You are on page 1of 2

INFLUENCE OF NATURE ON WOMEN AS SEEN IN THE NOVEL SURFACING BY MARGARET ATWOOD ABSTRACT Nature surrounds us everywhere.

Nature has traditionally been imaged as feminine provides a clue to the connection between the oppression of nature and oppression of women. In a broad sense, Eco-Feminism seeks to do away with all kinds of oppressions and holds the belief that no attempt to liberate women will be successful without a similar attempt to liberate nature from the onslaught of modern technology and the colonists. Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. Many of Margaret Atwoods works, both poetry and fiction, embody her concerns for the Earth and related biological processes. Atwoods contributions occupy a certain unique position in world literature and they have been rendered into more than twenty languages and published in twenty five countries. Honoured with numerous awards including the Booker Prize, Atwood is actively involved in cultural and human rights activities. This paper attempts to analyze Surfacing (1972) because it provides a remarkably rich rendering of Eco-feminist issues and brings out the influence of nature on women. In this novel Atwood presents a world that oppresses and subjugates both femininity and Nature by throwing light on problems of ecological imbalance particularly in the countryside of Northern Quebec. The narrator-protagonist makes a return to nature in order to retrieve her real self that has so far been suppressed by a disastrous marriage and traumatized by a forced abortion. She returns to her native place in Northern Quebec where she finds the countryside and the wilderness a welcome change from her workaday life.
ANUPAMA.R M.PHIL ENGLISH LITERATURE, QUEEN MARYS COLLEGE FOR WOMEN, CHENNAI-600004.

Nature is filled with wonders that can take humans out of their human-centric egoism.

ANUPAMA.R M.PHIL ENGLISH LITERATURE, QUEEN MARYS COLLEGE FOR WOMEN, CHENNAI-600004.

You might also like