Patricia F. Goldblatt (Essay Date Spring 1999)

SOURCE: Goldblatt, Patricia F. "Reconstructing Margaret Atwood's Protagonists." World Literature Today 73, no. 2 (spring 1999): 275-82.

In the following essay, Goldblatt discusses the transformation of Atwood's female protagonists "from ingenues to insightful women."

A weaver employs fragments from life, silk, raw yarns, wool, straw, perhaps even a few twigs, stones, or feathers, and transforms them into a tapestry of color, shape, and form. An author's work is similar, for she selects individuals, locations, images, and ideas, rearranging them to create a believable picture. Each smacks of reality, but is not. This is the artist's art: to reconstruct the familiar into new, fascinating, but often disturbing tableaux from which stories can unfold.

Margaret Atwood weaves stories from her own life in the bush and cities of Canada. Intensely conscious of her political and social context, Atwood dispels the notion that caribou-clad Canadians remain...