Margaret Atwood and Her World
Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in rural Canada, where her father worked as an entomologist studying insects. This background deeply influenced her environmental awareness, which runs throughout her writing. She's not just a novelist—she's also a fierce advocate for women's rights, free speech, and climate change action, often tackling issues before they became mainstream concerns.
Atwood wrote The Handmaid's Tale in the mid-1980s, right after Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher came to power. This was a time of conservative revival in the West, with growing religious movements criticising the sexual revolution of the 1960s. For feminists like Atwood, the increasing power of these religious groups felt genuinely threatening.
The Cold War had been raging for almost Atwood's entire life by this point. This psychological tension between the Soviet Union and the US created a constant fear of nuclear destruction. Whilst The Handmaid's Tale doesn't focus directly on nuclear apocalypse, the threat of radioactive poisoning lurks in the background—characters face being sent to "the colonies" as punishment.
Remember: Atwood famously said, "There's nothing in the book that hasn't already happened." She drew inspiration from real historical events, making her dystopia terrifyingly believable.
