Re-Inscription of Female Images and Subjectivities in Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride

In exploring the complex female identity models that are articulated in Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride, this essay foregrounds Atwood’s sensitiveness to one of the major feminist issues of the early nineties: the debate over whether it is/was possible to postulate a distinctive “female specialness”. The essay's specific contention is that, in outlining the complex experiences of three Canadian friends – Tony, Roz and Charis – and of their demonic antagonist, Zenia, across three decades (from the sixties to the early nineties), Atwood questions notions of biological reductionism and, more importantly, the feminist creed of universal sisterhood4.