Margaret Atwood

by Shannon Hengen

  670.BERAN, Carol L. “‘At Least Its Voice Isn’t Mine’: The Concept of Voice in Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle.” Weber Studies 8.1 (Spring 1991): 54-71. Atwood uses 3 voices for the narrator, and the 3 are combined as a voice for herself, the author.

  671.BORSTAD, Louise Marie. “An Analysis of the Disease of Anorexia Nervosa in the Novel The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood.” MA thesis. St. Cloud State University, 1991.

  672.BROWN, Julie. “Our Ladies of Perpetual Hell: Witches and Fantastic Virgins in Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 4.3 [15] (1991): 40-52.

  673.CALVERT, Michelle. “The Body as Topos: The Discursive Mapping of the Feminine Subject in Selected Works of Canadian Art and Literature.” MA thesis. Carleton University, 1991. 187 pp. Also available on microfiche from Canadian Theses Service (1992). “This thesis utilizes selected feminist and poststructural theories of gendered subjectivity to explore the work of four Canadian women artists and writers. It suggests that the body as topos represents a central organizing metaphor which highlights the position of women’s bodies as always-already marked and positioned within dominant discursive and social practices. This analysis addresses Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Audrey Thomas’s Mrs. Blood and Intertidal Life, Janice Gurney’s appropriational art, and Genevieve Cadieux’s multi-media installations.” (Author). For more see MAI 31.01 (Spring 1993): 13.

  674.CARRINGTON, Ildikó de Papp. “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.’” Studies in Short Fiction 28.2 (Spring 1991): 135-149. Although similar in origin of themes, the two writers differ in their narrative approach. [Ed. note: Munro’s “Walking on Water” was published in 1974 in Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You; in 1986 Margaret Atwood also published a short story entitled ‘Walking on Water.’ Appearing originally in Chatelaine, it was republished in a longer version in the second, American edition of Bluebeard’s Egg.]

  675.CUDER-DOMINGUEZ, Pilar. “El Romance y la Literatura Canadiense: Margaret Atwood.” Revista Española de Estudios Canadienses 1.2 (May 1991): 278-303.

  676.DAVIDSON, Arnold E. “Canada in Fiction.” The Columbia History of the American Novel. Ed. Emory Elliott et al. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. 558-585. Short references; also, biographical sketch of Atwood on 756.

  677.DeMARCO, Donald. Biotechnology and the Assault on Parenthood. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991. See especially “The Politicization of Motherhood.” 70-71. This section contains a brief mention of The Handmaid’s Tale.

  678.DHAR, T. N. “First Person Singular: The Raised Feminine Consciousness in At-wood’s The Edible Woman.” Feminism and Recent Fiction in English. Ed. Sushil Singh. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1991. 268-276.

  679.DUPRIEZ, Bernard. A Dictionary of Literary Devices. Translated and adapted by Albert W. Halsall. Toronto; Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 1991. Contains several references to Atwood; translation of Gradus: Les précédes littéraires.

  680.ELLIOTT, Marilyn O. Mercer. “Words on Paper: An Exploration of the Creative Process in Six Stories. (Original writing).” MA thesis. Texas Woman’s University, 1991. 165 pp. “Many writers, writing out of a love of language, a need for expression, a desire to be heard, choose fiction as their vehicle for universal truth. In drawing upon personal experience as a source of that truth, writers discover and/or experience the creative process, the art of writing, insight into a subjective past, and enrichment through the creative act. As a demonstration of that process, this thesis employees autobiographical elements as a source for original fiction purporting to evoke recognition of truth in the reader. Preparation included reading essays by Margaret Atwood, Eudora Welty, Joyce Carol Oates, and Alice Munro on fiction as a literary art form.” For more see MAI 30.01 (Spring 1992): 29.

  681.EMBERLEY, Julia. “We Will Not Play Body to Your Territory: A Response.” Room of One’s Own 14.4 (December 1991): 82-96. Response to Henderson article (see 695).

  682.EPSTEIN, Hugh. “‘Where He Is Not Wanted’: Impression and Articulation in ‘The Idiots’ and ‘Amy Foster.’” Conradiana 23.3 (1991): 217-232. Discussion of Surfacing (224) to illustrate the artist’s relationship to the world.

  683.FAWCETT, Brian. Unusual Circumstances, Interesting Times. Vancouver: New Star Books, 1991. See especially Chapter 8, “Margaret Atwood’s Achievement.” 75-79. Reprinted from Books in Canada; Fawcett, in the “Introduction,” implies revision from journal publication; Atwood mentioned in two other essays also.

