A Woman's Place is in the Resistance; None More Than Margaret Atwood's

The year is 2019, scarlet-cloaked women walk the streets of Washington DC, New York and cities around the world, their lips silent, their faces hooded, and their eyes angry. Women take to the streets to protest vehemently against government encroachment on their rights, and men still dominate the top levels of corporate and government entities, making decisions to de-fund reproductive care facilities, tax feminine products as luxuries, and failing to uphold sexual assault standards in a wake of frustrated accusations. It is only 2019, but it seems that Margaret Atwood's characters have come to life. 

"A word after a word after a word is power." - Margaret Atwood. 

If power is based on word count, than Margaret Atwood is the most powerful person in the world.

Although most renown today as the author of The Handmaid's Tale, the inspiration behind the disturbing and wildly popular Hulu series, Atwood has published 16 novels, eight short fictions, eight children's books, 17 books of poetry, 10 non-fiction books, one graphic novel, and has worked on small press editions in poetry, television, radio, audio recordings and theater. Her works The Handmaid's Tale and Alias Grace have been adapted into streamable television series recently. Overall her work has been translated into 30 languages and adapted into movies, plays and an opera.

None have taken over popular culture and political activism quite like The Handmaid's Tale. Atwood's 1985 speculative fiction imagines a dystopian society in which the government of the United States has transformed into a autocratic theocracy named Gilead. In this fictional state, women are subjugated as sex slaves in service to the ruling class of men based on a horrific interpretation of biblical views and a declining birth rate. The sex slaves, or "handmaids" are marked by bright red cloaks and white bonnets to designate their status as state controlled vessels. Now, the dress is no longer a symbol of subjugation. It has become a symbol of resistance. 

Atwood's work has not only won critical acclaim within the literary field, earning her a membership in Queen Elizabeth II's Orders of the Companions of Honour, but has permeated political activism against state institutions. The scarlet cloak and bonnet have become regular sightings in street protests against restrictions on abortion and reproductive health care facilities. Atwood's novel is quoted, tweeted and referred to in reference to the threats to Roe v. Wade by the current administration and justice department. The most disturbing aspect of Atwood's creation is its depiction of how easily the slow chipping away of rights can slip into state sponsored terror. In this way, the novel serves as a warning.

Atwood originally wrote The Handmaid's Tale as a response to the political backlash of the 1980s against the Women's Rights Movement. She penned the novel in Germany against the backdrop of the Berlin Wall, a symbol of organized state oppression. Atwood used her environment to fuel her creative process, specifically referring to the sonic booms of the Soviet planes flying overhead and the forced silence of passersby in the streets. Atwood described herself as an enthusiastic consumer of science fiction and speculative fiction novels in the 1950s when she was a teenager, citing works such as Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and 1984 by George Orwell as inspiration. It is no coincidence that she began writing this novel just as Orwell's predictions were supposed to come to pass. Many of Atwood's novels are centered around human behavior in the wake of ecological disaster and oppression. her novel, Oryx and Crake (2003), follows a genetically modified human population that has learned to survive following a disastrous epidemic and the extinction of human kind. 

The daughter of a Canadian ecologist and nutritionist, Atwood grew up in the scenic woodlands of Canada where her connection with nature, writing and the world around her was fostered by a curious and slightly isolated childhood. Inspired to write since the age of five, Atwood attended Victoria College at the University of Toronto and received her masters degree in English Literature at Radcliffe in Massachusetts. She then went on to teach at several universities across the US and Canada. An activist at heart, Atwood would often hop on Greyhound buses to schools, libraries,and convention centers to promote and talk about her books, especially in relation to women's rights.

And, she's still writing. Atwood, who currently resides in the forested Canadian hills where she grew up, isolates herself from the outside world during her creative process. In comparison to Gardner's description of Martha Graham's creative process, Atwood's is similar not only in the physical and mental isolation she chooses to work under, but in her use of her environment and personal experiences to mold her work. Her relationship with the natural world around her and the political upheaval of the time informed her writing just as Graham's travels across the United States inform her performance. Art imitates life and vise versa. 

The Testaments, a sequel to Atwood's 1986 novel The Handmaid's Tale set 15 years after the events of the novel, came out on bookshelves in September. This novel in particular encapsulates both Atwood's sense of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Intrinsically, Atwood continues to write not to gain fame or fortune, she already has those, but in the pursuit of self fulfillment. Extrinsically, however, Atwood recognizes the impact her writing has on the political atmosphere, especially regarding women's rights in the US, and continues to write in the hopes of furthering that activism.

Her writing is her platform. When she speaks, she does so well. Here is her interview with CBS Sunday Morning detailing the book's progress and the message she wants her fans to embrace: even when circumstances seem impossible, there is always hope.

"Writing...is an act of faith: I believe it's also an act of hope, the hope that things can always get better than they are." - Margaret Atwood.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Margaret-Atwood
https://www.cbs.com/shows/cbs-sunday-morning/video/yl7be2FJD_lm6TzdA_Cd0__2DkILWHZO/margaret-atwood-on-the-testaments-/
https://www.biography.com/writer/margaret-atwood
https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/margaret-atwood

Gardner, Howard. Creating Minds. Basic Books, 1993.