Exis-tensions: Surviving theRed ShoesSyndrome in Margaret Atwood'sLady Oracle

Abstract

As the earliest and most sustained of Atwood's attempts to examine the potentially deadly conflict between a woman's artistry and female identities, Lady Oracle has often been read as a text that must necessarily be considered alongside Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's influential film, The Red Shoes. Yet absent from previous analyses is a discussion of how this conflict is perpetuated though the female artist tradition, and how Joan Delacourt's habitual overeating indicates her self-destruction, rather than her self-empowerment, in the face of conflict. Moreover, while Joan's obesity aligns with the self-harm anticipated by what Atwood terms ‘the Red Shoes syndrome,’ her projecting her creative talents onto alternate identities can be read as a dissociative survival strategy that, for a time, permits her to maintain her divided identity as a woman artist. keep silent and avoid red shoes, red stockings, dancing. Dancing in red shoes will kill you. Atwood, Two-Headed In [the Victorian Period], a woman writer was a freak, an oddity, a suspicious character. How much of that sentiment lingers on today, I will leave you to ask yourselves … Atwood, ‘The Curse’