Somacarrera 10/4/00 7:51 pm Page 135

A RT I C L E
‘Barometer Couple’: balance and parallelism
in Margaret Atwood’s Power Politics
Pilar Somacarrera, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain

Abstract

Feminist criticism has traditionally interpreted Margaret Atwood’s poetry collection

Power Politics (1971) as an account of victimization of women by men, in spite of the
author’s complaints about this limitation of the meaning of these texts. Rather than
being victims, the subjects of these poems (‘you’/‘I’) constitute an inseparable dyad
who inflict pain on each other while they are ineluctably dependent on each other. In
this article I use terms from classical rhetoric (isocolon, chiasmus, anadiplosis and
epanorthosis) in the analysis of the poems, with a view to explicating the nature of the
relationship between their two subjects. I focus on the study of parallelism, which
although it has been recognized as a feature of Margaret Atwood’s poetry, has not been
studied systematically. The use of this rhetorical scheme in Power Politics is related to
three main functions: definition, balance and reasoning. Through the rhetorical analysis
of these functions, I argue that the poems are written with the persuasive intention of
undermining certain destructive myths which have prevailed in the relationships
between men and women.

Keywords: Atwood, Margaret; Canadian literature; Canadian poetry; parallelism;

Power Politics; rhetoric

1 Introduction

In her novel Surfacing (1972), Margaret Atwood proposes a simile for her vision
of marriage: ‘two people linked together and balancing each other like the
wooden man and woman in the barometer house at Paul’s’ (1994: 40). This simile
depicts quite accurately the kind of relationship that takes place between the two
subjects – you and I, male and female – of her poetry collection Power Politics
(1971, republished 1996). Rather than simply being victims, they constitute an
inseparable dyad who inflict pain on each other while they are ineluctably
dependent on each other. This ‘gothic’ sadomasochistic aspect of the book
produced a considerable uproar at the time of its publication because, as McCombs
(1981: 47) points out, it has been usually read as sexist realism. Other than
McCombs’ interpretation, the collection has often been considered a document of
the women’s movement and has been subject to much feminist criticism,1 in spite
of Atwood’s rejection of this reductionist approach. As Larkin notes in her
review, the author sees Power Politics as an amplification of themes that had been
present in her work since she first started writing and publishing (1973: 35).
One of these themes, duality, has been approached from a variety of
perspectives, most of them thematic or related to various strands of literary

Language and Literature Copyright © 2000 SAGE Publications

(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), Vol 9(2): 135–149
[0963–9470 (200005) 9:2; 135–149; 012471]
Somacarrera 10/4/00 7:51 pm Page 136

136 PILAR SOMACARRERA

criticism.2 In this article I am going to apply the theoretical framework of rhetoric

to the analysis of the poems with a view to explicating the nature of the
relationship between their two subjects. Since rhetoric, according to Billig (1984:
49), stresses the two-sidedness of human thinking and of our conceptual realities,
a rhetorical approach lends itself to the task of analysing the dual conflict at the
core of Power Politics. The three ‘means of persuasion’ classified by Aristotle,
ethos, pathos and logos, are present in Power Politics. In relation to ethos,
Cockcroft and Cockcroft (1992: 21) suggest any interaction involving persuasion
will inevitably start with the communication of personality or image of the
speaker. Cooley (1994: 74) in his stylistic analysis of the poems claims that the
‘ “I” is not powerless, not by any stretch of the imagination’. I will argue,
however, that the ‘I’ adopts different stances. The speaker does present herself as
powerless in some poems, as when she admits: ‘but I rest here without power/to
save myself’ (1996: 23); but in others she casts herself as a God who can
manipulate nature: ‘My right hand unfolds rivers/around you, my left hand
releases its trees,/I speak rain’ (1996: 43). Pathos, or the emotional response of an
audience to a discourse, can be traced in the impact of Power Politics on its
readers. As Dixon (1971: 1) observes, rhetoric presupposes an audience which is
spoken to, an audience which the speaker wishes to influence, to persuade,
perhaps to exhort and instruct and, in the case of Atwood, to shock.3 Finally,
insomuch as the speaker of the poems usually proceeds through structures of
logic, logos, or persuasion through reasoning, is also an evident component of the
poems. This component will be explored in detail in this analysis.
Parallelism has been recognized as a feature of Margaret Atwood’s poetry
(Skelton, 1977: 116), but so far a systematic study of how this rhetorical device
works in her poems has not been undertaken.4 In this article I identify the
following functions for parallelism in Power Politics: definition, balance and
reasoning. My analysis is informed by a classification of rhetorical schemes
derived ultimately from traditional rhetoric, and I have used the definitions by
Nash (1989) and Wales (1989) as a reference point. I am going to focus on
balance and antithesis, as encoded by syntactic parallelism, as well as different
types of verbal parallelism: isocolon, chiasmus, epistrophe and anadiplosis.
Syntactic and verbal parallelism must be seen as interconnected because,
according to Leech (1993: 82), in almost all the examples of verbal parallelism
the repetition of individual words is accompanied by some degree of repetition of
syntactic structure.
Nash defines isocolon and chiasmus as schemes of linkage in parallel (1989:
113). Parallelism is a fundamental linking device, since in the majority of the
poems there are few connectives (see Skelton, 1977: 112). Isocolon is a
particularly powerful kind of parallelism, in which phrases or clauses in a
sentence are of equal length, and parallel in syntax, and hence rhythm (Wales,
1989: 265). Chiasmus is a two-clause figure in which the second clause is an
inverted parallel of the first (Nash, 1989: 114). Anadiplosis consists in the
repetition at the beginning of a sentence of the word or phrase which closed the

