This study examines the associations between dressing and storytelling in Margaret Atwood's fiction. As cultural representations operating within a network of codes, clothed bodies are often discussed by theorists as constructed performances or as fabricated texts, inextricably bound up with ideology and power. The clothed body often becomes a battleground in Atwood's fiction as female protagonists respond to divisive cultural scripts through self-fashioning. Furthermore, Atwood seems to collapse the opposition between the material and the spiritual through clothing, to consider dress a fitting metaphor for the space between the natural and the supernatural. While the connections among dress, body, and story are visible from Atwood's earliest novel forward, they achieve their most unified and powerful effect in The Robber Bride (1993) and Alias Grace (1996). In these novels, Atwood draws upon the classical idea that the body clothes the soul to create a postmodern frame for the complex relationships among subjectivity, representation, voice, gender, and culture. This study examines the associations between dressing and storytelling in Margaret Atwood's fiction. As cultural representations operating within a network of codes, clothed bodies are often discussed by theorists as constructed performances or as fabricated texts, inextricably bound up with ideology and power. The clothed body often becomes a battleground in Atwood's fiction as female protagonists respond to divisive cultural scripts through self-fashioning. Furthermore, Atwood seems to collapse the opposition between the material and the spiritual through clothing, to consider dress a fitting metaphor for the space between the natural and the supernatural. While the connections among dress, body, and story are visible from Atwood's earliest novel forward, they achieve their most unified and powerful effect in The Robber Bride (1993) and Alias Grace (1996). In these novels, Atwood draws upon the classical idea that the body clothes the soul to create a postmodern frame for the complex relationships among subjectivity, representation, voice, gender, and culture. Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1(6) 1. "Clothed in Words": Margaret Atwood and Dress 7(20) Designing Women 7(3) Margaret Atwood on Dress 10(5) The Novels, A Collection 15(4) Critical Patterns 19(8) 2. Border Crossing: Dress as Performative Boundary and Margin 27(22) Battle Dress: Survival 29(2) Feminism, Femininity, and Self-Fashioning 31(4) Imag(in)ing Dress: Visual Culture 35(3) Second Skin: Dress and Embodiment 38(2) Flesh Dresses and Other Supernatural Trends 40(9) 3. Toxic Chic: Dress and Dreams in The Robber Bride 49(40) Venus Rising: Zenia as Dream Figure 51(4) Dress Codes 55(5) Rebellious Daughters: Dress and Differentiation 60(4) The Body as Flesh Dress 64(3) Working the Masquerade 67(6) Venus Rising From the Cauldron: Glamour as Magic 73(16) 4. Amazing Space: Veils and Vogues in Alias Grace 89(38) Cover Up, Victorian Style 93(6) Is There an Angel in the House? 99(6) Veiled Lady as Spectacle, or Another Flesh Dress 105(9) Sensational Fashions: Ladies' Books and Literary Ladies 114(13) 5. Style and Text(ile): A Conclusion 127(2) Works Cited 129