Margaret Atwood: Dancing Girls

Canadian poet, novelist, and critic, noted for her feminism and mythological themes. Atwood's work has been regarded as a barometer of feminist thought. Her protagonists are often a kind of 'everywoman' characters, or weaker members of society. Several of Atwood's novels can be classified as science fiction, although her writing is above the normal formulae of the genre.

"You have good bones, they used to say, and I paid no attention. What did I care about good bones, then? I was more concerned with what was covering them. I was more concerned with lust, and pimples. The bones were backdrop. " (from Good Bones, 1992)

Margared Atwood was born in Ottawa, Canada, the second of three children. He father was a forest entomologist. Part of her early years Atwood spent part in the bush of northern Quebec, where her father undertook research. Later these childhood experiences gave material to her metaphorical use of the wilderness and its animals in Wilderness Tips (1991).

In 1946 Atwood's family moved to Toronto. She was eleven before she attended school full-time. Atwood graduated from Leaside High School in 1959. She then studied at the University of Toronto, where she met the literary analayst Northrop Fry; his myth criticism and Jungian ideas influenced her deeply. She won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, and became a graduate student at Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, receiving her M.A. in 1962. Atwood continued her studies of Victorian literature at Harvard (1962-63, 1965-67), reading for Ph.D., but interrupted her studies in 1967 after having failed to complete her dissertation on 'The English Metaphysical Romance'. She worked for a market-research company in Toronto and taught English at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver (1964-65). She has held a variety of academic posts and has been writer-in-residence at numerous Canadian and American universities.



All that bullshit out of the way, I like Atwood, she has a very tongue-in-cheek sense of humour. I can't wait to get done all these short stories, the theme so far include; all woman have rape fantasies, slipping into insanity, a woman clinging to a hopeless cheating man, and a stalker who just wants to say hi.