  684.FITZ, Earl E. Rediscovering the New World: Inter-American Literature in a Comparative Context. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991. Section on Surfacing (214-221) in Chapter 10 “The Conflict between Civilization and Barbarism.” 211-232; scattered references to Atwood elsewhere.

  685.FRASER, Wayne. The Dominion of Women: The Personal and the Political in Canadian Women’s Literature. Contributions in Women’s Studies, No. 116. New York; Westport, CT; London: Greenwood Press, 1991. 190. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 deal extensively with Atwood: covering anti-Americanism in her early novels, comparing Lady Oracle and Laurence’s The Diviners, and commenting on her political role in the 1980s.

  686.GASPAROTTI, Alessandra. Surfacing: Margaret Atwood e la messinscena del passato. Il Lettore di Provincia 23 (April 1991): 53-62.

  687.GERNES, Sonia. “Transcendent Women: Uses of the Mystical in Margaret At-wood’s Cat’s Eye and Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping.” Religion and Literature 23.3 (Autumn 1991): 143-165. Atwood’s representation is more intellectual than the mythology presented by Robinson, but both seek answers in a spiritual quest.

  688.GILBERT, Sandra M., and Susan GUBAR. “‘Infection in the Sentence: The Woman Writer and the Anxiety of Authorship’ from The Madwoman in the Attic (1979).” Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. Ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991. Lady Oracle mentioned (297) to illustrate the crippling effects of culture upon a woman author.

  689.GLICKMAN, Susan. “The Waxing and Waning of Susanna Moodie’s ‘Enthusiasm.’” Canadian Literature 130 (Autumn 1991): 7-26. Says Moodie’s poetry differs from Atwood’s portrayal.

  690.GREENE, Gayle. Changing the Story: Feminist Fiction and the Tradition. Bloom-ington; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991. See especially chapter entitled “Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle.” 166-190. The Gothic theme in Lady Oracle is analyzed as it goes past the conventional ending to create a happier present. Also, The Edible Woman is discussed in the chapter, “Mad Housewives and Closed Circles” (58-85), and there are numerous other comments on Atwood throughout the book.

  691.______. “Feminist Fiction and the Uses of Memory.” Signs 16.2 (Winter 1991): 290-321. Bodily Harm, Lady Oracle, and Cat’s Eye are discussed in this examination of the structure of the narrative; other women authors discussed extensively as well.

  692.GULICK, Angela Michelle. “The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood: Examining Its Utopian, Dystopian, Feminist and Post Modernist Traditions.” MA thesis. Iowa State University, 1991.

  693.HANSEN, Elaine Tuttle. “Mothers Tomorrow and Mothers Yesterday, but Never Mothers Today: Woman on the Edge of Time and The Handmaid’s Tale.” Narrating Mothers: Theorizing Maternal Subjectivities. Ed. Brenda O. Daly and Maureen T. Reddy. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991. 21-43. The “missing mother” with the “lost daughter” is a theme in both novels to present views of mothering.

  694.HAUGHTON, Rosemary. “Women and the Church.” Thought 66.263 (December 1991): 398-412. The Handmaid’s Tale is briefly mentioned as illustration of women’s treatment in a theocracy.

  695.HENDERSON, Jennifer. “Birdwatching the Postcolonial Way.” Room of One’s Own 14.4 (December 1991): 51-56. Discusses critical approach to Canadian literature in which female characters represent Canada and says this approach is in keeping with Atwood’s Survival.
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  696.HENGEN, Shannon. “‘Metaphysical Romance’: Atwood’s PhD Thesis and The Handmaid’s Tale.” Science-Fiction Studies 18.1 (March 1991): 154-156. Themes of good and evil, nature, and power are traced back to Atwood’s uncompleted thesis.

  697.HOWELLS, Coral Ann. “A Question of Inheritance: Canadian Women’s Short Stories.” Determined Women: Studies in the Construction of the Female Subject, 1900-90. Ed. Jennifer Birkett and Elizabeth Harvey. Savage, MD: Barnes & Noble, 1991. 108-120. Resistance and revision in tradition are examined in stories by Atwood (“Bluebeard’s Egg”), Munro (“Heirs of the Living Body”), and Thomas (“Crossing the Rubicon”).

  698.HUMM, Maggie. Border Traffic: Strategies of Contemporary Women Writers. Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press, 1991. See especially Chapter 4 “Going Through the Green Channel: Margaret Atwood and Body Boundaries.” 123-159. Several novels, including The Edible Woman, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Surfacing, are discussed.

  699.HUTCHEON, Linda. Splitting Images: Contemporary Canadian Ironies. Toronto; Oxford; New York: Oxford UP, 1991. passim. Atwood’s works frequently cited as portraying this cultural theme.

