EMANCIPATION AND EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN IN MARGARET ATWOOD’S BODILY HARM (Pages 208-213) by Mrs. D. L. Jaisy in THE INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH SPECIALIST / ISSN: 2350-1499 (Online); 2350-0751 (Print)

The search for identity has emerged as a major concern in much of the post-colonial writings. Canada, like any other newly emergent Commonwealth country has always tried to define and establish itself as a nation with its own distinctive national and cultural identity. Canada is a unique and diverse country and it has two home cultures’ French and British like other colonial literatures, Canadian literature has encountered a number of obstacles in its growth. As a woman writer, she draws our attention towards the issues of suffering and survival as conditions of both the Canadian experience and female experience. Introspection, self-analysis and an attempt to come to terms with one’s self both through isolation and social interaction are the features of many twentieth century novels, particularly, the novels of Canadian woman novelists like Margaret Atwood and Margaret Laurence. These two Canadian writers articulate in their fiction, the silence and marginality of women and a sort of cultural alienation of women. Margaret Atwood is a feminist writer who is not afraid to speak her mind. Her central figure is mentally, physically, metaphysically and self reproachably tortured by male domination. The women in her novels are suffering from personal victimization. She, in fact writes about the feminist issues like marginality, alienation and self-division. Her fictions are based on love, marriage, motherhood and domestic experience. She explores the victimization of woman. She is ranked as a great feminist writer in this era. The main aspect is about female physic quest. She explains the real source of women’s oppression in a male dominated society. Margaret Atwood’s female character especially in her novel Bodily Harm is usually exemplary of achievement and empowerment. Rennie, Lora, Anna and the other females is the protagonist who suffers a lot of abuses by the male characters. Keywords: emancipation, empowerment, victimization