Breaking Out
There is one simple thing that sets good stories apart from bad, that sets bestsellers apart from flops, one thing that pulls readers in to a story or sends them out, never to return. That one thing, that most important aspect is character agency. A character’s ability to make choices, to shape the course of their own future. Without agency, characters cannot change, of their own accord. They are left to the ravages of their environment. They seem like pale outlines on the page, moving through a story mechanically, predictably. A character must have agency, but some situations prevent characters from acting upon it. In The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, the main character, Iris Chase, eventually wrests her agency from the hands of her father and husband, who have controlled her for the course of her life.
Iris’s father, Norval Chase, strictly controls Iris’s—and her sister, Laura’s—early life, even though he has few actual interactions with her. He has hired Reenie, and has clearly prevented his children from doing certain things: going to school, talking to boys, playing with neighborhood children, going in to town. “When we weren’t with the tutors we were supposed to stay at Avilion, either inside the house or on the grounds. But who was there to police us?” (Atwood 153). Norval is clearly trying to control the girls’ lives, but they subvert every attempt to be controlled. This control goes past the typical parent-child relationship. Norval uses his position as the father to force upon his daughters his own ‘instructive’ view of the world, a world in which they are not to interact with society or men in any way. He does not interact with them in any meaningful way—except to scold them, or to present them to the community as proof of his parenting skills. The girls are not allowed to grow and mature, to use their agency, which sets Iris up to be controlled and manipulated by Richard in her marriage.
Richard Griffen, prominent businessman and upcoming politician, needs a wife, so he and Norval make a deal in which Iris is traded for financial security. Richard proceeds to control his wife in every way. She dresses the way he wants her to, interacts only with chosen people, obeys his every command, and never speaks against him. The only rebellious act Iris commits is her affair with Alex Thomas. In fact, Richard’s control prevents Iris from seeing the warning signs of Laura’s suicide, or how Richard is sexually preying on Laura. Iris is only able to break free from Richard’s grasp when her grief over Laura makes her understand what Richard did. “I left a letter for Richard. I said that in view of what he’d done—what I now knew he’d done—I never wanted to see him again. In consideration of his political ambitions I would not request a divorce, although I had ample proof of his scurrilous behavior in the form of Laura’s notebooks…” (Atwood 502). This is the moment that Iris truly grasps her own agency.
Once Iris has escaped from Richard, she sets about using her agency in a very dramatic way. She runs away, with her daughter, moving back in to her hometown and writing a novel about a romantic affair in her sister’s name. The publication of this novel results in Richard’s suicide, but Iris does not seem to have any regrets about that. “Then Richard went missing, and then he was found in the Water Nixie… ‘I’m glad to hear he felt some remorse,’ I said coldly. ‘I can’t say I noticed any at the time’” (Atwood 511). Iris speaks very coldly and clinically of her husband’s death, and moves on very quickly. She makes a life for herself, tries to distance herself from the past, but she cannot. In her eighties, Iris writes a memoir of everything that happened, telling her granddaughter the truth, the real events that happened, insofar as she can. Iris reveals the horrors of her past, showing her growth, recovery, and escape from repression.
In The Blind Assassin, characters within the story prevent Iris from properly utilizing her agency, but she eventually prevails and escapes those situations. She uses her newfound agency to reveal her previous rebellion, in the form of the Laura Chase novel. Iris dares the world to confront her on this issue, to assert how offensive her novel is. She wants people to attack her about these choices because she desires to show how much she has thrown off society. In her eighties, Iris writes her memoir, detailing how the people around her controlled her, and how she overcame that control, found her sense of agency, and used it to tell that very story.
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. The Blind Assassin. London, Virago, 2011.