Watching Women, Falling Women.

This is a study of the novels Cat s Eye, The Robber Bride and Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. More specifically it focuses on the descriptions of the female characters and their relationships to each other. This study shows that normative, patriarchal structures in these novels work as obstacles to the women s friendships, making them very complex and difficult. Atwood s novels depict a brutal world where men are no longer needed to uphold the norms and values of an unequal system. By constantly watching oneself and others, all female characters are depicted as part of the panoptical system. However, this study also discusses ways out of gendered behaviour. The outbreak is made possible chiefly by employing what Gregersdotter calls dialogic storytelling. The author argues that these three novels can be seen as a trilogy due to the novels focus on friendship between women. This study contributes both to the research field concerning the writings of Margaret Atwood, as well as to gender and literature studies in general.

Autorentext

Katarina Gregersdotter has a PhD in English literature and is currently teaching and doing research on crime fiction. She is a member of the research group Challenging Gender at Umeå University, Sweden.

Klappentext

This is a study of the novels Cat''s Eye, The Robber Bride and Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. More specifically it focuses on the descriptions of the female characters and their relationships to each other. This study shows that normative, patriarchal structures in these novels work as obstacles to the women''s friendships, making them very complex and difficult. Atwood''s novels depict a brutal world where men are no longer needed to uphold the norms and values of an unequal system. By constantly watching oneself and others, all female characters are depicted as part of the panoptical system. However, this study also discusses ways out of gendered behaviour. The outbreak is made possible chiefly by employing what Gregersdotter calls dialogic storytelling. The author argues that these three novels can be seen as a trilogy due to the novels'' focus on friendship between women. This study contributes both to the research field concerning the writings of Margaret Atwood, as well as to gender and literature studies in general.