Spotty Handed Villainesses

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. ”

“What kind of story shall I choose to tell? … How shall I tell it? … Who will be at the centre of it? … Will it have a happy ending, or not?”

She says that no matter what is being written, no matter what genre or style, these questions must be answered in the process of writing. They can be explorations of moral freedom -- because everyone's choices are limited, and women's choices have been more limited than men's, but that doesn't mean women can't make choices. She then proceeds to systematically tell the audience what novels aren’t. She concludes by claiming that as wicked women exist in real life, so they have a place in literature; and that the many-dimensionality of women needs to be given literary expression. “But female bad characters can also act as keys to doors we need to open, and as mirrors in which we can see more than just a pretty face. She questions the differences in having a female as the central protagonist, rather than a male.

• The whole speech, by showing what fiction writers are in practice doing as they create their imagined worlds, works to challenge this view. She talks about King Lear’s daughters, Regan and Goneril; Lady Macbeth; Jezebel; Medea; the child-killing mother in “Beloved”; Tess in “Tess of the D’Urbervilles”; Deliliah; Mata Hari, Judith, Hester Prynne; Madame Bovary; Becky Sharpe in “Vanity Fair”, Undine Spragg in “The Custom of the Country”, Jane Eyre, Lucy Tantamount in “Point Counter Point”. ” She moves logically through the various genres in literature, looking at gender issues within them.

THEMES

Role of Women in Society

Margaret Atwood is more reasoned and logical in her approach of the role of women, compared with many others. ”

Atwood then examines the true role of women in literature.