Margaret Atwood Comes to Dartmouth

Acclaimed writer-turned-cultural-icon Margaret Atwood spoke to a brimming Spalding Auditorium on April the 18th as part of the 2019 Dorsett Fellowship Lecture Series—“Ethics Through the Lens of Literature.” Ms. Atwood’s lecture, “In Deepest Dystopia,” was a highly anticipated event both on campus and in the Upper Valley—students and community members alike lined up hours in advance to secure a seat, with all 900 seats in Spaulding Auditorium filling entirely by the time Ms. Atwood took the stage. She was introduced by Professor Sonu Bedi, Associate Professor of Government and the Hans ’80 and Kate Morris Director of the Ethics Institute. During his introduction, Professor Bedi admitted to being star struck by meeting Miss Atwood, a sentiment seemly shared by many in the room. This fanfare all pointed to the undeniable fact that, in 2019, Margaret Atwood is no longer seen as a famous Booker Prize-winning author, but rather as a sort of prophetic movie star.

Ms. Atwood’s elevated fame is due largely to the wildly successful HBO adaptation of her seminal work, The Handmaid’s Tale. Professor Bedi reminded the audience that this series has been nominated for thirteen Emmys and is currently preparing to air its third season. Ms. Atwood chose to address the show more humorously, stating that it had resurrected her book “not quite from death, but from a respectable afterlife as a school text.” Though it seems clear that it was the allure of The Handmaid’s Tale, either the book, the show, or both, that had drawn so many people to Ms. Atwood’s lecture, the peril of handmaids in Gilead was not the initial focus of her talk.

 Ms. Atwood, whose wit is a sharp when she speaks as it is when she writes, began by joking about her New Hampshire-based ancestors, one of whom was the “crafty and devious” Daniel Webster ‘01. Ms. Atwood then claimed to have inherited both of these defining characteristics. Ms. Atwood’s humor continued when discussing her love for ruminating on potential ends of the world. Ms. Atwood argued that this topic was a favorite pastime amongst her ancestors—the congregational Puritans of New England—and therefore she comes by it honestly. Ms. Atwood stated that her favorite forms of apocalypse are the demise of the human race and the devolution of the United States into totalitarian theocracy. When Ms. Atwood then turned to the audience and remarked that neither of these things would ever, ever happen, she was met with uproarious laughter. Ms. Atwood claims that she prefers her dystopias to stay in written form—if for no other reason than she prefers it to be politicians and national governments that “cook up the real ones.”

The first of Ms. Atwood’s dystopias up for discussion was Oryx and Crake. This 2003 stunner, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, focuses on the former of Ms. Atwood’s described dystopias—the demise of the human race. Oryx and Crake showcases Ms. Atwood’s keen interest in biology—a topic that has captivated her since childhood. Growing up in a family of biologists, Ms. Atwood developed a deep appreciation for species diversity, something that has informed her love of bird watching as an adult. The idea for Oryx and Crake actually came to her during a birding trip to Australia. While she was exploring, Ms. Atwood and her fellow bird-watchers began discussing a common fear among environmentalists—species extinction. Ms. Atwood reminded the audience that species extinction is not a far-flung fear—it is a reality evident in every category of life on Earth, birds included. As Atwood ruminated on the many, now extinct, species of birds with her comrades, she began to consider if it were really so impossible to imagine the extinction of another species—”homo sapien sapiens.” For this reason, Atwood does not categorize Oryx and Crake as a work of science fiction. Rather, she calls it a work of speculative fiction. This genre—one of her trademarks—contains dystopias that are marked by realism. In the case of Oryx and Crake, it is a dystopia that has grown out of rampant genetic modification of human beings such that they have lost their inherent humanness. In the case of The Handmaid’s Tale, this dystopia is based on the devolution of the United States into a totalitarian theocracy. It was clear that the Dartmouth audience found this premise even more realistic than the extinction of the rarest of Australian birds.

The Handmaid’s Tale has been such a commercial success not just owning to its cinematic merit—many of its viewers have decided that it is less television and more prophecy. Atwood addressed this directly stating that the reception of the show, and by extension her book, changed dramatically following the election of President Trump. For Atwood and the viewers, this election has brought the global rise of authoritarian governments and rolling back of women’s rights “too close for comfort.” She offered this as the primary reason that The Handmaid’s Tale—signature red and white cloaks included—has become a symbol of female resistance across the country and the world.

Atwood’s idea for The Handmaid’s Tale came to her while she was living in West Berlin in the 1980’s and watching the backlash of the American religious right against second wave feminism—a movement largely dedicated to securing rights to contraceptives and abortion. This, coupled with Atwood’s pseudo-Soviet surroundings, helped her craft a world in which such a religious right establishes a totalitarian state with the express purpose of controlling women, especially concerning the issue of reproduction. Atwood reminded the audience that reproductive issues are at the core of the women’s movement. For a perilous moment, Atwood appeared to imply that women’s key function in society is to reproduce—a claim that while not untrue, would certainly have caused riots among the proliferation of rabid Dartmouth sorority girls in the audience. Her comment was rescued however, when she returned to her original point, that governmental control of women’s reproductive systems is a hallmark of a totalitarian regime. In closing this main segment of her talk, Atwood advised a healthy suspicion of the current U.S. government, especially the newly conservative Supreme Court. She repeatedly encouraged the audience members, particularly the young women, to vote. Atwood begged them to remain alert— “don’t live in a fool’s paradise.”