A study into Margaret Atwood’s exploration of the themes of feminism, identity, sense of self, and social class in her novels; The Handmaid’s Tale, Alias Grace, and The Edible Woman.
Margaret Atwood is a Canadian author with immense talent. Her works have been published in over thirty-five countries, and her collection of novels, poetry and critical essays grows to this day. Most, if not all, of her works have reached great critical acclaim, due to her masterful use of theme and extended metaphor.
This thesis will be used to investigate key themes Atwood employs, such as feminism, identity, sense of self, and social class. While many of her works serve to critique the patriarchy, this thesis also intends to investigate the way she portrays women within her novels and how they are used as a tool of men to enforce a second form of misogyny; women’s hatred of women.
The Edible Woman is a novel in which Atwood examines the themes of identity and sense of self, as the protagonist Marian struggles with her realization that she has few options available to
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The novel tells the story of Offred, a ‘handmaid’ in the patriarchal and theocratic dystopia, known as ‘the Republic of Gilead’. In Gilead, women have no rights, and are property of the state. As fertility rates have drastically reduced, fertile women are captured, indoctrinated into the deeply misogynistic ways of Gilead, and are given to men in high positions of power, in order for them to be raped once a month. The story is told from the perspective of Offred, around three years after the creation of Gilead. At the end of the story, it is apparent that Offred escaped Gilead through the ‘Underground Female Road’, and recorded her story on tapes. The novel serves as a warning of the patriarchy, and as a rejection of the joining of religion and