Margaret Atwood will be 80 in 2019. In an interview .”
Not quite. The Canadian Booker Prize-winning author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays has never been more popular.
Her 1985 classic of feminist dystopian fiction The Handmaid’s Tale – set in a Christian theocracy where fertile women are sexually enslaved - struck a powerful chord with readers concerned about the backlash against hard-won women’s rights led by the then new politically powerful evangelical Christian right in the US.
It would continue to fascinate and terrify in various adaptations, .
The book that taps unerringly – and eerily – into the big fears of our times.
But it was the ascent of Donald Trump, coinciding with the novel’s blockbuster TV adaptation by MGM and Hulu last year (SBS will air the second season later this month) that has catapulted Atwood’s nightmarish dystopia to new heights as a must-read feminist classic. ;
Atwood and her crimson handmaids are also having a big moment in popular culture and politics, featuring in an , , starring in everything to , and finding a new generation of readers on the back of celebrity endorsements. recently featured it in her book club, Our Shared Shelf.
In the political realm, those red capes and white bonnets have popped up everywhere from last year’s in US state capitals as the new uniform of feminist protest against a perceived backlash against women’s reproductive health and safety.
Atwood herself is riding high from international writing festivals to social media (she has more than 1.9 million followers on Twitter), generating headlines with tart pronouncements on everything from , to sexual etiquette and modern-day courtship.
Atwood’s slim tale is a potent touchstone and reminder of the power of female voices as a tool of resistance.
We can’t get enough of her work, it seems. , Atwood sold the rights to The Heart Goes Last, her 2015 novel about a married couple trapped in a social experiment, to MGM Television, while another classic work
So why does this queen of dystopian fiction and her handmaids continue to intrigue and terrify a new generation of readers?
Federation University literature lecturer Linda Wight says The Handmaid’s Tale is a book that taps unerringly – and eerily – into the big fears of our times, particularly those that concern young women: “the power of the Christian right, environmental degradation, gender inequities, homophobia, media censorship and control, terrorism.”
To young women grappling with oppression and abuse, from sexual harassment to the curtailing of reproductive rights, Atwood’s slim tale is a potent touchstone and reminder of the power of female voices as a tool of resistance.
“As Offred reflects, ‘there is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power…it deflates them, reduces them to the common denominator where they can be dealt with’. Both The Handmaid's Tale and #MeToo recognise the power of women's voices and the danger to women - individually and as a community - when those voices are silenced by fears of violence, unemployment and other significant repercussions.”
Like Orwell’s 1984, the novel not also taps into fears about authoritarian government control over bodies and minds but concerns about the future, and the role science and technology will play in our lives, says Sydney University English studies Associate professor Margaret Rogerson.
“The Handmaid's Tale and the Oryx and Crake trilogy are the most obviously futuristic/dystopian works but there is also a very short story about the (futuristic) cloning of the thylacine called Thylacine Ragout which was published in The Tent (Bloomsbury, 2006). This has a chilling message for Australians (in particular) who are concerned with science and the future as Atwood obviously is," Associate Professor Rogerson said.
“We may think that things are bad now, but will it be worse in time to come and will the 'worse' be anything like what Atwood has shown us here?”
The Handmaid’s Tale season 4 premieres on Thursday 29 April 2021. The Australian season is exclusive to SBS and SBS on Demand.
SBS will air the double-episode season premiere of The Handmaid’s Tale at 8.30pm Thursday 29 April, with episodes 1-3 available at . A second double episode will air on Thursday 6 May at 8.30pm, with weekly episodes to follow at 9.30pm. All episodes will be available to stream weekly at SBS On Demand.
Don't forget to subscribe to the award-winning Eyes On Gilead: A Handmaid's Tale SBS podcast. Available on | | | | , or wherever you listen to podcasts.
