Margaret Atwood:
- Concerned with Canada's cultural identity; Feminist concerns; Survival
(1972)
- Duality "Tricks with Mirror" Two-Headed Poems (1978); Victim mentality
- So far she's written 42 books; 10 novels;
- Styles: Postmodern, self-reflexive mode; mixing poetry and fiction,
mixing a lot of genres (Gothic, detective story, fairy tales, family
romance, comedy, allegory, etc.)
- Atwood on HA:
'''I delayed writing it for about three years after I got the
idea because I felt it was too crazy,'' Miss Atwood says. ''Then
two things happened. I started noticing that a lot of the things I
thought I was more or less making up were now happening, and indeed
more of them have happened since the publication of the book.
There is a sect now, a Catholic charismatic spinoff sect, which calls
the women handmaids. They don't go in for polygamy of this kind but
they do threaten the handmaids according to the biblical verse I use
in the book - sit down and shut up. "
- The Handmaid's Tale not being science fiction but based
on real political, historical and contemporary events." (from BBC
Interviews Atwood (1996); this
part)
- Atwood's 1987 essay opposing the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement:
"Canada as a separate but dominated country has done about as well
under the U.S. as women, worldwide, have done under men; about the
only position they've ever adopted towards us, country to country,
has been the missionary position, and we were not on top."(82)
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