Margaret Atwoods Survival and Sally Morgans My Place - Essay Example

 ABSTRACT This paper analyses the presence and use of the journey motif in Margaret Atwood’s Survival and Sally Morgan’s My Place. Although the writings were produced for very different purposes, they exhibit similarities through the physical and emotional journeys of the protagonists and through pre-occupations with colonial and post-colonial anxieties. In each case the return from the journey does not represent an unambiguous homecoming but hints at unresolved issues, which the heroine must face, although now she is better equipped to do so than she was at the start of the journey. The occupation and long-term administration of large areas of the world by colonizing powers has had far-reaching effects on the people who live in these territories. These are political and economic but also deeply cultural and highly visible in the creative output of the people thus affected - during the period of colonization and in the aftermath. Thus, across a broad range of media and genres, aural, visual and written materials bear witness to the struggle of asserting distinctiveness from and coming to terms with the relationships with the ‘cosmopolitan centre’1, from the early poetry of natives to modern artistic expressions. The theories that are attempting to make sense of the distinctiveness of post-colonial writings can be broadly grouped into four major approaches, one of these being a local or regional view, identifying with literature that is less comparative between or across facets of different societies and more introspective. More global perspectives are considering ‘race’ across literatures from diverse nations and also ‘compare’ between different former ‘colonies’. A broader approach is taken in a model that considers all post-colonial literatures together and examines global features they may exhibit, of ‘hybridity’ and ‘synchreticity’, and the way in which the “general discourse of colonialism … provides a significant framework [through] the language used to enact, enforce, describe or analyse colonialism2.” This discourse-oriented approach means that there is general emphasis on the role of language and hence ‘colonialist discourse theory’ as well as - less euro-centric - post-colonial theory underpins the body of post-colonial writings3. Thus language becomes part of the quest for reinterpretation of ‘legitimacy’ and ‘identity’, in an attempt to deal with the ‘crisis of cultural authority’ brought about by the fragile identities left behind by the departed colonial powers4. This often manifests itself in a pre-occupation with ‘place and displacement’, which Maxwell defines as an important feature of post-coloniality.5 Ashcroft et al go one step further by claiming that ‘place and displacement’ is always an element of post-colonial communities, regardless of the reason for the initial colonization, and that this inevitably translates into a pre-occupation with ‘the myths of identity and authenticity in literatures in English’6 In corroboration, Boehmer refers to ‘the meta-narrative of journeying and return’ - acts of ‘coming to consciousness that symbolize the search for ‘ways of living in’ new lands. But she questions where these new certainties might come from, this badly needed ‘defiant pride and spiky self-awareness’.7 Margaret Atwood argued that it would come if Canada made ‘itself known to itself’ and would develop a concept of the ‘here’, echoed by Northcott Frye, who believed that salvation would come from the ‘here’ of the ‘vast natural world’.8 Journeying and return and making ‘yourself known to yourself’ also underlie Atwood’s Surfacing and Morgan’s My Place, although content and form diverge. Differences arising from the subject matter locate My Place in the genre of personal history, understood in the Focaultian tradition as ‘perspective’9, whereas Surfacing is fiction, recounting fictitious events, wherein in a reversal of the classic hero quest, the narrator first dismantles her inauthentic, ‘constructed’ identity, and then descends into madness, emergence from which only offers ‘wholeness’ through motherhood. There are similarities to be found in My Place in so far as Sally too sheds a false identity of being non-aboriginal but she does so full of curiosity about her developing ‘multiplicity’. She too experiences turmoil but her emergence from it is far more ambiguous in the wider context of ‘Aboriginality’ and the post-colonial understanding of Aboriginal people.10, even if at the end she cries ‘with a sudden certainty’, ‘Oh Nan … I heard it too. In my heart, I heard it’.11 Beyond these thematic similarities, My Place is concerned with the direct impact of colonialisation on the Aboriginal people of Australia, whereas Surfacing is primarily a testament to the struggle against Americanisation and environmental degradation through modern materialism, although placed in the context of wider post-colonial concerns12. It is also necessary here to point to