Life Before Man
Margaret Atwood’s fourth novel, “Life Before Man,” was hard to get through. Not because the writing was poor, it wasn’t. Not because the plot-line was character-driven, I am drawn to literary fiction for this reason, but because of the very essence of what Atwood achieved with this novel, a world of adults functioning coldly and meticulously enough in domestic manipulation that was cruel, that was hard to read through. Published in 1979, a few earlier novels by Atwood have found me. Cast away by English departments, I’ve scavenged them for character study.
What haunts me from this novel is the image of an expensive decorative bowl, an empty bowl, the potential to be filled and used lovingly in a home, gone. What remains is a void ornamental bowl. Not functioning to true potential and design, the bowl is expected to be filled, loved. It never is.
Elizabeth, a dominating voice of the novel owns this bowl, she studies it. It is her narrative point-of-view that agonizes over it, or is perturbed by the bowl’s emptiness. A waste of an expensive thing, she sees herself as this bowl, empty of the opportunity to love, indifferent, a lost chance of capacity.
But, she is a bowl brimming and overflowing, taking up space that is consumed by the other characters of the novel. Enough expanse that an ex-lover kills himself over her break-up with him, a way to punish her, but also, evidence of her flooding the lives around her, tsunami-like.
Presenting three characters in alternating chapters, “Life Before Man,” was Atwood’s first exploration of multiple character voices and fluctuating narrative point-of-view. Combing through painful backstories and tortured present situations of unreciprocated love, I joked to those around me that, “they basically cheat on each other throughout the entire novel.”
All trapped in damaging relationships, locked in societal constructs and self-imposed ideologies, there is a witnessing of polite and controlled unravelling. The appalling nature of the characters, what was hard to work through on the page, is exactly what connected me to it, a facing of the reality of how people in real life treat each other, sometimes.
Our empty-bowled Elizabeth is sensual and put-together, calculative and callous, her dialogue can cut, demean and push other characters into a frenzy. She appeared to me a perfect villain character, alluring but poisonous. There is some sympathy that can be gathered from her childhood and relationship with her aunt, but does not, in my opinion, outweigh the quiet atrocity she takes up residence in. Elizabeth is dutiful as a mother and one redeeming quality of herself and her husband, Nate, is that they do not place their children at the forefront of the dysfunction between them.
Nate, a toymaker who gave up a life as a lawyer, struggles financially and does not feel that he will ever measure-up to Elizabeth’s standards. In retaliation to his wife’s cheating, he strays as well.
The reader meets Lesje then, Nate’s lover, a young woman who works in the Royal Ontario Museum in the paleontology department. Her specialized knowledge of fossils and the connections she makes between people and her work established an engaging niche for me to crouch into the novel. But, the separation and alienation Lesje experiences in that those around her cannot comprehend or show heart for her world the way she can, leaves her isolated and spiraling down into her own mind. There is also separation and alienation occurring for her on a more organic front, her negotiations of her Jewish and Ukrainian heritage leave her emotionally vulnerable and at the whims, for most of the novel, to the antics between Elizabeth and Nate.
Positioned in the crux of socially constructed and awkwardly polite cross-hairs, Lesje attempts to gain footing the only way she can. Plotlines turn slowly on themselves as each character strives for an upper hand.
It is not a novel about winning and losing. A mirror, this novel will show us exactly how adults can behave sometimes. Games. Self-centered pursuits. A saving-of-face. It was a blatant uncomfortable read, and yet, refreshing.
I can only imagine how “Life Before Man” was received in the 80’s, a time when social constructs were to fit a little tighter, or so I assume. Has anything really changed?
This novel is not for the faint-of-heart or a reader looking for an action-packed plotline, the novel is literary, driven by the motives and constraint of character. There is no one to root for. This is not an underdog story.
Perhaps the novel offers enough social critique to make for some readers becoming better people, if they are honest enough to face themselves at all.
