In Search of the Split Subject: Psychoanalysis, Phenomenology, and the Novels of Margaret Atwood

Shannon Hengen is an associate professor of English at Laurentian
University and the author of Margaret Atwood’s Power: Mirrors,
Reflections and Images in Select Fiction and Poetry.

In this book, Mycak focuses on six of Atwood’s novels—The Edible
Woman, Lady Oracle, Life Before Man, Bodily Harm, Cat’s Eye, and The
Robber Bride—with careful attention paid to the central character in
each. She assumes that the most effective method for studying these
novels is to examine how the central character constructs her identity,
for that vexed process forms each novel’s thematic and narrative line.


“[A]ll the protagonists and many of the peripheral characters are
fractured, disintegrating, alienated, or displaced,” maintains
Mycak—hence the analysis of split, rather than unified, subjects.
Psychoanalytic and phenomenological theories are brought to bear to
elucidate first how the psyche functions, and second, how perception
contextualizes the psyche: “[T]he self and its attendant divisions now
become a function of decentred subjectivity; that is, the self is split
owing to signification and enunciative positioning, the interplay of
Imaginary demands and symbolic desires, the process of specular identity
formation, the drama of familial relations, and the requirements of
social organization.”

Mycak’s understanding and appreciation of the theorists she draws
on—particularly the psychoanalysts Lacan, Kristeva, and Freud—are
solid. Questions, however, remain. Where, for example, does Mycak
position herself as reader of The Robber Bride? Her analysis of Zenia
renders her merely troubled, ignoring the havoc Zenia wreaks. Elsewhere,
too, the novels become case studies.

Theory dominates in each chapter. Mycak’s 15-page glossary of
psychoanalytic terms properly introduces the reader to where her
emphasis will lie—on theory, not on the novels. Nowhere except in her
introduction does she critique theory or suggest that the fit between
Atwood’s characters and Lacan’s ideas might not be perfect. And her
concluding statement that a “focus upon the split subject has not
precluded a holistic interpretation inclusive of the major aspects of
each novel” rings false.