Margaret Atwood’s Feminist Ethics of Gracious Housewifery

Tammy Amiel Houser The Open University, Israel

Margaret Atwood’s oeuvre has often been acclaimed for its complex representation of social, political, national, and environmental issues. Critics have frequently commented on Atwood’s engagement, in her genre-crossing and multilayered writing, with power relations, mainly those that establish sexual and gender hierarchies and trap women in victimizing practices.1 However, some of Atwood’s fictional texts suggest more than just a critical reflection on the negative aspects of such contemporary power relations. In this essay I argue that a positive ethical vision of hospital- ity emerges in recent Atwood texts. Focusing on her novel (2000) and her short story “The Art of Cooking and Serving” (2006), I point to a dialogue between Atwood’s literary treatment of hos- pitality and the philosophical idea of hospitality suggested by Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. This correlation need not indicate a di- rect influence, but Levinas’s and Derrida’s works offer a theoretical way for exploring Atwood’s complex ethical vision of gracious hospitality. Atwood, however, deals with the ethics of hospitality from a feminist perspective and through female protagonists, in narratives that contest women’s role as hostesses and critique the self-sacrifice that women’s caretaking obligations entail. Therefore, Atwood’s fiction may also pro- vide an indirect comment on Levinas’s and Derrida’s ideas of radical hospitality. Atwood rewrites the feminine myth of gracious housewifery in sev- eral ways, both disrupting the stereotypical association between women and selfless giving and signifying an ethics of nurturance and generos- ity. The dual movement, a critique of women’s domestic servitude along with an ethical endorsement of the idea of generous hospitality, estab- lishes fascinating tensions in Atwood’s fiction.

1 Reingard M. Nischik, for example, stresses “Atwood’s involvement with gender in all genres” (3). Fiona Tolan’s reading of Atwood’s fiction also focuses on Atwood’s feminist politics. On sexual politics in Atwood’s work, see Wilson 2003: xi–xv; see also Howells 1987: 53–56.

Partial Answers 11/1: 109–132 © 2013 The Johns Hopkins University Press 110 Tammy Amiel Houser “The Art of Cooking and Serving” is a story of female initiation, the second in the segmented journey-through-life that (2006) constructs in its eleven interconnected tales. The story portrays the growth and transformation of its unnamed narrator, probably the young Nell of the following stories, after her sister’s birth. As the story reaches its end, the fourteen-year-old protagonist works up the courage to refuse her mother’s request to calm her baby sister, after many days of soothing and rocking her and otherwise helping with household chores. Finally, the protagonist demands bluntly “Why should I?” — consequently feel- ing “as if released from an enchantment” and “no longer compelled to do service” (23). This ending is pitted against the narrator’s earlier enchantment with an old cookbook bearing the eponymous title The Art of Cooking and Serving. This cookbook, by Sarah Field Splint, becomes the narrator’s “favorite book” (17) in the anxious days before her baby sister is born. The cookbook glorifies the same homemaking servitude against which the narrator eventually rebels. In the beginning of the story she obses- sively knits a layette for the new baby, sweeps the floor exhaustively, and absorbs Splint’s traditional feminine knowledge. What is it that the young protagonist, eleven years old when told about her mother’s unplanned pregnancy, finds in this obsolete cook- book to which she is “entirely” devoted (17)? Why does she turn to it repeatedly, in her desperate moments of loneliness, in her apprehension about her mother’s “dangerous condition” (12)? The answer is found in the first chapters of the cookbook, which deal with “the proper conduct of life” (18) and offer strict advice on perfect housewifery. This meticu- lous advice, “from the olden days” (17), suggests a clear organization of the domestic sphere, precisely what the narrator needs in these times of dramatic change, confusion, and dread. Furthermore, the young narrator links the elegant hospitality preached in the cookbook to the entertain- ment of dream guests: “How I longed for a breakfast tray with a couple of daffodils in a bud vase, as pictured, or a tea table at which to entertain ‘a few choice friends’ — who would these friends be?” (18). The new- born about to arrive is a contrast to this dream: an uninvited arrival, trail- ing danger and trouble rather than a prospect of peaceful times, elegance, and choice company. The baby is the unknown, the crisis that lies ahead. Splint’s cookbook offers the calming belief that proper housewifery can cope with anything, solve any problem, remove any stain, and transform even the untidiest house into a charming home, where amiable guests are kindly served. Margaret Atwood’s Feminist Ethics of Gracious Housewifery 111

The promise of improvement and transformation is emphasized in the second chapter of the cookbook, which refers to “The House with a Servant” and explains how to transform an inexperienced maid into “a well-groomed, professional servant” (19). For the narrator, fascinated by the two images of the servant-girl, this promised transformation has the quality of a mythical metamorphosis. She confesses envy of the maid: “She was already transformed, and had no more decisions to make” (19). Thinking about her own growing up, she lingers on the issue of transfor- mation: “Transform was the word I seized on. Did I want to transform, or to be transformed? Was I to be the kind homemaker, or the formerly un- tidy maid? I hardly knew” (19). The narrator seems to consider her own identity formation in terms of feminine subjection and class division: she sees but two options, the maid or the homemaker. This coincides with the maternal nurturing roles she is charged with. Thus, the story “renders tra- ditional gender roles in problematic terms, showing these roles to work against the independence and freedom of choice particularly of women” (Nischik 86). At the end of the story, the protagonist seems to reject these limited options, never to return to them, as we see in the subsequent sto- ries in the collection. Significantly, the movement towards the decision “I was no longer compelled to do service” (23) reappears in Atwood’s collection of po- ems The Door, but there it is combined with an opposite ethical claim of the subject’s inescapable obligation to the other. The poems “Duti- ful” (2009a) and “String Tail” (2009b) both offer quasi-autobiographical narratives of submissive helpfulness and ensuing struggles for freedom. “Dutiful” poignantly asks: “How did I get so dutiful?” and describes the narrator’s “slavery” of “sweeping up dirt [she] didn’t make.” The speak- er admits, “I didn’t perform these duties willingly / I wanted to be on the river, or dancing,”2 and recounts her mature decision to change: “But I’ve resigned.” “I’ve decided to wear sunglasses, and a necklace / adorned with the gold word No” (111). Her feminine accessory represents the narrator’s new defiant self — striving for freedom, she says she wishes to “eat flowers I didn’t grow” (112). The speaking “I” of “String Tail” also puts forth a dramatic confession: “I used to have helpfulness tacked

