Surfacing by Margaret Atwood

First published: 1972

The Work

Surfacing is a dense, multilayered narrative with tantalizing symbols. Margaret Atwood’s second major novel, it was the first to gain international critical attention. Surfacing relates an unnamed narrator’s search for her missing father, presumed dead. This protagonist is also seeking her authentic identity as a woman and a spiritual being. She returns to the Canadian wilderness where her father vanished, finding its purity despoiled, desecrated by Americans heavily outfitted in hunting gear. Wild creatures struggle to survive; Canada seems a virgin who is violated and victimized.

The woman feels anesthetized. She can describe her surroundings vividly, but they evoke little emotion in her. The remoteness and loneliness of the wilderness mirrors her inner reality. She talks about a husband and child, but they have never existed. The reality was that a man she loved abandoned her, after coercing her into an unwanted abortion. Commercial art, her profession, now seems a prostitution of talent. She calls herself an escape artist.

With her on this odyssey are three companions. Unlike the protagonist, they have names: Anna, David, and Joe. Anna is ostensibly the woman’s best friend, but Anna is an acquaintance of only two months. Joe, the narrator’s current lover, has never aroused her with his embraces. Little of her life seems authentic. During their wilderness tramping, the companions come upon a dead heron, obscenely strung up in a tree, insulted even in death. The woman is sure that insensitive American hunters are responsible for this grotesque crucifixion. She sees her own vulnerability reflected in that of the humiliated animal.

Her journey is also a quest. The woman must discover what spiritual legacy her parents have left her. After reaching her father’s cottage, she plunges into the nearby lake. There she finds his submerged body, a Shakespearean vision of sea transformation. The shock of discovery brings healing. She surfaces, divining the gift of her father to have been insight. Her mother has left for her an awareness that the rhythms of nature, so at one with menstruation, childbirth, and menopause, are the same harmonies that Canadian Indians once understood. She deliberately conceives a child by Joe, resolving to return to the city, where she will practice her profession, give birth, and sustain new life as an awakened woman.

Surfacing may at first seem excessively introspective, lacking the narrative suspense of other Atwood novels, but it is likely to remain the favorite of readers primarily interested in spiritual and psychological insight. Speaking less directly than other Atwood writings to the political concerns of the feminist movement, its probings make it the most profound of her writings and possibly the most enduring.

Bibliography

Christ, Carol P. Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest. Boston: Beacon Press, 1980. Discusses women’s quests and spiritual awakenings. A chapter on Atwood is entitled “Refusing to Be Victim.”

Davey, Frank. Margaret Atwood: A Feminist Poetics. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1984. Provides a useful biography of Atwood which is interspersed with quotes from interviews. Also examines her poetry, novels, short fiction, and criticism.

Davidson, Arnold E., and Cathy N. Davidson, eds. The Art of Margaret Atwood. Toronto: Anansi, 1981. Thirteen essays dealing with Atwood as a poet, novelist, and critic. Two fairly contrasting views of Surfacing are presented, one a feminist archetypal view and the other a psychological comparison with Atwood’s first and third novels.

Grace, Sherrill E., and Lorraine Weir, eds. Margaret Atwood: Language, Text, and System. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1983. A varied collection of essays by Canadian scholars. Those addressing Surfacing deal with shamanism and syntax.

Hengen, Shannon. Margaret Atwood’s Power: Mirrors, Reflections, and Images in Select Fiction and Poetry. Toronto: Second Story Press, 1993. Sees Surfacing as strong novel about female empowerment.

Howells, Coral Ann. Margaret Atwood. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. Gives an overview of facts about and characteristics of Atwood’s writing. Considers Surfacing one of her Canadian signature works, chronicling postmodern malaise in a specifically Canadian context.

Nicholson, Colin, ed. Margaret Atwood: Writing and Subjectivity. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. Includes two lengthy essays on Surfacing, one arguing that the novel both invites and resists interpretation, remaining indeterminate, and the other that it is overtly existential in authorial intent.

Rigney, Barbara Hill. Margaret Atwood. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble Books, 1987. One chapter presents a clear summary of Surfacing and analyzes it in terms of borders and boundaries.

Rosenberg, Jerome H. Margaret Atwood. Boston: Twayne, 1984. An introduction to Atwood’s works, with a chapter on Surfacing as a study in becoming truly human.

Van Spanckeren, Kathryn, and Jan Garden Castro, eds. Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988. Presents fifteen essays on Atwood’s poetry and prose, with two specifically on Surfacing. An interview with Atwood and a foreword written by the author provide insight into her writings.

Woodcock, George. Introducing Margaret Atwood’s “Surfacing.” Ontario: ECW Press, 1990. Woodcock provides background information on Atwood, discusses the reception of Surfacing in Canada and the United States, and explores at length its style, structure, and themes.

Wilson, Sharon Rose. Margaret Atwood’s Fairy-Tale Sexual Politics. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1993. An analysis of Atwood’s use of fairy-tale motifs, with a detailed chapter on Surfacing.