Language and Literature 2000 9(2)

Somacarrera 10/4/00 7:51 pm Page 137

‘BAROMETER COUPLE’ 137

previous sentence (Cockcroft and Cockcroft, 1992: 131). Epistrophe is a figure in

which the last word of a phrase or clause is repeated in each sequent construction
(Nash, 1989: 112). Finally, in his article about the poetic style of Margaret
Atwood, Skelton mentions another scheme, epanorthosis, which, although it is not
a form of parallelism, often accompanies parallelistic constructions in the poems
(1977: 116). Epanorthosis consists in the recalling of a word in order to suggest a
more precise or appropriate expression (Nash, 1989: 116), as in the initial epigram
of the collection: ‘You fit into me/like a hook into an eye/a fish hook/an open eye’
(1996: 1).5

2 Functions of parallelism in Power Politics

2.1 Definition
Criticism of Atwood has usually stressed the way in which her texts have
operated as a challenge to the literary tradition.6 Onley (1974: 21) suggests that
the poems in Power Politics operate within an ‘ironic inversion of courtly love’.
In traditional love poetry, one of the most usual functions of parallelism is
defining the beloved by enumerating the positive characteristics which adorn the
‘you’. In Power Politics, this convention is subverted by using parallelism to
elicit a litany of negative characteristics, as the poem titled ‘He is a Strange
Biological Phenomenon’ illustrates. Cooley (1994: 78) remarks that the title itself
establishes the pattern of a ‘state of being’ verb followed by a noun:
You are widespread
and bad for the garden,
hard to eradicate
…
Your flesh by now
is pure protein
…
You are sinuous and without bones
(1996: 8)
The poem contains a series of other definitions, couched in other verbs: ‘you
feed/only on dead meat’, ‘Your tongue leaves’, ‘You thrive on’, ‘you have no
chlorophyll’, ‘you move from place to place’ and ‘you leave in’. I agree with
Cooley when he points out that these verbs are as much part of definition as the
copula verbs, for they lay out what are habitual and therefore defining actions
(1994: 78). Characteristically, the lines define the ‘you’ in whole and in parts. At
the same time, instead of using direct metaphors to highlight the negative aspects
of ‘you’, the ‘I’ addresses him with paraphrases. The same device (developing
negative metaphors and separation of body parts) can be observed in the following
poem, in which the relationship between the lovers is identified with a room:

Language and Literature 2000 9(2)