2 A similar complaint is heard in an earlier poem, “In the Secular Night,” in Atwood’s poetry collection Morning in the Burned House (1995). In that poem, the narrator describes a sixteen-year-old girl who wishes to go out and dance, but knows that “you had to baby-sit” (6). 112 Tammy Amiel Houser onto me like a fake string tail on a mangled dog” (113); eventually she announces her revolt: “Take everything and then I’m free” (114). The difference between Atwood’s recent portrayal of the feminist struggle for autonomy and her widespread critique of women’s oppres- sion in earlier works is most striking in the last stanza of “Dutiful.” The poem’s final lines point to the fundamental responsibility of the self in her relations with others, from which the speaker cannot resign. It comes as a surprise, expressed in a long and fragmented question (112): Still, why do I feel so responsible for the wailing from shattered houses, for birth defects and unjust wars, and the soft, unbearable sadness filtering down from distant stars? Atwood’s critical portrayal of women’s submission to the domestic roles of dutiful dirt-sweepers or obedient wagging dogs does not cancel her in- creased awareness of the essential human knot of responsibility towards others. The protesting speaker of “Dutiful,” who categorically decides to quit her feminine responsiveness to others, discovers, to her amazement, that she is doomed to acknowledge “the unbearable sadness” of distant others, without being able to dissociate herself from them. In “String Tail,” similarly, the speaker reveals that she is doomed to give absolutely everything she has to that other from whom she tries to disengage herself. Atwood’s view of irrefutable responsibility is also expressed, though less explicitly, in “The Art of Cooking and Serving.” While recounting how she rejected and escaped the feminine burden of providing for others and of being the hospitable domestic servant, the narrator is actually tell- ing a different story, that of her subjectivity as contingent on hospitality. Indeed, her story is caught between, on the one hand, her mutiny against the feminine role of caregiver and, on the other hand, the ethical idea of the self’s un-chosen responsibility for another. The bond of responsibil- ity and care is displayed in the protagonist’s lifelong and inescapable obligation to her younger sister, represented not only here but also in the two subsequent stories in Moral Disorder, “The Headless Horseman” and “White Horse,” which continue to follow the sisters’ relations as they grow up. These stories reinforce the understanding that once the bond of hospitality and care is constituted, the protagonist cannot avoid being addressed and called upon by her sister, and becomes repeatedly answerable to and for her. The photographed maid in Splint’s cookbook hints at this fundamental condition of being responsive, despite oneself, to the imperative call of another. Margaret Atwood’s Feminist Ethics of Gracious Housewifery 113

Furthermore, although the “The Art of Cooking and Serving” portrays the protagonist rebelling against the imposed role of caregiver, it also re- veals her deep yearning to be the recipient of exactly this kind of care and nurture. This is displayed in her attachment to Splint’s cookbook, with its ideal home and comforting housewifery, and to her mother’s handwritten notes inside (cf. 18). Indeed, in Atwood’s story the cookbook serves as a reassuring reminder of maternal affection, nurturance and care, which can defeat even the most painful experiences, transforming them with the help of loving concern. In the story “The Other Place” in the same collection, Splint’s ideal home is evoked by the narrator’s wishful fantasy. Now a young woman, autonomous and restless, she confesses to her “shameful desire” for a “cozy family life” in “a white house with frilly window curtains” (79). Again, the protagonist betrays a wish to become “a mother who wore an apron and did baking” (79); this fantasy reveals her strong predilection for the domestic ideal of perfect housewifery, although she feels that this dream is naïve and “shameful.” A similar attachment to this domes- tic model is apparent in Atwood’s prose-poem “Bring Back Mom: An Invocation,” from (2006), which requests: “Bring back Mom, / bread-baking Mom, in her crisp gingham apron” (105). Although the poem clearly declares its feminist critique of the “Mom” icon by portray- ing its destructive effects on women, it also reveals, non-ironically, the wonderful promise that this ideal still carries along. The “bread-baking Mom” is endowed with magical powers of healing and repairing: once she is back, “the holes in the world will be mended” (111). This magical transformation of the world is exactly what the pro- tagonist of “The Art of Cooking and Serving” longs for, at a time when she feels abandoned by her own pregnant and exhausted mother, whose roles she is now required to fill. Therefore, Splint’s cookbook serves her not only as “a conduct manual” (McWilliams 130) but also as a consol- ing fairy tale that calms her with its promise of maternal housewifery as the mythical solution to every trouble and distress. Since in “The Art of Cooking and Serving,” as in many other stories in Moral Disorder, life is always threatened by “Bad News” (the title of the first story), by grief and disappointment, unexpected trouble, and deterioration of the aging human body, the promise of Splint’s fresh doilies, clean linen, and charming mealtimes does not lose its attractiveness. It indicates the pos- sibility of an aesthetic transformation, almost a mythical metamorphosis, and a redemption of the material world by means of a generous care of and hospitality to another. 114 Tammy Amiel Houser

Atwood’s ethical view of hospitality and the tensions it produces are more extensively dealt with in her novel The Blind Assassin. Through the confessional memoir of an elderly narrator who recounts her lifelong involvement with her younger sister and reveals her enduring feeling of guilt for the sister’s early death, Atwood stages an engagement with the idea of imposed responsibility. Depicting the protagonist’s struggles with the patriarchal familial restrictions imposed on her at home, while at the same time emphasizing her involuntary bond with her younger sister, the novel presents subjectivity as invaded by alterity, enlisted by and in- debted to the Other. The subject is presented as “bound in a knot that can- not be undone in a responsibility for others” (Levinas 2000: 105 [“il se noue indénouable dans une responsabilité pour les autres,” 2004: 167]). Interestingly, The Blind Assassin also alludes to an old cookbook — The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook by Fannie Merritt Farmer (1896) — to address the notion of hospitality and explore its positive, if conflictual, ethical meanings. In Totality and Infinity (2002[1961]), Levinas configures hospitality as the basic relation between the subject and the Other, a relation of re- sponsibility and responsiveness to the singularity of a fellow human be- ing. Rewriting the privileged role of “home” in Heidegger’s philosophy, Levinas makes it a precondition for the Self’s openness to the demands of the Other.3 Levinas assigns a crucial role to the notion of “home” both in the constitution of the Self as “at home with oneself” (chez-soi)4 and in the ethical relation of welcoming the singular Other (autrui).5 Levinas states: “I welcome the Other who presents himself in my home by open- ing my home to him” (2002: 171),6 and later asserts: “The possibility for the home to open to the Other is as essential to the essence of the home

