Writing Her-story : A Postmodern approach to History in Margaret Atwood s The Blind Assassin.

Writing Her-story : A Postmodern approach to History in Margaret Atwood s The Blind Assassin. Miss Prerana Priyam Doley M. Phil. Scholar Gauhati University Guwahati, Assam India Abstract: From a postmodern perspective history has always been problematic because it is inextricably connected with issue like homogeneity, unity etc. We cannot know the past exactly as it was since it is made available to us in the form of text/documents constructed through the historian s perspective. History is just another metanarrative of Enlightenment which no longer have an overarching claim to Truth. Thus the celebration of little narratives instead of a single grand-narratives which gives voice to the otherwise marginalized and excentrics. Atwood s historiographic metafiction The Blind Assassin questions the masculine authoritative representation of history by bringing in female personal perspective. Considering the problematic treatment of truth and history, overlapping of fiction and history by Margaret Atwood, I will show in this paper, how she disregards that any official version which may have been represented as a true and validating single account of the past cannot be comprehended. Keywords: postmodern, metanarratives, little-narratives, historiographic metafiction. Postmodernism as well as postmodern literature as a term is not only difficult to define but also to place it within one homogenous category is next to impossible. Different critics have different opinions regarding the term which speaks for its multiplicity and complexity. Some see it as a historical period whiles others defines it as a style. Again for some it was a just a moment and some disagreeing describe it as more of a condition (Linda Hutcheon, Postmodernism 115). Umberto Eco writes in Postscript to The Name of the Rose, I believe that postmodernism is not a trend to be chronologically defined, but, rather an ideal category or better still, a Kuntswolen, a mode of operating (Eco as quoted www.ijellh.com 138

in Matei Calinescu, Exploring Postmodernism,5). While according to Brian McHale the referent to the term postmodernism does not exist because the various definitions of the term are literary-historical fictions constructed by readers/writers or literary historians. And since it is constructed and not a real life object it is possible to construct it in a number of different ways, none of it is less right or wrong than the other.(postmodernist Fiction 4-5). To quote McHale: Thus, there is John Barth s postmodernism, the literature of replenishment; Charles Newman s postmodernism, the literature of an inflationary economy; Jean Francois Lyotard s postmodernism, a general condition of knowledge in the contemporary informational regime; Ihab Hassan s postmodernism, a stage on the road of spiritual unification of humankind; and so on. There is even Kermode s construction of postmodernism, which in effect constructs it right out of existence.(5) The project of modernity as Jurgen Haberman calls began with seventeen century French Philosopher Renee Descartes infamous phrase cogito ergo sum I think therefore I am a concept that placed human existence at its center ( Linda Hutcheon, Postmodernism, 119). During the Enlightenment human-reason was placed on the highest pedestal as the common belief was that there were no crucial problems that proper application of reason could not solve. The knowledge of our selves, Truth, history and society were objectively determined. Such an approach was validating and effectuate because it provided a foundation for understanding the world and for progressing towards the so called Truth (Hutcheon, 119). According to Jean-Francois Lyotard, Enlightenment thought put forwarded primarily by eighteen century philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, W.F Hegel, Jean Jacque Rousseau and their descendants is sustained by what he calls metenarratives (Nicol, The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodern Fiction, 11).When Lyotard was asked by the Quebec Government to write a report on knowledge, science and technology in advance capitalist society, he published the book The Postmodern Condition ( in French in 1979, in English in 1984). In it he declared that postmodernism was incredulity towards metanarrative as it marked the decline and crisis of legitimizing master narrative. The so called metanarratives are those narratives that throughout history have ruled human thought and experience about knowledge. These metanarratives are stories or principles that give credibility to a society and justify its actions and visions of the future (Chris Snip-Walmsley, Postmodernism, 412). He claims that two grand narratives have determined western self understanding the Enlightenment story of progress and political emancipation and the Hegelian narrative of the manifestation of scientific reason ( Paul Sheehan, Postmodernism and Philosophy, 28). www.ijellh.com 139

