Of Female Friendships and Deception

In the realm of literature, Margaret Atwood is a tour de force. Among the world’s leading contemporary novelists, she is practically ubiquitous, and her literary career is nothing short of illustrious. Born on November 18, 1939, Atwood’s literary tendencies manifested early on. A voracious reader, she published her first book of poetry, Double Persephone, in 1961, when she was in her early twenties. It even won an award, setting her up for what would be a remarkable ascent to literary stardom. While she wrote, Atwood was also a lecturer. Over the course of her career, she taught and lectured at several prestigious universities, not only in Canada but also in the United States. She served as the MFA Honorary Chair at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1985. She was also the Writer-in-Residence at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, in 1987, and at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, in 1989. She has even made a cameo in a television series and has been part of an online lecture series.

Teaching aside, Atwood has always been renowned for her writing. She started with poetry, with her earliest published works being collections of poems. Her prolific career would eventually produce eighteen poetry collections, in addition to short story collections, edited anthologies, works of nonfiction, and even children’s books. However, Atwood’s métier has always been the novel. Her name is synonymous with her novels. In 1969, after publishing six poetry collections, she ventured into full-length prose. The Edible Woman was her debut novel, and with each new novel, she consolidated her position as one of her generation’s literary stars. Her biggest breakthrough came in 1985 with the publication of The Handmaid’s Tale, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It would become one of the most widely recognized literary titles in the world and was adapted into a film, an opera, and a television series.

With the unprecedented success of The Handmaid’s Tale—now considered an instant literary classic—the pressure on Atwood to produce equally impressive works mounted. Any other writer might have balked at the challenge, but Atwood was made of sterner stuff, as proven by the longevity of her career. She followed it with a series of critically successful works. Post–The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood was nominated for the Booker Prize five more times. With six nominations, she is the second most-nominated writer; only Salman Rushdie has more, with seven. The Blind Assassin won the award in 2000, while The Testaments was the co-winner, along with Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other, in 2019. She joins an august group of writers—only four in total—who have won the prestigious prize at least twice.

Every ending is arbitrary, because the end is where you write The end. A period, a dot of punctuation, a point of stasis. A pinprick in the paper: you could put your eye to it and see through, to the other side, to the beginning of something else. Or, as Tony says to her students, Time is not a solid, like wood, but a fluid, like water or the wind. It doesn’t come neatly cut into even-sized length, into decades and centuries. Nevertheless, for our purposes we have to pretend it does. The end of any history is a lie in which we all agree to conspire.

Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

The 1990s were also an impressive period in her career. The publication of The Robber Bride in 1993 further cemented her growing reputation. Atwood’s eighth novel opens in October 1990 at the bustling yet trendy Toronto restaurant, The Toxique, where three longtime friends meet for their customary monthly luncheon. The diminutive Antonia Fremont, affectionately known as Tony, is a strong and independent historian who specializes in medieval siege techniques and teaches at a university. Charis, on the other hand, is a free-spirited, spiritual woman. Formerly known as Karen, she is the most empathetic and understanding of the trio. Completing the group is Rosalind Grunwald, affectionately called Roz, a flamboyant businesswoman struggling to juggle her career and personal life. Coming from different walks of life and possessing contrasting personalities, the women appear to have little in common on the surface.

The answer lies in their shared past. Something deeper and more sinister binds the three women together—an experience dating back to their college years. Looming over their memories is their encounter with another young woman: Zenia. Beautiful, charismatic, and intelligent yet deeply enigmatic, Zenia first entered their lives through West, a fellow student whom Tony admired but was too awkward to approach. West and Zenia were romantically involved in college, but Zenia befriended Tony, gradually drawing her out of her shell and introducing her to a world she had never imagined. Then, without warning, Zenia disappeared, leaving West heartbroken. Eventually, Tony married West, who later became a musicologist.

Charis, meanwhile, grew up enduring emotional and sexual abuse from her mother and uncle. Her only reprieve came during summer vacations spent with her grandmother, who introduced her to the beauty of nature. By changing her name, Charis sought to escape her traumatic past and distance herself from childhood cruelty. Her life became centered on kindness and holistic healing. Less preoccupied with the past than Tony and Roz, Charis purchased a house on a secluded island off the coast of Toronto after college. There, she met Billy, an American draft dodger to whom she provided refuge. They eventually fell in love. One day, Zenia appeared on the island seeking shelter, and Charis, out of kindness, took her in.

In college, Roz was the antithesis of Tony. She was vibrant and confident, though she came from a troubled background. Raised in a strict but affluent Catholic household, she later discovered that her father’s wealth stemmed from secretive and illicit activities during the Second World War. She also learned she was half-Jewish, and while her father helped Jews escape persecution, he also profited from the conflict. His wealth came from the underground trade of rare artifacts he stole. After her father’s death, Roz took control of the family’s real estate development company. She married Mitch, a lawyer, and had a son and twin daughters. Though devoted to her family, a sinister force threatened the harmony of her life.

Where to start is the problem, because nothing begins when it begins and nothing’s over when it’s over, and everything needs a preface: a preface, a postscript, a chart of simultaneous events. History is a construct, she tells her students. Any point of entry is possible and all choices are arbitrary. Still, there are definitive moments, moments we use as references, because they break our sense of continuity, they change the direction of time. We can look at these events and we can say that after them things were never the same again.

Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

Ironically, the force that bound the trio together was Zenia herself, who also dominated their luncheon conversation. Zenia’s beauty and cunning easily disarmed everyone she encountered, including Tony, Charis, and Roz, and the men in their lives. Presenting herself as their friend, she manipulated them and exploited their vulnerabilities. She told each woman a different version of her life to gain an undue advantage. She borrowed money from Tony and never repaid it, eventually disappearing with stolen funds belonging to both Tony and West. Roz and Charis were likewise deceived. Presumed dead for five years, Zenia suddenly reappeared—walking into the restaurant during their lunch meeting, alive and well, to their shock and horror. This forced the three women to confront their past.

