Merging Narrative and Landscape: Margaret Atwood’s Narrative Techniques in “Stone Mattress” to Write Back Against the Masculine Tradition of Silencing and Exploitation

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article engages with ecological and moral debt, exploitation and oppression in the Anthropocene, from a literary and a feminist point of view in Margaret Atwood’s short story “Stone Mattress” (2014). In investigating human-nature and gender relations in the context of the Anthropocene, she establishes a parallel between the female subject and the ecosystem, particularly of the Arctic. In Atwood’s text the Arctic landscape becomes transformed from place into subject, and it is allowed a separate integrity as the metaphorical link between ice/cold and evil women is evoked by portraying Verna, her female protagonist, as a femme fatale, the ultimate embodiment of the Arctic. As a way of embedding the Arctic landscape in her narrative, Atwood infuses the text with the language of geology. In order to highlight the function of the stromatolite as the organizing image for the story, I rely on the close reading of the text, on feminist literary theory and feminist ecocriticism. This article seeks to excavate the layers of abuse, exploitation, privilege and entitlement enjoyed by patriarchy, exposed as debt by the female protagonist, and as well as to investigate Atwood’s narrative techniques to write back against the masculine tradition of silencing and exploitation.