Walter is an instructor of English at Pennsylvania State University. In the following essay, she discusses the difficulties in determining the character of Estelle on the basis of her monologue.

With her usual caustic wit, Margaret Atwood uses humor to examine women's power and powerlessness and to exploit the distinction between fantasy and fear in her story "Rape Fantasies." Atwood, through the voice of the narrator Estelle, shows readers how hard it is for women to laugh at themselves when they have been conditioned by the media to take themselves and their desires far too seriously and their safety not seriously enough. It is implied that only a rare woman like Estelle analyzes what her "rape" fantasies mean and how they have originated, suggesting that television and magazines help inspire a woman's fantasies of submissiveness to a strange male. Estelle especially condemns magazines that have these questionnaires...