“NOWHERE DEFINITE”: MEDIATION AND THE CONTROL OF NATURE IN MARGARET ATWOOD’S “DEATH BY LANDSCAPE”

Resumo

The overall goal of this article is to identify in which sense the wilderness, and its contrast with more metropolitan settings, has offered Canada a unique story and source of imagery. Inasmuch as “Atwood’s fascination with the distinction between the two alternatives (urban/wilderness) is pervasive” (AURYLAITE, 2004, p. 41) throughout her work, our specific purpose is to analyse how, in Margaret Atwood’s short story “Death by Landscape” (1977), the character Lucy incorporates such debate and conflict between these “two alternatives”. The dichotomy nature/landscape upon which the story is based provides a reflection on not only the process of creation and Canadian national identity, but also on what it is to be a woman, or to become a woman in the patriarchal world – Lucy chooses not to become a woman in the terms of patriarchal society. As a representative of the transformation from girl into women – that is divided by the confusing frontier wherein adolescence is positioned – Lucy decides not to appropriate the discourse that surrounds her existence but to problematise it through her inner and outer actions: desiring that which should not be desired and contemptuous of that which should be commended. Lucy’s characterisation in “Death by Landscape” (ATWOOD, 1977) gives readers a chance to reconsider their own epistemes on the wilderness vs. landscape binarism vis-à-vis how hegemonic society has manufactured and idealised nature and any similar binarisms materialising due to its objectified axioms.