Carlos Alberto Reyes Monroy

25/11/14

Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwoods a poet, novelist, essayist critic and environmental
activist. Her contributions to the Canadian literature are recognized worldwide and
she has won many awards for her work. Also shes one of the founders of a literary
organization that gives scholarships to people who is interested on writing. She
invented as well one device called Longpen that allows people to remotely write
documents via tablet and internet. Margaret has published about 60 books,
articles, essays and short stories, her main work focus on poetry, literature, fiction,
non-fiction, and her best known works are novels that are translated to many
languages.
Margaret Atwood was born in November 18 in 1939, in Otawa, Canada. Due her
fathers work, she had to travel to some parts in Canada, like Quebec, Ottawa and
Toronto. She was a passionate reader of literature, novels and Grimms brothers
tales since she was young and she started to write when she was 6 years old.
Atwood wanted to continue writing but in a professional way so in 1957 she went to
the Victoria College in the University of Toronto. In the universitys journal she
published her first poems and articles. She graduated in 1961 and she obtained
her bachelor degree in English Philology. After that, she won a medal for her for
her poems book Double Persephone and she obtained a masters degree from
Radcliffe College in 1962 and continued her studies at Harvard University for two
more years. She has also taught at many universities around Canada and US.
Margaret Artwood is described as a feminist writer because the gender topic
frequently appears on her work. She also writes about the relationships between
Canada and North America, civil rights, environmental issues, and myths created
by people in their social interactions. She gives much importance to the women
and the representation of them in literature and in real life, like common problems
in the relations that man and woman establish. For example, in her novel The
Edible woman, published in 1969, the main character is a young woman that has
problems with her identity; she feels that her body and her self are becoming

separated. In this novel, Atwood talks about the gender stereotypes represented
trough the characters that strictly adhere to them and about the problems that
common women suffer. The publication of this novel coincided with the feminist
movement, but Atwood suggested that her novel was protofeminist because it was
published a few years before the rise of the movement. This novel also helped
Atwood to establish herself as a significant writer. In her book Power politics,
published in 1971, she focuses on words (used by women) as a way to take cover
from the power of men.
Her literature emphasizes the role of women in everyday life and the impact of
books written by them. This is clear in a point marked in history when women were
excluded in active participation in literature, and their texts were included in minor
categories as diaries, letters, memories and autobiographies, in general, intimate
writing. The public circulation of these texts was limited because of this, but some
authors like Atwood kept writing and through this way she revealed also one part of
herself to the world, taking part in some characters. So we dont know if what she
writes in some of her novels its one kind of documental or just fiction.
This kind of writing implies the identity of the author, so they have to know
themselves, their experiences, problems, concerns, passions, etc. but also, the
traditions in literature, the social and cultural changes that mark the influences in
the way of writing. As Martnez-Zalce (1994) said, from this conscience, the job of
the author is to report a reality that can be historically verified: the product of their
job is one interpretation of their present and their past.
In Atwoods job, shes the narrator and the narrated character at the same time. Its
a kind of reconstruction of her personal experiences and knowledge reflected
through language, in her work, going from personal to public. She does it in a
creative way, because she doesnt limit to embody her experiences as she lived
them, she re-describes them using her imagination and showing her personal point
of view of things like politics or arts. So we can know by reading, what the authors
worldview is and whats trying to say if we analyze their works in a profound way.
We can take it as a metaphor of her and of the feminine existence and see it from

another perspective, using our own imagination. We also can realize of the
evolution and differences from the first and the last works.
Margaret Atwood also is interested in Canadian identity, which is reflected,
especially in her poetry book called The journals of Susana Moodie, published in
1970, where Atwood also creates a link between the narrative or literary creation
and History, so she doesnt limit herself to write just about fiction or poetry; shes
concerned about real problems that occur in her environment.
As a literary critic shes mainly known by her work Survival: A thematic guide to
Canadian litearature (1972). This guide is considered an introduction to Canadian
literature, and states that Canadian identity has been defined by the symbol of
survival, a fear of nature and the settler history, and this is embodied and reflected
on the creations as well. This book improved the peoples interest in literature of
this country.
Atwood has been also interested in human rights, freedom of expression,
environmental issues and animal rights as well. In her political involvement Atwood
and his partner, Graeme Gibson, have been supporting for a few years the Green
Party of Canada. Atwood has been in lots of organizations that are concerned
about the environmental issues. Although the conditions of modern life, the
problems due to industry and mass production she states that theres hope still.
Right now Atwood has many projects especially one called the Future Library
project that aims in collecting one story by a popular writer every year until 2114
and to show it to the world in that year.

References
Martnez-Zalce, Graciela (1994): Las escrituras del yo en la obra de Margaret Atwood, Debate
feminista (Marzo), pp. 199-211.