The world in which The Blind Assassin is set is stricken with inequality and oppression: economic exploitation, social class divisions, and sexism. While the novel’s main focus is on the forms of oppression that exist in small-town Canada in the 1930s and ‘40s, where most of the narrative is set, these forms of oppression are highlighted via their connection to the science-fiction story composed by the unnamed man in Iris’s novel, The Blind Assassin. In this story, which is set in a city called Sakiel-Norn on a planet named Zycron, there are two classes: the Ygnirods, who are “smallholders, serfs, and slaves,” and the elite Snilfards. The oppression and exploitation on Sakiel-Norn may initially appear more extreme than anything that exists on Earth; however, through interspersing stories of Zycron with the main narrative, Atwood suggests that there are actually more similarities than one might initially assume. The novel’s exploration of oppression is rather bleak and the acts of resistance that take place within it are almost all squashed. Ultimately, Atwood argues that while the will to resist is difficult to quash entirely, it is rarely possible to overpower the larger and more powerful forces of oppression.
The lives of both Iris and Laura provide the novel’s main examples of gender-based oppression, as well as instances of resistance to sexism (albeit ones that usually backfire or fail). Starting from when the sisters are both young, their lives are highly controlled and they have little independence. As Iris and Laura grow older, they both find that their agency is restricted by men—particularly by Richard, whom Iris and Laura’s father, Norval, pressures Iris to marry after the family’s button business fails. As the wife of a wealthy and powerful businessman, Iris finds herself having to subscribe to extremely strict social rules and expectations. Even worse, Iris married Richard in part because Norval told her that it would help protect Laura from the perils of financial ruin and degraded social status in the future. Yet, soon after the marriage, Richard betrays his promise to help Norval’s business, and later in life, Iris discovers that Richard raped Laura repeatedly over many years and that he forced Laura to have an abortion when she became pregnant. While the restrictions placed on Iris are bad enough, Laura’s fate at the hands of Richard conveys the most gruesome side of gender-based oppression.
Both Laura and Iris perform acts of resistance to the oppression they face, but ultimately this is not enough to overpower the forces that restrict them. The most important among these is their decision to hide the union organizer Alex Thomas in their attic after the riot triggered by workers at the button factory. In doing so, they violate not only the expectations placed on them as women, but also as members of the upper class—they are supposed to protect their own interests rather than sympathize with a “known subversive and radical” like Alex. This makes the girls feel free, empowered, and in control for the first time in their lives. Yet however transformative the decision to shelter Alex is on the sisters’ personal lives, it is ultimately powerless against the larger forces of oppression acting on them. Moreover, Iris’s second major act of resistance is not as courageous as it could have been, as it rests on a falsehood. She publishes her novel, The Blind Assassin, despite knowing it will provoke scandal due to the fact that it depicts a secret affair between an unmarried man and woman. However, this triumphant act is mitigated by the fact that Iris publishes the novel under Laura’s name—and Laura, by that point, is already dead. This helps Iris evade the consequences of the scandal by implying that it was the unmarried Laura, rather than the married Iris, who had an affair with Alex. Iris’s act of resistance is therefore not as powerful as it otherwise would be.
The oppression and resistance that take place in the main section of the narrative are contrasted against that depicted by the man in his science-fiction story. To some readers, it may seem as if the oppression that takes place in Sakiel-Norn is far worse than anything that occurs in Iris and Laura’s hometown of Port Ticonderoga, Canada. In this alien city, the lowest class of Ygnirods are enslaved. Ygnirod children are forced to make carpets until they go blind, and the elite Snilfards boast about how many children were killed in the making of their carpets: “This carpet blinded ten children […] This blinded fifteen, this twenty.” Yet while this oppression that takes place within the man’s story might seem extreme, the novel also hints at the similarities between this science-fictional world and pre-war Canada. For example, fact that the enslaved Ygnirod children make carpets is significant, as in the main narrative, both Norval and Richard build their wealth by owning factories in the textile industry. Furthermore, in both societies, upper-class women are subject to particular codes of behavior that do not apply to the lower classes. Snilfard women, for example, cover their faces, while it is illegal for Ygnirods to do the same. Meanwhile, Iris finds that after she marries Richard, she experiences increased scrutiny over her behavior and she feels pressured follow unstated rules as to what she can and can’t do. Walking around Toronto, she thinks, “In theory I could go wherever I liked, in practice there were invisible barriers.”
