Published Paper Details:

This paper attempts to unravel how a comparative study of Margaret Atwood's Bodily Harm and The Blind Assassin presents before the readers the manner in which the dichotomies of ageism often coincide with those of sexism. Through these works, Atwood seems to suggest that a young woman's diseased body produces a higher societal discomfort by overturning truisms about youth, which is reflected in disease-mediated transformations of women's self-consciousness and patterns of social interaction in the novels. This paper also provides an analysis of the social unease and the fear of death that stems from the experience of disease and illness by addressing social intersection between disease, age and gender. It provides insights about how women's diseased bodies and illness experiences are treated by the medical establishment, and connects them with how Atwood highlights the gendered specificities of illness as a lived experience. The current study intends to generate greater sensitivity towards the issues it addresses and thus bring about social awareness through literary and cultural analysis.