Among the women novelists, Margaret Atwood is the most prominent figure in the present day Canadian literary scene. She presents through her novels the urgency to express the newly grasped freedom of women. Atwood’ novels examine themes related to the politics of gender, such as enforced alienation of women under patriarchy, the delimiting definition of woman forced by men, the patriarchal attempt to annihilate the selfhood of women, the gradual carving out of female space by woman through various strategies and woman’s quest for identity. Atwood’s novels are governed by feminist consciousness which serves as the unifying principle. She uses her pen as a weapon to let the world know how women are oppressed in a male-dominated world and have no scope for self-realization and fulfillment. Her novels articulate the difficulties encountered by female writer in assuming an equal place with man in the realm of literary production. Margaret Atwood is concerned with the treatment of woman as normal human being and feels that she must be allowed her imperfections. She criticizes the social system that assigns roles to the sexes and then categorically labels them as inferior or superior, sinful or chaste. She is intensely preoccupied with women fighting against the female norms of life- sexuality, dichotomy between career and the claims of the family. Most of Atwood’s novels grapple with the politics of gender and deal with women’s experience in a male-dominated society. She exposes the silent and hidden operations of gender and confronts its politics, thereby recommending the rewriting of women’s history. She demands demolition of gender system and hopes for a new world in which men and women are equal at every level of existence.

The Edible Woman