Life Before Man by Margaret Atwood

First published: 1979

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Domestic realism

Time of work: October 29, 1976, to August 18, 1978

Locale: Toronto, Canada

Principal Characters:

• Elizabeth, a woman who has had a string of affairs, most recently with a temperamental artist at the museum who committed suicide
• Nate, Elizabeth’s estranged husband, who has also had a series of extramarital affairs
• Lesje, Elizabeth’s coworker and Nate’s new love interest
• William, Lesje’s roommate
• Martha, Nate’s most recent lover
• Chris, Elizabeth’s most recent lover, a talented artist
• Muriel, the sister of Elizabeth’s alcoholic mother
• Mrs. Schoenhof, Nate’s mother

Form and Content

Life Before Man has fifty-eight short sections, each dated and identified with one of the characters in a romantic triangle. Eighteen sections are narrated from Nate’s point of view, eighteen from Lesje’s, and twenty-two from Elizabeth’s. The narrative covers twenty-two months in their lives, from Nate’s first gesture in Lesje’s direction to a tentative hope that they have a future together. There are longer breaks in time as the story unfolds. Part 1 follows the three main characters through a single weekend; part 5, the last, covers almost a year. There are flashbacks throughout, as the three come to terms with their own pasts; two sustained flashbacks are dated to the fateful moments when Nate learns of Elizabeth’s affair with Chris and when he last sees Chris.

Ever since childhood, when she was dominated by her aunt, Elizabeth has seized control of every relationship. She breaks off the affair because she is terrified by Chris’s possessiveness, then she is angered and depressed by his suicide. The depression throws her marriage off balance, nudging Nate away from a tepid affair with Martha and toward Lesje. The triangle becomes a foursome when Elizabeth seduces William for pure revenge, but the real foursome involves Chris, whose memory lingers in everyone’s mind. At first, Lesje cannot imagine what made him commit suicide, but her affair brings out new passions. Although she is tempted to take an overdose of pills and kill herself, she decides to get rid of her birth control pills. She destroys her museum career, at most, when she becomes pregnant with Nate’s child.

Even before Lesje and Nate begin their sexual relationship, Elizabeth senses something between them. She invites Lesje and William to a dinner party at which the guests play “lifeboat” and explain why they should be allowed to stay on board when supplies dwindle. Elizabeth says she has a strong “survival instinct” and will take at least one person with her if they throw her overboard. Nate says he will sacrifice himself for the common good. Lesje says lamely that she can identify bones, then panics and runs away. The game brings out their differences. Elizabeth is a fighter and trusts no one. Nate cannot assert himself because, Elizabeth realizes, he has been reared as a pacifist and uses pacifism as a cover for indifference. Lesje is also unassertive, afraid of her emotions. Before their stories can be resolved, they must face the gaps opening up in their lives.

Elizabeth realizes that she has lived a double life. She is sophisticated but scrappy, a street kid who will stop at nothing to get her way. She realizes she is shockingly like her aunt in that she rebuffed her mother and so, perhaps, pushed her loyal sister into insanity and death. At her aunt’s funeral, Elizabeth faints and returns to her senses, more herself than before. Nate, meanwhile, discovers that he has been reared to respect the rules. He imagines Lesje to be unruled and unruling. At his mother’s house one evening, he imagines (in an interesting anticipation of Robert Bly’s wild man) that he growls and breaks through a glass door, chasing the desirable Lesje. When he tries to lead a “divided life,” however, living in two houses, he falls apart. Meanwhile, Lesje discovers that she wants more than she had thought from the relationship. When William is alerted by Elizabeth and tries to rape Lesje in a last-ditch effort to keep her, she moves out and rents a house that Nate promises to share. She wants him to spend more time there; later, she realizes that she wants to have his child.

Context

From the beginning, readers have responded favorably to the realism of Life Before Man, which was named notable book of 1980 by the American Library Association. Readers have complained mostly only that they need a sequel to know what really happened. For, as with many of Atwood’s novels, the ending seems ambiguous, the plot unresolved. The most controversial aspect of the ending is Lesje’s pregnancy. Some readers see it as a selfish, manipulative decision on her part. Others see it as a life-affirming act. There may be truth in both views, but insofar as there is hope for Nate and Lesje, the act is necessary. Atwood told critic Alan Twigg that Lesje is “tired of being put down for not being the mother,” tired of hearing the parents demand all the consideration.

Elizabeth is a survivor, like all Atwood’s heroines. She is among Atwood’s most fully realized characters because she is shown as Nate and Lesje see her, not only as she sees herself. She is a sympathetic character, but not always a pleasant one; she can be a nurturer and a bitch. Nate, meanwhile, is Atwood’s best answer to critics who say that she cannot create a plausible male character. Some complain that he is very much a woman’s man, dominated by his mother and wife, even by his daughters and lovers, and unable to stand up for himself against the more aggressive Chris. In that sense, however, Nate is typical of his generation; he is a sensitive man, trying to do his share in the marriage, uncertain about his role at home or at work. Atwood has resisted the view that only women should write about women, only blacks about blacks, and so forth. In her introduction to The Best American Short Stories, 1989 (1990), she says she could not bear the logical result: a world in which one could only write, or read, about oneself.

Atwood’s early novels are at once witty and poetic, with the poetry making the heroine’s plight more intense and the wit adding a wry perspective on the world in which she struggles to survive. In Life Before Man, the poetry and wit are more subtly blended in the characters’ self-understanding. A few readers have found the setting, plot, and characters as drab as tourists once found Toronto, but many more have seen the novel as a statement of literary high fashion, completely in the know about mid-life crises in the upper-middle classes during the decade after the women’s movement resurfaced. Atwood has been compared to Doris Lessing and Muriel Spark, novelists whose clever descriptions and dialogues bring ideas, as well as people, to life.

Bibliography

Davidson, Arnold, ed. Studies on Canadian Literature:Introductory and Critical Essays. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1990. Includes the essay “Margaret Atwood and the Politics of Narrative” by the feminist critic Annette Kolodny, which is helpful for its comments on Life Before Man.

Grace, Sherrill. Violent Duality: A Study of Margaret Atwood. Edited by Ken Norris. Montreal, Quebec: Véhicule Press, 1980. An introduction to Atwood’s early poetry and prose. The postscript has special interest as an early and intelligent response to Life Before Man.

Grace, Sherrill, and Lorraine Weir, eds. Margaret Atwood:Language, Text, and System. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1983. A collection of nine essays on Atwood’s texts and contexts. Linda Hutcheon’s essay discusses the narrative technique and character development in Life Before Man.

Ingersoll, Earl G., ed. Margaret Atwood:Conversations. Princeton, N.J.: Ontario Review Press, 1990. A collection of interviews with Atwood, including one with Alan Twigg, conducted shortly after the publication of Life Before Man. There is an index of names and titles mentioned in the interviews.

McCombs, Judith, ed. Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988. A collection of early reviews and criticism of Atwood’s work. Contains a bibliography of Atwood’s publications through 1986.

Moss, John George. A Reader’s Guide to the Canadian Novel. Toronto, Ontario: McClelland & Stewart, 1981. A standard introduction to the Canadian novel. The entry on Atwood discusses her first four novels, finding fault with Life Before Man.

Rosenberg, Jerome H. Margaret Atwood. Boston: Twayne, 1984. An overview of Atwood’s creative output through the 1970’s, written with Atwood’s cooperation.

VanSpanckeren, Kathryn, and Jan Garden Castro, eds. Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988. A collection of original essays on Atwood’s work, all written from a feminist perspective.