These two grand narratives are the primary discursive attempt at organizing the chaos of modernity into something coherent and socially useful (Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 31-7, as quoted in Sheehan, 28). According to Lyotard these metanarratives are like narratives or grand stories which have sustained the Enlightenment thought that structures the discourses of religion, politics, science and philosophy. He sees it as a form of ideology which functions vehemently to suppress and control the individual subject by imposing a false sense of totality and universality on a set of disparate things, events and actions (Nicol, 11). The postmodern condition, as Lyotard believes and defines is disillusionment with such grand narratives because no such system can be all inclusive as it will silence those voices that are excluded from its vision (Wailmsley, 412). The claims of any kind of overall, totalizing explanation were treated with much skepticism. By resisting such a grand narrative, the subordinated and marginalized who otherwise don t fit into the larger stories gained recognition against those who disseminate the master narrative.(christopher Butler, Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction, 15). Any narrative be that of scientist, historians, philosophers etc is always the result of selection and interpretation. They have no one to one correspondence with real world nor do they have a unique fit or reliable fit in the world. All master narrative are just another form of fiction and hence the conclusion, that universal truth is impossible, and relativism is our fate (Butler, 15-16). Postmodern subjects do not believe in grand narrative anymore because any single events may be described in many different ways and instead of valuing one particular version alternative narratives should also be acknowledged. Lyotard argues that postmodernity instead of valuing one grand narrative, celebrates little narrative (petit recitis) those which do not claim for a overarching Truth but offer a qualified, limited truth relative to a particular situation (Nicol, 12). Considering the problematic treatment of truth and history, overlapping of fiction and history by Margaret Atwood, I will show in this paper, how she disregards that any official version which may have been represented as a true and validating single account of the past cannot be comprehended. Margaret Atwood s booker prize winner The Blind Assassin is a complex novel with many layers of narratives. It has multiple plots with the setting moving simultaneously between the real contemporary present world and the fantastical planet, Zycron located at another dimension of space. The novel is an autobiographical memoir by the octogenarian narrator, Iris Chase Griffen as she retells the past with the purpose of disclosing the secrets relating her troubled marital relationship and the mysterious death of her sister Laura Chase with whom she shared a complicated and unusual sisterly love. The frame narrative is the autobiographical account by Iris, set in the time period from the late nineteen-century to the www.ijellh.com 140

end of twentieth-century with historical setting of the two World Wars, rise of Capitalism, Depression, etc. Writing in a first-person-narrative from her present home in Port Ticonderoga, Iris weaves in the family history of The Chase s and The Griffen s in her memoir. As she writes, she tries to investigate and draw a logical conclusion in understanding the causes and events which might have caused her sister Laura to commit suicide in the year 1945. The second narrative is a novel-within-novel also called The Blind Assassin supposedly written by Laura published posthumously. This novel depicts the love-affair between a unnamed women of high social standing and a young nameless fugitive. The third narrative is a science-fiction tale along with some other stories which are contained within the chapters of the novel-within-the novel. These stories are told by the man to her during their secret meetings. The tale is about a blind assassin and a mutilated maiden in the fantastical city of Sakiel Norm on the planet Zycron located in another dimension of space. Additionally with these primary narratives, clippings from local newspaper and magazines between 1934 and 1999 (Alan Robinson Representation of the past in Margaret Atwood s The Blind Assassin), obituaries along with some description of old architecture and statues are interspersed within the chapters of the main memoir. The twist in the frame narrative comes with the Iris s confession in the end that she is the real author of the novel, Blind Assasin and not her sister Laura Chase. The publication of the novel avenged Laura s sexual abuse and Iris s physical abuse by destroying Richard Griffen s political carrier by revealing the scandalous affair. Thus, we can say that there are two autobiographies by Iris quilted within the novel. One that she wrote while she was engaged in the triangular relationship shared by her and Laura with Alex and the other written fifty years later in the form of the memoir (Robinson 348-49). Through the memoir, the 1998-99 text, the narrator wants to reach out to her grand-daughter, Sabrina whose whereabouts are hidden by Winifred Griffen the evil sister-in-law of the former, I wanted only to let Sabrina know I was there; that I existed; that I wasn t what she d been told. (358, Atwood). Being the last living member of the Chase family, Iris tries to rewrite her family history in a completely different way as it was portrayed in the past by other family members as represented in official documents and other historical records. She records every significant event of both the families and also sheds light into some accounts/events which were otherwise unknown both to the readers as well as Sabrina. Iris claims, I offer the truth, I say. I m the last one who can (Atwood, 536) with a hope that Sabrina would believe in her version of the family history to be authentic and validating as any other previously existing records. In postmodern theory, history and literature to some extent share an inseparable kind of relation sharing many common things. For many ages literary prose has been using www.ijellh.com 141

