Eco feminism in the Selected Novels of Margaret Atwood Eco feminism in the Selected Novels of Margaret Atwood, Offred, Peter, Margaret Atwood, Gilead, The protagonist, Rennie, Marian, Bodily Harm, breast cancer, David, Marian McAlpine, doctor Daniel, Rennie Wilford, International Atwood, oppression of women, patriarchal society, Serena Joy The Comedy of Errors, Bringing Hollywood storytelling techniques to branching storylines for training applications, CODE-SWITCHING IN BAPSI SIDHWAS'S NOVEL ICY-CANDY MAN, Waste land, What keeps children in foster care from succeeding in school, The Art of the Deal, Strange Vacation Days:â– James Schuyler's Materialist Writing of Space-Time, The decay of cinema, Say It Ain't So, Huck Eco-feminism in the Selected Novels of Margaret Atwood A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF JAMMU FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLISH Supervisor : Submitted by : Prof. Sucheta Pathania Sonia Khajuria DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH UNIVERSITY OF JAMMU JAMMU – 180 006 2012 CERTIFICATE It is certified that: I. The thesis titled ‘Eco-feminism in the Selected Novels of Margaret Atwood’ embodies the work of the candidate Ms. Sonia Khajuria and is worthy of consideration for the award of Ph.D. Degree. II. The candidate worked under my supervision for the period required under the statutes of the University of Jammu, Jammu. III. The candidate has put in the required attendance in this department during the period under rules; and IV. The conduct of candidate remained satisfactory during the period of research in the Department. Dated : Prof. Sucheta Pathania (Supervisor) Acknowledgements First, I’d like to thank my supervisor Professor Sucheta Pathania for her immense support and guidance during the writing of this thesis. I admire her knowledge, and the patience she has shown during the process of writing and revising the thesis. She brought me closer to the subject through her Socratic questioning. I’m thankful to Prof. Satnam Kaur, Head, Department of English, University of Jammu for all the help. I’m also extremely indebted to Professor Posh Charak for providing me with the necessary resources to accomplish my research work. I warmly thank Dr. Monika Sethi for her support and for providing me with the text of Surfacing . I’d also like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to the Library staff of the Department of English, and the Centre for New Literatures, Culture and Communication, University of Jammu. I take this opportunity to sincerely acknowledge University Grants Commission, New Delhi for the award of Teacher Fellowship in my favour which buttressed me to do my work comfortably. My husband Anirban, a wonderful human being, my best friend, a perceptive critic, and my first audience, instilled in me the unflinching commitment to do justice to my work. I will remain indebted to him forever. I gratefully acknowledge the patience of my two joyful ‘little devils’ Aniket and Anindo who allowed me to spend their share of my time in writing this thesis. I shall always remain grateful to my parents who gently offered counsel and unconditional support at each turn of the road. My parents-in- law and other members of the family also need special mention for being such an important part of my support system. I offer my sincere gratitude to my brother-in-law Vivek, who painstakingly sourced some of the important books I needed. I also thank my dear sisters Monica and Anamika for their unequivocal support throughout, and for infusing me with the spirit of optimism. Finally, I appreciate the sincere efforts of Mr. Divakar Prabhakar for typing the thesis with a time-bound approach. (Sonia Khajuria) CONTENTS Page No. Acknowledgements (i-ii) Chapter – I : Introduction 1-55 Chapter –II : The Edible Woman 56-100 Chapter – III : Surfacing 101-141 Chapter – IV : Lady Oracle 142-180 Chapter – V : Bodily Harm 181-213 Chapter – VI : The Handmaid’s Tale 214-264 Chapter –VII : Conclusion 265-278 Works Cited and Consulted 279-307 To live, that is to say, with thoughtfulness and with attentiveness, an attunement to both words and world, and so to acknowledge that although we make sense of things by way of words, we do not live apart from the world. For culture and environment are held together in a complex and delicate web. (Bate, The Song of the Earth, 23) CHAPTER - I Introduction “Why do men feel threatened by women?” I asked a male friend of mine . “I mean”, I said, “men are bigger, most of the time, they can run faster, strangle better, and they have on the average a lot more money and power.” “They’re afraid women will laugh at them”, he said. “Undercut their worldview.” Then I asked some women . “Why do women feel threatened by men?” “They’re afraid of being killed,” they said. (Atwood, Second Words 