Text and image by Corinna Heumann

In Margaret Atwood‘s work, the major questions of our time meet unsettling answers. They belong to the great utopian literature of the world and are now ranked third after George Orwell’s „1984“ and Aldous Huxley’s „Brave New World“. With Atwood’s powerful visual storytelling, her two books, „The Handmaid’s Tale“ and „The Testaments“, have particularly become part of a new socio-political pop culture.

Real and Fictional Heroines

Margaret Atwood writes speculative fiction. Unlike traditional science fiction, which often imagines fantastical future worlds in distant galaxies, she does not invent purely fictional settings. Instead, she transforms her deep knowledge of historical developments into outstanding literary creativity, speculating on possible manifestations of familiar totalitarian power structures and characters. As Thomas Mann once said, fantasy does not mean making things up but rather making something out of what already exists.

Atwood’s blend of global awareness, catastrophe, control, and power fantasies describes plausible paths that desperate societies might take in times of fear and terror. In her storytelling, the boundaries blur between an author writing literary history and her heroines, who are overwhelmed by the tides of time. She paints a dark picture of the immense potential for human oppression that can take shape within a civil society if decisive action is not taken to counteract the challenges of our present.

Heroines Without Romance

Through her speculative stories, Atwood provides sharp analyses of well-known societal structures, which ultimately victimize the female half of the population. With the backdrop of climate catastrophe and war, strong female protagonists emerge among ordinary people who could be our neighbors. Yet romantic saviors are nowhere to be found.

In Atwood’s totalitarian systems, society is built on gender roles that go far beyond traditional stereotypes. Power and mistrust permeate every aspect of life. Over familiar narratives and imagery, a paralyzing fog spreads like an eerie in-between world of past, present, and future. Her dramatis personae move through this space as if the sun might never rise again, trapped in a disturbing simultaneity. The author, her heroines, and her readers exist like liminal beings in a violence-drenched atmosphere of rigid hierarchies. This petrified setting makes any notion of romantic escapism impossible. The term Atwoodian emerges.

What Does ‘Atwoodian’  Mean?

Atwood’s heroines survive in a robotic, helpless state, subjected to absolute physical and psychological control. The author explores how violence and its deep integration into the fictional state of Gilead’s daily life become an end in themselves not only through male cooperation but also through the active participation of women. To exert the most efficient control over other women, the male ruling class has long relied on willing female enforcers. These women establish networks to train girls for their predetermined roles, thus effectively managing and perpetuating male dominance.

The so-called Aunts enforce their rules with extreme manipulation, leaving no shortage of brutal physical punishments. With breathtaking precision, Atwood illustrates how women and girls are forced from childhood to serve men at every level. They are forbidden to read, own property, or make independent choices. Their sole purpose is to bear children. Democracy and human rights have been declared obstacles to mankind’s survival and thus abolished.

The End of Imagination?

Dwindling female fertility becomes a symbol of humanity’s inability to confront environmental disasters and war. Under the pretext of saving civilization, the individual loses all safety in the fictional state of Gilead – an astonishing contradiction to the intent of guaranteeing the human survival. Atwood portrays the totalitarian rupture with our diverse cultural traditions. Any human longing for a better future is immediately crushed by brute force.

Transposed to our reality, the novel pushes humane solutions into an unreachable distance. Every trace of vitality and curiosity vanishes. Atwood’s narrative suggests that with the loss of female fertility life-affirming freedom and human creativity also perish. Within Gilead’s totalitarian power structures, fertility either way positive or negative becomes a curse. The absolute control over people‘s lives and their self-determination marks not only the end of imagination but also a state of complete paralysis as a possible end of the world. How the novel ultimately concludes, however, remains undisclosed.

Connection to Social Movements

One fact is clear: Margaret Atwood’s visually rich world of ideas continues to develop its own pop-cultural momentum, paving the way for an exciting history of reception inspiring social movements. Not only the iconic Handmaid’s Tale attire has become a symbol of political resistance, worn at feminist protests. Real young heroines are forming clubs and activist groups such as Handmaidsriot on Instagram to raise awareness of highly dangerous societal ideas and experiments.