MARGARET ATWOOD (1939- )

Biographical Sketch
Margaret Eleanor Atwood was born on November 18, 1939 in Ottawa, Ontario, the second child of Carl Edmund
Atwood and Margaret Killam Atwood. Her brother, Harold, was born in 1937 and her sister Ruth in 1951. Soon after
Atwood’s birth the family moved to rural northwestern Quebec, where they would spend several months of each year
as her father pursued studies in forest entomology. In 1946, the family began alternating spring, summer, and fall in
the Canadian wilderness with winters in Toronto, where Carl Atwood joined the University of Toronto faculty.
Atwood learned to read at a young age and was particularly fond of Grimms’ Fairy Tales, whose influence, along with
the wilderness survival themes of her childhood, are evident in her later writing. She began writing plays, poems,
stories and comics at age six, but did not consider professional writing until sixteen, when she determined to become
a poet. After graduating from Leaside High School in Toronto in 1957, Atwood enrolled at Victoria College, University
of Toronto where she studied English Literature in order to teach to support her poetry. In 1959, “Fruition” was
published in a major literary journal, The Canadian Forum, which gave her an “in” to the tight-knit Canadian poetry
scene of P. K. Page, Jay MacPherson (one of her professors), Leonard Cohen, and A. M. Klein, among others. In 1961 she
graduated from University of Toronto and published Double Persephone, which was awarded the prestigious E.J. Pratt
Medal for Poetry.
Atwood moved to Boston where she received a Master’s in English from Radcliffe College in 1962. She continued her
studies for a graduate degree at Harvard, and though they were incomplete she was awarded several honorary degrees
between 1973 and 1990, from Trent University, Queen’s University, Concordia University, Radcliffe, and Harvard. In
1964 she taught creative writing at the University of British Columbia, the first of several teaching/writer-in-residence
appointments at reputable North American universities, including University of Alberta (1968–70), University of
Toronto (1971–73), New York University (1971–72), and University of British Columbia (1964–65, 1992–93).
In 1967, the collection The Circle Game (1966) won the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, securing her reputation
as a poet. In 1967, she married James Polk, and in 1969 her first work of fiction, The Edible Woman, was published,
followed by The Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970) and Surfacing (1971).
After traveling in England, France and Italy from 1970–71, Atwood began a two year stint as Editor and member of the
board of directors at the influential Canadian publishing House of Anansi Press. She published a seminal work in
Canadian literary criticism in 1972, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature.
In 1973 Atwood and Polk divorced, and she wrote the first of several screenplays, Grace Marks, whose protagonist
would become the central character in her 1996 novel, Alias Grace. In 1973, she and author Graeme Gibson began living
together, and in 1976 their daughter Eleanor Jess Atwood Gibson was born. Atwood continued to publish at a prolific
rate: Lady Oracle (1976), Two-Headed Poems (1978), Life Before Man (1979), and several works for children rounded
out the decade.
In 1980, Atwood served as Co-chair of the Writer’s Union of Canada. In the same year she received a Guggenhiem
Fellowship and the Molson Award, and published Bodily Harm.
In 1983 she received the foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Letters Book of the Year Award for the short
story collection Bluebeard’s Egg, and served as President of International P.E.N., Canadian Centre from 1984–86. In
1985 one of her most influential works of fiction, The Handmaid’s Tale, was published to critical acclaim. It continues
to be one of the most widely taught novels in North American colleges. In 1988, Cat’s Eye was published, followed by
Wilderness Tips in 1991 and Good Bones in 1992. In 1992 after nearly a decade of travel—to Germany and England
with teaching positions held in Australia, New York, Alabama, and Texas—Atwood returned to Toronto, where she
continues to live with Graeme Gibson.
The last decade has seen the publication of The Robber Bride (1993), Good Bones and Simple Murders (1994), Strange
Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature (1995), Mornings in the Burned House (1995), Alias Grace (1996),
and Negotiating With the Dead: A Writer on Writing (2002). Her novel The Blind Assassin was awarded The Booker
Prize in 2000, the most prestigious honor in British letters.

