Notes: The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

I’m not a huge fan of Margaret Atwood. She’s uses pretty words, I like how they melt together like welded steel and goes straight to, I don’t know, the gut. But sometimes its overdone. You can’t make that many attempts at hit and miss humor and not desensitize the reader. Still, I like her in general—she’s morbidly descriptive, or descriptively morbid in turns. The stuff she writes are so real that they stop becoming real; I mean, you know that these things happen (say, a girlhood friendship or the betrayal of a spouse) but you’ve never really thought of them happening like that. I have four books from her: Bluebeard’s Egg, Wilderness Stories, Cat’s Eye and The Robber Bride. 

I didn’t finish Cat’s Eye. I wasn’t in the mood for long winding stories with conflict that is murky at best, and sad. I’ll try to read it someday though if I can find it.

Anyway, I’m writing these notes down just so I can organize my thoughts about “The Robber Bride”. Don’t bother reading this if you haven’t read the book.

Zenia is the robber bride. She takes everything she can and never gives back. The world revolves around her—her beauty, her body, her manipulative intelligence and deadly wit. Everything and everyone belongs to her. She is anarchy impersonified. Her prime motivations are money, pleasure, and challenge. 

Why did she steal West? Zenia hates Tony. Whereas with Charis she had a condescending attitude that one only bestows upon the retarded and Roz a certain respect for a potential equal (a weaker softer version of herself, a shadow), she hates Tony with a passion. I don’t really understand why; I think it has something to do with how Tony is cold and brilliant, how she is composed and almost untouchable. She steals West out of spite, but West is actually a good, decent guy. He wasn’t even challenging, liker her other men. He just happened to belong to someone that couldn’t have been affected any other way. She likes to wield power, she likes display. West is this power over Tony.

Why did she take Billy away? This is a trickier question. The prime reason is the money. Billy could be the source of it by being a spy to American draft-dodgers. There are no other indications otherwise, except in the confrontation between her and Charis where she thinks (rightly) that she did Charis a favor by taking her partner. But the timing is off, if one thinks about it. She took Billy shortly after Charis announced her pregnancy. It’s really suspicious, hinting of a concern for Charis’s condition because she knows that Billy will beat the pregnant woman senseless and even kill the baby. This is only a guess—Zenia dislikes Charis, thinking that she is a fool with mush for a brain, but (in a surprising act of pity) saves her from a moocher and drug user of a partner.

Why did she break Mitch? Zenia has nothing personal against Roz; she even says this herself. I think that she can actually relate to this particular woman, because they both have power, different kinds and used differently, but power all the same. They understand each other at this basic level. Mitch, I think, is everything that she couldn’t stand in a Man, her arch nemesis: controlling, obssessive, agressive, chauvinist, and treats women like Kleenex. He is a challenge. She gets him to fall in love with her and then leaves him broken and half-mad. It’s also about the money, it’s always about the money when it’s Zenia involved, but she also likes torture. I think, in this case, she also did a favor to Roz. Not an intentional one (maybe), like what she did with Charis, but a favor nonetheless.

The story revolves around three weak women who have been broken in different ways. They have taken the pain from their childhood to the present and let it control them. They loved the wrong kind of men (Charis and Roz, which is why Zenia took the love of their life—which explains why West is still with Tony) and paid for it dearly. Zenia took their trust, self-esteem, money, everything that mattered to them and left them with only each other to heal the gaping hole. Most importantly, Zenia left them stronger and braver. They faced their fears and respective grief, finally, after years and years of lugging these around.

It was not a brand new day after Zenia died, but the three women are finally at peace with themselves and their past mistakes.