Vulnerability in Margaret Atwood's "Rape Fantasies": A Game of Cards About Life

When [Chrissy] announces that she has been reading a women's magazine in which the idea of rape fantasies is being aired, she asks her co-workers to share their own versions. Immediately [Sondra] reacts by saying, "What fantasies?" and later adds, "You mean, like some guy jumping you in an alley or something" (94). In response, Chrissy says, "Yeah, sort of like that," suggesting that Sondra's story is not the sort she really wants. Indeed, the first extended narrative is told by Greta instead. Greta describes being alone in her eighteenth-floor apartment when a man enters who has literally come in from outside the window. During the brief exchange between Sondra and Chrissy, [Estelle] notes that Sondra now has a "thoughtful expression on her face," but, as we will see, Estelle interprets this look incorrectly. As Sondra sits silently, the other women tell stories in which they empathize with their attackers and feel genuine sympathy for the men with whom they have sex. For example, in two of her own narratives, Estelle presents scenarios in which she and her rapist are alike; in one, they both have colds and cannot speak properly, so she fixes him a "NeoCitran and a scotch, her cure" (100); in another, they both suffer from leukemia, so they agree to "end up going for coffee" (103). In many ways, their stories are not about rape at all; the stories are funny and implausible; they are about rapists who listen to their victims and who hold their victim's purses while the women search for repellant. [Margaret Atwood] presents the stories of Chrissy, Darlene, and later Estelle, as actual stories about sexual desire, but not about the experience of rape. Altogether the "rapists" in the story are neither frightful nor scary. None appears to be the sort of man who would cause a woman to experience violence or terror. However, Sondra does not add anything to the tales being told, so that Estelle remarks, "Sondra was miffed too, by the time she'd finished her celery and she wanted to tell about hers, but she hadn't got in fast enough" (97). Later, Estelle adds, "so Sondra never did get a chance to tell about her rape fantasy" (98). As these remarks indicate, Estelle interprets Sondra's actions to a desire to tell another fantasy, and ascribes Sondra's inability to do so to circumstances and to other people's verbal aggressiveness, not to reticence on Sondra's part. Here, Estelle presents herself as an authority on "reading" people, yet in other parts of the story s