Motherhood in Margaret Atwood’s novels

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2018 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, Catholic University Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, language: English, abstract: The aim of this bachelor thesis is to contribute to research on how feminist perspectives on motherhood are portrayed in North American fictional writing. For this purpose, I will use close reading techniques to analyze Margaret Atwood's novels The Handmaid's Tale, Cat's Eye and Oryx and Crake to show that all three foster a feminist view on motherhood. I will argue that in the novels Atwood recognizes motherhood as both a source of oppression and a source of empowerment. Additionally, I will demonstrate how she dismantles the myth of perfect motherhood by portraying disrupted mother-child relationships, authentic maternal experiences and the subjectivity of mother figures that would traditionally be regarded as "bad" mothers.