The Surfacing Of An Ecofeminist Awareness

Margaret Atwood (1939- ), one of the most famous and influential contemporary Canadian writers, is closely associated with the cultural flowering in Canada during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Poet, novelist and cultural commentator, Atwood deals with a wide range of themes in her writings. She is one of the first Canadian novelists who propound the women-nature relationship with a combination of feminist and ecological perspectives. Her awareness of the women-nature connection, or her ecofeminism, is clearly reflected in her second novel, Surfacing, which was published in 1972.The thesis is a tentative study of the ecofeminist awareness that Margaret Atwood establishes through the presentation of the female narrator in the novel. The narrator achieves her ecofeminist awareness through two levels of her journey: physical and psychological. The purpose of the physical journey is to search for her mysteriously missing father. Yet in the searching process, she begins a psychological journey that brings to surface her ecofeminist awareness. She becomes keenly aware of men's dominance over women and nature, the women-nature connection and patriarchal hierarchical dualism which privileges men over women and nature. On the basis of textual analysis, the thesis will explore Atwood's representation of the women-nature connection and her ecofeminist ideas about fulfilling equality and harmony between women and men, between culture and nature.