The Story Behind the Story

Susan Faludi once noted that feminists were “a prime enemy” for the New Right that evolved in America during the
1980’s, and to understand this point fully is to understand The Handmaid’s Tale’s true point of origin. In Brutal
Choreographies, for example, critic J. Brooks Bouson noted that at this time, Jerry Falwell accused feminists of executing
“a satanic attack on the home,” and, similarly, Howard Phillips argued that feminists schemed for “the conscious policy
of government to liberate the wife from the leadership of the husband” (135). In this way, through every form of media,
women were being told daily to get back into the kitchen; if they refused, they reportedly did so at the expense of
children and families—and thus, by extension, America’s future.
But one night in 1981, shortly after the publication of Bodily Harm, Margaret Atwood had dinner with a long-time
friend, unaware that this casual get-together would spark the idea for The Handmaid’s Tale. According to Atwood’s
own report, the two women discussed “various things as we usually do, including some of the more absolutist
pronouncements of right-wing religious fundamentalism. ‘No one thinks about what it would be like to actually act it
out,’ said I (or someone)”. Atwood took this very task upon herself.
The seeds for a novel thus took root, though Atwood didn’t pursue the project in earnest until, ironically, 1984. The
resonance of that year—the title and subject of George Orwell’s own classic, cautionary tale—seems no mere
coincidence. Before writing Handmaid, Atwood read and studied numerous utopian and dystopian works: not only
Orwell’s, but also Thomas More’s (Utopia) and Aldous Huxley’s (Brave New World), among others. She also continued
to read the Bible closely, drawing inspiration from Genesis 30, and she kept a running file of newspaper and magazine
clippings about contemporary world crises. According to critic Coral Ann Howells, the file included:

pamphlets from Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace ... beside reports of atrocities in Latin America,
Iran and the Philippines, together with items of information on new reproductive technologies,
surrogate motherhood, and forms of institutionalized birth control from Nazi Germany to Ceausescu’s
Romania.... The clippings file contain[ed] a lot of material on the New Right with its warnings about
the “Birth Dearth,” its anti-feminism, its anti-homosexuality, its racism and its strong underpinnings
in the Bible Belt.

The materials Atwood collected thus show the breadth of her concerns on a large scale, but they also pinpoint her
particular obsessions: the environment, intolerance, fascism, and reproductive rights. And because she takes pains to
mention what were, at the time, current events within the world of the novel, she clearly strives to present “a fictive
future which bears an uncomfortable resemblance to our present society” Critics often note, of course, that Atwood, a
Canadian writer, makes the choice to set Gilead within America’s boundaries. Rather than simply wagging a finger,
however, in an act of reductive, literary censure, Atwood provides cogent reasons for her setting choice in interviews.
For example, she once stated of the novel’s premise:
It’s not a Canadian sort of thing to do. Canadians might do it after the States did it, in some sort of watered-
down version. Our television evangelists are more paltry than yours. The States are more extreme in
everything. Our genius is for compromise... That’s number one. And I lived in Boston/Cambridge for four years.
That’s number two. And then they are my ancestors. Those nagging Puritans really are my ancestors. So I had
a considerable interest in them when I was studying them, and the mind-set of Gilead is really close to that of
the seventeenth-century Puritans. It’s also true that everyone watches the States to see what the country is
doing and might be doing ten or fifteen years from now.

Thus, the influence of the Puritans—which still resonates in American cultural norms—and the bold, arrogant,
spotlight-hogging image that still typifies the United States, made it the ideal setting for Atwood to ponder questions
like, “If a woman’s place is in the home, what happens when women want more? If means are taken to enforce a stay-
at-home regime, what follows?”
Obviously, the answers Atwood offers in The Handmaid’s Tale have successfully captured readers’ imaginations; with
the exception of a handful of reviews, the book generally received positive critical response, and, as Sharon R. Wilson
reported, the novel has become the most widely-taught Atwood text in the country. At the college level, the book shows
up on the syllabi of courses in “economics, political science, sociology, film, business, and other disciplines outside the
humanities, and it has been adopted by several universities (e.g., George Mason, Miami University) as a required text
for all undergraduates”. Thus, though some critics have pointed out the work’s flaws, the continuing relevance of the
novel’s themes and Atwood’s distinctive exploration of them have caused The Handmaid’s Tale to become a part of the
contemporary literature canon.

MARGARET ATWOOD ON THE CREATION OF THE HANDMAID’S TALE*

Some critics have called the novel a feminist tract. “Novels are not slogans,’’ Miss Atwood responds. “If I wanted to say
just one thing I would hire a billboard. If I wanted to say just one thing to one person, I would write a letter. Novels are
something else. They aren’t just political messages. I’m sure we all know this, but when it’s a book like this you have to
keep on saying it. The book is an examination of character under certain circumstances, among other things. It’s not a
matter of men against women. That happens to be in the book because I think if it were going to happen in the United
States, that’s the form it would take. But it’s a study of power, and how it operates and how it deforms or shapes the
people who are living within that kind of regime.
“You could say it’s a response to ‘it can’t happen here.’ When they say ‘it can’t happen here,’ what they usually mean is
Iran can’t happen here, Czechoslovakia can’t happen here. And they’re right, because this isn’t there. But what could
happen here? It wouldn’t be some people saying, ‘Hi, folks, we’re Communists and we’re going to be your new
Government.’ But if you were going to do it, what would you do? What emotions would you appeal to? What groups
would you utilize? How exactly would you go about it? Well, something like the way the religious right is doing things.
And the ultimate result of that process would be the union of church and state, which this country since 1776 has
striven to keep apart, with great difficulty, because the foundation of this country was not separation of church and
state. We’re often taught in schools that the Puritans came to America for religious freedom. Nonsense. They came to
establish their own regime, where they could persecute people to their heart’s content just the way they themselves
had been persecuted. If you think you have the word and the right way, that’s the only thing you can do.”
* Interview conducted by Mervyn Rothstein for the New York Times.