  700.HUTCHISON, Beth. “Essential Fictions: Masquerade, Mimicry, and Self-Enactments in Contemporary North American Fiction.” PhD thesis. University of Washington, 1991. 200 pp. Several novels examined including Cat’s Eye. For more see DAI-A 52.08 (February 1992): 2924.

  701.INGERSOLL, Earl G. “Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye: Re-Viewing Women in a Postmodern World.” Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 22.4 (October 1991): 17-27. Argues that similarities between Elaine Risley and Atwood’s life are not coincidental.

  702.JUMP, Harriet Devine. “Margaret Atwood: Taking the Capital W off Woman.” Diverse Voices: Essays on Twentieth-Century Women Writers in English. Ed. Harriet Devine Jump. New York: St. Martin’s Press; London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991. 98-121. Draws from The Handmaid’s Tale, Cat’s Eye, and other novels, poems, and essays to define Atwood’s complex and evolving approach to gender.

  703.KAMBOURELI, Smaro. On the Edge of Genre: The Contemporary Canadian Long Poem. Toronto; Buffalo, NY; London: University of Toronto Press, 1991. 56-57, 87. Briefly mentions The Journals of Susanna Moodie.

  704.KAMMLER, Heike. “Observers and Prophets of Our Time and Our Future: Women in Dystopian Fiction by Margaret Atwood and Doris Lessing.” MA thesis. University of Florida, 1991. Study of The Handmaid’s Tale and Lessing’s Four-gated City.

  705.KEITH, W. J. An Independent Stance: Essays on English-Canadian Criticism and Fiction. Erin, ON: The Porcupine’s Quill, 1991. See especially “Atwood as (Infuriating) Critic.” 54-61. This review essay on Second Words first appeared in Canadian Forum (February 1983); Keith is critical of Atwood’s efforts as a critic; this version restores some sentences left off the end in the earlier printing, and see also “Interpreting and Misinterpreting ‘Bluebeard’s Egg’: A Cautionary Tale.” 278-288. Warns against fitting a particular theory, in this case a feminist one, to a work of literature and ignoring other evidence.

  706.KERTZER, J. M. “Genius Loci: The Ghost in Canadian Literature.” Canadian Literature 130 (Autumn 1991): 70-89. Brief mentions, especially of Survival, scattered throughout the article.

  707.KOLODNY, Annette. “Margaret Atwood and the Politics of Narrative.” Studies on Canadian Literature: Introductory and Critical Essays. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1991. 90-109.

  708.LeBIHAN, Jill. “The Handmaid’s Tale, Cat’s Eye, and Interlunar: Margaret At-wood’s Feminist(?) Futures(?).” Narrative Strategies in Canadian Literature: Feminism and Postcolonialism. Ed. Coral Ann Howells and Lynette Hunter. Buckingham, UK; Bristol, PA: Open UP, 1991. 93-107. Postfeminism, postmodernism, and postmodernist feminism mark a crossroad in these works, in both a literary and a critical sense.

  709.LECKER, Robert, ed. Canadian Canons: Essays in Literary Value. Toronto; Buffalo, NY; London: University of Toronto Press, 1991. passim. Essays by various contributors in which Atwood is frequently mentioned.

  710.LECLAIRE, Jacques. “La metropole: Image du pouvoir dans les romans de Margaret Atwood.” Études canadiennes / Canadian Studies 30 (1991): 89-93. “The maze of the metropolis is the background of the cruel power game: who wields power over whom and how. It also embodies socio-economic and moral pressures. In order to survive everybody must foil the other’s attempts and also establish his own power at least over some space. Finally in the novels [from The Edible Woman to Cat’s Eye] the metropolis becomes the image of human power, as opposed to nature where man is confronted with other forms of power.” (Author abstract).

  711.LETCHER, Bettina Havens. “In the Belly of This Story: The Role of Fantasy in Four American Women’s Novels of the 1980s.” PhD thesis. University of Rhode Island, 1991. 199 pp. The Handmaid’s Tale is examined along with Gould’s Subject to Change, Morrison’s Beloved, and Silko’s Ceremony; fantasy provides the change for a radical new self which is taken in by the social community. For more see DAI-A 52.10 (April 1992): 3602.

  712.LITTLE, Philippa Susan. “Images of Self-Feminine and Feminist Subjectivity in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Margaret Atwood, and Adrienne Rich (1950-1980).” PhD thesis. University of London, Queen Mary and Westfield College, 1991.

  713.LOCKETT, Jacqueline Rose. “Margaret Atwood: The Treatment of Women’s Biology in The Edible Woman, Surfacing, and The Handmaid’s Tale.” MA thesis. (Women’s Studies). University of Natal, 1991. 106 pp.