historical source as their subject matter although it was Walter Scott who refined the adaptation of historical material in fiction and became the pioneer of genre historical novel. But in the postmodern context, to write history from the previously dominant positivist and empirical point of view is incorrect because the notion of objective reconstruction is next to impossible. History is nothing but another socially acceptable narrative which competes for our assent and seeks our attention (Butler, 32-33). As postmodern thought analyze everything as text and rhetoric (Butler) henceforth history has emerged as a discourse rather than a discipline (Hayden White, Postmodernism and Historiography ). Thus Linda Hutcheon claims We cannot know the past except through its text: its documents, evidence, even eyewitness accounts are text (Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism, p-16). With the claim that History is just another form of narrative and are just well known fictional plots without any realist claim (Butler) an interrelated issues that surfaces is that any kind of narativization is never an innocent act. Narrative always involves selection, organization and interpretation on the part of the narrator such that any event that has gained significance only because it has been arranged in that particular way by the narrator echoing, nothing is natural in narrative (Nicol, 25) to quote Roland Barthes: everything, down to the slightest detail, (has) a meaning Even were a detail to appear irretrievably insignificant, resistant to all functionality, it would nonetheless end up with precisely the meaning of absurdity or uselessness: everything has a meaning, or nothing has. (Barthes, Introduction to Structural Analysis of Narrative, 89 as quoted in Nicol, 27). Thus any narrative is a matter of rhetoric and the overall functionality and partiality makes it subjective resisting the objective nature of history advocated by the empiricist. Even though a narrator claims to be objective, he or she becomes inevitably partial because it is a continual process of selection and interpretation of the order of events (Nicol, 25-27) echoing Peter Brooks claim, that narrative is always a perspective on a story rather than record of every single event (Brooks, Body Works: Objects of Desire in Modern Narrative, 105 as quoted in Nicol, 27). The most important analogy between history and fiction is explored by Hayden White who says that historians make sense of the past events in such a way that a comprehensible story or a plot structure emerges which unites or gives a coherent structure to the raw and unprocessed facts. To quote historical narratives as what they most manifestly are: verbal fictions, the contents of which are as much invented as found and the forms of which are common with their counterparts in literature then they have with those in sciences. www.ijellh.com 142

(White, Historical Text as a Literary Artifact,82). The historians like any other writers of fiction would turn the raw facts into narrative so as it reached its reader with a causable plot structure resembling that of a story. And the way the historians arranges the events which he calls emplotment which gives significance and meaning to the narrative: [ ] histories gain part of their explanatory effect by their success in making stories out of mere chronicles; and stories in turn are made chronicles by an operation which I have elsewhere called emplotment. And by emplotment I mean simply the encodation of the facts contained in the chronicle as components of specific kinds of plot structures [ ] (White, 83). A chronological series of event may be emplotted in an array of ways depending on the historian s point of view, stressing on the events which s/he considers significant as compared to the others i.e. the different construction made from the same series of event: The events are made into story by the suppression or subordination of certain of them and the highlighting of the others, by characterization, motif repetition, variation of a tone and point of view, alternative descriptive strategies [ ] ( White,84). This suggests that any kind of history is just fabulation of events, an act of fiction making, depending upon the historians choice of emplotment. And hence the notion of relativism according to which all points of view are valid as far as narrativization is concerned. In this sense, in postmodern context the authoritative nature of history is questioned, because as Lyotard claims that instead of a single Truth, there are multiple truths which are all legitimate in their assertion. Thus the celebration of many little narratives put together by small groups of individual to achieve any particular objectives, although it does not claim to solve society s problem but they are valid and last only till it achieves its objective (Sim Stuart, The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism, 8-9). Atwood, in The Blind Assassin have fully incorporated and utilized this idea while structuring the narrative of the text. The narrator, Iris fully rejects the grand narrative of The Chase family history which is created by the family history books, architectures, monuments etc or as projected in the public domain through newspaper reports or magazines. She paints a picture of herself and her family both the Chase as well as The Griffens which is completely unknown to the world of her times. In particular to Sabrina about whose whereabouts are hidden from her with a hope to rekindle their relationships after years of brain washing by her Aunt, Winifred Griffin, Sabrina didn t come to me, though. She never did. It s not hard to guess. God knows what she d been told about me. Nothing good (59, The Blind Assassin, Atwood). Iris at first begins her memoir by bringing in excerpts from newspaper and magazines which present the ideal picture of the socially as well as politically powerful Griffens. And www.ijellh.com 143

