A Comparative Feminist Reading of Margaret Atwood’s <em>Surfacing</em> and Han Kang’s <em>The Vegetarian</em>

This article comparatively explores Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing and Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, examining the subordinate status shared by women and animals, male-controlled medical science and camera technology, and women’s mythical metamorphosis. Both fictional worlds, as lived by the heroines, are decidedly patriarchal: the I-heroine in Surfacing undergoes violence in a coerced abortion while Yeong-hye in The Vegetarian is force-fed meat by her authoritative father. Both narrative arcs are shaped by the heroines’ realization of their share in violence: the I-heroine realizes her consent to the abortion and Yeong-hye holds herself accountable for eating the meat of a dog killed by her father. The two heroines are met with different endings—the I-heroine chooses to be pregnant again and Yeong-hye renounces her life by avoiding eating—because of the former’s conviction about survival and life and the latter’s conception of eating as killing. Read together, the two novels explore the legitimacy of claims of innocence, the limits of care, and possibilities of transcending victimhood in mutually illuminating ways. Meanwhile, the novels provide insights into the non-closure prevalent in women’s fiction and the feminist meaning of women’s spiritual quest novels.