the ambiguity of the term ‘post-colonial’ where it concerns Australia. Many Aboriginal writers, academics and theorists reject the term on two grounds. Firstly because they still do not have achieved full participation in their society and ‘post’ is therefore inappropriate13 and also due to the fact that their culture looks back on more than 200,000 years of oral literary tradition, which pre-dates any other existing literary system and for which ‘colonialism’ has merely been a barbarous interruption of ‘Murri time’14. These broader frameworks are only partially visible through the utterances of the main characters and to a larger extent must be sought within the motifs that shape the texts and through their post-colonial contexts. In the case of Surfacing, this involves a quest to neutralise Americanisation, symbolised by ‘diving and surfacing’15. More direct references to the horrors of American encroachment are often symbolic, as when the main character finds the dead heron, killed as the narrator thinks by Americans, not because it had value but "to prove that [they] could do it, they had the power to kill…It must have been the Americans; they were in there now, we would meet them"16. For Morgan, her journey towards ‘Aboriginality’ meets with hostility, from ‘the establishment’ as well as from Aboriginal leaders and intellectuals, with accusations of ‘ersatz’ Aboriginality and inauthenticity17. Within the texts itself, simple narratives underlie the complex journeys the heroines undertake. In Surfacing a nameless young woman travels by car to an isolated island near Quebec, in the company of her lover Joe and her friends Anne and David, with the purpose of investigating the disappearance of her father, with whom she has had no contact for years. She stays for almost two weeks, among increasing tensions that develop between herself and her companions. She has a brief nervous collapse but recovers when she learns that she is pregnant and leaves the island. Behind this bland surface of the novel, however, is a complex web of trauma and inauthenticity, which is eventually dismantled and replaced by a more ‘whole’ identity and a fragile new beginning, although not without a descend into madness. Critical reviews of Surfacing have approached the novel from a multitude of angles, including language, feminism and mystical themes, of which only the ‘journey’ has relevance for this paper. It appears in a number of different guises, with Campbell speaking of ‘rites of passage from girlhood to womanhood’18 and others likening the progress of the heroine to a ‘mystic quest of romance’, in a reversal of male/female roles, passing through various stages towards ‘enlightenment’19, with Delbaere-Garant referring to a ‘backward journey’ from which the heroine emerges, ‘feminine identity restored’20. However, this implies that there once was a ‘wholesome’ feminine identity that could be restored, which is questionable, and although McLay suggests that in the end ‘reason is united with emotion and mind with body’21, it is difficult to construe the narrator’s tentative words of beginning to Joe22 as a manifestation of ‘restored feminine identity’. Against such straightforward interpretations argues also the complexity of Atwood’s other writings, as well as the text itself. Thus it is not ‘immaturity’ of girlhood but guilt and ‘maternal grief’23 that destabilises the narrator’s sense of identity as she realises in the critical moments after having discovered ‘something’ at the bottom of the lake. ‘But it couldn’t be him, he had not drowned after all, he was elsewhere. Then I recognized it: it wasn’t ever my brother I’d been remembering, that had been a disguise…I knew when it was…’24. And again…‘A section of my own life, sliced off like a Siamese twin, my own flesh cancelled. Lapse, relapse, I have to forget.’25 What surfaced with the unknown underwater object is the memory of her abortion, together with a set of complex emotions, which include an acknowledgement of impotence in the face of social pressures to be ‘a proper woman’26, as well as the fact that she had been a willing participant in her own enslavement27. The unknown’s rite of passage is therefore not originating in girlhood but in enslavement by societal norms, predating her childhood. To cope, she has imposed ‘controlled order’ on her life, although this order breaks down occasionally as when she talks about her family in the third person, as if they belonged to someone else      They used to go over it as fast as possible, their father knew every inch of it and could take it (he said) blindfolded, which is what they often seemed to be doing…That won't work, I can't call them "they" as if they were somebody else's family: I have to keep myself from telling that story.28 This understanding of the text is strongly supported by Kokotailo, who sees the novel as an exorcism of false selves, which creates a starting point for the future but also leaves the woman shattered. Kokotailo also insists