Atwood Challenge: Lady Oracle

Lady Oracle by Margaret Awtood
Publisher: Anchor
Genre: Literary
Page count: 359
Source: Purchased a copy

Release Date: 1976

An original and compelling work in which Margaret Atwood passes one woman’s bizarre life through the prism of her unique literary vision. The shy, awkward wife of a perpetual radical, Joan Foster is a formerly obese woman whose delicate equilibrium is threatened by the fact that the several lives she has lived separately and secretly are coming together and will be exposed. She is newly and notoriously famous as a bestselling author; she writes gothic novels under a nom de plume; she is having a hidden affair. Love, fear, understanding, suspense, sensuality, and humour – there is hardly an emotional current that is not touched inLady Oracle, and with a depth, vitality, and wit that are rare in any time.

Thoughts, Opinions and Themes

In my opinion Lady Oracle is one of the most underrated Margaret Atwood books. The story of Joan Foster is a complex one and it is an incredibly interesting character study. I like that she is a woman who is constantly trying to find herself, and figure out just where she belongs in the world.

Joan is a woman of multiple identities and she struggles to find balance between them. I think it’s important to note that it’s balance and not assimilation she’s looking for. She’s not trying to merge all these different parts of her life. And I can relate to this feeling. I know I for one have had different groups of friends – work friends, school friends, childhood friends etc. Sometimes it works out okay if you try and blend them but often I find it just makes everyone a little uncomfortable. There’s inside jokes and lingo to each group and someone always ends up feeling left out. But anyway I digress, back to Joan.

Lady Oracle takes us through three main parts of her life. The first is her as an over weight child. This ties into her relationships with other people – particularly with her mother – and how that shapes her view of the world and the people in it. From there we move into the second stage where she begins to take a little bit of the responsibility for her own life and she moves to England. She’s still quite immature in this stage, but she discovers the world of Costume Gothics, which allow her to flesh out some of her own life and ideas. And then finally, we reach the point where she’s secure enough to publish a feminist collection under her own name. That’s not to say by this point she’s suddenly mature. She still makes horrible decisions when it comes to men, and has a hard time standing up for herself. But I loved the co-existence between how much she had changed and how much she stayed the same. You can never fully run from your past. It will always be a part of you.

“I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it waited for sleep, then cornered me.”

Body Politics

“If Desdemona was fat who would care whether or not Othello strangled her?”

Body Politics, and the issue of fat shaming, are continually present throughout this book. And I loved that Margaret Atwood not only addressed these issues but tied them into greater ideas about gender politics and feminism. Because if we’re being honest it’s really hard to separate one from the other if you want to have an open conversation about it.

One great quote that emphasizes the challenges Joan faces is:

“What a shame, he’d say, how destructive to me were the attitudes of society, forcing me into a mold of femininity that I could never fit, stuffing me into those ridiculous pink tights, those spangles, those outmoded, cramping ballet slippers. How much better for me if I’d been accepted for what I was and had learned to accept myself, too. Very true, very right, very pious. But it’s still not so simple. I wanted those things, that fluffy skirt, that glittering tiara. I liked them.”

I think this quote also demonstrates how Atwood doesn’t oversimplify the issues. It’s not just that society wants Joan to be skinny, she herself is drawn to a certain way of life/body image. I also liked how her struggle with weight stays with her. I find too many books where the character loses the excess weight and then everything is fine and dandy. Even after Joan loses ~one hundred pounds, she thinks of herself as the “fat lady” and she is paranoid that someone from her past will show up and reveal her “terrible” secret. I think this is a more realistic portrayal of how someone would feel and the shame that they think they should feel over their former weight.

Art as an Escape

”Escape literature … should be an escape for the writer as well as the reader”

One thing that makes this book really unique for a Margaret Atwood novel, is that a good percentage of it is scenes from Gothic Romance novels. Since Joan writes them in secret they are a big part of her life, and we, as readers, often get snippets of her work in progress. It’s easy to see how Joan hides from the unpleasant realities of her own life, by losing herself in the predicaments of her heroines.

I think it’s safe to say that many people read romance novels as an escape. It’s nice to think about someone coming and sweeping you off your feet or love triumphing over all. But I like that Atwood swings the perspective around to see how this genre may also be beneficial to the author. I think Joan’s novels help her process and make sense of events that happen to her. However, even though her writing is beneficial to her, it’s not a solution. She continues to see herself as a victim, just like her heroines, proving that it’s not enough to simply escape from her problems. A lesson she learns first hand when she tries to fake her own death. Yes, she’s escaped the immediate problems of her life, but she can’t forget about them and in the end is forced to to face the consequences and return to her real life.