The Robber Bride is a complex and multilayered novel that grapples with a plethora of subjects and themes. Evidently, the novel is a deep meditation on the nature and complexities of female companionship. Set against the backdrop of the feminist movement’s rise in the 1960s, the novel examines how feminism shapes women’s relationships with one another. The intricacies of female companionship were initially examined through, ironically, the women’s relationship with men. Male companionship and male influence play significant roles in their lives. Atwood’s unflinching gaze captures the intersections between friendship and romantic relationships. Beyond the deception, betrayal has defined the three women’s relationship with Zenia, who repeatedly attempts—often successfully—to seduce the men they love.

This then alters the landscape of the three women’s friendship. As they confronted the past, there was a growing sense of cognizance that Zenia’s deception was the primary reason they became friends at all. Zenia left a trail of emotional and even financial devastation in her wake. Despite the devastation she caused, their shared experience ultimately provides a form of self-affirmation. Ironically, Zenia becomes the catalyst for their self-discovery. The three friends struggled with defining their sense of self against societal expectations, in light of the growing feminist movement. However, in the throes of Zenia’s deception and the betrayal perpetrated around them by the people they loved, the women find camaraderie and mutual support through shared adversity.

The dynamics between the four women were complex. It reveals polar opposites. On one end, female friendship fosters solidarity. It depicts how women empower each other in light of oppression. The friendship that developed between Tony, Charis, and Roz further underscores the importance of female empowerment. The other end depicts rivalry and the oppressive nature of female friendships. Zenia embodies this contradiction. Ironically, viewed from a different lens, she emerges as the embodiment of a self-empowered woman. She is both a manipulator who exploits sisterhood and a symbol of radical self-empowerment. The novel juxtaposes trust and betrayal while questioning the moral boundaries of empowerment itself.

Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it’s all a male fantasy: that you’re strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.

Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

As if to further underscore the theme of female empowerment, male characters are largely relegated to the background. As the narrative unfolds, West, Billy, and Mitch appear fragile, with weak constitutions. They were starkly different from the strong and highly independent women. Though Zenia attempts to steal their husbands, her actions can paradoxically be interpreted as liberating, freeing the women from men unworthy of them. The novel further interrogates amorality and the nature of evil, asking whether Zenia is a victim of circumstance or an agent of chaos, while subtly addressing issues such as sexual harassment, domestic violence, and objectification.

Atwood’s eighth novel ultimately challenges the traditional concept of femininity and masculinity, while exploring the balance of power between the sexes. Themes of environmentalism, particularly through Charis’s story, add further depth. Beyond female companionship and gender dynamics, the novel is a rumination on the nature of storytelling. Zenia’s fabricated tales contrasts Tony’s historical perspective. The dichotomy examines how stories can shape reality and even control relationships. Atwood also draws connections between storytelling and historical thought. The novel’s narrative structure also adds complexity. The polyphonic perspective allows interaction between the characters and the readers. The non-linear storytelling also creates a complex but intriguing plot. This reels the readers in.

The Robber Bride is a meticulous dissection of the complexities of female relationships. The novel illustrates how women can be both victims and perpetrators of each other’s suffering. Ultimately, the story of Tony, Charis, and Roz is a story of redemption and resilience. Against societal expectations and the unworthy men who loomed above their lives, they were able to reclaim control of their lives and identities. Despite the tumult that hovered above them, the story ended on a note of hope. Though born from devastation, their friendship becomes a source of strength, allowing them to move forward unburdened by Zenia’s destructive legacy. The Robber Bride is a further testament to Atwood’s enduring literary heritage.

Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It’s like the tide going out, revealing whatever’s been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future.

Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride
Book Specs

Author: Margaret Atwood
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Publishing Date: November 1993
Number of Pages: 466
Genre: Literary, Historical

Synopsis

From the extraordinary imagination of Margaret Atwood, the author of the bestselling The Handmaid’s Tale and Cat’s Eye, comes her most intricate and subversive novel yet.

Roz. Charis, and Tony – war babies all – share a wound, and her name is Zenia. Zenia is beautiful and smart and hungry, by turns manipulative and vulnerable, needy and ruthless, the turbulent center of her own never-ending saga. Zenia entered their lives when they were in college, in the sixties; and over the three decades since, she damaged each of them badly, ensnaring their sympathy, betraying their trust, and treating their men as loot. Then Zenia died, or at any rate, the three women – with much relief – attended her funeral. But as The Robber Bride begins, she’s suddenly alive again, sauntering into the restaurant where they are innocently eating lunch.

In this consistently entertaining and profound new novel, Margaret Atwood reports from the farthest reaches of the war between the sexes, provocatively suggesting that if women are to be equal they must realize that they share with men both the capacity for villainy and the responsibility for moral choice. The group of women and men at the center of this funny and wholly involving story all fall prey to a chillingly recognizable menace, which is given power by their own fantasies and illusions. The Robber Bride is a novel to delight in – for its consummately crafted prose, for its rich and devious humor, and ultimately, for its compassion.

About the Author

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She’s just jealous, people say, as if jealousy is something minor. But it’s not, it’s the worst, it’s the worst feeling there is—incoherent and confused and shameful, and at the same time self-righteous and focused and hard as glass, like the view through a telescope. A feeling of total concentration, but total powerlessness. Which must be why it inspires so much murder: killing is the ultimate control.

Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride