A Body in Fragments: *Life Before Man* and *The Handmaid's Tale*

This essay discusses the two novels in question through the lens of intertextuality (visual arts, XIX century literature, fairy tales) and Lacanian pychoanalytic theory. The latter locates a connection between bodily fragments and the dissolving ego. Fragmentation discontinuity and contradictions in Atwood’s narrative are suggestive of a sense of lack of a rationalizing and unifying entry at work in the text. As a result the novels’ fragmented structures suggest the fragmented nature of subjectivity. *The Handmaid’s Tale* in particular is described as an example of “historiographic metafiction” as the gaps and ambiguities of the protagonist’s tale and its emphasis on being a ‘story’ suggest the impossibility of full representation.