Margaret Eleanor Atwood is a versatile artist in the Canadian literature. This book is an assessment of Atwood’s belief about the condition of women, her portrayal of women and their status in Canadian patriarchal society. She has not overestimated the problems of women but holds a mirror to actual social status of women through her female characters who are true to life. She pleads for a healthy, harmonious and balanced man-woman relationship in which two sexes are viewed as complementary, not as a battle of sexes or a winning or losing game.
The study of Atwood’s novels creates an awareness that no gods from above but women themselves have to raise their inner self and make an effort to find their freedom. Through her female characters Margaret Atwood presents a different concept of feminism and challenges the unjust traditional role assigned to women. She proposes image of woman not just a “two-legged womb” but a dynamic human, different from male but no less significant in any manner.
The book also explores that Atwood’s feminist vision is neither male-centered nor female-centered but it offers a fresh perspective on women’s problems based on humanitarian ground. She fulfills the role of a torchbearer to society.
The book analyses seven of Atwood’s major novels that belong to the postmodern literary genre of ‘feminist protest’ and reveal an intense awareness of the relationship between bonding and bondage, i.e. between a woman’s need for connection with others and her equally strong need for freedom.
The book will be extremely useful to the students and teachers of English literature and researchers in this field.
Neeru Tandon, M.A., LL.B. topper and gold medallist from Kanpur University, obtained her Ph.D. in Indian-English Literature. She is an editor, author, critic, feminist and a poet too. Her area of interest includes contemporary fiction mainly by Indo-Anglian, Afro-American, and Canadian Women Writers. Presently, she is Reader at the Postgraduate Department of English, V.S.S.D. College, Kanpur. She has submitted her postdoctoral research work (D.Litt.) in Woman Literature. Dr. Tandon has several publications to her credit, which include critical commentary on Rabindranath Tagore’s Muktadhara, Anita Desai’s In Custody, Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable, Perspectives and Challenges in Indian-English Drama, Margaret Atwood: A Critical Survey, Feminine Psyche: A Post-Modern Critique (ed.) and Emily Dickinson: A Fresh Perspective. She is guiding research scholars in various fields like Parsi fiction, Canadian fiction, Afro-American fiction and Indian writing in English. She is Joint Secretary of All India Society of Intellectuals, and Life Member of B.P.N.I. She is also Associate Editor, The Atlantic Critical Review.
Dr. Anshul Chandra, a postgraduate in English Literature from S.N. Degree college, Kanpur, has obtained her Ph.D in Canadian Literature. She has participated and presented many a paper in national and international conferences.
A number of her research papers have been published in various books and journals of repute. Presently, she is working as a lecturer in the Department of English, Ch. Charan Singh P.G. College, Heonra, Etawah.
