Margaret Atwood: 'Spotty-Handed Villainesses' (1994)
             • Born in Ottawa, Ontario, 1939
             • Studied at the University of Toronto, then took her masters degree at Radcliffe College, Massachusetts, in 1962
             • Canada's most eminent novelist and poet, and also writes short stories, critical studies, screenplays, radio scripts and books for children, her works having been translated into over 30 languages.
             • A full-time writer since 1972, first teaching English, then holding a variety of academic posts and writer residencies.
             • President of the Writers Union of Canada from 1981-1982
             • President of PEN, Canada from 1984-1986
             • She is perhaps best known for her novels, in which she creates strong, often enigmatic, women characters and excels in telling open-ended stories, while dissecting contemporary urban life and sexual politics.
             • She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
             • Been presented with the Order of Ontario, the Norwegian Order of Literary Merit, and has been awarded sixteen honorary degrees.
             'Spotty-Handed Villainesses' has the sub-title 'Problems of Female Bad Behaviour in the Creation of Literature'.
             • The assumed audiences for this colloquial talk are well-educated readers of fiction who will respond to the many literary allusions Atwood, for many years a university lecturer, uses to illustrate her thesis.
             • The speech assumes, too, that her audiences are informed about contemporary movements in society, particularly the feminist view of the position of women in life and in art.
             • The purpose of this speech is to Educate
             • Atwood shows that the idea of women behaving badly has starred in much of the world's most valued literature. She considers that to some extent the validity of showing women with spots, as Villainesses, was challenged by the women's movement of the last quarter of the twentieth century. Women who did ev...