Somacarrera 10/4/00 7:51 pm Page 138

138 PILAR SOMACARRERA

You stay closed, your skin

is buttoned firmly around you
your mouth is a tin decoration
you are in the worst possible taste
You are fake as the marble trim
around the fireplace…
(untitled, 1996: 44)
Parallelism reinforces the metaphors and similes which objectify the ‘you’,
insisting on his lack of authenticity.
Transgression of the convention of praising the ‘you’ may be achieved by the
revisionary disclosure introduced by enjambment. In the poem beginning with the
metaphor ‘You are the sun’, the reader is tricked into believing that the traditional
device of adding up compliments is going to be maintained:
You are the sun
in reverse, all energy
flows into you and is
abolished; you refuse
houses, you smell of
catastrophe, I see you
blind and one-handed, flashing
in the dark, trees breaking
under your feet, you demand,
you demand
(untitled, 1996: 47)
A metaphor like ‘You are the sun’ would be perfectly normal in traditional love
poetry, but in Atwood’s poem the positive qualities assigned to the beloved are
immediately cancelled in the following line (‘in reverse’). Having broken the
expectation, the enumeration of negative characteristics continues in the next lines.
Another way of subverting the praising conventions of traditional love poetry
consists in defining the ‘you’ through tautologies, also structured in parallel and
anaphoric lines: ‘you are not those other people/you are yourself’ (1996: 50). The
‘you’ is also described tautologically in a poem which makes an insistent use of
isocolon, introducing the effect of denying the obvious:
You are not a bird you do not fly
you are not an animal you do not run
you are not a man
your mouth is nothingness
where it touches me I vanish
you descend on me like age
you descend on me like earth
(untitled, 1996: 53)

Language and Literature 2000 9(2)

Somacarrera 10/4/00 7:51 pm Page 139

‘BAROMETER COUPLE’ 139

The highly parallelistic structure of this excerpt resembles the discursive

practices of preaching. The overpatterning of binary structures of this excerpt is
remarkable: in the first two lines the negative definition of the ‘you’ is paired with
the negation of a characteristic of the animal with whom he has been compared.
Through the parallel constructions which signal what the ‘you’ is not, the ‘I’
progresses towards an accurate definition which again is formulated by isocolon
in the last two lines.
The characteristics assigned to the ‘you’ by isocolon may be not permanent (as
‘You are not a man’) but temporary, as in the following poem:
and there isn’t anything
I want to do about the fact
that you are unhappy & sick
you aren’t sick & unhappy
only alive & stuck with it
(untitled, 1996: 16)
The parallel structure relies as much on the binary combinations of isocolon and
chiasmus (sick/unhappy, unhappy/sick, alive/stuck), as on the contrast produced
by the oppositions (are/aren’t, sick/alive) and the cohesive effect of consonance
(sick/stuck).
Isocolon allows for another way of defining the ‘you’ which consists in
naming his possessions: ‘This is your castle, this is your metal door/these are your
stairs’ (1996: 49). The parallel sentences emphasize the ubiquitous spatial
preoccupations, as well as a list of patriarchal characteristics. In the next section
of the poem, the figure of isocolon encapsulates the negative attributes of the
‘you’, effects of his passing as a destroying angel: ‘The walls crumble, the
dishes/thaw, vines grow/on the softening refrigerator’ (1996: 49). Pejorative
definitions of the ‘you’ are semantically very close to accusations, which are also
pervasive in the poems. As Cooley (1994: 79) notes, the ‘I’ is already fingering
the ‘you’ in her definitions, and when she accuses him, she is giving her verdict,
as when her accusation rides anaphorically in a kind of chant supported by highly
parallelistic patterns:
It was you who started the countdown
…
and it was you whose skin
fell off bubbling
…
and you also who laughed
when you saw it happen
(untitled, 1996: 32)
The effect of piling sentences in these lines can be highly persuasive, replicating a
sense of emotional and intellectual pressure. The rhetorical device of the
pounding parallel sentences is meant to coax the ‘you’ into accepting the role

Language and Literature 2000 9(2)

Somacarrera 10/4/00 7:51 pm Page 140

140 PILAR SOMACARRERA

imposed by the ‘I’. Therefore, the habit of defining on the part of the ‘I’, taken to
a hysterical extreme, aims at preventing the ‘you’ from assuming an identity of
his own. The analysis of this defining ‘mania’ of the poems confirms role-
engulfment as the central theme of Power Politics (Onley, 1974: 22).

