Title:
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Margaret Atwood’s transformative use of the crime fiction genre
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This thesis examines Atwood's transformation of the crime genre, more
particularly the whodunit and the spy thriller, in some of her longer fiction. Her
protagonists are considered as detective figures needing to decipher experiences
made mysterious to them by acceptance of hegemonic scripts. Discussion
explores their discoveries that they are not only victims of the crime fabulae they
unravel, but accessories, their complicity arising from an acculturation to
ideologies of power, particularly those of patriarchy, class and colonialism. A
gendered inflection of the crime narrative is also evident in one of the texts under
discussion, Alias Grace, which depicts an unsuccessful male investigator.
Using the concept of abduction - the interpretation of signs according to
inherited mental frameworks - this thesis demonstrates that the protagonists'
understanding of their conditions requires profound changes in their mental
mapping of their worlds. While the body and the environment are shown to
provide pressing evidence of crime, analysis demonstrates that mysteries are only
unlocked by adjustments in the protagonists' mindsets. Careful tracking of those
adjustments also makes clear that Atwood treats the romance narrative as a barrier
to understanding.
This thesis considers detection as an activity required by Atwood's
readers as well as her characters. The penultimate chapter, on the metafictive
detective story, therefore examines those authorial techniques that engage readers
as investigators needing to deconstruct false stories generated by blinkered
focalizers. Underpinning the entire thesis, but especially addressed in its closing
chapters, is the belief that Atwood' s metafictive strategies are not symptoms of a
postmodem depthlessness. Instead, pursuing Atwood's assertion that popular
forms of literature embody mythologies which she terms the 'dreams of society',
transformation of the crime genre is discussed as part of the author's wider
project: interrogation of ways of seeing in order to encourage a sounder
apprehension of ourselves and our worlds.
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