Margaret Atwood (post 5) denies “Lady Oracle” is autobiographical, since protagonist is a writer who lost 100 lbs, but Atwood was never obese.

In interviews, Atwood likes to tell the story of how readers have assumed that she had been obese as a child, and had lost a lot of weight, since Joan, the protagonist of Lady Oracle, at fifteen, was 5’8” and 240 lbs., but lost one hundred pounds when her aunt died and left her money on the condition that she lose the weight.

Joan, the first-person narrator, who is a novelist as an adult, tells the reader, at very great length, about her conflict with her mother, and her relationship with her peers, as related to her childhood obesity. But is Joan a reliable narrator? Should the reader believe that she had been obese throughout childhood, and had then lost one hundred pounds?

I’ll give my opinion about Joan’s truthfulness when I finish reading Lady Oracle. But the question I’m raising in this post is what to think when novelists deny that their novels are autobiographical, as they often do.

Suppose Atwood, though never actually obese, had had an imaginary companion or alternate personality who was obese. Would she then be telling the truth when she says that the novel is not autobiographical?

Of course, I have no way of knowing if Atwood has ever had an imaginary companion or alternate personality who was obese, except that I believe most major characters, of most novelists, are best understood, not as constructs, but as alternate personalities.

This would mean that Lady Oracle, though not autobiographical of Atwood’s host personality, might be autobiographical of her alternate personality. Maybe Atwood had a fat alternate personality who wanted to come out, and who did come out, in this novel.