2.2 Balance
Parallelism also encodes the perpetual balance or tension taking place between the
‘you’ and the ‘I’ in the poems. Most importantly, parallelism indicates the
different attitudes adopted by the ‘you’ and the ‘I’ when they face each other. A
number of these confrontations can be summarized as ‘ “I” is solicitous/“you”
indifferent’. In the first poem of the collection, ‘He Reappears’, the ‘you’ rejects
the friendly offer of the ‘I’:

You pretended you were hungry

I offered you sandwiches and gingerale
but you refused
…
Can’t we
be friends, I said
you didn’t answer
(1996: 2)
In later poems, the desire for friendship turns into a sexual approach which will
be equally rejected by the ‘you’:
I touch you, straighten the sheet, you turn over
in the bed, tender
sun comes through the curtains
(untitled, 1996: 23)
The positioning of the adjective tender at the end of the second line of the stanza
activates the possibility that it might be applied to the ‘you’. As usual in Atwood,
the line at first betrays us into belief, finding, just this once, the tenderness we
have come to expect in love poetry. However, the run-on line immediately cancels
this possibility. In another poem about the sexual approach between lovers,
indifference becomes downright rejection. In the following lines, the ‘you’, as
Blakely observes, refuses sensual touch; he rejects the vulnerability of receiving
pleasure when it is offered and retains control (1983: 40).

I stroke
you lightly and you shiver
you clench yourself, withhold
even your flesh
…

Language and Literature 2000 9(2)

Somacarrera 10/4/00 7:51 pm Page 141

‘BAROMETER COUPLE’ 141

I slip my hand down

your neck, rest on the pulse
you pull away
(untitled, 1996: 34)
Parallelism may signal degrees of withdrawal, as in the previous lines (‘you
shiver/you clench yourself/you pull away’), but also advance. The unstoppable
movements of the ‘you’ as he is moving into the ‘I’ are also described in some
highly parallelistic lines in a poem which depicts him as a hurt animal wildly
trying to tear itself from a trap:
you move wounded, you are hurt, you hurt
you want to get out, you want
to tear yourself out, I am
the outside, I am snow and
space, pathways, you gather
yourself, your muscles
clutch, you move
into me as though
(untitled, 1996: 46)
In this poem, figures of speech like epistrophe, epanorthosis and polyptoton
contribute to the portrayal of the movement of the ‘you’ into the ‘I’. These figures
have two functions: to reinforce the progression of ideas and to assist the ‘I’ in
finding a more accurate definition of the moves of the ‘you’. In the line ‘you are
hurt/you hurt’, the combination of polyptoton (repetition of words deriving from
the same root) and parallelism communicates the alternation of agency and
passivity in inflicting pain which characterizes both subjects of the poems (in this
case, the ‘you’). In the following lines, ‘you want to get out, you want/to tear
yourself out, I am/the outside’, sexual intercourse is defined as a movement
outwards on the part of the ‘you’. The rhetorical devices of epistrophe and
epanorthosis enable the ‘I’ to correct herself, substituting the verb ‘get out’ by
‘tear out’, which places a greater emphasis on violence.
Another type of balance between the ‘I’ and the ‘you’ can be found in dialogue
(‘question/answer’). ‘You’ and ‘I’ take turns to plead and be indifferent. In a
poem which contains a parody of the Pietá, the ‘you’ supplicates and the ‘I’,
merciless, proceeds, like a contemptuous Madonna, to crucify him:
You say, Do you
love me, do you love me
I answer you:
I stretch your arms out
one to either side,
your head slumps forward
(untitled, 1996: 6)

Language and Literature 2000 9(2)

Somacarrera 10/4/00 7:51 pm Page 142

142 PILAR SOMACARRERA

In ‘Hesitations Outside the Door’ the reverse pattern is observed: the ‘I’
speaks, but the ‘you’ ignores and continues performing acts of domination:
I say, leave me
alone, this is my winter,
I will stay here if I choose
You will not listen
to resistances, you cover me
with flags, a dark red
season, you delete from me
all other colours
(1996: 49)
Later in the same poem, the dichotomy ‘You say/I say’ illustrates certain
divergences between the ‘you’ and the ‘I’. The myth of Bluebeard’s castle
underlies the words of the ‘you’, whereas the ‘I’ vindicates everyday life:
You say: my other wives
are in there, they are all
beautiful and happy, they love me, why
disturb them
I say: it is only
a cupboard, my collection
of envelopes, my painted
eggs, my rings
(1996: 50)
In ‘Small Tactics’, a poem about a relationship which is deteriorating because
of the continuous absences of the ‘you’, the lovers adopt symmetric poses in their
telephone conversation:
It’s getting bad, you weren’t
there again
Wire silences, you trying
to think of something you haven’t
said, at least to me
Me trying to give
the impression it isn’t
getting bad at least
not yet
(1996: 19)

