The Body of Hurt in Margaret Atwood's Novel Bodily Harm

Authors

  • Avital Gad Cykman UFSC

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2015v68n2p57

Abstract

This article analyses Margaret Atwood’s novel BODILY HARM (1981) in regard to its exploration of the link between corporeality and contextuality, focusing on the relation between the historical and socio-cultural context in which identity is constructed and the female character’s perception of body and self. The character’s retrospective journey serves as a ground for a deconstruction of the character’s values, behavior, relationships, and discomfort with the body in order to reveal the power relations and social causes behind her present situation. The study focuses on the literary articulation of the problems of being female, the exploration of the relation between the biological body and the cultural concept of the body, and the criticism of social representations of women.

Author Biography

Avital Gad Cykman, UFSC

Avital G.Cykman is a PhD candidate at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. Her work about feminist postmodernism in Margaret Atwood’s novel Cat’s Eye won first place in the graduate essay contest category in Margaret Atwood Society Awards and was published in the Margaret Atwood Society Magazine, Canada. Her article about anger in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handsmaid’s Tale has been published in Arthemis, an interdisciplinary magazine for research in gender, feminism, and sexuality. Her fiction book Life In, Life Out was published in the USA in 2014 to a favorable critical review. Her research interests include corporeality, gender, minorities, women writers and creative writing.

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Published

2015-01-21

Issue

Vol. 68 No. 2 (2015): Body and Literature

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.