then she juxtaposes it with the real particulars and causal consequences of the events through her story which nullifies the acclamation by the sources and materials. The death of Laura was proclaimed as a tragic accident by the newspapers whereas it was suicide as revealed later and the issue that came forward from the accident at that time was that of the adequacy of safety precautions taken by the city: It was the police view that a tire caught in an exposed streetcar track was a contributing factor. Questions were raised as to the adequacy of safety precautions taken by the city (Atwood,6). In fact Laura committed suicide after years of sexual abuse by Richard Griffin who is ironically one of this country s most able men. His loss will be deeply felt (Atwood,17) as stated in the papers. The publication of the scandalous book, The Blind Assassin clearly mentioned Laura s abuse by Richard which ruined his political carrier and prompted him to commit suicide. On the other hand the malicious and evil Winfred is described by The Globe and Mail on her death as, noted philanthropist, the city of Toronto has lost one of its most loyal and long-standing benefactresses (Atwood,30). Iris had presented particularly to her granddaughter her version of the truth that stands in stark contrast to the official documents which have somehow through the ages have acquired the position of the only authentic and correct representation. She herself mentions about the probability of fictionalization of their family history by her Grandfather Benjamin: Or this is what is said of him in The Chase Industries: A History, a book commissioned in 1903 and privately printed, in green leather covers, [ ] He used to present copies of this otiose chronicle to his business associates, who must have been surprised (Atwood,68) Atwood consciously questions the totalizing tendency of history by putting forward various unsaid versions of the same events and demonstrates that the emplotment of any narrative depends upon the perspective of the historian/writer. Iris takes the refuge of the incidents narrated by their household help Reenie in constructing her version of the history. The many events and incidents that occurred before Iris s birth were filtered to her through Reenie s perspective and as such the personal/little narrative was given a voice which was otherwise somehow subdued by the official version, But she knew the family histories, or at least something about. What she would tell me [ ] in this way I collected enough fragments of the past to make a reconstruction of it, which must have borne as much relation to the real thing as a mosaic portrait would do to the original (83). Iris continuously intersperses her personal history with the social and political history of that time. The greater historical events only serves the purpose of time markers as her sole www.ijellh.com 144

