National Identity In Margaret Atwood's 'The Robber Bride'

Margaret Atwood’s name is counted amongst the most famed writers of Canadian Literature, having published fourteen novels, seven collections of short prose and short stories, and seventeen books of poetry to its credit. While her works boast of diversity, some themes and ideologies constantly recur, including a fascination with the Canadian wilderness, a concern with women’s place in society, Canada’s postcolonial status, and finally, the importance of history in Canada’s process of nation formation. In her own style, Atwood locates herself within her Canadian milieu, forwarding the idea to all aspiring writers who wanted to locate themselves in their own world:

“I don’t think Canada is ‘better’ than any other place, any more than I think Canadian

A preoccupation with questions of home and estrangement, national identity and belonging runs through this novel, which is populated by characters who experience a literal or metaphorical exile. It is accompanied, however, by the recognition that such a displaced condition is different for “those from other countries,”8 that there is an “us” (white Anglophones) and a “them” (the immigrants) (99). In The Robber Bride the attention to visible minorities foregrounds difference, but the kind of difference highlighted in the novel is not simply multiculturalism, difference among cultures. It is also difference within culture and within the

Zenia is the stranger within the text, the other who is given no voice, but who prompts anxiety because she refuses to reflect a stable image back to the self. She appropriates the mask that Fanon detects on the face of every subaltern working within an alien dominant culture, but the effectiveness of her disguise is in itself unsettling: “her fakery was deeply assumed, and even her most superficial disguises were total” (36–37). Zenia’s mimicry is potent and unsettling, crossing the boundaries between sameness and otherness. Howells speaks of the transgression of boundaries in the novel: “Zenia operates on this edge of desire and lack which is the borderline territory of the marauding Gothic Other” (Howells 1995). Zenia works on this desire and the ambivalence it creates. As foreigner, she is part pitied, part feared, and part envied. Consequently, the other side to her monstrosity is her much discussed exotic beauty: “Zenia stands out . . . like the moon” (126), and like Shanita, she prompts both fascination and repulsion. Everything about her is contradictory and unstable. In The Robber Bride, boundaries are also crossed by Roz’s transgressive father: “He could walk through a border like it wasn’t there,” says Uncle Joe. “What’s a border?” asks Roz. “A border is a line on a map,” says Uncle Joe. “A border is where it gets dangerous,” says Uncle George. (331) With every