' Lauter discusses how Atwood reinterprets the story from Circe's perspective, revealing her deeper insights and challenging the traditional quest myth that often marginalizes female figures. Atwood's work suggests a radical revision of the myth, proposing alternative narratives that empower women and critique the limitations of existing mythic structures.
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Dying Falls
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Lanchester provides a mixed assessment of the short story collection Bluebeard's Egg.
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Formal Allegiances: Selected Poems × 6
(summary)
In the excerpt below, Smith offers a mixed review of Atwood's Selected Poems II, discussing her significant contributions to literature and raising questions about the success of her poetry.
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Odd Woman Out
(summary)
In the following review, Yglesias praises Atwood's style and commitment to issues, but finds the novel Cat's Eye an uneven work.
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Comic Storytelling as Escape and Narcissistic Self-Expression in Atwood's Lady Oracle
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Bouson explores the psychology of the protagonist in Lady Oracle, examining how Joan Foster's comedic voice masks her deeper emotional struggles and narcissistic anxieties, while also engaging the reader in her complex narrative.
- Waltzing Again: A Conversation with Margaret Atwood
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In Pursuit of the Faceless Stranger: Depths and Surfaces in Margaret Atwood's Bodily Harm
(summary)
In the following essay, Lucking discusses the motifs of depth and surface in relation to Atwood's thematic concern with the quest for authentic selfhood in Bodily Harm.
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Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye: Re-Viewing Women in a Postmodern World
(summary)
In the following essay, Ingersoll analyzes what he perceives as the autobiographical elements in Cat's Eye.
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Lady Oracle: The Politics of the Body
(summary)
In the following essay, Patton analyzes Atwood's use of goddess mythology in Lady Oracle.
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The Hairball on the Mantlepiece
(summary)
In the following review, Wilcox generally praises Atwood's Wilderness Tips, but finds some of the prose awkward and over-mannered.
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Time Telescoping Tales
(summary)
In the following review of Wilderness Tips, Rubin praises Atwood's ability to function as a "barometer" of the social climate of present and past decades in her writing, but faults her work for "a lack of energy and élan."
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The Handmaid's Tale, Cat's Eye and Interlunar: Margaret Atwood's Feminist (?) Futures (?)
(summary)
In the following essay, LeBihan analyzes the narrative technique and major themes in The Handmaid's Tale, Cat's Eye and some of the poems in Interlunar.
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The Atwood Variations
(summary)
In the following review, Kemp praises Good Bones as a "sample-case of Atwood's sensuous and sardonic talents."
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Reading Reflections: The Autobiographical Illusion in Cat's Eye
(summary)
In the following essay, Cooke explores Atwood's use of a fictional protagonist and an autobiographical form in Cat's Eye.
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Mirror, Mirror, Who's the Evilest?
(summary)
In the following review, Shapiro praises Atwood's novel The Robber Bride, noting that nobody maps female psychic territory the way Margaret Atwood does. Her latest novel, The Robber Bride, takes its title from the Grimm fairy tale about the robber bridegroom who kidnaps maidens. Here the malevolent suitor is a woman named Zenia, who insinuates herself into other women's lives and carries off their husbands and boyfriends.
- On the Villainess
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'After the Failure of Logic': Descent and Return in Surfacing
(summary)
- Atwood, Margaret (Vol. 3)
- Atwood, Margaret (Vol. 2)
- Atwood, Margaret (Vol. 4)
- Atwood, Margaret (Vol. 13)
- Atwood, Margaret (Vol. 8)
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Atwood, Margaret (Eleanor)
- Letters in Canada: 'Dancing Girls'
- Atwood Under and Above Water
- Sherrill Grace
- A Terrible Beauty
- Bitter Wisdom of Moral Concern
- Love and Horror
- Fiction: 'Bodily Harm'
- The Making of 'Selected Poems', the Process of Surfacing
- Life After Man
- Poetry: 'True Stories'
- Plots and Counterplots
- Eight Poets
- Desperate Remedies
- 'Bodily Harm'
- Women Too Alone to Realize Their Aloneness
- Atwood, Margaret (Vol. 15)
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Atwood, Margaret (Short Story Criticism)
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Versions of Reality
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Grace finds parallels between Atwood's stories and her poetry and assesses the merits and weaknesses of the stories in Dancing Girls.
