Between reality and fantasy : different means of escape in Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle

Title: Between reality and fantasy : different means of escape in Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle
Source document: The Central European journal of Canadian studies. 2002, vol. 2, iss. [1], pp. 27-35
Extent
27-35
  • ISSN
    1213-7715 (print)
    2336-4556 (online)
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
 

Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.

Abstract(s)
This paper addresses the question of the relationship between the individual and the society by focusing on the main heroine of the novel, Joan Foster, and her problems of female identity and multiple selfhood. Joan, who defines herself as an escape artist, develops different means of escaping the entrapment of the male-dominated cultural myths imposed on her by her mother and the society she lives in, by changing herselves. Since she is a novelist, she struggles to escape the confines of her plots as well as her self by moving between the self and the Other, without being able to define either. In fact she is unable to achieve a liberating escape from either society or her own narratives, and only exchanges one kind of confinement for another. The whole narrative of Lady Oracle, which deals with one of the most spectacular escapes ofthe main heroine, her own death, blurs boundaries between reality and fantasy, the self and the Other, and appears to be an escape from the constraints of the Gothic conventions that are, as many critics have noted, present in the novel.
Le présent ouvrage traite des relations entre l'individu et la société mettant au premier pian l'heroine principale du roman, Joan Foster, et les problèmes multiples de son identité féminine. En se définissant comme artiste évadé, elle recourt aux différents moyens d'évasion des pièges tendus par les mythes masculins dominants. Ceux-ci lui sont imposés par sa propre mère et par la société. Elle s'en échappe en changeant elle-même. Ecrivain, elle essaie de s'évader des limites des intrigues de ses propres romans, errant tout le temps entre le Moi et l'Autre, ne réussissant pas à définir ni Moi ni Autre. Elle n'arrive pas à se délivrer ni de la société ni de ses propres histoires et elle ne fait que remplacer une sorte de restriction par une autre. Le roman entier, décrivant une des plus frappantes évasions de l'héroine principale, sa mort, rend floues les limites entre la réalité et la fantaisie, le Moi et l'Autre et devient l'évasion des restrictions des conventions gothiques présentes, selon les opinions de nombreux critiques, dans le roman.
References
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