is Atonement sexist?

[paintandbrush]

Why?

I realise that it features a lot of female characters making poor choices, but the men aren't great either. There have been quite a few accusations of misogyny against McEwan for this one. Will anybody explain the logic behind it all?

I thought On Chesil Beach was v well written, going on a skim-through in a library, even if the plot was a bit ridiculous.
Have to disagree with the comment about it being sentimental bc it's Briony. I thought both books were v McEwan, though- the same technique of two characters interpreting the same events differently.

I used 'sentimental fiction' in it's sense of being a genre of literary fiction. My definition of sentimental fiction would be 'a genre that explores inter-personal ethics within a wider socio-political context and/or develops/explores the language humans have for experiencing this'.

Sentimental novels include the work of Jane Austen and Laurence Sterne.

It's arguable that it might include Antonio Di Masio and even Jacqueline Rose's work on political identification.

There was a post-Victorian move to identify 'sentiment' and 'sentimental novels' as gushy, mimsy, over-emotional, irrational nonsense, penned by women. I think you can spot the gender bias in that characterisation.

There remains, I think, a similar devaluing of the term 'sentiment' and 'sentimental fiction' to this day.

I, personally, think those dynamics exist in 'Atonement' - unconsciously. I think the novel sets out to explore those issues (it is within the genre of sentimental fiction) but actually reproduces that sexist dynamic.

Eg. McKewan, ourC20 male hero, 'undoes' the preconceptions of sentimental fiction by including rape, child abuse, child sexuality, post-modern elements: supposedly shocking and challenging our understanding of the parameters of sentimental fiction.

The female author reproduces them, sanitises life's nastiness, adds collusive fantasies of consolatory romance, lies in her (fictional) sentimental novel(s).

Personally, I think that is a sexist recuperation of the work of many feminist critics to open out and reclaim the work of (primarily female) authors of sentimental fiction.

He kind of 'grabs' all the modern reinterpretations of sentimental fiction for 'the masculine' whilst simultaneously off-loading the (still!) negative elements onto an imaginary feminine.

It annoys me because I read it as a land grab by a male author of the work of primarily female and feminist literary critics.

I liked Atonement and didn't think it was sexist at all.

I enjoyed Atonement.

I have also enjoyed this thread.

The review is very interesting.

One chapter is devoted entirely to Emily Tallis, Briony’s mother, and her attempts to avoid a migraine while lying on the bed.

I liked that the book gave us MORE points of view. The mother also sees what goes on by the fountain, and has a different perspective on it. We see that scene from three points of view and it enhanced (IMO) the theme of limited information giving rise to different interpretations.

Perhaps Briony feels that she deserves forgiveness because she has ardently wished for and imagined it, while Lola wears obnoxious lipstick and shows no signs of guilt.

Susan Pevensie didn't get to go to heaven when she died because she liked nylons and lipstick and boys and apparently was no longer a "friend of Narnia".

thecat - Atonement analyses certain sentiments but it is most certainly not "sentimental fiction".

"It annoys me because I read it as a land grab by a male author of the work of primarily female and feminist literary critics."

I have no idea what you tried to say with this.

My issue with it is I suppose more about victim blaming than sexism.

I really, really, like Ian McEwan, but have a few beefs with him about his female characters. Julie in 'A Child in Time' is a slightly more likeable version of the wife in 'Solid Geometry' - but both look for answers in woo-type-stuff. And in CIT, the issue is admittedly muddled because Stephen is something of a misogynist himself, but McEwan does seem more on his side than not. And he balances Julie's woo with Thelma's theoretical physics, but is also careful to note that Thelma is old and has messy grey hair, and is never an object of desire.

In 'Sweet Tooth', the heroine is good at maths and dares to think she might have something to say about literature, but all her opinions are, as she later acknowledges, dross. The charismatic writer she meets (who is pretty much Ian McEwan) is oh so much smarter (and the twist at the end confirms this in spades....).

Where was the victim blaming in Atonement?

Nobody was blaming her and she wasn't a victim anyway, as she well knows and tries to atone for.

Of Lola, not Bryony. The text seems to me quite strongly to emphasise her precocity before the attack, and also to do something pretty dubious by having her end up with her attacker.

Sorry but, again, no idea what you are trying to say.

What does any of that have to do with "victim blaming"?

Cote I think I've seen you vigorously defending McEwan before, and I'm all for a discussion, but your tone seems unnecessarily combative here!

15 year old Lola (whose name I think is at the very least an unconscious echo of 'Lolita') is introduced as both precocious and vain: 'perfectly composed, having liberally applied perfume and changed into a green gingham frock to offset her colouring', with 'toenails painted vermilion': she's manipulative, 'pressing home her advantage' by invoking her parents' separation because she wants to play Arabella. Her 'nearly adult mind' is also mentioned, and when Paul meets her he sees that 'the girl was almost a young woman, poised and imperious, quite the little Pre-Raphaelite with her bangles and tresses, her painted nails and velvet choker.'

