An Interpretation Of Stone Mattress By Margaret Atwood

How to Get Away with a Murder: An Interpretation of Margaret Atwood’s Stone Mattress

“Stone Mattress” is a title story about “how you might murder somebody on a boat in the Arctic and get away with it” as noted by the author, Margaret Atwood, in an interview for the Trillium Book Award of 2015 (“Margaret”). The main character of the short story is a woman named Verna Pritchard, whose life was completely shattered at the age of fourteen when she was raped, impregnated, and slandered by a seventeen year old boy and his best friend (Atwood). Verna went on to marry and kill four men, and she blamed her murderous actions on one of her rapists, Bob Goreham (Atwood 212). After murdering her fourth husband, Verna decided to take a vacation where she

encountered Bob Goreham for the first time after fifty years. Verna’s rage and bitterness persisted, and she sought vengeance as a result of many unsettled emotions. During Atwood’s brief interview for the Trillium Book Award of 2015, the author informed her followers of what “Stone Mattress” is about, but she neglected to include why she chose to write about such a heavy and grim topic (“Margaret”). In this speculative fiction, Margaret Atwood developed a character that was initially a vulnerable, shy, and studious young girl who, after such a traumatic event, transformed into an angry, murderous, and manipulative, but clever woman. Atwood likely developed Verna’s character because, in order to create the perfect crime, she needed a character that was incentivized, damaged, and shrewd. Margaret Atwood likely crafted this story to create tension around the subject of rape, an act that leaves its victims powerless, by creating a character who is a rape victim that attempts to regain her power in the most unconventional ways.
Atwood created a character with the potential to hold an abundance of warranted pain, pain that could ignite psychological complications, indignation, and, most importantly, the motivation to kill. Verna Pritchard was a timid, bright, and focused young girl who was victimized by a callous and remorseless young man. Bob Goreham, a wealthy high school football player, escorted young Verna to a formal school dance (Atwood 204). This was Verna’s very first dance, and her date was “Mr. Heartthrob” (Atwood 204). Fourteen year old Verna believed she was in love, and she did not anticipate what would occur after the dance. What soon transpired changed Verna’s life in the most negative way possible. To describe how Verna recalls the event, Atwood wrote:
Nowadays a girl would know to call the police. Nowadays Bob would go to jail no matter what lies he might tell, because Verna was underage. But there had been no true words for the act then: rape was what occurred when some maniac jumped on you out of a bush, not when your formal-dance date drove you to a side road in the mangy twice-cut forest surrounding a tin-pot mining town and told you to drink up like a good little girl and then took you apart, layer by torn layer. To make it worse, Bob’s best friend, Ken, had turned up in his own car to help out. The two of them had been laughing. They’d kept her panty-girdle as a souvenir. Afterwards, Bob had pushed her out of the car halfway back, surely because she was crying. “Shut up or walk home,” he’d said. (Atwood 211-212)
This quote is an example from the text that challenges the common perception of rape. An event like what occurred in this short story is not what is often associated with the word rape. Most people surmise that rape is what occurs when a random guy or girl attacks his/her victim in a dark alley or vacant lot. Unlike what commonly occurs, Verna’s character is led to believe that she had a connection with Bob prior to her being raped. In any circumstance rape is an emotionally charged experience, but in Verna’s case she is allowed to feel betrayed on top of every other emotion. Like any victim of rape, Verna’s character was demeaned by the experience. Verna was robbed of her innocence, humiliated, and denied the simplest manifestations of a human being. Verna felt powerless, exploited, frayed, and enraged by the event that occurred. These are all justifiable emotions and each of them, paired with a lack of resolution, could evoke the motivation to kill.
In addition, by allowing Verna’s life to be shaped by her past experiences, Atwood develops a character that is both damaged and burdened. In the days following Verna’s rape, Bob Goreham went on to spread rumors about Verna who soon became a victim of “slut-shaming” or ridicule from her peers and church members. Once Verna and her mother discovered that she was pregnant, Verna was sent to a “Home for Unwed Mothers” where she gave birth to a baby that was then taken from her (Atwood 206-207). Verna’s character had faced significant adversity and anyone in her place would likely feel insecure and abandoned as a result of the actions of the community and her mother. Verna’s character, in an attempt to regain the power she lost when she was raped, went on to become a very different woman. For example, she became more concerned with wealth; she established the desire to be “protected by layer upon layer of kind, soft, insulating money, so that nobody and nothing [could] get close enough to harm her” (Atwood 201). This shows that Verna’s character felt defenseless and obtaining money was the only way she could feel safe and formidable. In addition, Verna’s inclination to reclaim her power was manifested in her emergence as a serial-husband killer. She sought out and married vulnerable and wealthy older men then she would discreetly dispose of them. Verna did this by allowing the men to overdose on their medications and participate in activities that were advised against. Verna was successful in her endeavors because she had developed an expertise in the manipulation of the male species (Atwood 216). This skill can be attributed to Verna’s beauty, which was the result of “aquacise” and plastic surgery (Atwood 202). Her desire to “go under the knife” was likely provoked by a lack of self esteem rooted in Verna’s early development as a young woman. Her heinous actions towards men, superficial qualities, and acquired skill set are definitely the result of what she faced when she was younger. Each of these characteristics makeup the framework of a damaged and burdened women. Verna’s character had become beautiful and confident on the exterior but uneasy and dark on the interior. “The Verna of the day before had died, and a different Verna had solidified in her place: stunted, twisted, and mangled” (Atwood 212). In developing a character with so many subjective conflicts, Atwood invokes strain on the subject of rape by emphasizing the effects that rape can have. Verna’s character is self-conscious, malicious, and shallow because she held on to what happened to her when she was fourteen.
It seems like Bob’s actions robbed Verna of her innocence, personality, and happiness but could not seize her intellect.