that Atwood’s novel is neither purely modern nor post-modern, straddling instead the passage from one to the other, adding depth and breadth to the possibilities of interpretation29. Donaldson, assessing Surfacing as an example of Northrop Frye’s ‘mythic quest’, proposes a more comprehensive framework for the spiritual journey - a three-stage endeavour of journey and adventure, critical struggle and ‘exaltation’30, although ‘heroic exaltation’ here means her pregnancy, which allows her to return to her city environment with a regained past and a future. There are ‘markers’ along the journey into the wilderness of the Canadian island that cast dark shadows. There is ‘death and disease’ and it is coming ‘up from the south’31, alluding to unwanted American influence, with ‘the old way blocked’ and the new way depriving her of a sense of familiarity as if ‘they’ve cheated…I feel deprived of something.32 The heroine longs for a manageable physical suffering that might replace the mental anguish she undergoes and all the while she parallels her own suffering with that of the violated wilderness around her and with that of Canada on a larger scale, violated by Americanization.33 Surfacing is multi-faceted, too complex to do more than paint broad brushstrokes of the issues surrounding the journeys, of discovery of self, of the extent of violence that has been done to woman and wilderness and of the potential for emancipation, if one has the strength to bring it about. It is not clear if Atwood sees the same potential for freedom for Canada as she sees for the woman, however, the latter returns from the woods to resume life. My Place is also characterized by a simple surface narrative, which is at the same time Sally Morgan’s autobiography. It must be understood, however, in the context of the systematic annihilation of the Aboriginal people practiced by successive Australian Governments over a time span of nearly 200 years, and ranging from (but not limited to) outright killings to dispossession, imprisonment, rape, sexual slavery and the removal of half-cast children from their parents for the purpose of ‘breeding out colour’34. It are particularly the ‘assimilation’ policies that have affected Sally’s family, with the disappearance of aboriginality evident in the different generations, from the half-cast grandmother, her quarter-cast mother to Sally herself, who has a white husband and children who are now only one eighth Aboriginal35. Against this complex background, Sally makes a number of journeys of discovery, first of her true heritage, then through probing and persisting about her roots in Outback Northern Territory and throughout these events the journey from displacement to complex identity. She had always had the feeling that ‘a vital part was missing…that (she’d) never belong anywhere’36. When she journeys to the Pilbara district, she establishes kinship and later she says ‘I feel embarrassed now, to think that once, I wanted to be white’.37 The ostensibly successful journey into her ancestry is marred, however, by rejection from tribal elements:‘You don’t know what it means, no one comes back, You don’t know what it means that you, with light skin, want to own us’38. Other voices joined the swelling chorus of disapproval after the appearance of My Place, from those who were disturbed by the ease with which these ‘journeys of discovery’ had been accomplished and particularly the way in which Sally’s ‘understanding’ and ‘conciliating’ attitude made her palatable to the establishment. Muecke sums up the general consensus when he says that her journey of self-discovery as an Aboriginal has been made acceptable for ‘mainstream consumption’ but may lack authenticity39. In Morrissey’s writings, the concept of ‘journey of discovery’ as such also comes under scrutiny as representing the ultimate irony when Aboriginal people, who were great journeymen until the time of colonization, were and are deprived of their journeys through forcible removal from areas, through ghettoisation and urbanization in general, are confronted by one who claims to be one of their own – and who is white – making their journeys40. There would be few other countries where the bitterness over the past is still to such an extent overshadowing an only just emerging better future, and were racial divisions have deliberately been kept alive through the rigorous separation of races, for political, (hardly41) moral and racial reasons42. What emerges from the foregoing discussion is a picture of ‘journeys of discovery’ regarded with suspicion, and accused of being inauthentic. Morgan has been defended, however, in part through her own text and to a much larger extent through the commitment she has shown over the past 20 years to what Morrissey calls her ‘re-inscription into aboriginality’43. The biggest accusation that can perhaps be leveled against My Place is that in the very concept of romantic journey into Aboriginality the author uses the tools of the oppressor to colour