Duality Of Writer-Characters In Margaret Atwood’s Works

Margaret Atwood is an important writer in contemporary literature.She is recognized as "Queen of Canadian literature" and has created many influential literary works.Atwood’s works are highly valued for their varied themes,delicate language,unique narrative techniques and profound connotations.Running through the works are her thoughts on the duality of the world and human beings.In her literary criticism Negotiating with the Dead:A Writer on Writing,she enumerates the representations and implications of doubleness in literary tradition and puts forward the view that "all writers are double"(Atwood,2015:32).In her poetry,she presents the duality of the world through various metaphorical images,and at the same time deconstructs the binary oppositions one by one.In her novels,she portrays various writer-characters whose experience and narrative present the dilemmas caused by their dual identities and their efforts in seeking solutions.Several scholars have researched the issue of duality related to Atwood and her works.They have summarized Atwood’s views on duality and revealed the dual characteristics of characters and themes in her works.However,their research fails to link her theory about duality with her identity as a writer and ignores the fact that there are many writer-characters in her novels who are endowed with dual identities which is absolutely not a coincidence.Therefore,in order to make clear the hidden relationship between her literary theory and creation,taking her five novels as the subject of its research and combining with her thoughts about duality proposed in Negotiating with the Dead,this thesis studies characteristics and interactive relationship of the writer-characters’dual selves reflected in these works.It also aims to reveal Atwood’s view of literary creation conveyed through the portrayal of writer-characters who live with duality.The thesis consists of six chapters.The first chapter introduces Atwood’s life and literary creation,summarizes the existing research on her works at home and abroad,and explains the main structure and contents of the thesis.The second chapter introduces the dual images of writer-characters and their general characteristics in the five novels.The writer-characters are presented in the forms of twins and doubles,representing their dual selves.The third chapter analyzes the conflict between writer-characters’ dual selves.One self represents the unawakened women and the followers of the Establishment while the other self the awakened women and the overthrowers.One self is a spiritual wanderer and the other a spiritual returnee.They comprise both an idealist and a realist,and both a victim and a survivor.The fourth chapter discusses three ways in which writer-characters’dual selves fuse through writing:the compromise of one of the selves,the complementation of one self by the other,and the convergence of the two.The fifth chapter,combining with Atwood’s viewpoints on writer’s duality in Negotiating with the Dead,explores the implications of this characterization for writers in real world.The sixth chapter is Conclusion.It summarizes the previous chapters and points out the internal relationship between Atwood’s literary thoughts and literary creation.