3 Responding to Heidegger, Levinas writes: “The privileged role of the home does not consist in being the end of human activity but in being its condition, and in this sense its commencement” (2002: 152). See also Levinas’s remark in 1998: 117–18. 4 In the chapter of Totality and Infinity entitled “The Dwelling” (2002: 152–74), Levinas lingers on the substantive role of La demeure (habitation/dwelling) in allowing the subject to establish his or her interiority: recollection, contemplation and representation constitute the subject’s distinctive individual identity as chez-soi (see in the original, Levinas 2003: 162–189). 5 See Derrida 1999a on the importance of the notion of “home” for Levinas’s ethics of hospitality. 6 “J’accueille autrui qui se présente dans ma maison en lui ouvrant ma maison” (Levinas 2003: 185). Margaret Atwood’s Feminist Ethics of Gracious Housewifery 115 as closed doors and windows” (2002: 173 [aussi essentielle à l’essence de la maison que les portes et les fenêtres closes,” 2003: 188]). Human subjectivity is thus represented as approachable, penetrable and answer- able — able to “open” itself to the Other, like the home’s entrances.7 Indeed, according to Levinas, although you can try and shut yourself away, you are permanently called by another, who knocks at your doors and windows, asking to be let in, demanding endless giving and obliga- tion. The “home” metaphor captures the essential human condition of be- ing exposed to the singular Other, while assuming responsibility for this Other’s well-being without necessarily having any conscious, rational intention of doing so or free will in the matter. A repeated image in Levinas’s Otherwise than Being or Beyond Es- sence (2000 [1974]) illustrates this ethics of radical responsibility for the Other in a way that can provide an indirect comment on The Blind Assassin. The image of taking the bread out of the subject’s own mouth and handing it to the hungry stranger recurs in Otherwise than Being (56, 72, 74, 77, 79); it signifies the corporeal immediacy of hospitality and its excessiveness. Levinas explains it by quoting from Isaiah 58: It is not a gift of the heart, but of the bread from one’s mouth, of one’s own mouthful of bread. It is the openness, not only of one’s pocketbook, but of the doors of one’s home (au dela’ du porte-monnaie — des portes de son logis [2004: 120]), a “sharing of your bread with the famished,” a “welcoming of the wretched into your house.” (2000: 74) This deep generosity in Levinas’s ethics alludes to what Jacques Der- rida terms “unconditional hospitality,” the duty of absolute welcome that is imposed on the host when faced with an unknown visitor.8 Derrida’s discussion of hospitality makes an important distinction between con- ditional hospitality, which involves the invitation of a known guest and assumes the powerful rights of the host as the master of the home, and absolute or unconditional hospitality, in which the host is surprised by an unexpected stranger and asked to accept him or her without any restric- tions or sovereignty.9 As Derrida explains,

7 On Levinas’s conception of subjectivity, see Critchley 62–77, 188–91; Batnitzky 6–21. 8 Derrida’s engagement with hospitality is central to his late writings from the 1990s on, especially Of Hospitality (2000); “Hospitality,” in Acts of Religion (2002); “Adieu” (1999b) and “A Word of Welcome” (1999a). On the connections between Derrida’s and Levinas’s concept of “hospitality,” see Plant 438–44, and Wyschogrod 36–41. 9 In “Hospitality” Derrida distinguishes between hospitality as invitation, which is estab- lished and controlled by the host, and hospitality as visitation (2002: 362), which involves 116 Tammy Amiel Houser

absolute hospitality requires that I open up my home and that I give not only to the foreigner . . . but to the absolute, unknown, anonymous other, and that I give place to them, that I let them come, that I let them arrive, and take place in the place I offer them, without asking of them either reciprocity (entering into a pact) or even their names. (2000: 25) This idea alludes to the dangers involved in offering hospitality to the stranger who may turn out to be an enemy or a parasite. Consequently, conditional hospitality is a social practice based on a set of laws, rights and duties that aim to protect the host against such dangers.10 The notion of unconditional hospitality, however, indicates that the hosting subject is vulnerable, hosting absolutely with infinite generosity, to a degree of becoming “hostage” to the Other (Levinas 2000: 112).11 The conflict- ing relations between hospitality as a virtue and the possibility of being invaded by the other-as-parasite are useful in understanding Atwood’s treatment of this theme in The Blind Assassin.12 Exploring Levinas’s ethics of hospitality, Derrida also addresses his problematically androcentric connection of femininity to the intimacy of the home (1999a: 36–45). Extensive feminist criticism has targeted this subject, referring to Levinas’s comment, “The woman is the condition for recollection, the interiority of the Home, and inhabitation” (2002: 155).13 Indeed, in Totality and Infinity the woman functions as a principle of inti- macy and familiarity that provides man with the necessary means for his ethical transcendence. The woman establishes the domestic sphere and

the radical exposure of the subject-host to the coming of the “absolutely unforeseeable [inan- ticipable] stranger” (2002: 361). The deconstructive contradiction between the two becomes his main interest in his diverse writings on hospitality. 10 On the dangers that threaten the host and the laws of conditional hospitality see Derrida’s chapter “Foreigner Question” in Of Hospitality, 3–74. 11 On the relations between the host and the other-as-parasite see J. Hillis Miller’s influ- ential essay “The Critic as a Host,” in which he interprets the conflicting meanings of the words “host,” “guest,” and “parasite.” 12 The idea of the “other-as-parasite” is prominent in Atwood’s earlier novel (1993), where the generous hospitality of Tony, Charis, and Roz allows malicious, vampiric Zenia to insinuate herself into their lives as their “friend,” feed off them, and cause them great harm. 13 “La femme est la condition du recueillement, de l’intériorité’ de la Maison et de l’habitation” (2003: 166). Many writers in the collection Feminist Interpretation of Em- manuel Levinas critique this association of habitation and the feminine. See Perpich 46–48; Brody 59; Sikka 102; Katz 2001: 147–149; and Sandford 2001: 180–199. For more general feminist criticism of Levinas, see Sandford 2000. Margaret Atwood’s Feminist Ethics of Gracious Housewifery 117 the initial welcome, which then allows the (masculine) subject to offer hospitality to the absolute stranger.14 This familiar association of women with domesticity and its andro- centric assumptions about women’s homey roles are often represented but also repudiated in Atwood’s fiction.15 Atwood is very critical of “the typical female image of nourishment and generosity” (Nischik 64),16 as seen, for example, in her short satirical piece “The Little Red Hen Tells All,” included in and Simple Murders (1994). In this funny version of the old folktale, narrated by the hen, Atwood parodies the capitalist ethos of production and individual hard work (“Do it yourself” [13]) together with its implicit expectations of feminine altruism. The little red hen tells us about her decision to behave like a good hen, “not a rooster,” and offer her loaf of bread — the product of her own hard work — to all the other animals: “Have some more. Have mine” (15). Atwood’s use of the bread-loaf image in this short story and her more recent elaboration of it in The Blind Assassin attest to the development of her ethical view in her late fiction.The Blind Assassin does not stop at criticizing women’s traditional role of baking and serving the bread, but indicates the ethical possibilities inherent in it. Remarkably, the figure of the bread-loaf recurs in another prose piece, “Bread,” first published in 1981 and then included in Good Bones and Simple Murders. This short text confronts the reader with moral dilemmas regarding the sharing of a loaf of bread, but it avoids issues of gender by using the second-person narrative.17 In The Blind Assassin Atwood engages again with the ethical mean- ings of the loaf of bread, but here she relates them clearly to the feminine figure of the “loaf-giver” and to women’s homemaking practices. Her novel thus reclaims the ethos of feminine nurturance and openhanded

