How Far Would You Go? Trajectories of Revenge in Margaret Atwood's Short Fiction

In many of Margaret Atwood's stories, neither love nor money makes the world or, rather, the plot go round. The prime interest and profit for her offended protagonists often derives from a satisfactorily accomplished revenge. The ancient law of talion, of an-eye-for-an-eye, presides over these stories. This paper explores the two main responses to injury and aggression that correspond to the chronological trajectory of Atwood's writings. In her early short fiction, retaliatory drives are typically directed inward. The (mainly female) victims tend to punish themselves rather than their aggressors. In the later fiction, by contrast, outer-directed reprisal becomes the reactive rule. As selected instances will show, Atwood's human and nonhuman avengers, including nature itself, increasingly find varied ways to strike back at offenders.