Margaret Atwood: A Feminist Poetics

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

I have a considerable respect for Frank Davey’s critical writings, especially his recent Louis Dudek & Raymond Souster (1980) and Surviving the Paraphrase (1983). I have to state, however, that I find Margaret Atwood: A Feminist Poetics decidedly disappointing. Davey chooses to focus on a male/female dichotomy that he finds running through most of Atwood’s work in both prose and verse. He elaborates upon this, and goes on to distinguish between “male space” and “female space” — terms that seem to me neither clear nor useful. The whole endeavour becomes especially puzzling when, for instance, Susanna Moodie and Circe in two of Atwood’s brilliant poetic sequences are seen as possessing “masculine artistic power” (p.54). Moreover, if “pattern is a humanistic ‘male’ second-order imposition on experience” (p.57), then Davey’s critical approach, in constructing an intellectual pattern to encompass Atwood’s writing, may be seen as itself a masculine violation to be resisted.

There are two additional reasons why the approach seems unfortunate. As is reasonably well known, Atwood developed as a writer within the mythopoeic movement of the late 1950s. But her poetry took on a distinctive flavour and subtlety when she transcended the binary categorizations and mythic self-consciousness that tended to characterize that group. Davey’s male/female dichotomy is certainly an element in Atwood’s work but, when conspicuous, is liable to prove a weakness rather than a strength. (Oddly enough, Davey virtually admits the point in a somewhat disorienting epilogue, in which he expresses reservations about this dichotomy [p. 163].) By emphasizing this aspect, Davey does less than justice to Atwood’s achievement. And this brings me to the second point. Atwood may have sprung to prominence on the waves of the feminist movement (despite strong reservations in certain feminist quarters), but she is not to be confined by a feminist label. At her best, she has an amplitude that goes beyond the limited perspective of gender.

Nonetheless, Davey is often stimulating, especially when he forgets about his thesis. His best chapter, on Life Before Man, virtually abandons the male/female preoccupation, discovers “considerable psychological depth” in the characters (p.82), and recognizes within the book “a challenge to affirm life” (p.87) which most of the original reviewers missed. This is not, I think, an ideal introductory book, but readers who know their Atwood and are prepared to argue every inch of the way will discover much of value.