Language and Literature 2000 9(2)

Somacarrera 10/4/00 7:51 pm Page 143

‘BAROMETER COUPLE’ 143

The first line with its slightly agrammatical construction emphasizes the
complaint of the ‘I’ about the repeated absences of the ‘you’. The structure of the
rest of the excerpt is based on the balance ‘I’/‘you’, antithetical parallelism
(Skelton, 1977: 117) and epanorthosis. Balance relies on the contrast of the poses
(‘you trying/to think of something … Me trying to give/the impression it
isn’t/getting bad…’); antithetical parallelism allows for the contradiction (‘It’s
getting bad… it isn’t/getting bad’) and epanorthosis (‘at least to me’…‘at least/not
yet’) couches the desperate attempt of the ‘I’ to hold on to the relationship.
Balance between the ‘you’ and the ‘I’ is also conveyed by isocolon, a figure
which brings together pairs of sentences and, therefore, reinforces duality and
opposition. As the title anticipates, the intentions of the ‘you’ are opposed to those
of the ‘I’ in ‘Their Attitudes Differ’:
You held out your hand
I took your fingerprints
You asked for love
I gave you only descriptions
(1996: 10)
I disagree with Skelton when he claims that the relationship between the two lines
of these ‘modules’, as he calls them, is that of cause and effect (1997: 112). I
would argue that the connection is, rather, defined by opposition or, to use the
term I have proposed in this article, of balance between ‘I’ and ‘you’. A similar
contraposition occurs in ‘They Travel by Air’, a poem in which not only the
intentions but the lovers themselves collide:
A different room, this month
a worse one, where
your body with head
attached and my head with
body attached coincide briefly
I want questions and you want
only answers, but the building
is warming up,
(1996: 11)
Isocolon is combined again with chiasmus, which assigns different roles to the
man’s and the woman’s mind and body. In his case, it is the head which is
attached to the body, in her case it is the opposite. Therefore, whereas the body is
presented as the essential part of the ‘you’, ‘I’ defines herself as dominated by the
head, that is, as essentially a thinking, reflective being. The roles are opposite but,
as McCombs (1981: 49) remarks, the ‘body with head/attached’ is the
complement to her own divided self, the ‘head with/body attached’. In the other
instance of isocolon (‘I want questions and you want/only answers’), the
rhetorical figure foregrounds the opposite intentions of the lovers which will lead
them to the inevitable collision.

Language and Literature 2000 9(2)

Somacarrera 10/4/00 7:51 pm Page 144

144 PILAR SOMACARRERA

Finally, isocolon is used for the expression of balance in the final lines of
poems which emphasize the clash between individuality and the duality of the
relationship. Onley (1974: 36) refers to this kind of balance as the tension
between individuality and isolation, on the one hand, and loss of identity and
sexual fulfilment on the other. One poem from the collection, in which a failed
relationship is identified with an accident, ends with the following lines:
Which of us will survive
which of us will survive the other
(untitled, 1996: 23)
Through the use of epanorthosis, isocolon incorporates an aspect of logical
progression (elaboration of an argument), moving from the struggle for survival
to the dual aspect of ‘struggle, battle’ which is prevalent in the collection.
Antithesis achieves the same effect in the last two lines of ‘Hesitations Outside
the Door’, which follow a similar scheme:
In the room we will find nothing
in the room we will find each other
(1996: 51)
The entire poem has been building up to a climax towards finding out what is
inside the room and this climax is resolved, again, by the inescapable balance of
the two lovers.

