ABSTRACT
From the “assemblage of lies and alibis” invoked in Lady Oracle (211) to the “series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of the other” of Cat’s Eye (3), it has been clearly established that Atwood’s work consistently offers vivid metaphors for writing the female Bildungsroman. However, her most recent work, Moral Disorder, seems to mark a new departure in Atwood’s imaginative engagement with writing women’s lives. In discussions of her work, Atwood frequently uses spatial metaphors to illustrate the shape of a text’s narrative – the circle of The Edible Woman and the spiral of Surfacing described by Atwood in a letter to Marge Piercy in 1973 are typically explicit examples of this (MS Coll. 200:2:4). Decades later, Moral Disorder brings something new to the dramatization of growing up female and Canadian in Atwood’s fiction and, in terms of its spatialization of experience, it offers a kaleidoscopic reflection of female coming of age.
