It's All About the Body: Zombification and the Male Gaze in Oryx and Crake and Brown Girl in the Ring

Abstract

[EN] This article seeks to analyse the commodification of women of colour in two dystopian Canadian novels: Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), by Nalo Hopkinson, and Oryx and Crake (2003), by Margaret Atwood. I argue that the women in these stories are subjected to similar patriarchal strategies of control. Namely, I suggest they are zombified through the male gaze, or in other words, they are regarded as ambulatory bodies by their societies. This draws attention to the Canadian government's neoliberal policies that often belie neocolonial undertones in their usage of the bodies of women of colour. In addition to this, I will focus on the characters' ability to resist this totalising and zombifying gaze through different means. Here I posit that Hopkinson presents a world that emphasises commonality among women and, therefore, her characters are more successful in dismantling patriarchal structures. In opposition to this, I argue that Atwood's novel isolates Oryx which makes her unable to achieve structural change, and therefore she chooses to become an elusive figure as a form of protest.