14 Derrida suggests that Levinas’s ideas in Totality and Infinity can be understood as re- ferring not to women but to sexual difference itself; this reading makes Levinas’s text almost a feminist one (Derrida 1999a: 43–45). Stella Sandford, however, rejects Derrida’s bid to save Levinas from the anti-feminist label; see Sandford 2002: 154–55. 15 For feminist critique of the oppressive relations between women, home, and homeland, see George; Mohanty and Martin; and Strehle; the latter refers to Atwood’s challenging of this cultural association (53–76). See also Rao 100–113. 16 For a critical analysis of the traditional conceptualization of “generosity,” its oppres- sive gendered assumptions, and its effects on the subordination of women, see Diprose. 17 Atwood previously engaged with the material and symbolic meanings of bread in her early short poem “All Bread,” collected in Two-Headed Poems (1978). This poem also avoids any gender-specific discourse. 118 Tammy Amiel Houser hospitality. However, Atwood seems careful not to equate women with generous loaf-giving in an essentialist way. Rather, using various poetical strategies that include intertextuality, multiple plots, and fairy-tale and mythical allusions, in The Blind Assassin Atwood portrays the virtues of feminine hospitality as transcending gendered identities and moving away from the domestic sphere. She thus suggests a broad, almost mythi- cal vision of hope and generosity in a world of indifference, distress, and threatening calamities.18 In the confessional memoir that forms the novel’s frame story, Iris Chase-Griffen, the elderly protagonist-narrator of The Blind Assassin, recounts her growing realization of the oppressive hegemonic powers that operate in and through the private sphere of the home. The novel’s heterogeneous form moves between her story and an embedded narra- tive, allegedly authored by her sister Laura but eventually revealed as Iris’s own work. This embedded novel, also titled “The Blind Assassin,” contains the sensational story of an erotic love affair between two un- named lovers, probably though not necessarily based on the extramarital relations between Iris and the radical social activist Alex Thomas.19 The different narratives that comprise The Blind Assassin also include news- paper clippings; they provide a more public perspective on the historical setting which stretches from World War I to the late 1990s. Included within Laura’s novel are fantastic science-fiction stories that the mysteri- ous lover tells his wealthy and nameless beloved, suggesting an alternate alien reality that critically reflects the Canadian society of the 1930s.20 All these various layers contribute to making The Blind Assassin “a mo- saic of the past” (Wilson 2002: 271) or “an intricately designed literary puzzle” (Bouson 251), which blurs the boundaries between the private domestic sphere and collective history and points to their shared oppres-

18 Another recent example of the notion of hospitality and its altruistic command of giv- ing the last loaf to the Other is found in the conclusion of Atwood’s 2009 novel, . This somber dystopia ends with a scene describing a “grateful” feast (431) in which the starving protagonists share their “only two cups” of soup (430) with their attack- ers, the “Painballers.” This image of generosity and nourishment seems to suggest that such hospitality is the only hope left for the human species in dark times. 19 Most critics have interpreted the embedded Blind Assassin as recording Iris and Alex’s love affair (see Stein 147). Nevertheless, since Iris’s reliability is questionable, we are left with the possibility that she is lying, and “motivated by jealousy of the affair with Alex which Laura’s novel records” (Robinson 355). See also Wilson 2008: 79–80, 81. 20 The science-fiction stories have been interpreted by critics as an allegory of both Iris’s life and Canadian social tensions of the period. See Staels 153, Robinson 348, and Tolan 258. Margaret Atwood’s Feminist Ethics of Gracious Housewifery 119 sion of women in and by the patriarchal system of twentieth-century capitalist Canada.21 The oppressive capitalist modus is worked out in the domestic Avil- ion — Iris’s childhood residence — portrayed as a fancy mansion rather than a cozy home (382).22 For the young Iris and Laura, Avilion is a lonely place where their mother died in childbirth, leaving them in their father’s hands “as if we were some kind of a smear” (383). Their sense of abandonment is compounded by the emotional and physical violence they suffer in this unprotecting house.23 After Iris’s marriage to the suc- cessful industrialist Richard Griffen — a marriage that her father, Nor- val, forces on her when he fears the impending bankruptcy of his button factory — both sisters move to Griffen’s house. This alienated location never becomes a comforting home either; rather, it is a place from which Iris tries to get away (319). It is here that Iris finds out, albeit only af- ter Laura’s death, that her sister was raped by Richard more than once. Thus the novel exposes “home” as a place of violence and aggression, blindness and denial, which lead to the exploitation and sacrifice of the helpless — a theme that runs through both Iris’s memoir and the parallel science-fiction narratives.24 This motif reminds us that “[h]omes are not about inclusions and wide open arms as much as they are about places carved out of closed doors, closed borders and screening apparatuses” (George 18). Therefore, it is significant that the love affair in the embedded nov- el never takes place in a “home.” The lovers meet in different hiding places described as cheap, shabby, and dilapidated, lacking the stabil- ity of a home and its supposed connotations of security and intimate attachment.25 It is in one of these “un-homed” places that the woman feels herself receiving the generous hospitality of Levinas’s mouthful of

21 On the patriarchal abuse of women in the different plots, see Stein 135–53, Tolan 262–63, and Bouson 255, 268. 22 Avilion was designed and decorated by her pretentious grandmother as an act of hom- age to the greatness of far-away, longed-for England (61), and it is viewed by Iris as “a mer- chant’s palace” (58). On the imperial aspects of Avilion, see Strehle 57–63, Rao 100–101. 23 Home is where both sisters are gravely humiliated by their cruel tutor, Mr. Erskin, who sexually molests Laura. On the oppressive aspects of “Home” in the novel, see Strehle 59–63. 24 On the motif of sacrifice in the different plots of The Blind Assassin, see Stein 136, 146–47. 25 “Is this where you’re living? she says. . . . This is where I’m staying, he says. It’s a different thing” (109). 120 Tammy Amiel Houser bread. The experience is, for her, striking and almost embarrassing, as she notices the bed in this decrepit place and sees the efforts that the man has made to put it in order: “She almost wishes he hadn’t, because seeing this causes her a pang of something like pity, as if a starving peasant has offered her his last piece of bread” (111). This metaphoric offering of bread is echoed in the “Loaf Givers” chapter of the novel, which brings the image of bread-giving, itself an allusion to a cookbook, into high relief. This chapter (180–90) focuses on a Labor Day dinner held in 1934, shortly before Iris’s father goes bankrupt. As Iris recalls, this day “was the only time all of us were ever in the same room together” (180). The guests include the wealthy Rich- ard Griffen, his arrogant sister, Norval’s companion, and Alex Thomas, a strange visitor from out of town, invited unexpectedly by young Laura.26 The extravagant dinner turns out to be a ridiculous presentation of bad food, served unprofessionally, accompanied by intense dispute, political disagreement, and insulting remarks. It is a poor illustration of hospital- ity, but an excellent illumination of the material concerns and the exer- cise of power involved in such a conventional opening of one’s doors. Norval, head of the household and authoritative host, invites the Griffens in order to obtain financial assistance for his collapsing busi- ness. His offering of hospitality is therefore instrumental, intended to present him as the dignified master of both his home and his factory (despite its current problems), a worthy individual with whom it will be rewarding to do business. This kind of hospitality is clearly different from that imposed on him by the unknown Alex, who is introduced to the house by Laura. In Norval’s mind, Laura’s act has broken the rules of his empire: “Laura had jumped the gun and usurped his own position as host, and next thing he knew she’d be inviting every orphan and bum and hard-luck case to his dinner table as if he was Good King Wenceslas” (182). Laura’s naïve behavior is treated as if it were a declaration of war against her father’s authority. As the master of his own house, only he has the right to offer hospitality or, instead, to pull the doors shut. His position fits Derrida’s analysis of conditional hospitality as a paternal exercise of power and self-affirmation, in which the host asserts his pre- rogative selectively to choose or exclude (cf. 2000: 55). In addition, in

