Darth Vader Has Nothing on Zenia

We have these people in our lives and it is a common aspect to many of Atwood’s novels whereby the protagonist’s life revolves around the greater, more active movements of another character. Oryx and Crake are the forces that drive the Snowman’s life in Oryx and Crake, and his decisions are a reaction to theirs. In The Robber Bride, Zenia is the prime mover of the three main characters’ lives. She brings them together by her betrayal and abuse of each of them and she is the glue that keeps them together. Even after her death, Roz, Charis and Tony often come back to talking about Zenia, unable to escape her.

I’m struck the most in reading when an author can articulate an aspect of my own experience in fiction that I haven’t been able to, so that it becomes immediately clear when I read it. Atwood’s description of Zenia and her effect on the protagonists did that for me. I’ve met people like Zenia, and I’ve had people in my life where I’ve definitely found myself carried in their wake, thinking about them after they’ve moved on to engage with someone else. Haven’t we all?

The construction of Zenia is important and instructive as a way to portray a villain. When we think classic villains in pop-culture we think of Hannibal Lecter, Darth Vader, and when we think about them we think about their actions on screen as they struggle with the protagonist. Zenia is described entirely through the various eyes of her victims. In pop-culture terms she’s a mix of Keyser Soze and Nolan’s take on The Joker. Zenia is a creature without hard definition. She expands and contracts depending on who is looking, telling different histories of herself depending on who she is seeking to influence and what she wants from them. She’s destructive chaos, and I think if she were left as just that in The Robber Bride she would still be memorable, but Atwood raises Zenia to legendary status by making her something else as well.

She’s honest.

The structure of Robber Bride follows like this: three characters encounter Zenia, who they thought was dead, and flee from her; each character’s backstory with Zenia is told in succession; in the present day they confront her one at a time; the story resolves (no spoilers). Most interesting here are the confrontations that occur toward the end of the novel that almost take the form of interviews. Each woman has been badly hurt by Zenia. They’ve had people they care deeply about taken from them. So when they confront her the expectation is that they will go in guarded against her. They know she lies, after all. How can a liar keep hurting you after that’s been revealed?

By telling the truth. And that’s the trick with Zenia, the part that hurts the most and the aspect that neither character can run from. Zenia sees clearly. She knows the weakness of the person she’s talking to and turns a mirror to it. She twists the knife. In many ways Zenia is just a dark mirror for each of the women she hurts and in story terms that is extremely powerful voodoo.

The Robber Bride was a book that I thought about long after reading and Zenia was the character I lingered on the most. I thought about what I would say to Zenia if I were in that hotel room and worse, what Zenia would say to me. Could I bear it, that kind of cruel, hatefully motivated honesty? I wasn’t sure. I thought about that conversation a lot. What she might say, what I wouldn’t want anyone to say but always worry that they might. The stuff you can’t share with anyone for fear that you’re the only one who thinks that way.

Powerful stuff that lingers in the mind. The hallmark of an excellent novel and a powerfully articulated character.

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