Margaret Atwood Revisited by Karen F. Stein (review)

humanities 539 Will we know `who is this woman' after reading these two fine biographies ? Perhaps. We will certainly know more about her, about contemporary Canadian literature, about the writing life. And we will enjoy the read. (KAREN F. STEIN) Karen F. Stein. Margaret Atwood Revisited Twayne. xx, 180 US $32.00 Margaret Atwood Revisited, a volume in Twayne's World Authors Series of literary criticism, provides an overview of Atwood's long and varied writing career to date by surveying the range of her published work, including her poetry, novels, short fiction, non-fiction, and children's stories. As such it is a useful introduction to Atwood's writing and would make a valuable resource in an undergraduate classroom. Because it is, as the title implies, a `revisiting' of Atwood's works and their critical reception, the strength of Stein's book lies not in the originality of its analysis, but rather in the clarity and scope of its summary. Stein's introduction provides biographical and background information. She organizes the remaining chapters around Atwood's works, grouping them in terms of both genre and chronology while making interesting links between the characters in the novels and the speakers of many of Atwood's poems. Stein opens each chapter by explaining how the grouping of texts fits together, categorizing Atwood's characters as `archetypes,' `victims,' `witnesses,' and `tricksters.' The structure suggests a narrative of development and encourages a reading of Atwood's œuvre as unified yet shifting. Touching on the critical reception and the major theoretical approaches to the works, Stein suggests that the victims and archetypes that characterize the earlier works tend to mature and become more fully realized in Atwood's later writing. Although Stein's summaries of the works are useful, the rationale behind her groupings breaks down as she repeats similar themes in each chapter. For example, Stein suggests that Atwood's later novels `revisit familiar themes: Gothic quests, female friendship, victims, doubles and doubling, memory, myth, and storytelling.' She also argues that Atwood's later poems`continue to probe themes such as the power and duplicity of language, identity, and storytelling.' Because the list of themes Stein engages is, for the most pat, general and wide ranging, depth tends to get sacrificed for breadth throughout her study. One surprising gap in Stein's book is a sustained attention to Atwood's positioning within her social and historical context. Although in her first chapter Stein insists that `to speak about Atwood we must place her in twentieth-century Canadian social and historical contexts,' in the same sentence she goes on to describe Atwood's familial relationships rather 540 letters in canada 1999 than her larger situation. Similarly, in her chapter `Northern Gothic: The Early Poems, 1961B1975,' there is only a fleeting reference to the mythopoeic school that so influenced Atwood during her early writing career and the impact of her affiliation with Northrop Frye and Jay Macpherson at Victoria College. Stein does not develop in any detail how interdependent Atwood's and Frye's theories of Canadian identity once were. She suggests that Atwood's Survival has raised heated debates about the definition of a Canadian literature without adequately situating those debates within a given time and place. Further examination of Atwood's role as writer and critic within a shifting Canadian literary milieu would provide useful background for both Canadian and international readers. Such contextualizing might also clarify Atwood's own political commitments. Curiously, Stein's summaries of Atwood's writing seem at odds with her repeated suggestion that Atwood is seen to `mistrust politics.' Any reader of Atwood must confront the constant pressure that Atwood puts on the structures of patriarchy and imperialism. According to Stein, the major theme that links all of Atwood's writing is her belief in the power of storytelling. Referring to Atwood's protagonists as Scheherazade figures, Stein suggests that `Atwood's fictions and poems demonstrate powerfully and poignantly that the stories we tell ourselves and each other may explain or obfuscate, entrap, or liberate, lead us to safety or destruction, and bring us to the depths of despair or the heights of joy.' This broad statement avoids...