Issue’s of gender in Margaret Atwood’s poetry. 11/29/07

Margaret Atwood is one of Canada’s: most prolific poets, most respected authors, and first feminist writers. As an important figure in Canada’s literary and poetic heritage her work has been analyzed and scrutinized many times over. These analyses are usually focused on Atwood’s work as feminist literature often using bibliographical references as support. This essay will use Margaret Atwood: A Critical Companion by Nathalie Cooke, “Nearer by Far: The Upset ‘I’ in Margaret Atwood’s Poetry” by Dennis Cooley, Zygmunt Bauman’s “On Postmodern uses of Sex”, and Frank Davey’s essay “Atwood’s Gorgon touch [Seven books of poetry, from Double Persephone to You Are Happy]” to synthesize an analysis of Margaret Atwood’s feminist perspective. Specifically I will discuss Atwood’s personal history in relation to her notions of gender and sex roles, the use of person, the use of mythological characters, and sex in Margaret Atwood’s “They Eat Out” and selected poems.

The information provided in Margaret Atwood a Critical Companion by Nathalie Cooke supplies chronological events filled with biographical and contextual evidence of Atwood’s life. Cooke discusses the issues faced by Atwood being a woman writer during the late 1950s and later. The information presents insight into the feminine world of Atwood’s poetry and literature; “Atwood’s upbringing, education, and early formation as a writer provided a foundation for the direction of her writing, particularly its central themes of […] feminism” (Cooke, p.3). Cooke states that: “Atwood makes the issues of the day – the politics of her times and her profession (censorship, feminism, sexuality) – compelling: by making them personal, […]” [emphasis added] (Cooke, p.1). In Atwood’s poem “They Eat Out,” the speaker (assumed as a woman) displays an empowered role (feminist approach) in the relationship between two people; “[…] only I / can do it and so / I raise the magic fork / over the plate of beef fried rice / and plunge it into your heart” (They Eat Out, 5-9).

Elements of feminism are abundant within Atwood’s poetry, the events taking place while Atwood attended university, as Cooke posits, “[hardened] Atwood’s resolve on feminist issues” (Cooke, p.7); Cooke states that: “[…] when Atwood arrived at Radcliffe College […] she found that it too, was largely a man’s world. Women weren’t given entrance to Lamont Library […]” (Cooke, p.8). Atwood mocks the patriarchal male perspective in: “you hang suspended above the city / in blue tights and a red cape” (They Eat Out, 16-17), by satirically illustrating the superman archetype- the strong man swooping in to save the helpless woman.

Typical of a patriarchal society was the idea of men being the ‘bread winners’ in a relationship; Cooke explains this in: “[instrumental] in cementing Atwood’s distinctly feminist resolve were her experiences in the workplace in the 1960s, […] women did not earn the same salaries as [men] and were not expected to keep their jobs after marriage” (Cooke, p.8). Atwood’s feminist view of gender roles and the ‘bread winner’ issue is revealed in the opening lines of the poem “They Eat Out:” “[in] restaurants we argue / over which one of us wall pay for your funeral.” [emphasis added] (1-2)

The obvious social and economic inequalities faced by Margaret Atwood during the 1950s and later were pivotal forces in developing Atwood’s feminist position. “[…] Atwood was acutely aware of the double standards facing women and was prepared to use her writing to expose them” (Cooke, p.9). Atwood attacked many of the structures of a patriarchal society (specifically concerning male dominance over women) using her writing to challenge the idea’s that: women should take a secondary role in the work place, have no place in certain academic areas, the patriarchal conceptions of the ‘bread-winner,’ and others later discussed.

In “Nearer by Far: The Upset ‘I’ in Margaret Atwood’s Poetry” by Dennis Cooley the use of the first-person pronoun is discussed. Cooley explores how: “in style and grammar – how in varying and telling strategies - the speakers situate themselves by virtue of supervising their own narratives” (Cooley, p.69). Margaret Atwood’s poem “They Eat Out” employs the first-person point of view that supervises and directs revealing the speaker’s feminist mind-set.

Cooley posits: “[…] the voice […] loves to direct and to inform […] her language often moves into discursive formations, close to bald statement in fact” (Cooley, p.71); the fact is that speaker is unfulfilled in her relationship and reveals the discontentment of women in a patriarchal society. Cooley states that: “[from] the outset the speaker anchors herself as the one who does all the thinking, the one who is in charge” (Cooley p.74); the speaker controls the narrative in “They Eat Out:” “I will make” [emphasis added] (4), “only I can do it” [emphasis added] (5-6), and “I continue” [emphasis added] (23); ‘directing’ the reader one way and omitting the other side to the story: the voiceless partner’s story. Cooley asserts: […] the central figure does preside over whose grammar confers upon her not only power, not only power to do things, but power to do things to other people, notably to govern ‘you’” (Cooley, p.80); the speaker in Atwood’s poem can be “[made] immortal” (They Eat Out, 4), and be “[raised by] magic fork” (They Eat Out, 7) to supernatural existence. This linguistic technique of ‘directing,’ as Cooley explains: “serves to reinforce how concerned the speaker is with defining and maintaining her own space” [emphasis added] (Cooley, p.72). Cooley articulates: “[the speaker] never accords him speech nor admits him to escape from silence into the independence of dialogue where he could be supposedly self-commissioned […]” (Cooley, p.85); the speaker only provides information illustrating that “[they] argue” (They Eat Out, 1) and the partner “[was] always ambitious” (They Eat Out, 25), affirming his preoccupation with patriarchal conceptions (those being, more or less, conceptions of power). The speaker in the poem declares her control through her power to make her partner “immortal;” either by sex or, more importantly, the act of telling the story (in Atwood’s case, writing) about the partner and allowing for an audience (those who read the poem). This importance of immortality via language Cooley suggests is: “[one] of the most dramatic forms of control she exercises [it] is metalingual, language and art being the arena in which the self is tested and defined” (Cooley, p.84) and the speaker defines herself as the creator.