2.3 Reasoning
Skelton (1977: 115) contends that Atwood’s poems avoid all but simple and
inescapable kinds of philosophical or metaphysical speculation. Later, he adds
that they seldom move in logical stages towards resolution or conclusion (1977:
119). I argue, however, agreeing with Mallinson (1985: 28), that the poems are
written in a metaphysical tradition and are, therefore, argumentative. They are, in
fact, argumentative according to the individual and social meanings of the word
‘argument’ which Billig has drawn attention to (1984: 44). An ‘argument’ is a
process of reasoning, but also a contentious exchange of views. Power Politics
explores the two meanings of ‘argument’, but in particular the aspect of the
dispute between men and women, as illustrated by ‘They Eat Out’, a hilarious
poem about two dining lovers. In this poem deliberation becomes the crucial point
of the encounter between ‘you’ and ‘I’. In the ‘exordium’ the speaker proposes
the options to the addressee:
In restaurants we argue
over which of us will pay for your funeral
though the real question is
whether or not I will make you immortal
(1996: 5)

Language and Literature 2000 9(2)

Somacarrera 10/4/00 7:51 pm Page 145

‘BAROMETER COUPLE’ 145

Duality is enacted by the obsessive repetition of binary structures and the ‘if…or’
logic deployed by the ‘I’:
The other diners regard you
some with awe, some only with boredom
(1996: 5)
The poem ‘They are Hostile Nations’ provides an example of how the ‘I’
carefully argues the ‘you’ into reconciliation by piling up parallel sentences:
In view of the fading animals
the proliferation of sewers and fears
the sea clogging, the air
nearing extinction
we should be kind, we should
take warning, we should forgive each other
Instead, we are opposite, we
touch as though attacking
(1996: 37)
The perfect logical structure of the poem with its premises (first stanza or module)
and consequences (second module) is supported by parallelism. In the third
module the behaviour which the speaker has presented as reasonable and
advisable is rejected, thus introducing a note of opposition which is also found in
other poems:
I should have used leaves
and silver to prevent you
instead I summoned
(untitled, 1996: 53)
The scheme of anadiplosis, which is specifically related to logical progression
(Wales, 1989: 22), also has a crucial role in the function of arguing. In the
following poem, which, once again, aims at defining the ‘you’, anadiplosis marks
the progressive but unstoppable movement of the argument of the ‘I’:
After all you are quite
ordinary: 2 arms 2 legs
a head, a reasonable
body, toes & fingers, a few
eccentricities, a few honesties
but not too many, too many
postponements & regrets but
you’ll adjust to it, meeting deadlines
and other people, pretending to love
the wrong woman some of the
time, listening to your brain

Language and Literature 2000 9(2)

Somacarrera 10/4/00 7:51 pm Page 146

146 PILAR SOMACARRERA

shrink, your diaries

expanding as you grow older,
growing older, of course you’ll…
(untitled, 1996: 16)
In this poem, as Cooley (1994: 76) observes, the logical structure takes on a tone
of persuasion, as the ‘I’ tries to argue the ‘you’ into the accuracy of her
definitions. In ‘Hesitations Outside the Door’, a poem pervaded by territorial
anxieties, anadiplosis serves to speculate about the situation of the relationship.
The ‘I’ admits at the beginning about the lack of sincerity of the couple:
i
I’m telling the wrong lies
they are not even useful
The right lies would at least
be keys, they would open the door.
The door is closed, the chairs
the tables, the steel bowl, myself
shaping bread in the kitchen, wait
outside it
(1996: 48)
At the end of the poem, anadiplosis is strategically deployed again to deliberate
about whether or not they should enter the room:
Should we go into it
together/If I go into it
with you I will never come out
If I wait outside I can salvage
this house or what is left
(1996: 51)
In ‘They Travel by Air’, which places the lovers in the claustrophobic space of
a room, sexual love is imaged as a shattering of the ego that seems to be
epitomized in the collision between mirrors:
there is not much
time and time is not fast enough any
more, the building sweeps away, we are off course, we
separate, we hurtle towards each other
at the speed of sound, everything roars
we collide sightlessly and
fall, the pieces of us
mixed as disaster

Language and Literature 2000 9(2)

Somacarrera 10/4/00 7:51 pm Page 147

‘BAROMETER COUPLE’ 147

and hit the pavement of this room

in a blur of silver fragments
(1996: 10)
This poem is a chain of parallel sentences stating causes and consequences added
up in an asyndetic sequence which creates a pounding, staccato effect. Each
clause builds upon the previous one through anadiplosis and enjambment until the
last stanza, which reveals the nature of the central metaphor. The rhetorical device
and the lineation have the effect of carrying the meaning from line to line and
creating a pace and rhythm which match the poem’s tension.