The similarities between Canada and Sakiel-Norn make sense given that the man who writes the science-fiction story is a radical leftist. The man emphasizes that the Ygnirods want to rebel, but—like Iris and Laura—these aliens struggle to overcome the powerful forces oppressing them: “The Ygnirods were resentful of their lot in life, but concealed this with a pretense of stupidity. Once in a while they would stage a revolt, which would then be ruthlessly suppressed.” While the desire to resist may be an inevitable result of oppression, the novel suggests that the suppression of resistance is an even greater guarantee.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Oppression vs. Resistance ThemeTracker
Oppression vs. Resistance Quotes in The Blind Assassin
The Ygnirods were resentful of their lot in life, but concealed this with the pretense of stupidity. Once in a while they would stage a revolt, which would then be ruthlessly suppressed. The lowest among them were slaves, who could be bought and traded and also killed at will. They were prohibited by law from reading, but had secret codes that they scratched in the dirt with stones. The Snilfards harnessed them to ploughs.
The carpets were woven by slaves who were invariably children, because only the fingers of children were small enough for such intricate work. But the incessant close labour demanded of these children caused them to go blind by the age of eight or nine, and their blindness was the measure by which the carpet-sellers valued and extolled their merchandise: This carpet blinded ten children, they would say. This blinded fifteen, this twenty.
When I was the age for it—thirteen, fourteen—I used to romanticize Adelia. I would gaze out of my window at night, over the lawns and the moon-silvered beds of ornamentals, and see her trailing wistfully through the grounds in a white lace tea gown. I gave her a languorous, world-weary, faintly mocking smile. Soon I added a lover. She would meet this lover outside the conservatory, which by that time was neglected—my father had no interested in steam-heated orange trees—but I restored it in my mind, and it supplied it with hothouse flowers […]
In reality the chances of Adelia having had a lover were nil. The town was too small, its morals too provincial, she had too far to fall. She wasn’t a fool. Also she had no money of her own.
And so Laura and I were brought up by her. We grew up inside her house; that is to say, inside her conception of herself. And inside her conception of who we ought to be, but weren’t. As she was dead by then, we couldn’t argue.
Like many peoples, ancient and modern, the Zycronians are afraid of virgins, dead ones especially. Women betrayed in love who have died unmarried are driven to seek in death what they’ve so unfortunately missed out on in life.
I feel sorry for him. I think he’s only doing the best he can.
I think we need another drink. How about it?
I bet you’re going to kill him off. You have that glint.
In all justice he’d deserve it. I think he’s a bastard, myself. But kings have to be, don’t they? Survival of the fittest and so forth. Weak to the wall.
You don’t really believe that.
Not only were they outside agitators, they were foreign outside agitators, which was somehow more frightening. Small dark men with moustaches, who’d signed their names in blood and sworn to be loyal unto death, and who would start riots and stop at nothing, and set bombs and creep in at night and slit our throats while we slept (according to Reenie). These were their methods, these ruthless Bolsheviks and union organizers, who were all the same at heart (according to Elwood Murray). They wanted Free Love, and the destruction of the family, and the deaths by firing squad of anyone who had money—any money at all—or a watch, or a wedding ring. This was what had been done in Russia. So it was said.
You might say he grabbed what he could get. Why wouldn’t he? He had no scruples, his life was dog eat dog and it always had been. Or you could say they were both young so they didn’t know any better. The young habitually mistake lust for love, they’re infested with idealism of all kinds. And I haven’t said he didn’t kill her afterwards. As I’ve pointed out, he was nothing if not self-interested.
She takes after Laura in that respect: the same tendency towards absolutism, the same refusal to compromise, the same scorn for the grosser human failings. To get away with that, you have to be beautiful. Otherwise it seems mere peevishness.
The sudden invasion changes things for the Zycronians. Barbarians and urbanites, incumbents and rebels, masters and slaves—all forget their differences and make common cause. Class barriers dissolve—the Snilfards discard their ancient titles along with their face masks, and roll up their sleeves, manning the barricades alongside the Ygnirods.
Following the death of Norval, Laura has (reluctantly) been living with Richard, Winifred, and Iris in Toronto, where she has caused a great deal of trouble. Recently, Winifred has complained to Iris that Laura has been expressing outlandish ideas, such as saying that love is more important than marriage. When Iris confronts Laura about this in private, Laura replies with this quotation. From a contemporary perspective, it may seem obvious that Laura’s argument is at least partly correct. These days, many would argue that love is self-evidently more important than marriage. Furthermore, Laura’s argument about marriage being an “outworn institution” that is more an economic transaction than a sacred bond foreshadows the feminist claims that became popular later in the 20th century.
Significantly, Laura frames her critique of marriage not in a progressive feminist light, but rather in a Christian one. Following Jesus’s tradition of focusing on the principles behind rules rather than the rules themselves, Laura argues that love is what’s important, not marriage. One could argue that Laura’s need to draw on Christianity in order to justify this claim is evidence of the restrictions placed on women and their thought during this era. At the same time, it also obvious that Laura’s faith intensely informs the way she approaches the world—it isn’t just a cover for subversive views.
