The recasting of the Female Gothic in the novels of Margaret Atwood

grantor: University of TorontoThis thesis analyzes the novels of Margaret Atwood through the use of the Gothic as a framework. Atwood's novels re-write and re-vision aspects of the Female Gothic, the American Gothic, and the Canadian Gothic in their depiction of the problems of female identity and self-definition, human evil, and the demands and expectations placed on women and men by contemporary society. In the Introduction I present a history of the Gothic as a genre, analyzing narrative themes and concepts originating in Horace Walpole's 'The Castle of Otranto', Ann Radcliffe's 'The Mysteries of Udolpho ', and Matthew Lewis's 'The Monk'. I will show how the Gothic evolved, after the genre collapsed as a force in its original form by 1930, in both the United States and Canada. The Gothic as found in North America uses national history and the actuality of the landscape to provoke and depict terror. In both Canada and the United States the Gothic is used as a vehicle to depict issues of alienation and the influence of the past in both national and personal terms. In the Introduction I will also present a working definition of the Female Gothic that will show how the sub-genre is not, as many contemporary feminist theories have maintained, a genre that expresses female self-loathing, but one that permits an active engagement with the problems of constructing the female self as an active speaking subject. Chapters One through Seven will analyze each of Atwood's novels published to date in detail. In each, Atwood's use of the Gothic tropes of imprisonment, confinement, haunting, and surveillance will be examined. Atwood's use and rewriting of the Gothic canon will also be considered. In the conclusion, I will present a brief analysis of 'Alias Grace', Atwood's most recent novel, and show how Atwood has rewritten the Gothic form to depict female anxieties and contemporary political abuses, and to examine questions of human evil and the relations between space and time.Ph.D