Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood
- The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Editions Used
- Abbreviations
- Margaret Atwood Chronology
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Margaret Atwood in Her Canadian Context
- Chapter 2 Margaret Atwood on Questions of Power
- Chapter 3 Home and Nation in Margaret Atwood’s Later Fiction
- Chapter 4 Margaret Atwood’s Female Bodies
- Chapter 5 Margaret Atwood and Environmentalism
- Chapter 6 Margaret Atwood and History
- Chapter 7 Margaret Atwood’s Revisions of Classic Texts
- Chapter 8 Margaret Atwood’s Humor
- Chapter 9 Margaret Atwood’s Poetry and Poetics
- Chapter 10 Margaret Atwood’s Later Short Fiction
- Chapter 11 Margaret Atwood’s Recent Dystopias
- Chapter 12 The Hulu and MGM Television Adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
Chapter 4 - Margaret Atwood’s Female Bodies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 March 2021
- The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood
- The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Editions Used
- Abbreviations
- Margaret Atwood Chronology
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Margaret Atwood in Her Canadian Context
- Chapter 2 Margaret Atwood on Questions of Power
- Chapter 3 Home and Nation in Margaret Atwood’s Later Fiction
- Chapter 4 Margaret Atwood’s Female Bodies
- Chapter 5 Margaret Atwood and Environmentalism
- Chapter 6 Margaret Atwood and History
- Chapter 7 Margaret Atwood’s Revisions of Classic Texts
- Chapter 8 Margaret Atwood’s Humor
- Chapter 9 Margaret Atwood’s Poetry and Poetics
- Chapter 10 Margaret Atwood’s Later Short Fiction
- Chapter 11 Margaret Atwood’s Recent Dystopias
- Chapter 12 The Hulu and MGM Television Adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
Summary
This chapter, which considers selected Atwood texts over fifty years, focuses on sexual politics in her representations of women’s attempts to define and reclaim possession of their own bodies and identities. Within a framework that includes feminist theorists Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray, Joan Riviere, Andrea Dworkin, Susan Bordo, and Wendy Harcourt, the chapter considers the psychological and sociopolitical implications of body denigration. Signaling Atwood’s enduring motif of the disappearing female body without free will, from the early “mud poem” (1974), the chapter explores varieties of women’s self-obliteration and bodily reclamation in The Edible Woman and Lady Oracle, Gilead’s patriarchal domination over female bodies in The Handmaid’s Tale, women’s often ineffectual resistance to bodily objectification in Cat’s Eye and The Blind Assassin, and disturbing futuristic speculations on the possibility of complete possession of female bodies in Oryx and Crake and The Heart Goes Last through biotechnology and robotics.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood , pp. 61 - 75Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021
- 1
- Cited by