Nothing to live against? : predators in Margaret Atwood's works

Abstract

Helene Cixous, the radical French feminist, has, at times, "repudiated the label 'feminist"' because it strengthens the "hierarchical opposition of masculine/feminine which she is trying to deconstruct." In much the same vein, Margaret Atwood observes that people are "great categorizers and pigeon-holers"; she believes that by categorizing and putting people "safely" in pigeonholes and dismissing them thereafter, we think, "we have thereby summed them up". However unlike Cixous, Atwood does not deny the label 'feminist' which is often attached to her writings, even though she is "unwilling to adhere to a party line". She refuses to be categorized as propagandist but she does admit to being an "observer of society".