PLACES AND SPACES OF DISLOCATION - LADY ORACLES TORONTO

In this paper we explore some of the issues relating to place, identit y, and ideology in Margaret Atwood's third novel, Lady Oracle, first p ublished in 1976. Simply, Lady Oracle relates the story of the writer Joan Foster as she struggles to come to terms with her multiple identi ties. In so doing, the novel depicts some of the many social and spati al changes taking place in Toronto from the 1940s to the 1970s. Herein we focus on the representations of home and city, and how loan's sear ch for identity is embedded in the reconfiguration of these geographic al spaces and places. Home assumes negative connotations as it is asso ciated both with the suburbs and with a mother who relinquished her ow n needs and desires for motherhood. The city, on the other hand, is an ambiguous landscape; we suggest, however, that it is precisely this a mbiguity that encourages and permits loan to explore alternative ident ities. By way of conclusion, we will point to some of the novel's assu mptions and silences.