All of this, to me, seems like victim blaming ('and what kind of underwear were you wearing on the night of this alleged attack?').

Why does McEwan (and yes, I know ultimately it turns out this is Briony, but even more ultimately, it is he, and he does not give any sense that this particular aspect of the novel is merely B's perception) so carefully characterize the victim in this way? The suggestion is that Some Women (or rather, girls) will happily lie about rape, as she goes along with the popular mood against Robbie and scapegoats him ('false accusations ruin men's lives' agree the menz!), and it turns out that the attack which so upset her didn't stop her eventually marrying the man who did it ('they like it really!').

The entire novel is about the damage that a malicious accusation of rape can incur, and all our sympathies are directed toward the falsely accused Robbie - only very briefly to Lola, whom the text does rather seem to insist brought it on herself. Now, a false accusation of rape obviously is a terrible thing, but in this case a rape did happen, yet that is not the tragic event of the narrative.

I'm not asking that McEwan write about different things or write different books to dramatize the plights I personally feel are more deserving, but the extent to which I find this book problematic is based around those elements which I've tried to explain.

I'm with Cote on this. I don't think it's sexist, nor that there is victim-blaming.
And for me, I don't accuse McEwan of "clever-clever" at the end: the whole conceit is that it's Briony being clever-clever.

By the by - "Susan Pevensie didn't get to go to heaven when she died because she liked nylons and lipstick and boys and apparently was no longer a "friend of Narnia"."

Not so. At the end of The Last Battle, Susan is still alive in the world we live in. She is "no longer a friend of Narnia", she has dismissed it from her concerns. She is interested in nothing but .... those other things. I would recommend reading both Andrew Rilstone's essay "Lipstick on My Scholar" -

www.andrewrilstone.com/2005/11/lipstick-on-my-scholar.html

Also, RJ Anderson's essay - "The Problem of Susan" -
rj-anderson.livejournal.com/176635.html

I'm not "vigorously defending Ian McEwan", just saying I don't understand why you think there is victim blaming in Atonement. I like his writing but it's not like I know the guy.

"15 year old Lola (whose name I think is at the very least an unconscious echo of 'Lolita')"

Story takes place in 1935. Lolita was published 20 years later, in 1935. Loads of girls were (and still are, surprisingly) called Lola, Dolores, and even Lolita. I have a part-time babysitter in her 30s with one of those names. Aren't you clutching at straws?

"... is introduced as both precocious and vain: 'perfectly composed, having liberally applied perfume and changed into a green gingham frock to offset her colouring', with 'toenails painted vermilion': she's manipulative, 'pressing home her advantage' by invoking her parents' separation because she wants to play Arabella. Her 'nearly adult mind' is also mentioned, and when Paul meets her he sees that 'the girl was almost a young woman, poised and imperious, quite the little Pre-Raphaelite with her bangles and tresses, her painted nails and velvet choker.'
All of this, to me, seems like victim blaming"

Seriously? None of that has anything to do with victim blaming.

So what if she was precocious and vain? What if she liked dresses and nail polish?
AFAIK nowhere in the book was she blamed for being attacked - not by any of the characters and certainly not by the author.

You see I totally agree with Seek - Lola is presented as an seductive pubescent temptress (which by the way makes it almost impossible that someone as well read as IM doubtless is would not be making the Lolita connection), and her lying accusation is emphasised as the cause of Robbie's suffering, not her rape. Moreover she is portrayed very unsympathetically, and her subsequent marriage functions in the plot as conformation (or at least strongly implies) that the lie was a deliberately manipulative act on her part.

This is indeed classic victim-blaming - there's an alternative (and sadly common) narrative, in which a vulnerable child from an unstable family is sexually assaulted by a predatory man and ends up in an abusive marriage to him, but this is not the way the story works in the text.

Trying to defend IM, I guess you could argue that the main story is Bryony's perception, and that it shows his talent that he sets up this shadow narrative in which Lola is the tragic heroine; you could even argue that the name Lola/Lolita is a nod to the fact that the narrator is unreliable and the 'nymphette' is really being abused. In fact, I am almost convincing myself here - it does add another layer to perception/reality question. But I still find it hard to get over the fact that in the basic plot of the novel, Lola is definitely the main 'person to blame', especially as the twist ending doesn't touch on her character, so if we are supposed to read her tragedy as another level of the novel, this is very poorly signalled.

I haven't read that much IM otherwise, but I remember 'Black Dogs' as having a very nasty and misogynistic sexuality - though admittedly very powerfully used in that case.

"Trying to defend IM, I guess you could argue that the main story is Bryony's perception"

You don't need to argue, it actually is Bryony's narrative - she is the author of this book, as made clear towards the end of the book.

".. and that it shows his talent that he sets up this shadow narrative in which Lola is the tragic heroine; you could even argue that the name Lola/Lolita is a nod to the fact that the narrator is unreliable and the 'nymphette' is really being abused. In fact, I am almost convincing myself here - it does add another layer to perception/reality question."

