Watching women, falling women Power and dialogue in three novels by Margaret Atwood

Abstract: ?This study examines the three novelsCat s Eye, The Robber Bride, and Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. It focuses on the female characters and their relationships to each other: Their friendships are formed in a patriarchally structured environment and are therefore arenas for defending and controlling the norms of such a structure. The women continually watch each other and themselves, and through the power exercise of watching, femininity is constructed. Atwood describes acts of dialogic storytelling as a means to find options to gendered behavior.