purpose was to quilt into her narrative the events which changed or affected her life in some way or the other, The war began in the August of 1914, shortly after my parent s marriage (87) or 1918. November 11.Armistice Day. There it s over. The guns are silent (93). She does not worry when the War began and ended, the only significance it had in her life was how it had a huge financial profit for their Button factory, War is good for the button trade (88) or how The Chase family lost two of their sons, Percy and Eddie and how her father Captain Norval Chase lost an eye and a leg in the War. Thus we can see how the historical events had a great a great influence how it construct their understanding or construction of their own personal history. From the postmodern perspective history has always been problematic because history is inevitably connected with issues like unity and totalization, homogeneity, representation and truth (Hutcheon,87). As I have already mentioned histories are just like fictions in the sense that they a both derive their force from verisimilitude than from any objective truth (Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism 105) and are both discourses, that both constitutes systems of signification by which we make sense of the past. In other words the meanings and shape are not in the events but in the systems which makes those past events into historical facts (Hutcheon,89). It is the empoltment and narrativization employed by the historians which makes it a historical fact and as such no genuine historicity (Hutcheon, Poetics, 89) is possible. Any claims of authentic representation of the past are to be treated with critical awareness considering the faults and limits of any construction such that many postmodern texts take the form of Historiographic metafiction which are: narratives that, through the interaction between histiography and metafiction, rejects claims of any authentic representation, challenges artistic or originity and highlight the transparency of historical referentiality. In these instances, the subject under interrogation becomes narrative method or text rather than the past events which they seek to represent. (Reforming the Past, A. Timothy Spaulding, 18) Hutcheon believes that historiographic metafiction epitomizes postmodern fiction because of its celebration of postmodernist foundation such as, discontinuity, disruption, dislocation, decentering, indeterminacy and anti-totalization. (Hutcheon, Poetics,3). She defines the term as, I mean those well-known and popular novels which are both intensely self-reflexive yet paradoxically also lay claim to historical events and personages (Hutcheon, 104). It questions and doubts the representation of the past through history, which have somehow attained the status of being the obsolete truth because postmodern societies concerns for the www.ijellh.com 145

multiplicity and dispersion of truth (Hutcheon, 108). It is extremely self-reflexive in nature due its metafictional awareness that questions how do we know about the past but at the same time it also lay claims to historical events.the conscious use of historical records and contesting the truth of the historical records makes historical metafiction aware of its status as well as history s in general as human construct thus exemplifying itself, rethinking and reworking of the forms and contents of the past ( Hutcheon,105). Hutcheon argues that it is inherently contradictory because it both inscribes as well blur the line between fiction and history. By combining fiction with historical facts historiographic metafiction exposes the author s subjective interpretation of any text and thus prevents historical representations from being conclusive (Angela Wei). Thus the amalgamation of metafiction and historiography together give rise to a new kind of writing which Linda Hutcheon calls historiographic metafiction which uniquely capable of fulfilling the poetics of postmodernism (108). The term Metafictions used in historiographic metafiction are those fictions which are self - reflexive and retells its own telling ( Nicol,12). It is aware of its own status as an artifact and constantly draws attention to the fact that the text is a work of fiction such that author does not make any overt claim that the world along with its character are true to life in any sense. It describes the capacity of fiction to reflect on its own status as fiction and thus refer to all self-reflexive utterances which thematizes the fictionality of narrative ( Newman and Nunning, Metafiction and Metanarrative 205). While Patricia Waugh defines the term as: fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality. In providing a critique a critique of their methods of construction, such writing not only examines the fundamental structures of narrative fiction, they also explore the possible fictitiousness of the outside literary/fictional world. (Metafiction, 2) Having said so, Atwood s The Blind Assassin can be considered a historiographic metafiction because the narrator retells history with extreme self- awareness of it being a construct of her memory and its overt metafictionality acknowledges, their own constructing, ordering and selection process (92). Told in the first person narrative, Iris holds back certain information, not revealing everything and proceeding with an air of mystery and suspense. She even tricks the readers along with the other characters within the novels by hiding the true authorship of the roman-e-clef. At the end of the novel Iris confesses to the reader it was she who had written the novel and it was never Laura. It means all the incidents and claims that was made within the novel, The Blind Assassin were in fact not genuine, As for the book Laura didn t write a word of it I thought of myself as recording. A www.ijellh.com 146

