Desperate housewives: A comparative perspective on domestic terror in Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad, The Blind Assassin and Lady Oracle

The purpose of this study is to look at how Margaret Atwood combines the fundamental elements of the Gothic and postmodern literature to deal with the female condition in her three novels: The Penelopiad, The Blind Assassin, and Lady Oracle. She carries classical Gothic tropes to the 21st century, proving Gothic is still relevant in postmodern age. The protagonists of the three novels challenge the patriarchal story and societal roles that was imposed on them, and they strive to replace history with herstory. While doing so, they reveal the terror that is at the core of their prewritten stories. Their rewritings are in the form of an autobiography, intertwined with other genres ranging from science-fiction to rope-jumping rhymes. By using such minor forms of literature, they challenge the grand narratives of patriarchy and attempt to create their own identity. Keywords: Gothic, postmodern, Gothic-postmodern, female problem, rewriting, the other, novel, identity.