26 On Alex’s otherness, see Strehle 64–67. Strehle concludes that although Alex stirs everyone’s emotions in both the domestic and public spheres, he fails to pose any real chal- lenge to the political power relations represented in the novel. Margaret Atwood’s Feminist Ethics of Gracious Housewifery 121 his anger at Laura, Norval reveals his financial and social frustration, for he was indeed used to thinking of himself as Good King Wenceslas who generously supported his subjects (in Port Ticonderoga), a position that is no longer available to him (see also 224). The novel places Norval’s hospitality in its socio-historical context, Canada of the 1930s: the old industrial order, embodied by the Chases’ button factory with its concern for its workers, is about to be replaced by the cruel modern capitalism of Richard Griffen, characterized by absolute indifference to the misery of his dependents. Responsibility for the dinner is entrusted to the weary hands of Ren- nie, the housekeeper, who knows nothing about elegant dinner parties but does make a real effort (helped by the girls) to prepare an impres- sive meal. The result, however, is more than disappointing: the many pompous courses are as bad in taste as in appearance, demanding endless “mastication” (186). Dinner is served by Rennie’s elderly cousin, who appears in her untidy clothes, with dirty hands and an aggressive man- ner (184). Aggression is also evident in the conversation that follows the tense chewing, when Alex recounts his visit to the labor camps for the unemployed and his impression of the growing famine and anger there. The Griffens’ contempt for him is clear (“I’m told the food’s not bad,” says the hostile Richard [188]), and the dispute almost brings the event to a point of explosion — but “just then the bomb glaceé made an entrance” (188), attention is diverted to the strange dessert, and the mastication that is once again required. In this context, the motif of the “Loaf Givers” in the chapter’s title is conspicuous. It seems to indicate a completely different frame of ref- erence than that of the hospitality realistically described in the chapter against the background of the Great Depression. We soon discover that the motif alludes to the writings of John Ruskin, the English author, philosopher, art critic, and social reformer, whose words appear in the epigraph to one of Grandmother Adelia’s cookbooks (the one by Fannie Merritt Farmer), which Rennie consults when preparing the important dinner (180). Recalling it, Iris quotes Ruskin: “Cookery means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of Helen and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices, and all that is healing and sweet in the fields and groves and savory in meats. It means carefulness and inventiveness and willingness and readiness of appliances. It means the economy of your grandmothers and the science of the modern chemist; it means testing and no wasting; it means English thoroughness and French and Arabian hospi- 122 Tammy Amiel Houser

tality; and, in fine, it means that you are to be perfectly and always ladies — loaf givers.” (Atwood 2001: 181) This praise of cookery appears in the 1866 The Ethics of the Dust: Ten Lectures to Little Housewives on the Elements of Crystallization, a book in which Ruskin instructs young girls by answering their various ques- tions about life and its perplexities.27 Despite the book’s lightweight ti- tle (“Little Housewives”), Ruskin’s arguments are seriously posited; as Dinah Birch explains, their intellectual impulse is set against modern science’s positivism and suggests considering “the physical world as an ethical phenomenon” (116). The above quotation is an answer to the little girl Mary, who asks her revered wise educator, “What does ‘cooking’ mean?” (Ruskin 1916: 122). Ruskin’s philosophical and poetic answer, which Farmer chooses to appropriate and incorporate into her practical cookbook (and which At- wood then incorporates into the novel), may reveal him to be a Victorian patriarch, just as described by Kate Millett in Sexual Politics (1970).28 Seeing the domestic mission of cooking as essentially the realm of wom- en, Ruskin’s words seem to grant a mythological and moral justification to women’s traditional role as the preparers and servers of food. This would appear to match Ruskin’s known conceptualization of woman- hood in his famous lecture “Of Queen’s Gardens” (published in 1865 in Sesame and Lilies), in which he applauds “woman’s true place and power” in the domestic sphere (1901, section 69, 109), after presenting home as “the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt and division” (section 68, 108). Ruskin traced the Old-English root of the word “lady” to “loaf-giver,” which he stressed as bearing ethical significance (section 88, 133). Ruskin’s view of the perfect lady, together with other known Victo- rian images of selfless, graceful, angelic femininity (notably Coventry Patmore’s “The Angel in the House”) have been severely criticized by feminist scholars (see Gilbert and Gubar 20). However, Ruskin’s writ- ings have also been reinterpreted and reclaimed as subverting common gendered notions and suggesting complex, often contradictory views of womanhood and women’s duties in both the domestic and the public

27 On Ruskin’s The Ethics of the Dust, see Weltman 124–48. 28 Millett’s criticism of Ruskin’s sexist views focuses on his “Of Queen’s Gardens,” which she sees as revealing his unequivocal Victorian patriarchal conservatism regarding women’s nature and social roles (89). Margaret Atwood’s Feminist Ethics of Gracious Housewifery 123 spheres.29 Atwood, in her witty parodist’s manner, directs our attention to the multiple meanings and effects of Ruskin’s words. First, Iris draws an amusing picture of these mythological heroines actually cooking: “I found it difficult to picture Helen of Troy in an apron, with her sleeves rolled up to the elbow and her cheek dabbled with flour” (181). This image highlights the gap between Ruskin’s sublime description and the real physical labor of cooking. Iris then considers Circe and Medea, who used their magical talents to prepare poisoned food, hinting at the deadly powers of the cooking woman. Furthermore, in what seems to be a feminist Kate-Millett kind of approach, Iris points to the regulative function of the cookbook, with its glorification of women’s hospitality in the masculine, authoritative voice of Ruskin. Referring to her grandmother Adelia and her female friends, Iris notes the political effectiveness of the book and the appeal of Ruskin’s words to its female readers, who were induced to passively accept their domestic role of hospitable housewives (181). Moreover, Iris stresses the oppressive effects of the image of the angelic British hostess — the “lady” — on the white middle-class Canadian wife, frequently de- picted in Atwood’s writing as a participant “in the wealth and privilege of the house but not in control of it” (Strehle 54). In Iris’s story, the “lady” is revealed as one of those imperialist myths inherited from (Ruskin’s) British culture, designed to cultivate and restrain women in the Cana- dian colonies. These “unapproachable, regal even” ladies (181), often assisted, like Iris and her grandmother, by lower-class women servants, exercised their housewifery in the hierarchical and imperial organiza- tion of the house, which they preserved through the routine practices and feminine dedication applauded by Ruskin.30 Nevertheless, Iris’s attachment to Farmer’s cookbook and her read- ing and rereading of Ruskin’s “curious” words (181) made prominent by the chapter’s title, point to the ethical significance of the cookbook. This is further emphasized when Iris’s reflections on the cookbook and on