  714.LOWE, Julia. “Re-inscribing the Mother: Feminist Theory and Fiction.” MA thesis. Carleton University, 1991. 97 pp. Also available on microfiche from Canadian Theses Service (1992). “This thesis [examines] the different ways feminist theory and literature has [sic] defined the multiple meanings of the maternal which have been suppressed by the patriarchal paradigm.…[In contrast to other works studied] a Lacanian reading of Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle [shows] the mother is incapable of liberating her daughter from patriarchal law.” (Author). For more see MAI 31.02 (Summer 1993): 563.

  715.MAYS, Lynda Graham. “Women as Daughters, Wives, and Mothers in the Novels of Margaret Atwood.” MLS (Master of Liberal Studies) thesis. Rollins College, 1991.

  716.McCOMBS, Judith. “Contrary Rememberings: The Creating Self and Feminism in Cat’s Eye.” Canadian Literature 129 (Summer 1991): 9-23. Multi-layered and fluid, the feminist and literary self is also affected by “pre-literary and non-literary concepts of the self.”

  717.McCOMBS, Judith, and Carole L. PALMER. Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall and Company, 1991. 735. An annotated bibliography covering writing about Margaret Atwood from 1962 to 1988, with a literary introduction by McCombs that supplements her 1988 introduction to Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood.

  718.McDONALD, Christie. “Changing the Facts of Life: The Case of Baby M.” SubStance 64 (1991): 31-48. On 42, The Handmaid’s Tale is cited as relevant to the Baby M case. [Ed. note: Baby M (born 27 March 1986) was the name given to the child in an American custody case between the surrogate mother hired to carry her, and the child’s biological father. Mary Beth Whitehead, the surrogate mother, was artificially inseminated with William Stern’s sperm. Contrary to popular belief (as well as what was stated in the surrogacy contract), Mr. Stern’s wife, Elizabeth, was not infertile, but rather there was a possibility she had multiple sclerosis. When Whitehead gave birth to a daughter whom she named “Sara Elizabeth Whitehead,” she refused to give her up to the Sterns. A New Jersey court awarded custody of Melissa (as the Sterns had named her) to the Sterns in 1987, but this ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court of New Jersey on 2 February 1988. The Supreme Court remanded the case to family court. On remand, the lower court awarded William Stern custody and Mary Beth Whitehead visitation rights.]

  719.MEYERS, Helene. “Femicidal Fears in Contemporary Fiction: Feminist Thought and the Female Gothic.” PhD thesis. Indiana University, 1991. 267 pp. Bodily Harm one of several texts examined in a study which “charts
the intersections between the female gothic tradition, feminist theory, and contemporary women’s fiction.” For more see DAI-A 52.09 (March 1992): 3277.

  720.MILLER, Jane. Seductions: Studies in Reading and Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. See especially “Feasters and Spoilsports.” 136-164. Section VI of this chapter (159-162) contains the discussion of Cat’s Eye, focusing on differences in male and female childhoods.

  721.MINER, Madonne. “‘Trust Me’: Reading the Romance Plot in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” Twentieth-Century Literature 37.2 (Summer 1991): 148-168. Episodes in the novel, such as the Scrabble game, show how to put together plot elements to obtain additional readings of the text.

  722.MOLNÁR, Judith. “The Coalescence of Natural and Mental Landscapes in Margaret Atwood’s The Journals of Susanna Moodie.” Hungarian Studies in English 22 (1991): 127-132. The Journals of Susanna Moodie reflect the mental and physical landscape of Canada through the changes in Moodie’s psychological and spiritual development.

  723.MOOS, Patricia Danelle. “Reflections of Motherhood in Three Novels by Margaret Atwood.” MA thesis. McMaster University, 1991. 83 pp. The Edible Woman, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Surfacing.

  724.NEW, W. H. “Canadian Literature. Atwood/Power.” Encyclopedia of Literature and Criticism. Ed. Martin Coyle, Peter Garside, Malcolm Kelsall, and John Peck. Detroit, MI; New York: Gale Research, 1991. 1172-1175. Discusses Atwood as both part of and different from the Ontario literary tradition; touches on her feminism and her cultural nationalism with the message that no writer can be neutral regarding the issues of society.

  725.NISCHIK, Reingard M. Mentalstilistik: Ein Beitrag zu Stiltheorie und Narrativik dargestellt am Erzählwerk Margaret Atwoods. Tübingen: Narr, 1991. Atwood’s works are considered in terms of choice of words, transitive systems, syntax, types of narrative transmission and mental stylistics, speech acts and mental stylistics, and sexist versus non-sexist language.