3 Conclusions

In his consideration of Atwood’s poetic work, Skelton (1977: 119) claims that it
‘belongs more to the ideogrammatic7 than the rhetorical tradition’. I hope to have
demonstrated with this analysis that the poems in Power Politics are written
within a rhetorical framework. The analysis of a specific rhetorical device,
parallelism, appears to be a useful interpreting scheme which sheds light on the
meaning of the collection. Whereas definition links them to traditional love
poetry, these texts offer a new version of the unrequited love of the courtly
tradition, in which the ‘I’ projects a monstrous Other. The subversion of the
convention of the ‘I’ exalting the ‘you’ hinges on parallelism. Whereas in
traditional love poetry this rhetorical device is used to accumulate praises to the
‘you’, in Power Politics it is aimed at foregrounding his negative characteristics.
Parallelism, with its enormous potential for insisting on an idea, is an excellent
device to undermine certain discursive practices of the patriarchal society. One of
these is the imposing of fixed roles on men and women. In addition, as Onley
(1974: 33) remarks, in the patriarchal social structure man habitually defines
himself by aggression. In the poems this practice is disrupted by having another
subject, the ‘I’, obsessively and aggressively define the ‘you’ as a plague, vermin,
poisonous snake, aggressor.
The analysis of the use of parallelism for balance confirms my belief that in
Power Politics Atwood is not developing the ‘victor/victim’ patterns she explores
in her thematic guide to Canadian literature Survival (1972: 36–41). Rather, the
pattern that pervades in this poetry collection is what Rosenberg calls ‘mutual
exploitation’ (1984: 62) or, to use my own term, balance. The alternation of roles
of victor/victim by the ‘you’ and the ‘I’ is disclosed by the study of parallelism.
This conclusion invalidates some of the feminist criticism of Atwood, such as
Blakely’s (1983: 37, 40) contention that dominance of the field belongs ultimately
to the man, whereas the woman is vulnerable. The linkage schemes of isocolon
and chiasmus have a crucial role in the linguistic representation of the balance
motif. Isocolon, which entails duality and emphasis, is therefore appropriate to
foreground not only the dyadic nature of the tension between the subjects, but

Language and Literature 2000 9(2)

Somacarrera 10/4/00 7:51 pm Page 148

148 PILAR SOMACARRERA

also their opposite intentions. Poems like the initial epigram and ‘They Travel by
Air’ suggest, however, that ‘you’ and ‘I’ are opposite but complementary, two
sides of the same coin in perpetual balance. The complementary aspect of the
relationship is made prominent by chiasmus, a figure of symmetry which also
contributes to the witty and aphoristic tone which pervades the poems. Reasoning,
the last function I have assigned to parallelism in the poems, is, of course, related
to balance and duality insomuch as the concept of ‘argument’ involves the ‘you’
and the ‘I’ disputing and testing the truth by discussion.
In addition, parallelism signals certain thematic territories which have been
identified by Atwood’s critics,8 such as spatial obsessions, dismemberment of the
parts of the body and the inaccuracy of language. Parallelistic structures become a
channel in the ‘I’’s struggle to find the right terms for her definitions of the ‘you’.
In each parallel sentence, ‘I’ moves closer to the intended meaning, often through
the figure of epanorthosis which leads to a more precise or appropriate word or
expression. The analysis of repetition and parallelism in the poems reveals that
the speaker in Power Politics wields eloquence rather than power. This voice uses
persuasion in order to overturn certain destructive myths which have traditionally
prevailed in the relationships between men and women, and ‘their endless
variations of pose, accusation, complicity and subversion of the human’ (Atwood,
1973: 16). The final question is, as Atwood herself has put it, whether it is
possible for men and women to stop mythologizing, manipulating and attacking
one another (1971: 74) and become, as she suggests in one of her poems,
‘fellow/travellers’ instead of enemies.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a Faculty Research Grant from the Government of
Canada (Spain Programme 1998). I am also grateful to Professor Helmut
Bonheim from the University of Cologne for granting me access to
bibliographical material on Margaret Atwood at the Englisches Seminar during
the summer of 1997.
Poems from Power Politics by Margaret Atwood are reprinted with the
permission of the House of Anansi Press, North York, Ontario, Canada.