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Margaret Atwood: Some Observations and Textual Considerations
(summary)
In the following essay, Houghton analyzes Atwood's attempt to construct meaning by drawing attention to and highlighting the “process of exclusion in everyday experience, by focusing upon the inadequacies and illusions of overt fabrications.”
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Minuets and Madness: Margaret Atwood's ‘Dancing Girls’
(summary)
In the following essay, Thompson offers a detailed survey of the stories in Dancing Girls.
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The Short Stories
(summary)
In the following essay, Davey discusses recurring themes in Atwood's short fiction.
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Alternate Stories: The Short Fiction of Audrey Thomas and Margaret Atwood
(summary)
In the following essay, Davey considers ways in which Atwood's characters cope with reality by viewing it through fictional frameworks.
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Bluebeard's Egg and Other Stories
(summary)
In the following positive review of Bluebeard's Egg, Lyons asserts that the stories have many virtues and sources of interest, including the revelations about Atwood's biography, the exploration of her major themes and motifs, and not least of all, their excellence as stories.
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A review of Bluebeard's Egg and Other Stories
(summary)
In the following review, Knapp offers a negative assessment of Bluebeard's Egg. As much as The Handmaid's Tale was a minor literary sensation which marked Atwood's move to international prominence, her second collection of short fiction is patently unsensational. With the exception of two stories new to the American edition, the volume appeared already in 1983 in Canada. Two-thirds of the stories, in addition, have been featured previously in Harper's and other magazines, making their reappearance under one cover as much a matter of publishing convenience as of artistic necessity. Not a single date of original publication is given; and whether this is mere negligence or deliberate obfuscation by the publisher, it makes the critic's evaluation of the texts more difficult.
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'Bluebeard's Egg': Not Entirely a ‘Grimm’ Tale
(summary)
In the following essay, Peterson evaluates the influence of legends and fairy tales on Atwood's short fiction.
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Atwood's Sacred Wells (Dancing Girls, poetry, and Surfacing)
(summary)
In the following essay, Brown explores the recurring images in Atwood's work, focusing on how they function in her fiction and poetry.
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Definitions of a Fool: Alice Munro's ‘Walking on Water’ and Margaret Atwood's Two Stories about Emma: ‘The Whirlpool Rapids’ and ‘Walking on Water’
(summary)
In the following essay, Carrington finds parallels between Alice Munro's “Walking on Water” and Margaret Atwood's “The Whirlpool Rapids” and “Walking on Water.”
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Blood Taboo: A Response to Margaret Atwood's ‘Lives of the Poets’
(summary)
In the following essay, Nelson considers the poetic language of Atwood's “Lives of the Poets.”
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The Atwood Variations
(summary)
In the following review, Kemp praises Good Bones as a “sample-case of Atwood's sensuous and sardonic talents.”
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A Poet's Bones
(summary)
In the following laudatory review of Good Bones, Besner deems the stories in the collection as “fictions for our time, and, arguably, fictions that show Atwood's narrative talents at their finest.”
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‘Yet I Speak, Yet I Exist’: Affirmation of the Subject in Atwood's Short Fiction
(summary)
In the following essay, Suarez traces the development of Atwood's narrative technique as evinced in her short fiction.
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Of Bimbos and Men's Bodies
(summary)
In the following review, Le Guin provides a favorable assessment of Good Bones and Simple Murders. If you know any writers or would-be writers, give them this little book, with a bookmark at the piece called “The Page.” In a couple of hundred words it says more than all the dozens of how-to-write books say about the act of writing, the reality of it.
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Representing the Other Body: Frame Narratives in Margaret Atwood's ‘Giving Birth’ and Alice Munro's ‘Meneseteung’
(summary)
In the following essay, Wall examines the portrayal of women as well as the narrative structures in Alice Munro's “Meneseteung” and Margaret Atwood's “Giving Birth.”
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Scarlet Ibises and Frog Songs: Short Fiction
(summary)
In the following essay, Stein offers a thematic and stylistic overview of Atwood's short fiction, highlighting how Atwood's stories combine realism and whimsy, fairy tale, myth, and fantasy to represent the lives of contemporary women and men. The essay discusses the striking symbols in Atwood's stories and explores various situations, emphasizing the characters' invented fictions and their impact on their lives.
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Versions of Reality
(summary)
- Further Reading