Atwood uses the technique of first-person point of view to symbolically represent the changing attitude of many women over the notions of patriarchal society. Notions of women being the lesser sex and having no control are sardonically tossed out the window by Atwood through her verse. Person is only one of the techniques and concepts Atwood employs to reject the patriarchal notions of her generation; as Frank Davey explains Atwood often uses the concepts of postmodernism to challenge the patriarchal.

Frank Davey’s essay “Atwood’s Gorgon touch [Seven books of poetry, from Double Persephone to You Are Happy]” explores the use of space and time in many of Margaret Atwood’s poems to express mans fragility and mortality. Davey posits mythological characters are employed to produce a “denial of time” (Davey, p.138), the result of those characters static nature. In Margaret Atwood’s “They Eat Out”, the Superman image of popular mythology represents a denial of time Davey refers to as ‘evasions’. These evasions “are all extensions of [the] human need to “believe that nothing can change” ” (Davey, p.138), Atwood illustrates this need in “I liked you better the way you were” (They Eat Out, 24). Essentially the denial of time is a “[crutch] used by the weak in the face of mutility” (Davey, p.141) an attempt to deny the very human fear of change and the unknown with a static mythological element.

The denial of time is expressed in many different forms, in Atwood’s “Progressive insanities of a Pioneer” the pioneer represents Atwood’s “philosophic evasion of humanism” (Davey, p.138) the pioneer attempting to assert “man’s timeless centrality” (Davey, p.138), “He stood, a point/ on a sheet of green paper/ proclaiming himself the center” (Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer, 1-3). The pioneer builds fences and a house, but in the end time defeats man and the land again becomes an unstructured deluge “the green/ vision, the unnamed/ whale invaded” (Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer, 7, 16-19)

Similarly “A Night At the Royal Ontario Museum” expressed Atwood’s Anti-humanism clearly being sickened by the “perverse museum” (32) and all the artifacts that act as physical reminders of man’s timelessness. Ultimately man’s attempt to immortalize himself is the result of his fear of change is only one aspect of a much greater fear, the fear of the unknown and by extension the fear of death, an allusion to man’s quest for immortality.

Zygmunt Bauman briefly approaches the elements of eroticism, reproduction, identity, and love in “On Postmodern uses of Sex.” He discusses the links between these elements and Sex (intercourse) “Sex is involved – centrally and inextricably – in the greatest feat and most awe-inspiring of cultural miracles: that conjuring up immortality out of mortality, the interminable out of the temporal, the imperishable out of the evanescent” (Bauman, p.7). In Margaret Atwood’s poem “They Eat Out” Sex, reproduction, and identity are illustrated.

Bauman states: “Sex, as we know, is nature’s evolutionary solution to the issue of continuity, durability of life forms; it sets mortality of every individual living organism against immortality of the species” (Bauman, p.7); in Atwood’s poem the speaker identifies her ability to immortalize her partner: “[…] I will make you immortal” (They Eat Out, 4). The idea of immortality achieved through Sex (figuratively in Atwood’s poem) is assumed in re-reading the poem and deducing the characters involved to be in a heterosexual relationship. The engagement of Sex between the characters is noted in: “whether or not I will make immortal. / At the moment only I / can do it […]” (They Eat Out, 4-6). The speaker offers immortality through the possibility of sexual reproduction.

Love and Sex is rather anti-climatic within Atwood’s poem. The display of an orgasmic sensation experienced by both characters ends in the speaker being unsatisfied and the partner having been elevated to a supernatural height:

I raise the magic fork / […] / and plunge it into your heart […] / you rise up glowing; / the ceiling opens / a voice sings Love Is A Many / Splendoured Thing / you hang suspended above the city / in blue tights and a red cape […] / As for me, I continue eating; / I liked you better the way you were,” (They Eat Out, 7- 24).

Bauman suggests that postmodern culture (that of which includes Margaret Atwood) is more concerned with Orgasm: “In its postmodern rendition, sexual activity is focused narrowly on its orgasmic effect; for all practical intents and purposes, postmodern sex is about orgasm” (Bauman, p.6).

Bauman’s “On Postmodern uses of Sex” allow us to interpret the allusions to Sex in Atwood’s “They Eat Out”. The postmodern interpretation reveals the significance of orgasm, while another interpretation posits immortality of the individual through the survival of the species as the driving force for Sex. The speaker in Atwood’s poem teases her partner with her sexual prowess and offers a chance at immortality but is left unsatisfied; a banal reflection over the conceptions of patriarchal society and the movement towards change- for women.

Denis Cooley, Nathalie Cooke, Frank Davey, and Zygmunt Bauman would all agree Margaret Atwood is a champion of the feminist cause and has spent much of her career exposing the many patriarchal misconceptions of a woman’s role. From these many analyses one central idea is clear- Margaret Atwood believes it is her role (the role of the artist) to challenge the notions common to society, to champion those who have no voice, and to effect change in some of our social misconceptions. Margaret Atwood one of Canada’s first and most influential feminists; more she is a postmodernist and a naturist but that is a topic for another time.

Photo taken from: canadianshakespeares.ca