413) Margaret [Eleanor] Atwood is one of the most revered writers of Canadian Literature. Her works have created a dignified place for Canadian Literature at the international level. She rightfully earns the credit for falsifying “the beliefs that Canada had no literature, that it was incapable of producing literature” (Kaur 11). As a prolific writer, poet and critic, she has an uncanny ability to make her readers rise up from the deep slumber of certainty by her experimentalism, and her wit to challenge the status quo. Coomi S. Vevaina and Coral Ann Howells have rightly observed in Margaret Atwood-The Shape Shifter that: There are hundreds of possibilities for changing shape in Atwood’s writings: violent bodily transformations, gradual changes over time in personal relations, shifts in perceptions of national identity and in social mythologies, as well as transfigured landscapes and evolutionary and climatic change with its casualties and survivors. Atwood’s fictive world is one of continual metamorphosis. (Foreword) Atwood’s work cannot be bracketed in one literary tradition, Nathalie Cooke has rightly pointed out that “Atwood’s work is located at the intersection of three distinct, though related, literary traditions: feminist, Canadian nationalist, and post- modern” (19). Atwood emerged as a prolific writer in those confusing times when Canada was witnessing a new wave of feminism coupled with disillusionment of American imperialism. Her first two novels The Edible Woman and Surfacing clearly reflect the psyche of Canadians, especially women, who refused to be an American colony. Since the time of free trade agreement Atwood has been very vocal in her stand against the cultural and economic imperialism of America. During a debate in 1987, she spoke against the free trade agreement. Protagonists of both the novels echo the agonies of women in the world of “Americanised” Canadian men. In Atwoodian sense “Americanised” means a person having capitalistic attitude towards humanity and nature. Atwood has been fearlessly raising difficult questions and criticising the indifferent attitude of men towards women, and environment. In her own words “Women are human beings, they are equal human beings, I happen to believe that and I will fight to eliminate inequalities as I have done . you know women are equal human beings. That also means they are equally fallible” (qtd. in Meese 183). Margaret [Eleanor] Atwood was born on November 18, 1939, in Ottawa, Canada. She is second of three children of Carl and Margaret Killam Atwood. She has an older brother Harold and a younger sister Ruth. Her father was an entomologist; and as a result she spent her childhood with her family in the wilderness of northern Quebec. Atwood and her brother didn’t have the privilege of formal school education in the early years but were taught by their mother at home. Atwood learnt to read early as there was no other source of entertainment in the wilderness, moreover, she was not a healthy child, so she often found solace in reading. Her childhood love affair with nature began early when she was six months old. From the age of six her parents introduced her to the woods. The end of World War II in 1945 opened a new world for her. The Atwood family moved to Toronto in the year 1946 but they continued visiting northern bushes in summers. No doubt, since childhood she was close to nature, and her pro-environment approach is visible in her works, and is also instrumental in her becoming an environmentalist; Atwood and her husband Grame Gibson are patrons of the ‘Friends of the Earth’, and she is also the honorary President of conservation charity ‘Birds’ Life’. Though Atwood couldn’t attend school before she was eleven, yet she had started showing her interest in writing at the age of five. She admitted “Reading and writing are connected . I learnt to read very early so I could read comics, which I then started to draw” (An Interview, Guardian ). She wrote her first play at the age of seven, which was not well received by her first audience i.e. her brother and his friends. She was mocked at by her brother and that was her first taste of criticism. She decided to stop writing plays and shifted her focus to novels. Meanwhile, she developed a passion for painting also, but she realised that writing was her real passion. Atwood became a poet at the age of sixteen, as she wrote: I wrote a poem in my head and then I wrote it down, and after that writing was the only thing I wanted to do . It wasn’t the result but the experience that had hooked me: it was the electricity. My transition from not being a writer to being one was instantaneous. (Atwood, Negotiating 14) Unfortunately, Atwood was born in the time when people were living under the shadow of World War II, which broke out two and half months before her birth.