From an Obscured Gaze to a Seeing Eye? Iris as Victim, Villain, and Avenger in the Role of Writer-as-Assassin in Margaret Atwooda??s The Blind Assassin:

摘要

In the postmodern period, first-person-limited, unreliable, female narrators may have a greater difficulty in a??seeinga?? and, thus, depicting their landscapes than previous erasa?? storytellers. Iris (Chase) Griffen, narrator-protagonist of Margaret Atwooda??s The Blind Assassin, spins a complicated, self-reflective text exploring her attempts at composing a world vision that consumes the novela??s larger part. Irisa??s search for answers about her identity as well as that of other characters may leave readers in the lurch, waiting for their a??story,a?? in Ross Chambersa??s terms, as an agreed-upon product. Nonetheless, having amassed assorted textual materials, Iris stockpiles the ammunition she needs to do her a??joba?? as a storyteller-assassin who creates and destroys, as characters suffer a fall. Assuming guises dependent on location, Iris enacts the conflicting roles of a victim, social product, villain, and blind assassin to assault her culturea??s masculinist architectures that bar womena??s points of views in opposition to what Henry James presents as the unending panoramas offered by his metaphorical a??House of Fiction.a?? Irisa??s struggle to construct her life story mirrors the difficulty many women face more broadly, in which they face competing, irreconcilable values. In the novel, Irisa??s ability to play differing parts with equal aplomb compels readers to view her as a complex narrator, constructing and assassinating fellow characters to render her female descendantsa?? fates as open ended.