29 Dinah Birch, 107–19, argues against the common view of Ruskin as a patriarchal thinker who advocates the inferiority of women. See also Weltman’s reading of Ruskin’s gender subversions, 103–23. 30 Some hundred pages later, Iris hints again at the image of the loaf-giver when she explains why she felt she could not leave Richard: “Richard was just a kind of loaf. He was the bread on the table, for Aimee as well as for myself” (479). Iris’s sarcastic words remind us that in order to be a lady she must have the lord’s support and his supply of food. Loaf- giving, Atwood emphasizes, is not separate from the gendered, political, and financial actual- ity of human life but totally embedded in it and determined by it. 124 Tammy Amiel Houser women’s hospitality ends by her endowing the notion of lady with con- notations of royalty and of divine grace: “And on top of that, perfectly and always ladies — loaf givers. The distributors of gracious largesse” (182). Iris’s comment, which equates the “lady” with “loaf-giver,” actu- ally develops Ruskin’s idea of women’s “royal or gracious influence” (1901: 89, section 53). In Iris’s phrasing, the ideal of gracious loaf-giving may seem sarcastic, not only in the context of the Labor Day dinner but also in light of her own selfish, sometimes even malicious attitude to- wards others, and especially her cruel conduct toward her vulnerable and guileless younger sister.31 As we learn from Iris’s confessional narrative, she has since her early childhood felt trapped by the unwanted maternal obligation of having to take care of Laura, and repeatedly tried to reject the feminine image of goodness and helpfulness and to ignore her sis- ter’s misery.32 Iris’s ungracious behavior toward Laura reaches its climax when she turns a blind eye to her sister’s sexual abuse by Richard, and later when Iris tells Laura about her love affair with Alex. Following that disclosure, Laura drives Iris’s car off a bridge and kills herself. Iris’s account of her life — which reveals her rejection of her respon- sibility for Laura, her defiant refusal to be Richard’s devoted housewife (together with her vengeful acts against him), and her failure to be an af- fectionate mother to her only daughter (cf. 433–37) — clearly distances her from the Victorian ideal of the feminine loaf-giver. Nevertheless, her enthusiastic reading of the cookbook and of Ruskin’s quotation in it, and her excited statement about the majestic “gracious largesse” of the lady, reveal her attachment to this feminine ideal. Particularly, they point to Iris’s continuous yearning to become the recipient of such gracious at- tention and care, which her dead mother, whom Iris enormously misses, cannot provide.33 Thus, Atwood’s novel portrays Iris’s conflicted posi- tion between, on the one hand, a firm rejection of the enforced feminine roles of responsible sister, devoted housewife and caring mother, and, on the other, an ethical affirmation of the loaf-giving ideal of these roles, and a deep longing to be on the receiving end of such maternal generos- ity and attention.

31 Arranging the seating for the dinner party, for example, Iris puts Alex Thomas next to herself, while placing Laura “at the far end. That way, I’d felt, he’d be insulated, or at least Laura would” (183). 32 Iris remembers how she felt burdened with the mission of mothering her sister (cf. 93–94), whose presence she experienced as demanding too much attention and care: “I was tired of keeping an eye on Laura. . . . I was tired of being held accountable, period” (173). 33 On Atwood’s absent mothers, see Peled 47–60. Margaret Atwood’s Feminist Ethics of Gracious Housewifery 125

This latter affirmation of loaf-giving generosity is further established if we view the allusion to Ruskin’s mythic and royal femininity as related to the novel’s references to myths and fairy tales.34 It then seems that for Iris, the cookbook serves as a kind of comforting fairy tale, recounting the possibility of human “gracious largesse,” to which she can turn for encouragement and support. This comforting ideal reverberates through- out the novel’s various narratives. It shapes the contrast between the re- ality of vicious selfishness, both personal and political, and the fabulous vision of generous hospitality and benevolence. Such ideas are at play, for example, in the science-fiction story about the blind assassin who, sent to kill a poor, tongue-less sacrificial virgin, surprisingly “extended mercy, for the first time in his life” (270). It is a pivotal fable in the novel, declaring the promise of “gracious largesse,” as the blind assassin dis- plays his own graciousness and acts as a loaf-giver. In the chapter “Loaf Givers,” gracious generosity appears embodied in a wild old plum tree. The elderly Iris mentions that this splendid tree stands “on the other side of the fence” (not belonging to anyone, undo- mesticated) and “blossoms every spring, unasked, untended” (180). Iris recounts her “fondness” for this tree, which so kindly gives her its plenti- ful juicy fruit. It answers her deep desire for openhearted responsiveness and thus makes her wonder about “[s]uch generosity” (180). This natural generosity comes up against the reality of Iris’s damaged life, dominated since her early childhood by the financial interests and selfish pursuits of her family. Having become lonely, morose, and cynical, Iris nevertheless admires the generosity of the uncultivated plum tree, which provides a contrast to the denial and withholding that she knows all too well. Thus, while pointing to the patriarchal beliefs and norms embedded in the Victorian image of the “loaf-giver” and emphasizing their oppres- sive effects on women, Atwood’s novel explores this topos within the historical Canadian context of the Great Depression and looks into its broader ethical possibilities. The novel suggests that “loaf-givers” are not necessarily female: they can be the bread-giving lover, the merciful blind assassin, and the generous plum tree. Through these constructions of hospitality Atwood calls attention to a larger vision of generous, un- limited, and restorative nurturing at work in human life and in the undo-

34 Wilson analyses such mythical allusions (2008: 73–89); Tolan discusses The Blind Assassin’s combination of realistic narrative and a subtext of myth (258–64). See also Shuli Barzilai on Atwood’s original use of the fable form to refer subversively and critically to a realistic context (2008: 127–50). 126 Tammy Amiel Houser mesticated natural world. The feminist importance of this rewriting lies in its transgression of the limits of gender and in re-labeling hospitality as not exclusively feminine, domestic, and private.35 The novel’s ethical vision is further developed in the episode of Lau- ra’s and Iris’s generous hospitality towards Alex, an episode which seems to literalize Ruskin’s ethical figure of “loaf-giving.” Here too the topos undergoes a feminist recasting. Alex’s secret accommodation at Avilion takes place after the closure of Norval’s button factory, the ensuing work- ers’ protests, and the mysterious torching of the factory, with Alex as the main suspect (cf. 208). Once again an unwelcome visitor at Avilion, this time as a fugitive, Alex is brought into the house by the fourteen-year-old Laura, who hides him in the cellar and feeds him out of her own uneaten meals until Iris joins the rescue operation, relocates Alex to the attic, and tends to his needs (cf. 206–21). The sisters’ joint operation seems to fit Ruskin’s ideal of women as “loaf-givers,” especially when Iris alludes to “Mary and Martha, ministering to — well, not Jesus” (216). This “gracious largesse” of young Laura and Iris is in not a case of feminine submission to patriarchal norms but a revolt against them, de- fying as it does their father’s authority in the domestic sphere and the national authorities that are pursuing Alex in the public sphere. Their generous hospitality is exceptional in their social surroundings and in the climate of the Depression with its widespread hunger.36 Escaping regula- tory control, the hosting women break the laws of property (by ignoring trespassing) and the laws of the individualistic economy of exchange and profit-based relations, with which Iris later becomes associated through her marriage to Richard. Moreover, opening the doors to Alex utterly changes the sisters’ lives. Their common attachment to him radically blurs the boundaries between them. Iris and Laura’s portrayal as not entirely distinct37 is manifested mainly through the tale-within-a-tale that records the love affair with Alex without making clear which sister is involved. Thus Iris and Laura’s

