Moral Disorder
First edition cover
|
|
| Author | Margaret Atwood |
|---|---|
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Genre | short stories |
| Publisher | McClelland and Stewart (Canada) |
|
Publication date
|
4 September 2006 (first edition, hardcover) |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 81772483 |
Moral Disorder () is a collection of connected short stories by Margaret Atwood. It was first published on 4 September 2006 by McClelland and Stewart. It chronicles the hidden pains of a troubled Canadian family over a 60 year span. All the short stories have the same female main character at different times of her life, except the last one, which is an autobiographical tale.
The book title is taken from the title of the novel that Graeme Gibson was writing in 1996, when he decided to stop writing novels.
The female character reflects on the morning habits of her husband and herself. He rushes into the bedroom to tell her the news from the paper. He is eager to share the burden. But she would rather wait until breakfast. Their behavior has settled into patterns. She feels that they are just waiting for the time when their world will start collapsing. Remembering a vacation to Glanum, she imagines them as ancient Romans, discussing over breakfast the bad news about the Barbarian invasions.
The girl is aged 11, and her mother is with child. The girl struggles to understand what her mother is experiencing, and resents the lack of household contribution throughout the pregnancy. The young girl works diligently to complete all of the household chores, as well as knitting the baby a layette. With the birth of the baby, the girl begins to rebel against her mother's wishes, ultimately succeeding her wish to gain more freedom.
In the present, the main character and her sister talk about the past while driving to visit their mother, whose health is failing. They talk about their youth. When the older sister was thirteen, the baby being two, she made a Halloween costume of the Headless Horseman. Later the baby sister included the severed head in her games. She was always very sensitive and impressionable, coming close, in her teens, to suicidal thoughts.
Before her final high-school exam, she studies with her boyfriend Bill. In particular, they analyze the poem My Last Duchess by Robert Browning. It is a monologue by the Duke of Ferrara that implies he may have killed his young wife because "she smiled too much". Bill, whose strength is algebra and exact sciences, can't understand the poem. The main character makes an effort to explain it to him, but finds that she herself is haunted by questions. Her first superficial erotic experiences are contrasted with the dark side hinted at by the poem. She and Bill eventually break up because he accuses her of defending the Duke. There is some truth in the accusation, since she finds the Duchess a "dumb bunny".
...
Wikipedia