Checking Our Surroundings!

Does Evil Have A Face: A Moral Problem

Change, a person cannot "just" change. It takes multiple steps and time to begin the process of change. You must first be aware of your weaknesses, your bad behavior and stop blaming others or bad luck on your situation and begin to take responsibility for your actions. Change could be a good and a bad thing depending on your environment. In Atwood's short story, Lusus Naturae, the main character has changed physically but her personality to her belief is still intact. Atwood uses the protagonist to focus on what goes on around her and critiques the family’s behaviors, attitudes, and definition of morality/humanity.

Through the family member’s actions we are able to deduce what type of people they are as they react to their daughter’s physical changes. Atwood starts the story by introducing us to one of the protagonist’s family discussions and we begin to see some of their actions, “WHAT could be done with me, what should be done with me? These were the same question. The possibilities were limited. The family discussed them all, lugubriously, endlessly, as they sat around the kitchen table at night, with the shutters closed…” (224). The family sat at night with the shutters closed out of embarrassment of their child. Atwood follows up with moments in the protagonist’s life that lead to these secretive nights, “I no longer nestled into the crook of his arm, however. He sat me on the other side of the table. Though this enforced distance pained me…” (225). From this excerpt we see that the father has distant himself from his young daughter as sign of rejection and he is not the only one. The mother, in Atwood’s short story, Lusus Naturae, is also guilty of rejecting her daughter, “Once she used to brush my hair, before it came out in handfuls; she’d been in the habit of hugging me and weeping; but she was past that now. She came and went as quickly as she could. However she tried to hide it, she resented me, of course. There’s only so long you can feel sorry for a person…” (226-227), “My mother wanted to sell and move in with my sister and her gentry husband and her healthy, growing family, whose portraits had just been painted; she could no longer manage...” (227). Again, Atwood shows how the family used to care about the protagonist, but continued to reject and distant themselves from her. With time the love that was once there had dissolved.

As we see the family’s love for the protagonist dissolve, Atwood displays a protagonist with continuing love, care and innocence to her family. The grandmother in Atwood’s short story, Lusus Naturae, once held the protagonist’s head under filthy water as a way to eject the demons in her even though the protagonist did not act in evil ways, but merely looked different (225). This moment is quite important because it shows a moral weakness in the grandmother, and in the following quote we see a similar moment that helps to define good morals, “’Maybe it’s a curse,’ said my grandmother. She was as dry and whiskery as the sausages, but in her it was natural because of her age.” (225). The grandmother doesn’t look appealing as well, but in her case it is natural. The protagonist does think that she is possessed and forgives her for her cruel actions. “Though this enforced distance pained me, I could see his point.” (225). Even at her father’s rejection of her she is understanding of his decision. The protagonist has always been told that there is something wrong with her, that she is something that needs to be hidden away from everyone else. “In the daytimes I stayed shut up in my darkened room: I was getting beyond a joke. That was fine with me…” (226). Once again she takes the abuse and merely smiles for her family. The Protagonist’s sister is among those that have turned their backs on a family member, “…Now they’re marching towards this house, in the dusk, with long stakes, with torches. My sister is among them, and her husband, and the young man I kissed...” (228). The Protagonist’s sister shows up with a mob to kill her, as if to lead to them to what she can no longer deal with. The protagonist leaps off the house to her inevitable death, and by doing so she allows her sister and the members of society to live without the burden of murder. “I am of a forgiving temperament, I know they have the best of intentions at heart…” (228). We continue to see an innocent girl that has strong moral fibers, at least stronger than those around her. The Protagonist cares more for her family than her family cares for, and she cares more for her family than she cares for herself as we see in this excerpt, “’Do it,’ I told her. By now my voice was a sort of growl. ‘I’ll vacate my room. There’s a place I can stay.’ She was grateful, poor soul. She had an attachment to me, as if to a hangnail, a wart: I was hers. But she was glad to be rid of me. She’d done enough duty for a lifetime.” (227). She has decided to be alone now so her mother can go live the life that she wants, but the protagonist has not had a life to live of her own. “It was decided that I should die… I was put on display in a very deep coffin in a very dark room, in a white dress with a lot of white veiling over me, fitting for a virgin and useful in concealing my whiskers. I lay there for two days…” (226). The family was fine with a lot of things like displaying the protagonist for two days in a coffin to help their other daughter to find a husband to ease their suffering.

Even though the protagonist grows up and is able to take care of herself she is still an innocent child, and a child is always in need of help and support. She was the one suffering, she was the one that needed the extra attention. Atwood noticeably mentions the protagonist’s pain, “If it weren’t for the fits, and the hours of pain, and the twittering of the voices I couldn’t understand, I might have said I was happy.” (227). In many lines in Atwood’s short story we see the difficulty that the protagonist has, "I couldn’t stand ­sunlight. At night, sleepless… listening to the twittering voices nobody else could hear.” (225). A child in suffering, and yes she grows and is able to survive, but she is still an innocent child as Atwood displays to us, "Inside our house, I tried a mirror. They say dead people can’t see their own reflections, and it was true; I could not see myself. I saw something, but that something was not myself: it looked nothing like the innocent, pretty girl I knew myself to be, at heart." (227). She had changed physically as she grew up, but to her she was still that same young girl that her family once knew and loved. Even as she lives on her own she does not experience life, she might have read about love, but she never got to experience love and therefore does not understand it:

The two of them looked furtive. I knew that look — the glances over the shoulder, the stops and starts — as I was unusually furtive myself. I crouched in the brambles to watch. They met, they twined together, they fell to the ground. Mewing noises came from them, growls, little screams. Perhaps they were having fits, both of them at once. Perhaps they were — oh, at last! — beings like myself. I crept closer to see better. They did not look like me — they were not hairy, for instance, except on their heads, and I could tell this because they had shed most of their clothing — but then, it had taken me some time to grow into what I was. They must be in the preliminary stages, I thought. They know they are changing, they have sought out each other for the company, and to share their fits… I detached myself from the brambles and came softly toward him. There he was, asleep in an oval of crushed grass, as if laid out on a platter. I’m sorry to say I lost control. I laid my red-nailed hands on him. I bit him on the neck. Was it lust or hunger? How could I tell the difference?...

As a reader we know what the couple were doing in the forest, we understand what is happening because we have experienced love, but as an innocent child, whom was in need of help, the protagonist is confused and is hopeful that the couple were transforming like she had. What she thought was a kiss was a bite and once again we see that helpless innocence that the protagonist is.

Atwood shows the innocence and moral good of the protagonist not only by her actions, but by the behaviors, attitudes and definition of morality by the protagonist’s family and their society. The protagonist’s family were the ones that needed change and the society they lived in was one that needed to evolve. “‘She’s a lusus naturae,’ he’d said… ‘Freak of nature,’ the doctor said… ‘It’s Latin. Like a monster.’” (225). Anything grotesque, abnormal, was seen as something evil or dangerous. People tend to fear the things that they cannot understand.

Works Cited

Margaret Atwood. “Lusus Naturae.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2013. 224-228.

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