35 Ruskin advocates a move from the private home to the public sphere when he urges women to offer comfort and remedy to social miseries in the wider community, outside of their private homes (1901, sections 88–95, 132–43). This suggestion enrages Millett, who regards Ruskin’s attitude as absurd — depriving women of their political and economic rights on the one hand and declaring them responsible for social ills and “solely accountable for morality on the planet” on the other (106). 36 The Blind Assassin describes the miserable poverty of that period, especially during the cold winter of 1935; see 223. 37 See Howells 2003: 41–52; Robinson 355–56; Bouson 267; and Tolan 265. Margaret Atwood’s Feminist Ethics of Gracious Housewifery 127 hospitality takes the novel into what Derrida calls the domain of the “per- haps,” which structures the encounter with the Other (1997: 5): it may be Iris who has the affair with Alex, or it could be Laura, or perhaps it is both. Letting this stranger into their house produces an ambiguity on the level of narration, which finds support in the photographs showing the two sisters with Alex; these images further entangle the sisters’ identities and undermine the realistic frame of the narrative.38 This confusing lack of distinction between the sisters should be seen in relation to the novel’s engagement with the issue of hospitality. As Iris’s narrative unfolds, it becomes clear that her generous tending to Alex was exactly what she had failed to offer her sister when Laura needed it most. Closing herself off from her sister’s suffering, Iris has driven Laura to her horrible death, for which she now suffers tremendous guilt, as hinted at by her question, “Was I my sister’s keeper?” (428), a rephrasing of Cain’s answer to a demanding God. It is through this Bibli- cal quotation that Levinas formulates the basic condition of the Self as hostage to the Other, charged with infinite responsibility for him (2000: 117).39 In Atwood’s work, this question points to Iris’s late recognition of her basic un-chosen obligation to Laura and her sense of having failed to protect her. After Laura’s death, when Iris finds out that her sister was raped by Richard, her immediate reaction is to leave her husband and conceal Laura’s written testimony in her (Iris’s) wedding trunk. Trying to leave her painful past behind, Iris finds herself haunted, obsessively hearing Laura’s voice to the point that she becomes thoroughly intertwined with her dead sister. Thus, the novel points to hospitality as an experience of being invaded by a parasitic other. This same idea emerged earlier from Iris’s sense of being victimized by her obligations to Laura (93), whom she described as “a pest” (94). The alleged co-authorship of the embedded novel (“Laura was my left-hand, and I was hers. We wrote the book together” [513]) suggests Iris’s belated act of allowing Laura a place. This too may be understood in terms of Derrida’s unconditional hospitality, forced on the Self by the demanding Other (cf. 2000: 25). It points to the textual takeover by the Other, as Iris’s act of textual hos- pitality leads to her surrender to her sister’s words. Those words, kept hidden inside Iris’s trunk for so long, now enter Iris’s narrative, make the text polymorphous and heterogeneous, hosting within itself the alterity

38 On the effects of the photographs, see Wilson 2008: 80–85 and Barzilai 2010. 39 On Levinas’s discussion of Cain, see Katz 2010: 171–81. 128 Tammy Amiel Houser of other narratives. Iris’s complex relations with Laura, reflected in both the novel’s plot and in its form, establish the ambivalence of hospitality as both a virtue of generosity and the weakness of excessive submission to the Other’s demands, which may completely dismantle the Self and its body of writing. Hospitality, in its diverse and almost opposite meanings, is also the theme that brings the novel to its conclusion. The short final chapter, “The Threshold” (520–21), represents Iris’s vision of eventually wel- coming Sabrina, her granddaughter, into her house. This happens just before Iris’s death, noted in the previous page as announced in the local newspaper (519). The imagined arrival of Sabrina fulfills, almost miracu- lously, Iris’s fantasy of welcoming the granddaughter she sorely misses (521). As she offers her hands to Sabrina, Iris nevertheless understands that she is not only hosting her granddaughter but also becoming hostage to her: “But I leave myself in your hands. What choice do I have?” (521). These final words allude to the novel’s implication that “subjectivity is hostage, both in the sense of being a hospitable host and also in the sense of being held captive by the other. The other is like a parasite that gets under my skin” (Critchley 66). Still, Iris’s eventual hope is that open- ing her doors to her granddaughter will lead Sabrina to address her as “Grandmother”: “through that one word I will no longer be disowned” (521). Iris’s never-ending yearning is for hospitality as the promise of a healing connection, which offers belonging and generous care. In both The Blind Assassin and “The Art of Cooking and Serving,” hospitality is a wishful dream of gracious attention and loving sup- port, but it is also a commandment built into subjectivity in ways that bind the subject to another in an endless obligation that can sometimes lead to dangerous exploitation. With the cookbook episodes and their housewifery images, Atwood suggests that the hosting subject is indeed “compelled to do service” (2006: 23), although she represents her pro- tagonists as rebelling against this imperative and against its androcentric, oppressive implications. Consequently, the novel and short story pit the protagonists’ feminist struggles for self-assertion and liberation against the ethics of radical hospitality and its altruistic command of giving the last loaf of bread to the other. The tensions produced by such a clash are not resolved on the level of the plot. Instead, they are transformed into mythical or fairytale-like fantasies that affirm the possibility of gracious largesse in and for human lives.40

40 I wish to thank Galia Benziman for her attentive reading of this paper, her useful com- ments, and her kind encouragement. Margaret Atwood’s Feminist Ethics of Gracious Housewifery 129

Works Cited Atwood, Margaret. 1978. “All Bread.” Two-Headed Poems. Toronto: Oxford University Press, pp. 108–109. ———. 1993. The Robber Bride. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. ———. 1994a. “Bread.” Good Bones and Simple Murders. New York: Nan A. Talese, pp.121–24. ———. 1994b. “The Little Red Hen Tells All.” Good Bones and Simple Murders. New York: Nan A. Talese, pp. 13–15. ———. 1995. “In the Secular Night.” Morning in the Burned House. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, pp. 6–7. ———. 2001 [2000]. The Blind Assassin. New York: Anchor Books. ———. 2006a. “The Art of Cooking and Serving.” Moral Disorder. New York: Knopf Doubleday, pp. 10–23. ———. 2006b. “Bring Back Mom: An Invocation.” The Tent. New York: Nan A. Talese, pp. 105–11. ———. 2009a. “Dutiful.” The Door. London: Virago, pp. 111–12 ———. 2009b.“String Tail.” The Door. London: Virago, 113–14. ———. 2009c. The Year of the Flood. New York: Nan A. Talese / Doubleday. Barzilai, Shuli. 2008. “Unfabulating a Fable, or Two Readings of ‘Thylacine Ragout.’” In Once upon a Time: Myth, Fairy Tales and Legends in Margaret Atwood’s Writings, ed. Sarah A. Appleton. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 127–50. ———. 2010. “‘If You Look Long Enough’: Photography, Memory, and Mourning in The Blind Assassin.” In Margaret Atwood: The Robber Bride, The Blind Assassin, , ed. J. Brooks Bouson. London: Continuum, pp. 103–28. Batnitzky, Leora. 2003. “Encountering the Modern Subject in Levinas.” Yale French Studies 104: 6–21. Birch, Dinah. 2002. “Ruskin’s Womanly Mind” (1988). In Ruskin and Gender, ed. Dinah Birch and Francis O’Gorman. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 107– 36. Bouson, Brooks J. 2003. “‘A Commemoration of Wounds Endured and Resented’: Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin as Feminist Memoir.” Critique 44.3: 251–68. Brody, Donna. 2001. “Levinas’s Maternal Method from ‘Time and the Other’ Through Otherwise Than Being: No Woman’s Land?” In Feminist Interpretations of Emmanuel Levinas, ed. Tina Chanter. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, pp. 53–77. Critchley, Simon. 1999. Ethics — Politics — Subjectivity: Essays on Derrida, Levinas, and Contemporary French Thought. London: Verso. Derrida, Jacques. 1997. “Perhaps or Maybe. Jacques Derrida in Conversation with Alexander García Düttmann.” PLI: Warwick Journal of Philosophy 6: 1–18. 130 Tammy Amiel Houser

