Reading Reflections: The Autobiographical Illusion in <i>Cat's Eye</i>

Abstract

I have been told by friends, relatives, colleagues, and teachers - in fact, by everyone I know who has read it - that Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye is 'more autobiographical than her other books.' And, of course, they are right. It is more autobiographical - or, anyway, it is more obviously about self-representational - than her other books. But it is autobiographical in the same way that Lady Oracle is gothic: it speaks to the form as much as it speaks from or within it. My argument is that autobiography is not so much a generic category as it is a literary strategy. Atwood's readers must do more than classify Cat's Eye in terms of autobiography; they must focus their attention on the way autobiography is used in the novel. Accordingly, the emphasis of my discussion of the autobiographical elements in Cat's Eye lies more on Atwood's artistry than on the links between Atwood's life and her art.