SOCIAL MARGINALIZATION IN LUSUS NATURAE BY MARGARET ATWOOD

IV-INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON LITERATURE, CULTURE AND LANGUAGE, Van, Turkey, 5 - 07 December 2025, pp.156-157, (Summary Text)

Lusus Naturae is a short story by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, about an unnamed young

girl, published in 2014. Often written through a feminist lens, Atwood’s novels and numerous

short stories are known for exploring dark themes like patriarchal control, environmental

collapse and women’s roles in society. As the title suggests, Atwood focuses on how this

unnamed character is isolated from society and how a tragic illness creates a shame and a

marginalization for her in society. In this postmodern short story reflecting people who are

marginalized in society because of their physical appearance, Atwood tells the decline of

woman figure both physically and psychologically by using feminist gothic elements. As she

writes in many her works before, she particularly highlights the position of woman in society

and the pressure they are subjected to. While writing this story, Atwood was influenced by the

time period in which she lived, and reflected how cruelly and brutally society treated women

who were marginalized and did not follow traditional rules. In the story where social criticism

comes to the fore, Atwood does not use the word mutation directly as a scientific concept, but

she states that this unnamed character's condition is the result of a genetic mutation. The aim of

this study is to reveal how society reacts differently to those who are different and to reflect the

socio-psychological effects of labeling and stigmatization on individual in the frame of labeling

theory.