Margaret Atwood's Evil Women Analysis

Once her family moves to Toronto after the war to settle down, she was approximately eight years old. At that time, circumstances changes for Elaine who feels unhappy, helpless and yearns for female friends as she has no female friends yet (Vijay Singh Mehta 179). As Pavla Chudějová (34) has suggested in “Exploring the women’s experience”, Elaine become conscious of the society’s gender restrictions for the first time when she starts going to school. At school, Elaine follows the rules where she has to wear skirts to school and “the girls hold hands; the boys don’t” (CE 50-51), as well as to enter the building through the “grandiose entranceways with carvings around them and ornate insets above the doors, inscribed in curvy, solemn lettering: GIRLS and BOYS.” (CE 51) which confuses her and

Consequently, as illustrated in chapter one, Butler proposes in “Imitation and Gender Insubordination” (1998), that “gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original” (722). Therefore, Elaine demonstrates how playing with girls was not a natural for her instead it is something she had to learn to do. Elaine states that: “Playing with girls is different and at first I feel strange as I do it, self-conscious, as if I’m doing an imitation of a girl. But soon I get more used to it.” (CE 57). Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson in her book The Cambridge Introduction to Margaret Atwood that since Elaine’s behaviour is learned and not innate, so it is a clear example of how socialization reifies behaviour, or makes what is constructed appear natural. Accordingly, one can see that Butler’s theories on performativity are what Elaine describes at this point: that gender is a performative and an imitating act. As she has grown up with her brother, she does not feel comfortable to play with