In the text Margaret Atwood’s poetry and poetic by Branko Gorjup the two terms The Protean Self and Violent Duality were mentioned at the very beginning, both describing Atwood’s style of writing poetry. I introduce the two concepts first, then I’ll try to find examples for this in her recent poem Update on Werewolves from September 2018.
The Protean Self is a book written by the American psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton in 1993. In this work, Lifton describes the modern society as very flexible, using the words “fluid and many-sided”. Like the Greek god Proteus is known for shapeshifting in mythology, humans are able to re-create themselves over and over again, in a figurative way. According to Lifton, no human has a fixed character, we all play different roles in different situations, always switching between them. This is very familiar to Erving Goffman’s interaction theory, that he described in his book The presentation of self in everyday life (1959), that distinguishes between ‘onstage performance’, for example the role a person plays at work and ‘backstage performance’ someone shows at home. Lifton makes also use of the theatre metaphor, as he describes modern life a series of theatrical performances.
‘Violent Duality’ describes oppositional forces that are in contrast to each other. Gorjup names some pairs, for example civilization and nature or male and female. He adds that these forces also are presented as transcending in Atwood’s poems.
Update on Werewolves presents modern woman as predators that once have been pray of men but now are able to turn into strong creatures with fangs and claws as well and go on hunts themselves. The shapeshifting metaphor is closely connected to the protean self, as you can see in the last two lines of verse six and the first two lines of verse seven:
“bums to the wind, ripping out throats
on footpaths, pissing off brokers.
Tomorrow they’ll be back
in their middle-management black”
They are hunters at night, openly sexual and modest workers at daytime. They switch their roles back and forth and adapt themselves to the modern times, in contrast to their old victim-role. The ‘violent duality’ can be seen in the contrast between modern society and old folklore, as well as the depiction of males and females as hunter and prey. Human and animal traits are put in contrast but they also flow into each other in the metaphor of the werewolf.
