Once Upon a Time: Myth, Fairy Tales and Legends in Margaret Atwood’s Writings

194 Pages·2008·0.82 MB·English

by  Sarah A. Appleton

Once upon a Time

Once upon a Time
Myth, Fairy Tales and Legends
in Margaret Atwood’s Writings
Edited by
Sarah A. Appleton
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Once upon a Time: Myth, Fairy Tales and Legends in Margaret Atwood’s Writings,
Edited by Sarah A. Appleton
This book first published 2008
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2008 by Sarah A. Appleton and contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-84718-684-X, ISBN (13): 9781847188643
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments.....................................................................................vii
Introduction.................................................................................................1
Sarah A. Appleton
Chapter One.................................................................................................9
Myths of Distinction; Myths of Extinction in Margaret Atwood’s
Oryx and Crake
Sarah A. Appleton
Chapter Two..............................................................................................25
Mythmaking in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake
Carol Osborne
Chapter Three............................................................................................47
Staging Penelope: Margaret Atwood’s Changing Audience
Shannon Hengen
Chapter Four..............................................................................................57
“We Can’t Help but Be Modern”: The Penelopiad
Coral Ann Howells
Chapter Five..............................................................................................73
Fairy Tales, Myths, and Magic Photographs in Atwood’s The Blind
Assassin
Sharon Wilson
Chapter Six................................................................................................95
It’s About Time: Temporal Dimensions in Margaret Atwood’s
Life Before Man
Karen Stein
Chapter Seven..........................................................................................115
No Princes Here: Male Characters in Margaret Atwood’s Fiction
Theodore Scheckels
vi Table of Contents
Chapter Eight...........................................................................................127
Unfabulating a Fable, or Two Readings of “Thylacine Ragout”
Shuli Barzilai
Chapter Nine............................................................................................151
Atwood’s Female Crucifixion: “Half-Hanged Mary”
Kathryn VanSpanckeren
Contributors.............................................................................................179
Index........................................................................................................183
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful for the encouragement given to me by my institution, Old
Dominion University, and especially to the former chair of the English
Department, David Metzger. My gratitude is also given to the Women’s
Studies Department at William & Mary College for granting me a visiting
scholar’s appointment. Others who deserve recognition include Timothy
Bostic, Tracy Jewett, Jacqueline Sweeton, my children Sam and Jill, Evan
Aguiar, and, as ever, my husband Mitchell Bonnett. Most of all, my warm
regards and appreciation go to the extraordinary contributors to this
volume whose warmth, wit, and wisdom made this a very enjoyable
project indeed.

INTRODUCTION
SARAH A. APPLETON
While it is often acknowledged that Margaret Atwood's novels are rife
with allusions from the oral tradition of myth, legends, fables, and fairy
tales, the implications of her liberal usage bear study. From the figure of
Little Red Riding Hood in The Handmaid's Tale, to the retelling of the
Odyssey in The Penelopiad, Atwood's novels re-scrutinize the common
assumptions behind the tales and re-conceptualize the feminine and
masculine archetypes derived from these narratives. From—in particular
—a Jungian perspective, the archetypes no longer hold power; in fact, the
traditional figures —i.e., the virginal maiden, the wicked stepmother, the
heroic champion, the wise old woman —come unbound from their rigid
restrictions, gaining depth and dimension in Atwood's portrayals.
In his work, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance
of Fairy Tales, Bruno Bettelheim contends, “nothing can be as enriching
and satisfying to child and adult alike as the folk fairy tale” (5, my
emphasis). He further allows that
myths and fairy tales were derived from, or give symbolic interpretation to,
initiation rites or other rites de passage—such as a metaphoric death of an
old, inadequate self in order to be reborn on a higher plane of existence.
(35)
These rites of passage, while often equated with the maturation process of
a child, also invigorate passages in adulthood, providing models of
continuing development on levels ranging from spirituality to psychology.
The prevalence of myths, legends, and fairy tales in contemporary
women’s fiction, then, signals familiar territory for readers as
remembrances from childhood reading are re-infused with adult challenges
and choices, as well as old wisdom for a new world. As Sharon Rose
Wilson contends, “A re-visioned fairy-tale sexual politics underlies
Atwood’s aesthetics and is evident from her earliest to her most recent
work, including her fiction, poetry, essays, and visual art” (“Fairy-Tale”
2 Introduction
6). Indeed, Margaret Atwood’s writings contain a stunning array of
references from these archetypal tales and legends.
Jack Zipes notes that for the original literary, that is, written, versions
of the fairy tales, the readers were adults: “In most European countries it
was not until the end of the eighteenth and early part of the twentieth
centuries that fairy tales were published for children” (14). He states that
the children’s versions were “sanitized and expurgated versions of the
fairy tales for adults” (14). In Atwood’s use of fairy tales, legends, and
myths, she restores the context of the stories to adulthood, relying on the
juxtaposition of childhood reading expectations against the realities of
complex maturity. That is, the heroine is not likely to be rescued by a
dashing prince or benevolent god; the crone’s “evil curse” may actually be
masked munificence.
In an interview, Atwood stated,
Myths mean stories, and traditional myths mean traditional stories that
have been repeated frequently. The term doesn’t pertain to Greek myths
alone. Grimm’s Fairy Tales are just as much myth or story as anything
else” (Hammond 114).
It is these oft-repeated tales from throughout the ages that bring
recognition to readers, whether the tales maintain their original trapping or
they have been re-visioned with old lessons in new clothing. In addition,
as Wilson so aptly notes,
In deconstructing her fairy-tale and mythic intertexts, allowing the muted
or silenced subtext to speak, Atwood’s metanarratives consist of more than
two narrative strands interwoven in dialectic with one another: the frame
narrative (always more than a revised version of the traditional fairy-tale)
and the ‘embroidered’ intertexts usually heightened, exaggerated, or
parodied. (“Fairy-Tale” 31)
Thus, Atwood’s writings are never simple revisions of its intertexts; as
Wilson recognizes, the tales are enmeshed with other intertexts, inverted,
enhanced and undermined, doubled, interrogated, and often confirmed in
surprising fashion.
Atwood, as she relates in her essay, “Grimm’s’ Remembered,”
preferred the “unexpurgated” versions of the tales —the adult versions —
when she was a child, convincing her parents to allow her to read the book
they were concerned about. She relates, “I expect my parents gnawed their
nails while their adored children read about pieces of bodies falling down
the chimney, Godfather Death, and other horrors” (291). Yet, Atwood