Pat wrote:
> I agree America had that potential. But as I see it, it has
> had
> that potential waiting in the wings for a long time, and once in
> everyone's lifetime it bursts out like a plague of boils. That the
> book
> was written in the mid-eighties is interesting - that she saw such a
> thing
> on the horizon then, when gender roles were about as feminist as
> they've
> been all century - is interesting. But we should all be aware of the
> undercurrents contributing to it.
>
Certainly we should be aware of those undercurrents - from Cotton Mather
to Pat Robertson, but the question is: what made Atwood write that novel
at that moment? I would argue it was a mixture of the fall of the shah
and the rise of the ayatollah in Iran, the Reagan presidency, the entire
plague of 'me, me, me' attitude in the '80's, and (especially) the
backlash against feminism that the neo-conservatives and the Reagan
Democrats ushered in at that time. If Atwood had been writing at
different times in American history, I think the outcome would have been
far different than _The Handmaid's Tale_ we see today...
- Geoffrey
-- "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." - Ford Prefect
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:07:36 PDT