Creating Her Own World: The Rise from Submission to Independence in Margaret Atwood'sSurfacing: A Feminist Study

Abstract

Margaret Eleanor Atwood (1939-) is regarded the greatest woman and feminist writer in Canadian Literature. The themes of her poems and novels shift the focus of the reader to issues which are directly related to women. In the 1960s, women were not allowed to think about their own requirements, be that monetary, social or bodily needs. Any woman who challenged the social codes was looked down upon. It was in this period that Margaret Atwood used fiction as an instrument to voice against the traditional practice of male hegemony which always undervalued women and suppressed their identity. Therefore, the aim of the paper is to shed light on how, in her paramount novel, Surfacing (1972), Atwood portrays the total alienation of women in Canadian society and how she uses the isolation of the narrator to relate with all Canadian women which will finally result in their rise to an independent mode of living.Atwood finds men imposing laws of patriarchy on women through religion, marriage, language etc. She also says that men only consider women as “war-spoils” (23). Her alienation is very systematic and manifests that children know their gender role at an early age. The effect of the narrator’s alienation is the complete withdrawal from vibrant life and landscape.