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THE BEST WAY OF
KEEPING A SECRET
IS TO PRETEND
THERE ISN’T ONE
THE BLIND ASSASSIN (2000), MARGARET ATWOOD
T
he gothic fiction of the 18th
and 19th centuries
typically featured such
elements as haunted castles,
tyrannical villains, endangered
heroines, mysteries, and ghosts.
In the late 20th century, Canada,
and Southern Ontario in particular,
developed its own take on this
tradition. Novelists including Alice
Munro, Robertson Davies, and
Margaret Atwood appropriated
aspects of gothic fiction such as the
supernatural and the grotesque,
and the genre’s dark imagery, and
applied them to contemporary
Canadian life. Frequently, such
literature attempts to make sense
of Canadian national identity in apostcolonial context, and can be
seen as a reflection of settlers’
anxieties about their history.Narrative complexity
Margaret Atwood relocates the
fascination with fear and terror
that fed the European gothic to
her own home territory, exploring
the darker side of human nature
and the destructive potential of
buried secrets. Her book The Blind
Assassin is a notable example of
Southern Ontario Gothic, playing
on notions of sacrifice and betrayal,
truth and lies, conspiracy and
romance, and the boundaries
between the living and the dead.
The novel is a multilayered story
told through the eyes of 83-year-old
Iris Chase Griffen, writing her
memoirs in the form of a letter
to her granddaughter. Within the
story of Iris’s life another novel
is nestled, also called The Blind
Assassin, about two lovers, and
purportedly written by Iris’s sister,
Laura. And within that novel is
yet another story, a pulp science-
fiction tale related by the man in
Laura’s novel. All these stories are
punctuated by newspaper reports
that add a further, supposedly
factual, dimension to the narrative.IN CONTEXT
FOCUS
Southern Ontario GothicBEFORE
1832 Considered the first
Canadian novel, Wacousta
by John Richardson is full
of menace and gothic terror.1967 Timothy Findley’s The
Last of the Crazy People is
published. Five years later
the author coins the term
Southern Ontario Gothic
to describe his novel.1970 Robertson Davies’ Fifth
Business is an early example
of Southern Ontario Gothic,
looking at the dark underbelly
of an Ontario community.AFTER
2009 Intrigue, murder, and
fear infuse Alice Munro’s
gothic short-story collection
Too Much Happiness.2013 Hilary Scharper’s
Perdita, which she describes
as “Ecogothic,” is a modern
Canadian ghost story.Darkness moved closer ...
Back into the long
shadows cast by Laura.
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