———. 1999a. “A Word of Welcome.” Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas. Trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 15–123. ———. 1999b. “Adieu.” Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas. Trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 1–13. ———. 2000. Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond. Trans. Rachel Bowlby. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 2002. “Hospitality.” In Acts of Religion. London: Routledge, pp. 358– 420. Diprose, Rosalyn. 2002. Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas. Albany: SUNY Press. George, Rosemary Marangoly. 1996. The Politics of Home: Postcolonial Relocations and Twentieth-Century Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. 1979. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press. Howells, Coral Ann. 1987. “Margaret Atwood , The Handmaid’s Tale.” Private and Fictional Words: Canadian Women Novelists of the 1970s and 1980s. London: Methuen, pp. 53–70. ———. 2003. “‘Don’t ever ask for the true story’: Margaret Atwood, , and The Blind Assassin.” Contemporary Canadian Women’s Fiction: Refiguring Identities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 25–52. Katz, Claire. 2001. “Re-Inhabiting the House of Ruth: Exceeding the Limits of the Feminine in Levinas.” In Feminist Interpretations of Emmanuel Levinas, ed. Tina Chanter. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, pp. 145–78. ———. 2010. “Education East of Eden: Levinas, the Psychopath, and the Paradox of Responsibility.” In Radicalizing Levinas, ed. Peter Atterton and Matthew Calarco. Albany: SUNY Press, pp. 171–81. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1998. Entre Nous: On Thinking-of-the-Other. Trans. Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2000 [1974]. Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 2002 [1961]. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. ———. 2003 [1961]. Totalité et infini: Essai sur ’l extériorité. Paris: Kluwer Academic. ———. 2004 [1974]. Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence. Paris: Kluwer Academic. McWilliams, Ellen. 2009. Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman. Farnham: Ashgate. Margaret Atwood’s Feminist Ethics of Gracious Housewifery 131

Miller, J. Hillis. “The Critic as Host.” Critical Inquiry 3.3 (1977): 439–47. Millett, Kate. 1970. Sexual Politics. New York: Doubleday. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, and Biddy Martin. 1986. “Feminist Politics: What’s Home Got to Do With It?” In Feminist Studies / Critical Studies, ed. Teresa de Lauretis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 191–212. Nischik, Reingard M. 2009. Engendering Genre: The Works of Margaret Atwood. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. Peled, Nancy. 2010. “Motherless Daughters: The Absent Mothers in Margaret Atwood.” Textual Mothers/Maternal Texts: Motherhood in Contemporary Women’s Literatures, ed. Elizabeth Podnieks and Andrea O’Reilly. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, pp. 47–60. Perpich, Diane. 2001. “From the Caress to the Word: Transcendence and the Feminine in the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas.” Feminist Interpretations of Emmanuel Levinas, ed. Tina Chanter. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, pp. 28–48. Plant, Bob. 2003. “Doing Justice to the Derrida-Levinas Connection: A Response to Mark Dooley.” Philosophy & Social Criticism 29/4: 427–50. Rao, Eleonora. 2006. “Home and Nation in Margaret Atwood’s Later Fiction.” In The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood, ed. Coral Ann Howells. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 100–13. Robinson, Alan. 2006. “Alias Laura: Representations of the Past in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin.” Modern Language Review 101.2: 347–59. Ruskin, John. 1901. “Lecture II–Lilies. Of Queen’s Gardens” (1865). Sesame and Lilies: Three Lectures by John Ruskin. London: George Allen, pp. 87–143. ———. 1916 [1866]. “The Ethics of the Dust: Ten Lectures to Little Housewives on the Elements of Crystallization.” Sesame and Lilies; The Ethics of the Dust. London: Humphrey Milford, pp. 1–203. Sandford, Stella. 2000. The Metaphysics of Love: Gender and Transcendence in Levinas. London: The Athlone Press. ———. 2001. “Masculine Mothers? Maternity in Levinas and Plato.” In Feminist Interpretations of Emmanuel Levinas, ed. Tina Chanter. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, pp. 180–99. ———. 2002. “Levinas, Feminism and the Feminine.” In The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, ed. Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 139–58. Sikka, Sonia. 2001. “The Delightful Other: Portraits of the Feminine in Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Levinas.” In Feminist Interpretations of Emmanuel Levinas, ed. Tina Chanter. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, pp. 96–116. Staels, Hilde. 2004. “Atwood’s Specular Narrative: The Blind Assassin.” English Studies 2: 147–60. 132 Tammy Amiel Houser

Stein, Karen F. 2003. “A Left-Handed Story: The Blind Assassin.” In Margaret Atwood’s Textual Assassinations: Recent Poetry and Fiction, ed. Sharon Rose Wilson. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, pp. 135–53. Strehle, Susan. 2008. Transnational Women’s Fiction: Unsettling Home and Homeland. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Tolan, Fiona. 2007. Margaret Atwood: Feminism and Fiction. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Weltman, Sharon Aronofsky. 1998. Ruskin’s Mythic Queen: Gender Subversion in Victorian Culture. Athens: Ohio University Press. Wilson, Sharon R. 2002. “Margaret Atwood and Popular Culture: The Blind Assassin and Other Novels.” Journal of American and Comparative Cultures 25/3–4: 270–75. ———. 2003. “Introduction.” In Margaret Atwood Textual Assassinations: Recent Poetry and Fiction, ed. Sharon Rose Wilson. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, pp. xi–xv. ———. 2008. “Fairy Tales, Myths, and Magic Photographs in Atwood’s The Blind Assassin.” In Once upon a Time: Myth, Fairy Tales and Legends in Margaret Atwood’s Writings, ed. Sarah A. Appleton. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 73–89. Wyschogrod, Edith. 2003. “Autochthony and Welcome: Discourses of Exile in Levinas and Derrida.” Journal of Philosophy & Scriptures 1/1: 36–41. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.