Notes

1 See Onley (1974) and Blakely (1983).

2 See Grace (1980, 1981).
3 About the reaction to Power Politics Atwood says, ‘A real kind of heavy shock set in around
Power Politics in 1971’ (Twiggs, 1991: 128).
4 Mallinson’s monograph on Atwood (1985) does explore, however, her tropes.
5 I have decided to exclude this poem from this analysis, as it has already received a great deal of
critical attention: see, for example, Bowering (1992).
6 See Howells (1996: 9) and Hutcheon (1988: 144–5).

Language and Literature 2000 9(2)

Somacarrera 10/4/00 7:51 pm Page 149

‘BAROMETER COUPLE’ 149

7 He means that ‘(the poems) record percepts rather than concepts and that in those … poems
which present a chain of consequences, the consequences are almost invariably presented as
events and images rather than intellectual formulations’ (Skelton, 1977: 115).
8 See, for example, Howells (1996: 8) and Cooley (1994: 69).

References

Atwood, M. (1971) ‘Love is Ambiguous … Sex is a Bully’, Canadian Literature 49: 70–5.
Atwood, M. (1972) Survival. A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. Toronto: House of Anansi.
Atwood, M. (1973) ‘Notes on Power Politics’, Acta Victoriana 97(2): 7–19.
Atwood, M. (1994) Surfacing. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.
Atwood, M. (1996) Power Politics. Toronto: House of Anansi.
Billig, M. (1984) Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Blakely, B. (1983) ‘the Pronunciation of the Flesh: A Feminist Reading of Margaret Atwood’s Poetry’,
in S. Grace and L. Weir (eds) Margaret Atwood: Language, Text and System, pp. 33–51.
Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
Bowering, G. (1992) ‘Atwood’s Hook’, Open Letter, eighth series (winter): 81–90.
Cockcroft, R. and Cockcroft, S. (1992) Persuading People: An Introduction to Rhetoric. London:
Macmillan.
Cooley, D. (1994) ‘Nearer by Far: the Upset “I” in Margaret Atwood’s Poetry’, in C. Nicholson (ed.)
Margaret Atwood: Writing and Subjectivity, pp. 68–93. New York: St Martin’s Press.
Dixon, P. (1971) Rhetoric. London: Methuen.
Grace, S. (1980) Violent Duality. A Study of Margaret Atwood. Montreal: Vehicule Press.
Grace, S. (1981) ‘Margaret Atwood and the Poetics of Duplicity’, in A.E. Davidson and C.N.
Davidson (eds) The Art of Margaret Atwood: Essays in Criticism, pp. 55–68. Toronto: House of
Anansi.
Howells, C.A. (1996) Margaret Atwood. London: Macmillan.
Hutcheon, L. (1988) The Canadian Postmodern. Toronto: Oxford University Press.
Larkin, J. (1973) ‘Soul Survivor’, Ms (May): 33–5.
Leech, G. (1993) A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry. London: Longman.
McCombs, J. (1981) ‘Atwood’s Haunted Sequences: The Circle Game, The Journals of Susanna
Moodie, and Power Politics’, in A.E. Davidson and C.N. Davidson (eds) The Art of Margaret
Atwood: Essays in Criticism, pp. 35–54. Toronto: House of Anansi.
Mallinson, J. (1985) Margaret Atwood and Her Works. Toronto: ECW Press.
Nash, W. (1989) Rhetoric: The Wit of Persuasion. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Onley, G. (1974) ‘Power Politics in Bluebeard’s Castle’, Canadian Literature 60: 21–42.
Rosenberg, J.H. (1984) Margaret Atwood. Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers.
Skelton, R. (1977) ‘Timeless Constructions: A Note on the Poetic Style of Margaret Atwood’,
Malahat Review 41 (January): 107–20.
Twiggs, A. (1991) ‘Just Looking at the Things that are There’, in E.G. Ingersoll (ed.) Margaret
Atwood. Conversations, pp. 121–30. Willowdale, Ontario: Firefly Books.
Wales, K. (1989) A Dictionary of Stylistics. London: Longman.

Address

Pilar Somacarrera. Departamento de Filología Inglesa, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad

Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Cantoblanco, Madrid, Spain. [email:[email protected]]

Language and Literature 2000 9(2)