Childhood trauma and the identity quest in Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye

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Margaret Atwood, an iconic Canadian writer in many of her novels has dealt with the power politics and its consequences especially in her women protagonists’ life. In her novel Cat’s Eye, the power games are played exquisitely by little girls. As it has been done previously by Graham Greene and William Golding in their works, Atwood has effectively captured the complex relationship between the school bully and victim, through her characters. Like Atwood’s earlier novels, Cat’s Eye is a novel which is not only against to restrictive idealism, it is also against to authoritarianism manifesting in several forms. According to Atwood, women suffer not only at the hands of rigid patriarchy; even female folks indulge in bullying and torturing the less privileged of their own gender. In this novel, Elaine Risley was a victim and a protagonist. She is victimized by her three classmates at her school-Cordelia, Carol and Grace Elaine Risley persecuted from her child age and in her young age it increased a lot. Due to her itinerant life, she became homeless among her peers. Consequently, she became a victim to the surroundings.