ATWOOD IN THE DYSTOPIAN TRADITION

The state in Gilead prescribes a pattern of life based on frugality, conformity, censorship, corruption, fear, and terror—
in short, the usual terms of existence enforced by totalitarian states, instance of which can be found in such dystopian
works as Zamyatin’s We, Huxley’s Brave New World, and Orwell’s 1984.
In order to situate Atwood’s novel within the relevant context of dystopia, I wish to articulate the salient dystopian
features those three classics reveal. The ensuing discussion will be an elaboration on Atwood’s rendition and
redefinition of those features.
1. Power, Totalitarianism, War:
Dystopias essentially deal with power: power as the prohibition or perversion of human potential; power in its
absolute form that, to quote from 1984, tolerates no flaws in the pattern it imposes on society. Dystopias thus show, in
extreme terms, power functioning efficiently and mercilessly to its optimal totalitarian limit. Interestingly, war or
foreign threats often loom in the background, providing the pretext to join external tension with internal terror.
2. Dream-Nightmare: Fantasy: Reality:
While dystopias may be fear-laden horror fiction (how the dream turns into a nightmare), the emphasis of the work is
not on horror for its own sake, but on forewarning. Similarly, while dystopias contain elements of the fantastic with a
“touch of excess” carrying the narrative “one step [or more] beyond our reality,”2 the aim is neither to distort reality
beyond recognition, nor to provide an escapist world for the reader, but “to allow certain tendencies in modern society
to spin forward without the brake of sentiment and humaneness.”3
3. Binary Oppositions:
Dystopias dramatize the eternal conflict between individual choice and social necessity: the individual resenting the
replacement of his private volition by compulsory uniformitarian decisions made by an impersonal bureaucratic
machinery; Zamyatin’s heroine poignantly sums up the conflict: “I do not want anyone to want for me. I want to want
for myself.”4 The sphere of the binary opposition expands further to cover such dialectical dualities as emotion and
reason, creative imagination and mathematical logic, intuition and science, tolerance and judgment, kindness and
cruelty, spirituality and materialism, love and power, good and evil. The list can go on.
4. Characterization:
Dystopias often tend to offer two-dimensional character types; this tendency is possibly due to the pressure of the
metaphorical and ideological thrust of these works. Moreover, the nightmarish atmosphere of dystopias seems to
preclude advancing positive, assertive characters that might provide the reader with consoling hope. If such positive
characters do exist, they usually prove miserably ineffectual when contending with ruthless overwhelming powers.
5. Change and Time:
Dystopian societies, consumed and controlled by regressive dogmas, appear constantly static: founded on coercion
and rigid structures, the system resists change and becomes arrested in paralysis. Such a static life “shorn of dynamic
possibility,” becomes for the underprivileged members of society mediocre, monotonous and predictable: “a given and
measured quantity that can neither rise to tragedy nor tumble to comedy.”5
Accordingly, dystopias are not associated with innovation and progress, but with fear of the future. They use, however,
the present as an instructive referent, offering a tacit alternative to the dystopian configuration.
6. Roman à These:
To varying degrees, dystopias are quintessentially ideological novels: they engage the reader in what Fredrick Jameson
calls a “theoretical discourse,” whereby a range of thematic possibilities are posited and polarized against each other,
yet the novels eventually reveal a definite philosophical and socio-political outlook for which fiction proves to be a
convenient medium. What distinguishes Atwood’s novel form those dystopian classics is its obvious feminist focus. (...)
While the major dystopian features can clearly be located in The Handmaid’s Tale, the novel offers two distinct
additional features: feminism and irony. Dramatizing the interrelationship between power and sex, the book’s
feminism, despite condemning male misogynous mentality, upholds and cherishes a man-woman axis; here, feminism
functions inclusively rather than exclusively, poignantly rather than stridently, humanely rather than cynically. The
novel’s ironic tone, on the other hand, betokens a confident narrative strategy that aims at treating a depressing
material gently and gradually, yet firmly, openly, and conclusively, thus skillfully succeeding in securing the reader’s
sympathy and interest. The novel shows Atwood’s strengths both as an engaging story-teller and a creator of a
sympathetic heroine, and as an articulate crafts-woman of a theme that is both current and controversial. As the novel
signifies a landmark in the maturing process of Atwood’s creative career, her self-assured depiction of the grim
dystopian world gives an energetic and meaningful impetus to the genre.