bodiless hand, scrawling across a wall. (Atwood, 626). Readers thus confront a biased, possibly unreliable narrator cum character whose actions and motives could not be predicted or known (Alan Robinson, 348-9). According to Ingersoll, in the chapters within the novel in the frame narrative, Iris acts as self-conscious narrator (Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction) because she is aware of herself and the task of writing such that it becomes metafictional not only in the mis en byne of the novel within the novel construction, but also in its formation as a novel being created before the reader s eye ( Waiting for the End, 546 ). The novel within a novel structure complements the frame narrative by embracing within itself many clues which later on helps to elucidate the mystery and suspense created by Iris from the very beginning of the narrative. This technique also emphasizes the constructed nature of any narrative be it history or fiction alike. Iris have recreated history through her memoir with an extreme self-awareness that she being the historian could bring it in only those events which according to her important. The main narrative has many historical backdrops like the War, Depression etc but Iris instead on focusing on them entirely portrays how it affected her and her family. The historical events are intertwined with her personal life and giving importance only to the personal in order to present a story that she wants the reader to perceive, Where was I? I turn the page the war is still raging [ ] But on this page, a fresh clean page, I will cause the war to end I alone, with a stroke of my black pen. All I have to do is write: 1983. November. Armistice Day.(93). Moreover, the various newspaper excerpts used by Atwood not only provides the historical context but also gives the readers the social, political and economic condition of the time. After The War the other event that affected Iris and the Chase Industries at large was The Depression. As mentioned in The Mail and Empire, December 15, 1934, due to the heavy loss suffered by the Chase Industries as a result of depression there were incidents of violence and series of strikes by the union members and their leaders. Mr. Norval Chase in acute financial distress had to consolidate his factory with Richard E. Griffen s and sealed the contract by giving Iris s hand in marriage to Richard. Thus the historical events are presented from the narrator s perspective revealing amongst various significant events only those that are important to her life from the beginning of 17 th century to the present of the early 20 th century. She even includes entries about her grandfather s origins and how his forbears got strong hold at business and settled in Port Ticonderoga. The details of the war are not overtly described but how the characters particularly of the two families suffered its consequences are witnessed and given a form by Iris s memoir. Richard Griffen s affiliation towards authority and control can be seen in his support of the Munich Accord and a strong Germany cited in Globe and Mail, October 7, 1938 can be seen as parallel to his dealing with Iris and www.ijellh.com 147

her sister. The greater political and economical turmoil of the wartime can be seen as analogous to the personal Chase-Griffen family drama. As Richard states corresponding to the Munich Accord that, prosperity and peace will put paid to the Depression and all the difficulties of previous years and so will be his relations with the sisters (Postmodern Feminist Writer, W.S Kottiswari, 143-4). The Blind Assassin is a historiographic metafiction because it deals with the past historical events but how this past is recreated and rewritten by the narrator with an acute metafictional self-awareness. Due to her self-reflexive narrative Ingersoll has remarked, Iris is not only a character/narrator in [the novel] but also an author, albeit an unacknowledged one ( Waiting, 546). Iris feels constantly the burden of history because of the pain associated with it and her urge to retell it through her perspective thus subverting the official masculine metanarrative, My bones have been aching [ ] They ache like history: things long done with, still reverberate as pain. (Atwood, 70) Iris s narrative subverts the official discourse by bringing in the personal perspective to describe the national/international of that time. Her version nullifies the existing records, thus giving her a space or voice which was otherwise somehow subdued by masculine master narrative. In her attempt to challenge the traditional authoritarian totalizing narratives of Histories Iris have given way to the pluralist notion of histories and thus created her own her-story told from a female perspective( Coomi S. Veviana, Margaret Atwood and History, 86-87).Historiographic metafiction questions the truth claim of history because of the resemblance of history with fiction as both are discourses, human constructs, signifying systems and both derive their major claim to truth through that identity ( Hutcheon,93). As such it also coincides with the postmodern rejection of any narrative singularity or unity and any kind of totalization is questioned and treated with skepticism. In The Blind Assassin, Atwood makes use of the historiographic metafiction for the subversion of universally acknowledged master narrative as represented through magazine clippings, newspaper reports, obituaries and other documents. Thus shifting our focus from, macro-history to micro history where the story is told from by the marginalized voices which were frequently omitted from official historical records (Vevianna, 86). The assertion of the social and historical particularity by Iris shifts our focus instead of a single authoritative version of history to the ex-centric, the marginal, the borderline (Hutcheon, Poetics, 86) and as such creates her own version of history celebrating multiplicity. www.ijellh.com 148

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Postmodernism and Historiography, Special Public Opening Symposium After Metahistory: Lecture on Postmodernism by Prof. Hayden White,Ritsumeikan University. www.ritsumei.ac.jp/acd/gsce/news/200901022_repo_0-e.htm Web. 27 Nov 2015. www.ijellh.com 151