A Comparative Feminist Reading of Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing and Han Kang’s The Vegetarian
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3986/pkn.v48.i1.09Keywords:
Canadian literature, Korean literature, Atwood, Margaret: Surfacing, Han, Kang: The Vegetarian, female characters, literary metamorphosis, meat-eatingAbstract
This article comparatively explores Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing and Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, examining the subordinate status shared by women and animals, male-controlled medical science and camera technology, and women’s mythical metamorphosis. Both fictional worlds, as lived by the heroines, are decidedly patriarchal: the I-heroine in Surfacing undergoes violence in a coerced abortion while Yeong-hye in The Vegetarian is force-fed meat by her authoritative father. Both narrative arcs are shaped by the heroines’ realization of their share in violence: the I-heroine realizes her consent to the abortion and Yeong-hye holds herself accountable for eating the meat of a dog killed by her father. The two heroines are met with different endings—the I-heroine chooses to be pregnant again and Yeong-hye renounces her life by avoiding eating—because of the former’s conviction about survival and life and the latter’s conception of eating as killing. Read together, the two novels explore the legitimacy of claims of innocence, the limits of care, and possibilities of transcending victimhood in mutually illuminating ways. Meanwhile, the novels provide insights into the non-closure prevalent in women’s fiction and the feminist meaning of women’s spiritual quest novels.
References
Agamben, Giorgio. Nudities. Translated by David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella, Stanford University Press, 2011.
Alaimo, Stacy. “Trans-corporeality.” Posthuman Glossary, edited by Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova, Bloomsbury Academic, 2018, pp. 435–438.
Atwood, Margaret. Surfacing. Ontario, PaperJacks, 1973.
Atwood, Margaret. Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. Toronto, House of Anansi Press, 1972.
Beeston, Alix. “The Watch-Bitch Now: Reassessing the Natural Woman in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and Charlotte Wood’s The Natural Way of Things.” Signs, vol. 45, no. 3, 2020, pp. 679–702.
Casey, Rose. “Willed Arboreality: Feminist Worldmaking in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian.” Critique, vol. 62, no. 3, 2021, pp. 347–360.
Christ, Carol P. “Margaret Atwood: The Surfacing of Women’s Spiritual Quest and Vision.” Signs, vol. 2, no. 2, 1976, pp. 316–330.
Davidson, Arnold E., and Cathy N. Davidson. “The Anatomy of Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing.” Ariel, vol. 10, no. 3, 1979, pp. 38–54.
Díaz, Nancy Gray. The Radical Self: Metamorphosis to Animal Form in Modern Latin American Narrative. University of Missouri Press, 1988.
Gaard, Greta. Critical Ecofeminism. Lexington Books, 2017.
Gaudet, Jeannette. “Dishing the Dirt: Metamorphosis in Marie Darrieussecq’s Truismes.” Women in French Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, 2001, pp. 181–192.
Han, Kang. “Han Kang on Violence, Beauty, and the (Im)possibility of Innocence.” Interview by Bethanne Patrick. Literary Hub, 12 Feb. 2016, https://lithub.com/han-kang-on-violence-beauty-and-the-impossibility-of-innocence/.
Han, Kang. “Interview with Han Kang.” Interview by Sarah Shin. The White Review, Mar. 2016, https://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/interview-with-han-kang/.
Han, Kang. The Vegetarian: A Novel. Translated by Deborah Smith, Hogarth, 2016.
Hirsch, Marianne. “Spiritual Bildung: The Beautiful Soul as Paradigm.” The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development, edited by Elizabeth Abel et al., University Press of New England, 1983, pp. 23–48.
Houle, Karen. “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics as Extension or Becoming? The Case of Becoming-Plant.” Journal for Critical Animal Studies, vol. 9, no. 1–2, 2011, pp. 89–116.
Howells, Coral Ann. Margaret Atwood. Palgrave Macmillan, 1996.
Kim, Adhy. “Han Kang’s Speculative Natural Histories Beyond Human Rights.” Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 58, no. 2, 2021, pp. 431–454.
Lee, Joori Joyce. “Touching Surfaces: Gestures of Love Toward the Wounded Sister in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, vol. 39, no. 2, 2020, pp. 329–347.
Lee, Seul. Convivial Violence: Contemporary Transnational Literature of Care and Social Control. 2021. Texas A&M University, PhD dissertation.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 833–844.
Murray, Jennifer. “For the Love of a Fish: A Lacanian Reading of Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing.” Literature Interpretation Theory, vol. 26, no. 1, 2015, pp. 1–21.
Piercy, Marge. “Margaret Atwood: Beyond Victimhood.” The American Poetry Review, vol. 2, no. 6, 1973, pp. 41–44.
Plaskow, Judith. “On Carol Christ on Margaret Atwood: Some Theological Reflections.” Signs, vol. 2, no. 2, 1976, pp. 331–339.
Pratt, Annis. “Surfacing and the Rebirth Journey.” The Art of Margaret Atwood: Essays in Criticism, edited by Arnold E. Davidson and Cathy N. Davidson, Toronto, House of Anansi Press, 1981, pp. 139–157.
Tsao, Tiffany. “Postcolonial Life and Death: A Process-Based Comparison of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Ayu Utami’s Saman.” Comparative Literature, vol. 66, no. 1, 2014, pp. 95–112.
Zolkos, Magdalena. “Bereft of Interiority: Motifs of Vegetal Transformation, Escape and Fecundity in Luce Irigaray’s Plant Philosophy and Han Kang’s The Vegetarian.” SubStance, vol. 48, no. 2, 2019, pp. 102–118.