Notes
2. Irving Howe in 1984 Revisited: Totalitarianism in Our Century, ed. Irving Howe (New York: Harper and Row, 1983), p. 8.
3. Irving Howe, Politics and the Novel (New York: Horizon Press, 1957), p. 242.
4. Yevgeny Zamyatin, We, trans. Mirra Ginsberg (New York: Viking, 1972), p. v.
5. Politics and the Novel, p. 240.

The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)

CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY

There remains a mirror, on the hall wall. If I turn my head so that the white wings framing my face direct
my vision towards it, I can see it as I go down the stairs, round, convex, a pier glass, like the eye of a fish,
and myself in it like a distorted shadow, a parody of something, some fairy-tale figure in a red cloak,
descending towards a moment of carelessness that is the same as danger. A Sister, dipped in blood. At
the bottom of the stairs there's a hat-and-umbrella stand, the bentwood kind, long rounded rungs
of wood curving gently up into hooks shaped like the opening fronds of a fern. There are several
umbrellas in it: black, for the Commander, blue, for the Commander's Wife,
and the one assigned to me, which is red.

A group of people is coming towards us. They're tourists, from Japan

it looks like, a trade delegation perhaps, on a tour of the historiclandmarks or out for local color. Th
ey're diminutive and neatly turned out; each has his or her camera, his or her smile. They look around,
bright-eyed, cocking their heads to one side like robins, their very cheerfulness aggressive, and I can't
help staring. It's been a long time since I've seen skirts that short on women. The skirts reach just
below the knee and the legs come out from beneath them, nearly
naked in their thin stockings, blatant, the high-heeled shoes with their straps attached to the feet
like delicate instruments of torture. The women teeter on their spiked feet as if on stilts, but off balance;
their backs arch at the waist, thrusting the buttocks out. Their heads are uncovered and their hair too
is exposed, in all its darkness and sexuality. They wear lipstick, red, outlining the damp cavities of their
mouths, like scrawls on a washroom wall, of the time before.
Istop walking. Ofglen stops beside me and I know that she toocannot take her eyes off these women. W
e are fascinated, but also repelled. They seem undressed. It has taken so little time to change our minds,
about things like this. Then I think: I used to dress like that. That was freedom. Westernized, they used
to call it.

MEMORY
But that's where I am, there's no escaping it. Time's a trap, I'm caught in it. I must forget about my
secret name and all ways back. My name is Offred now, and here is where I live.
Live in the present, make the most of it, it's all you've got. Time to take stock.
I am thirty-three years old. I have brown hair. I stand five seven without shoes. I have trouble
remembering what I used lo look like. I have viable ovaries. I have one more chance.
But something has changed, now, tonight.Cicumstances have altered. I can ask for something. Possibly
not much; but something.
Men are sex machines, said Aunt Lydia, and not much more. Theyonly want one thing. You must lea
rn to manipulate them, for yourown good. Lead them around by the nose; that is a metaphor.
It's nature's way. It's God's device. It's the way things are.

Aunt Lydia did not actually say this, but it was implicit in everything she did say. It hovered over her
head, like the golden mottoes over
the saints, of the darker ages. Like them too, she was angular and without flesh.
But how to fit the Commander into this, as he exists in his study, with
his word games and his desire, for what? To be played with, to be gently kissed, as if I meant it.
I know I need to take it seriously, this desire of his. It could be important, it could be a passport,
it could be my downfall. I need to be earnest about it, I need to ponder it.

(…)

It could even have been the man who got us thepassports; why not get paid twice? Like them,
even, to plant the passport forgers themselves, a net for the unwary. The Eyes of God run over all the
earth.

Because they were ready for us, and waiting. The moment of betrayal
is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some
other human being has wished you that much evil.

It was like being in an elevator cut loose at the top. Falling, falling, and not knowing when you will hit.

I try to conjure, to raise my own spirits, from wherever they are. I need to remember what they
look like. I try to hold them still behind
my eyes, their faces, like pictures in an album. But they won't stay
still for me, they move, there's a smile and it's gone, their featurescurl and bendas if the paper
's burning, blackness eats them. Aglimpse, a pale shimmer on the air; a glow, aurora, danc
e of electrons, then a face again, faces. But they fade, though I stretch out my arms towards them, they
slip away from me, ghosts at daybreak. Backto wherever they are. Stay with me, I want to say. But they
won't. It's my fault. I am forgetting too much.

(…)
To be seen is to be penetrated.

(…)
Offred’s mother: “How furious she must be, now that she’s been taken at her word.”