"Surfacing", Margaret Atwood (1972)

Résumé du document

Atwood's contribution to the Canadian Literature is regarded as one of the most important of the past century. As an author, a poet and also a critic, she has distinguished herself by her literary eclecticism and her political and feminist involvement. She is also among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history. Born in 1939, she has spent a large part of her childhood in North Quebec as the narrator of Surfacing (1972), a founder book in Atwood's work. Surfacing is the story of a young woman who returns to her childhood land with a couple of friends, Richard and Anna, and her lover, Joe, to look for her disappeared father who had gone without explanations. This come back to the familiar home located on a remote island of Quebec behind closed doors will be the occasion to face her memories, her past and to surface, cleared out of her neurosis, and be able to brave a real new world. This book has been acclaimed, cheered, but also criticized.

Extraits

[...] We will try to emphasis the central Atwood's theme of Canadian Literature in Surfacing, it means the complex relation between victim and victimizer through the couple's relationship of Richard with Anna on the one hand, and Joe with the narrator one the other hand. It will be a good way to propose a characters' analysis. Although feminism is clearly a strong axis of this book, it will be emphasized why this couple's structure can't be only interpreted as an illustration of gender violence. Surfacing proposes a reflection on language and its 2 implication on representations, on the mental configuration, and above all on power and free will. I. David and Anna's relationship : Violence gender under witness. [...]

[...] This idea can be related with the mental journey of the protagonist and is especially relevant to study Joe's relationship with the narrator. Joe says you love me ? That's all. That's the only thing that matters” and the narrator thinks was the language again, I couldn't use it because it wasn't mine. He must have known what he meant but it was an imprecise word” (p.100). Joe's conciseness reveals that the narrator doesn't love him and doesn't share his feeling. [...]

[...] The bad part isn't the thing itself but being a witness” (p.76). We could interpret this scene and this victim/victimizer relationship only as a feminist illustration of the couple's coercion in a fight against gender violence and not as a Canadian Literature's identity quest. It can't be deny the Surfacing's political commitment in favour of Feminism. For all that, we should consider the Schaeffer's thesis about Surfacing. According to Susan Schaeffer, Surfacing's work is about “/mortality, victimization of all mankind/”. [...]

[...] For example when he enters in his bedroom and discovers the protagonist on the bed, he says : lady, what're you doing in my bed ? You a customer or something (p.85) or when he compares the protagonist to Anna : “Good girl, your heart's in the right place. And the rest of her too ( ) I like it round and firm and fully packed. Anna, you are eating too much” (p.92). He speaks about women as sexual objects and belittles Anna beside the group. [...]

[...] Bibliography : 8 For all the quotations' pages of the book, it has been used the Virago's Edition of 2003, London. Davey, Franck, “Atwood Walking Backwards”, Open Letter, 2nd Ser., No 5 (Summer 1973), 74-84. Özdemir, Erinç, “Power, Madness, And Gender Identity In Margaret Atwood's Surfacing: A Feminist Reading”, English Studies (2003) 57-79 Schaeffer, Susan Fromberg : is time that September Us' : Margaret Atwood's Surfacing”. Centennial Review Nº4 (Fall 1974), 319-337. Richard Cheadle, “Margaret Atwood's Surfacing”, Academic blog, (2006). http://surfacing.rjcheadle.com/index.shtml Bjerring, Nancy E. Problem of Language in Margaret Atwood's Surfacing.” Queen's Quarterly Nº4 (Winter 1976), 597-612. [...]