Margaret Atwood's Fairy-Tale Sexual Politics by Sharon Rose Wilson (review)

228 LETTERS IN CANADA 1994 Miller, scholar of Puritan literary traditions, inspired Atwood to study Canadian literature. 'Gender as Genre' is Sherrill Grace's analysis of female autobiography in three Atwood novels: Lady Oracle, The Handmaid 's Tale, and Cat's Eye. Grace finds that Atwood uses the genre of autobiography to 'present ... a cyclical, iterative, layered narrative that invites exploration rather than arrival,' and to present multiplicity rather than unity. Coral Howells continues the discussion of autobiographical fiction in 'Cat's Eye: Elaine Risley's Retrospective Art.' Focusing on the tension between story and paintings, Howells, like Grace, finds that 'Atwood has paradoxically exposed the limits of autobiography.' The last three essays discuss Atwood's short stories. In 'Gender and Narrative Perspective in Margaret Atwood's Stories,' Dieter Meindl classifies the stories in Dancing Girls and Bluebeard's Egg according to narrative perspective (point of view). Meindl notes that Atwood's narrators and centres of consciousness are most often female and argues that the stories are modernist rather than postmodern. Isabel Carrera Suarez finds an evolution in the technique of Atwood's three short-story collections. According to Suarez, 'language and subject evolve together.' Suarez argues that Atwood uses postmodern theories as tools 'for more inclusive analysis or representation.' The book's concluding essay, W.J. Keith's 'Interpreting and Misinterpreting "Bluebeard's Egg": A Cautionary Tale' urges critics to return to close reading of the text rather than adhering slavishly to a critical theory they wish to apply. Of course, we all start from theoretical positions, even Keith. The art of literary criticism is to test text against theory and theory against text. Keith's close reading makes two important points specific to 'Bluebeard 's Egg' which I see as central to Atwood's art. He notes that Atwood 'complicates the meaning of her story so that it cannot be read as a simple tract, feminist or otherwise.' Further, Keith argues that the key to the story is the 'multiplicity of possible interpretations.' Indeed, the value of Nicholson's collection lies in its 'multiplicity of interpretations,' its range of approaches, and its selection. The essays engage each other and open up a lively dialogue that invites the reader's participation. And as this book illustrates, all our interpretations are grounded in our theoretical assumptions (even if they are implicit rather than stated): there can be no one pure reading of any text. (KAREN F. STEIN) Sharon Rose Wilson. Margaret Atwood's Fairy-Tale Sexual Politics ECW Press 1993. xviii, 430. Fairy tales are double-sided. We often think of them in terms of happy endings in which beautiful young women are rescued by handsome HUMANmES 229 young men and live happily ever after: justice is swift, the good are rewarded, and the evil punished. What we tend to forget is the amount of suffering, evil, violence, and sheer blood-and-guts that precede the ending. Grimms' tales are grim indeed. In the 1970s, feminists objected to the fairy-tale image of a passive heroine waiting for the active hero, arguing that this is the wrong message to give active young women. As a young mother then, I worried about reading fairy tales to my daughters. But my fears were alleviated when I overheard my older daughter and her friend telling each other about a game they played in which they rescued their mothers who had been captured by witches. Two girls could tell a story in which they both punished and rescued their mothers. They were clearly working out psychological issues through their stories, and thus gaining power and a measure of control over their lives. Fairy tales must serve similar functions throughout history, for every culture has produced such fictions , and they include our best-remembered and best-loved stories. Fairy tales have been recuperated by psychologists and literary theorists. Psychologist Bruno Bettelheim entered the debate on fairy tales with his book The Uses of Enchantment (1976), in which he argued for the psychological significance of these stories for children's development. Recently Jack Zipes has been analysing the representations of gender in fairy tales. Clarissa Pinkola Estes' book Women Who Run with the Wolves (1992) offers...