In the two novels, various transformations of identity in main characters have directly undermined the cliché of identity as being unitary and stable, and breaking the distinct and stable boundary of the social stratum of different identities. As far as I am concerned, mainly two forms of transformation of identity are elucidated. The Robber Bride is preoccupatied with the possibility of owning different identities within one person which thus indicates the absurdity of the old notion of fixed identity, and Alias Grace is, apart from the first aspect, more concerned with the destabilization of social stratification behind the transformation of identities on account of its 19th century background the novel is set in. Zenia, the most unstable …show more content…
In her three friendships with Tony, Charis, and Roz in turn, Zenia has told them three different versions of her story. In the 60s when she met Tony, she was a refugee of the war whose mother was Russian renting her to men for money when she was a child and who was told three versions of her father—“minor Greek royalty, a general in the Polish cavalry, an Englishman of good family”—by her mother (165). In the 70s, she told Charis her mother was a Romanian gypsy who “was stoned to death” (268) in the war by villagers who was afraid of her evil power, and her Finnish father was killed during the war as well. When comes to the 80s, Zenia became the Jewish descendant whose family was persecuted in the war. And the three women, Tony, Charis, and Roz, could transform at will, from a mother to a wife, from a victim to a protector, and so on, which has directly transgressed the traditional identity concept.
In The Robber Bride, there is also the transformation between masculinity and femininity, another form of identity being stereotyped. With Atwood’s pen, the male image is no longer as what the patriarchal society has defined as tenacious, ambitious, responsible, competitive and so forth, and female as well is not merely characterized a series of stereotyped