herself as one of the oppressed.44 Although this belongs rightly into the realm of discourse and not theme, it is closely enough intertwined with post-colonial issues to be at least briefly mentioned. Both Atwood’s and Morgan’s novels have made use of the post-colonial pre-occupation with journeying and coming home. In both cases, the journey (or journeys) is problematic, though for different reasons. Atwood subjects her heroine to the equivalent of a romantic quest but romance exists only in form not in content. There is a painful ‘dismantling’ of the heroine’s false identities, which comes full circle when she believes she encounters her aborted fetus, leaving her stripped bare and descending into a kind of mad trance. Cooke offers an interpretation, which may be either, ‘rejuvenation’ or ‘nervous breakdown’45. She emerges naked but ‘stilled’, willing to re-enter the society she fled 2 weeks earlier, thus preparing for the homecoming part of the journey. My Place, although simpler as a narrative, is in fact made more complex because one journey of discovery becomes several. One is experienced by the heroine, Sally Morgan, and is to all intents and purposes what Morrissey calls thr ‘re-inscription’ to Aboriginality46, although according to Morgan, it is also the wonder of ‘I’ in all its growing complexity47. Another perspective of this journey can be found among the predominantly white body of post-colonial writers and critiques that, unwilling to accept the journey ‘away’ from them and the rejection of the ‘gifts’ of post-colonial society, are watchful for signs of lack of authenticity48. But for large parts of the tribal Aboriginal community, there exists also the journey ‘towards’ them, which they watch in outrage and bewilderment ‘No one ever comes back’49. For this last group in particular, Morgan now belongs to the others, the oppressors, and she re-enforces this otherness by speaking not their language, by using not their tools but instead those of the oppressor. Thus it would seem that ‘post-colonial’ does not simply mean ‘after they left’ and may not reflect such a meaning for a long time. At present, the term still speaks of anxieties, hostilities, scars and, as in Australia, open wounds that are refusing to heal – reflected in the subject matter, themes and form of their writers. Reference List: Ashcroft, B, Griffiths, G and Tiffin, H The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures, Routledge, London, 2000. . Ashcroft, B, Griffiths, G, Tiffin, H, Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts, Routledge, London, 2000. Boehmer, E, Colonial & Postcolonial Literature, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005. Campbell, J P, “The Woman as Hero in Margaret Atwood's Surfacing.” Mosaic 11.3 (1978): 17-28. Cooke, N, Margaret Atwood: A critical companion, Greenwood Press, Westport CT, 2004. Craigie, C in Indigenous Discourse, retrieved 25.3.2011 from www.aiatsis.gov.au/aboriginal_studies_press/order, Davidson, A E and Davidson, C N, The Anatomy of Margaret Atwood's Surfacing. Ariel 10.3 (1979): 38-54. Delbaere-Garant, J, “Surfacing: Retracing the Boundaries. ” Commonwealth Essays and Studies 11.2 (1989): 1-10. Docker, J, Recasting Sally Morgan’s MY PLACE: The Fictionality of identity and the phenomenology of the ‘Converso’, Seminar Paper given to the ANU Women Studies Series on Race, Place and Identity, 4.9.1997 Focault, M, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, Cornell Univ. Press, New York, 1977. Granofsky, R, “Fairy-Tale Morphology in Margaret Atwood's Surfacing.” Mosaic 23.4 (1990): 51-65. Hinz, E J. and Teunissen, J J, “Surfacing: Margaret Atwood's ‘Nymph Complaining.’” Contemporary Literature 20 (1979) Kokotailo, P, Form in Atwood's Surfacing: Toward a Synthesis of Critical Opinion Studies in Canadian Literature (SCL/ELC), Vol 8.2 1983, Retrieved 25.3.2011 from http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/SCL McLay, C, “The Divided Self: Theme and Pattern in Margaret Atwood's Surfacing.” Journal of Canadian Fiction 4.1 (1975): 82-95. Morgan, S, My Place,Virago, London, 1988. Morrissey, P, Aboriginality and corporatism. Blacklines: Contemporary Critical Writing by Indigenous Australians, Michelle Grossman, ed., Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2003. Muecke, S, Aboriginal Literature and the Repressive Hypothesis. Southerly 4, 1988, pp 405-18. Muecke, S, 1988, p. 405-18 in Indigenous Discourse, retrieved 25.3.2011 from www.aiatsis.gov.au/aboriginal_studies_press/order, Ommundson, W, Engendering the Bicentennial Reader: Sally Morgan, Mark Henshaw and the Critics, SPAN: Journal of the South Pacific Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies 36. 10, 1993. Reynolds, H, Nowhere People, Penguin Australia, Victoria, 2008. Ross, C S, “Nancy Drew as Shaman: Atwood’s Surfacing.” Canadian Literature 84 (1980): 7-17. Tress, K and Johnso, C, Indigenous Discourse, retrieved 25.3.2011 from www.aiatsis.gov.au/aboriginal_studies_press/order, Read More