Verna developed a methodical plan to carry out the murder of Bob Goreham. She contemplated her few options and found her inspiration when there was a modification in the itinerary of the cruise ship they had both boarded. The ship made an unscheduled stop where the passengers were allowed to view the “world’s earliest fossilized stromatolites” (Atwood 216). These stromatolites are significant to the plot of Atwood’s “Stone Mattress” and, most indubitably, Earth’s history. The word stromatolite comes from the Greek word stroma, meaning mattress and the root for the word stone (Atwood 216). This “fossilized cushion” was formed by strata of blue green algae, also known as cyanobacteria, and it is responsible for the very oxygen all humans use to live (Atwood 216). This historical formation symbolizes the layers of pent up rage that motivated the very action Verna committed. While the passengers of the ship explored the samples of stromatolite, Bob and Verna wandered to the second ridge of the formation where Verna discovered a wedged fragment of stromatolite. She studied the strata of what she had unearthed and took note of the colors that designated each year of its formation. “Black, grey, black, grey, black, and at the bottom the featureless core” (Atwood 218). The core, of the stromatolite Verna discovered, represents her fourteen year old self, the young, shy, introverted, and undeveloped person she was before she was raped. Each layer thereafter represents the dark years that came after Verna was robbed of her innocence, the cold, bitter, and angry women she became. Verna’s character used this stromatolite to murder Bob Goreham. After killing him, Verna’s character hides the murder weapon in plain site. Verna takes the wedged stromatolite back to the cruise ship and places it with other the samples where it would be touched by so many other

people that it couldn't be traced back to her. This conveys that Verna’s character is clever, clever enough to devise a plan that would allow her to get away with murder. In establishing Verna’s intellect, Atwood has developed a story with what is known as a perfect crime.
From the information introduced above, it can be concluded that Margaret Atwood created a character with the motive, psychological detriment, and intellect to commit a murder and get away with it. However, Margaret Atwood’s “Stone Mattress” is not literally a step by step guide on how to kill a person on a boat in the Arctic. This short story is a medium in which a very heavy subject is highlighted, that subject being rape. Atwood used this short story to emphasize the loss and struggle for power that rape victims face. In some ways, Atwood’s short story challenges the readers perception of rape by creating a realistic, but different, way for a rape victim to regain the power she lost when she raped.