I hadn't thought of it that way (having only read Lolita very recently), but you may be right.

As for "victim blaming" - Atonement talks about a pretty girl who likes to get dolled up getting attacked. This happens all the time in RL. It is not what "victim blaming" means. The fact is that Lola isn't blamed for the attack by anybody in the book. The so-called victim blaming is simply non-existent in the plot, IIRC.

Also Coly I think that article (lipstick on my scholar) is sophistical - the difference between 'interested in lipstick' and 'interested in nothing except lipstick' is minimal here - in both cases it is perfectly clear that Susan can't come back to Narnia because she has become socially/sexually aware.

Lewis could perfectly well have written a version in which Susan was dating rugby half-backs and wearing Chanel no. 5 and still interested in lions and magic, but he didn't. Thus perpetuating the idea that women, by virtue of becoming women, are cut off from imagination, adventure, religion etc. I definitely have a problem with that.

Ok then, not 'vigorously defending' - 'being really quite rude to people who have a different view of his texts', if that suits you better!

of course I know when Lolita was published and when Atonement is set - but it wasn't written in 1935, was it? The name, for whatever reason and with whatever level of intent, does evoke Nabokov's heroine.

The novel very carefully precedes Lola's attack with descriptions of her precocity and her flirtatiousness. It would be a different book, and, more importantly, a book which sent a different message about sexual assault if Lola had been a different kind of child. Because she is characterized as she is, the reader is invited not to worry too much about her, and to see her as having had some responsibility for the attack.

You don't need to argue, it actually is Bryony's narrative - she is the author of this book, as made clear towards the end of the book

Briony is the narrator - she is not the author: McEwan is, obviously.

Seek - Can you stop trying to make this debate about me? Thank you.

You don't need to argue, it actually is Bryony's narrative - she is the author of this book, as made clear towards the end of the book
Briony is the narrator - she is not the author

You might need to read it again. It is quite clear towards the end that this is the book Briony has written, and that the real story is rather different.

When I read it I thought it implied that Lola was raped, she has scratches on her arms etc. But then she marries the guy (forgot his name now)

I thought that was quiet unbelievable, and yes it says a lot about the author if he believes that a raped girl would then marry her rapist and live happily ever after

I'm sorry, I don't want to 'make it about you', but I resent the rather querulous and scathing tone of your posts. I find it rude, and I'd prefer a more polite conversation.

She is not the author of the book. The author of the book is Ian McEwan. Briony Tallis does not exist. She is the fictional creation of Ian McEwan, who authored the book in its entirety.

Cote - yes, ostensibly Bryony is the author, but in any book where there's an (unreliable) narrator there's a tension between what the narrator is telling you and what the author wants you to perceive, and there will be more divergence between these on some points of the narrative than others. So the question would be: is IM setting us up to disagree with Bryony's depiction of Lola, or is he implicitly concurring with it? I think you have to argue quite hard for the former, though that could (maybe?) be the text's subtlety.

So what would you consider victim-blaming, if not the events in Atonement? It's not just a pretty girl who likes to dress up co-incidentally gets attacked. It's pretty girl leads on older man (so kind of her fault), gets raped, actually likes it (hence agrees to marry him) - what!! - and in the meantime lies about having been raped (cliche and a dangerous one). In contemporary terms it's 'why were you wearing that skirt?' and 'why did you text him the morning after?', both classic victim blaming sentences in rape cases. (Unless you genuinely mean something different by victim-blaming, in which case we are perhaps misunderstanding each other). I think a better defence for IM is that he is deliberately setting up and subverting this narrative (see question in the previous paragraph, though I am not wholly convinced), but the victim-blaming narrative is definitely there in the text, in my view.

In the section of the text after the main part which it turns out is the character Briony's 'book', Briony tells us that her editors and researchers have pulled her up for some specific references to WW2 weaponry and uniforms, and asks what would be the point of saying that Cecilia had died in an air raid, and Robbie of septicaemia. The text does not suggest in any way that her perception of what happened regarding the attack has been changed: given that those aspects of the text which she does call into question all stem from that moment, it would be odd if there was a suggestion that that, too, was just an invention.

The epilogue also actually validates the earlier part of the text because it is here that Briony sees Paul and Lola in old age, Lola clicking along the pavement in a sable coat and in fine fettle. She also says that the novel will only be published after their deaths as well as hers. I don't think McEwan in any way invites us to doubt Briony's representation of what happened between Lola and Paul, or Lola's youthful precocity.

Ah really - I don't have a copy handy, but in that case the alternative narrative theory seems less likely - to be honest, I was only really speculating with it to begin with. Yeah, I think Atonement's sexist. And has an annoying ending.

That is a good point, Simone , that perhaps we mean different things by victim blaming.

I would take it to mean the suggestion that a woman or girl's clothing or behaviour has anything to do with her rape, or that she might have avoided being raped by making 'better' choices.

"what would you consider victim-blaming, if not the events in Atonement?"

I would call it victim blaming if anyone were actually blaming the victim. And they don't, not anywhere in the book.