Cold Revenge in Stone Mattress

Atwood’s Stone Mattress (2014) is a collection of ‘nine wicked tales’ about ageing and revenge. While these tales follow different characters and vary in genre, they are all connected through references to their physically cold setting, with many taking place during an ice storm. This chapter extends the application of concepts from Cognitive Grammar (Chapter 3 ) to explore how a domain of cold is networked across the short stories, building and establishing the collection’s distinctively macabre ambience. Drawing on reader data transcribed from a book group discussion, the chapter examines the shifting balance between the collection’s atmospheric and tonal effects, and the increasingly emotional and metaphorical associations created through dominion chaining within and across key scenes. Finally, it is argued that the dialogic relationship between the vengeful characters and the icy setting they inhabit is presented as an innate, and elemental, ecological alliance.