Victimisation and Survival as a Journey from ‘Wilderness’ to ‘Cultured’ in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing

Abstract

In Surfacing, Margaret Atwood points out how Canadian culture, unlike the American is really a collection of regional, aboriginal and ethnic subcultures: its emphasis is on equality and inclusiveness. She propounds that what is ‘natural’ is not ‘wilderness’ as labeled by the colonial masters. Rather, they have their own culture. Surfacing is a novel rich in interpretation as it depicts the binary quality of existential experience in Canada where land undermines man, wilderness contends with civilization, and isolation and alienation compel a search for identity. She believes that women will have to come forward to transcend their social conditions and emerge strong in order to endure and retain a sense of the self even if she is entrapped in the Patriarchal clutches of the society.