Cat's Eye

Earl G. Ingersoll (Essay Date October 1991)

SOURCE: Ingersoll, Earl G. "Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye: Re-Viewing Women in a Postmodern World." ARIEL 22, no. 4 (October 1991): 17-27.

In the following essay, Ingersoll explores the postmodern implications of the autobiographical elements in Cat's Eye.

Although one finds evidence of postmodernism in the manipulation of popular forms such as the Gothic in Lady Oracle and science fiction in The Handmaid's Tale, Cat's Eye is Margaret Atwood's first full-fledged "postmodern" work. Always the wily evader of critics' pigeonholes, Atwood, in a recent interview,¹ has denied the classification of her work as "postmodern." She expresses her own amused disdain towards the critical-academic world for its attraction to "isms"² in the discourse of Cat's Eye when Elaine Risley visits the gallery where her retrospective show is to be mounted. Risley dismisses the paintings still on display: "I don't give a...