'The Robber Bride' by Margaret Atwood

'Even Zenia's name is enough to provoke the old   sense of outrage, of humiliation and confused pain. The truth is that at certain times - early mornings, the middle of the night - she finds it hard to believe that Zenia is really dead.'

Zenia is beautiful, smart and greedy; by turns

manipulative and vulnerable, needy and 

ruthless; a man's dream and a woman's

nightmare. She is also dead. Just to make

absolutely sure, Tony, Roz and Charis are

there for the funeral. But five years on, as the

three women share a sisterly lunch, the 

impossible happens: 'with waves of ill will

flowing out of her like cosmic radiation',

Zenia is back...

Firstly, I feel I need to apologise for leaving such a long gap before my next write up. Back in August, I went on holiday for roughly two and a half weeks, and it is only now that I have found the time to sit down and properly write. I did read several books during my holiday, which I hope to write about in due time. In the meanwhile, here is a review of the book I read before my holiday.

Yes, I am back with Margaret Atwood. I believe that it is a relationship that will last forever.

What I liked best about The Robber Bride is that it is clearly an adaptation of a fairy tale. It even begins in fairy tale fashion: 

'The story of Zenia ought to begin when Zenia began. It must have been someplace long ago and distant in space, thinks Tony; someplace bruised, and very tangled. A European print, hand-tinted, ochre-coloured, with dusty sunlight and a lot of bushes in it - bushes with thick leaves and ancient twisted roots, behind which, out of sight in the undergrowth and hinted at only by a boot protruding, or a slack hand, something ordinary but horrifying is taking place.'

"Someplace long ago and distant in space" or 'Once upon a time in a land far away'? Possibly even 'A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away'? Atwood has immediately thrust her readers into a fairy tale. The idea of the "European print" suggests nostalgia, a land that is separated from the present by colour (ochre and sunshine) and dust. Furthermore, we hear the word "European" in connection with fairy tales and we are immediately transported into the dark realm of the Brothers Grimm. We are going to look into the past. We cannot see into the undergrowth of the forest, for a forest it is: where else are the best fairy tales set? Furthermore, what we see is "very tangled" and confusing; we will have trouble following this tale. Atwood finally introduces the concept of the 'uncanny': "something ordinary but horrifying".

Thus, The Robber Bride is clearly shown to be a gender-bent adaptation of the Brothers Grimm's fortieth tale, The Robber Bridegroom. Atwood even references the tale itself in the novel:

"They'd decided that all the characters in every story had to be female. Winnie the Pooh was female, Piglet was female, Peter Rabbit was female. If Roz slipped up and said "he," they would correct her: She! She! they would insist...

..."The Robber Bridegroom," reads Tony...The beautiful maiden, the search for a husband, the arrival of the rich and handsome stranger who lures innocent girls to his stronghold in the woods and then chops them up and eats them. "One day a suitor appeared. He was..."

"She! She!" clamour the twins...

..."We could change it to The Robber Bride," says Tony. "Would that be adequate?"

The twins give it some thought, and say it will do...

..."In that case," says Tony, "who do you want her to murder? Men victims, or women victims? Or maybe an assortment?"

The twins remain true to their principles, they do not flinch. They opt for women, in every single role." 

So, here we have it. Atwood has once again focused her narrative on the plight of women, and what women they are! The characters of Tony, Roz, and Charis are all well fleshed out, with back stories produced one after another after the characters have been introduced in media res. The reader learns how the three women grew up, went to university, met Zenia, suffered Zenia, and wished revenge on Zenia before they were cheated by her (supposed) death.

Tony, however, seems to be the principal storyteller, harking back to the narrator persona of fairy tales and pantomimes. The novel opens and closes with Tony's perspective. It is interesting that it is the war historian who has the first and final say. Perhaps, Atwood is reinforcing the idea that being a woman is rather like being in a battle.

As in fairy tales, we do not discover the back story of the monster. This monster does not only devour men; she is herself a storyteller, and an enthralling one at that. In order to banish her properly, the three women need to perform a ritual; otherwise, if they keep talking about her, they might bring her back to life. In addition, unlike in fairy tales, this monster is not vanquished. Zenia vanishes into thin air just as easily as she materialises from it.

Published five years after Cat's Eye and three years before Alias Grace, The Robber Bride looks at four very different women. Tony is a diminutive war historian and university professor, who privately speaks in a backwards language: a witch casting her spells, perhaps? If yes, it is easy to link her to Charis: mystical, hippy-dippy Charis with her crystals and her chickens. Yet, Tony's bloodthirstiness could possible connect her with Roz, the type of woman who might be described as a 'battle axe' by those jealous of her success and independence. Furthermore, all three women come from unhappy backgrounds, with difficult relationships with their mothers. They are not only linked by their shared university days, but also by personal loss of men, money, time, and energy to Zenia, the eponymous Robber Bride.

Zenia tricks her way into the lives of Tony, Charis and Roz, and destroys them. She is the force that drives the book. Almost everything happens in the novel because of Zenia. She is able to direct all her wily arts of seduction and ingratiation that she uses on men on the three women. Yet, she never has her own chapter, and remains unsolved, unknown by the end of the book.

What is Zenia? Easy; she is the woman that Tony, Roz and Charis choose to blame for everything bad that has ever happened to them. She represents their absent mothers. She represents the difficulties each woman has with sex, because she is overtly sexualised. Zenia is not shown as a real woman at any point; while the others age and become wrinkled, she remains young.

"Zenia is as beautiful as ever. She's wearing black, a tight outfit with a scoop neck that shows the tops of her breasts. She looks, as always, like a photo, a high-fashion photo done with hot light so that all freckles and wrinkles are bleached out and only the basic features remain: in her case, the full red-purple mouth, disdainful and sad; the huge deep eyes, the finely arched eyebrows, the high cheekbones tinged with terracotta. And her hair; a dense cloud of it, blown around her head by the imperceptible wind that accompanies her everywhere, moulding her clothes against her body, fitfully moving the dark tendrils around her forehead, filling the air near her with the sound of rustling. In the midst of this unseen commotion she sits unmoving, as still as if she were carved. Waves of ill will flow out of her like cosmic radiation.

Or this is what Tony sees. It's an exaggeration, of course; it's overdone. But these are the emotions that Zenia mostly inspires: overdone emotions."

To me, Zenia seems cartoonish, two-dimensional, a mere projection of the repressed rage and frustration increased threefold. Of course it's threefold; it's the "overdone emotions" of three women. Throughout the novel, I wondered whether Zenia was in fact ever a real person.

I came to this conclusion: if Tony, Roz and Charis hadn't already been damaged by their early life experiences, then Zenia wouldn't have been able to take advantage of them. Bad people take advantage of people who are already vulnerable. This raises the issue of victimhood. Three women have suffered; life has mistreated them. They somehow seem to conjure up a physical manifestation of their issues, but they do not vanquish it. Tony, Roz and Charis are not fairy tale heroes, but ordinary women who cannot let go of their issues. That is what happens in real life: your problems, sufferings, and pain are a part of your life. Atwood has found a very clever way of detailing this issue in a genre well-established in the storytelling canon.

In conclusion, I thought that The Robber Bride was a terrifically funny, farcical and witty book, that adheres to the fairy tale tradition of being preposterous. The three protagonists are not there to be liked: Tony appears sanctimonious, Charis annoying, and Roz seems more self-righteous than thou. Zenia is my favourite because she is unapologetically bad. Atwood's typical acerbic style of writing is combined with ingenious twists and turns of narrative tone: it changes according to character. I found The Robber Bride refreshing, and I feel further invigorated into reading more of Atwood's work.