Narrative Structures in Margaret Atwood’s “Giving Birth” Barbora Millerová College

Margaret Atwood's story “Giving Birth”became famous for a complex narrative structure and feminist approach. The story first appeared in her 1977 collection of short stories, Dancing Girls. It focuses on an unnamed female narrator, who is writing a story about another woman called Jeannie, who is preparing for and finally undergoing the process of giving birth. At the beginning, there is although an uncertainty about who the main protagonist and the narrator actually are and what is the relationship between them, since the very first sentence in the story indicates a confusion about the roles in giving birth: “But who gives it? And to whom is it given?”[1]. The narrator first talks about herself, she explains that she is just now starting to write this story, and she continues with a description of the time around Jeannie’s delivering, such as visiting a doctor’s office and going to the hospital, and comments about her thoughts during the whole process.In this essay, the narrative structures will be explicated, such as the use of narrative voice, point of view and time and how these features develop the text’s central concerns. Furthermore, the relationship of the narrator to the main protagonist and other characters in the...