When Margaret Atwood first published The Handmaid’s Tale in 1985, some readers and book critics questioned her premise: An American government that rolls back women’s rights? Women protesting in the streets? People fleeing to Canada? Impossible.
“When I first published that book, at the outset some people were saying, ‘Oh, Margaret, how could you suggest that we would ever do such a thing,” Atwood, who is a member of the 2017 TIME 100, says. “I don’t hear that so much anymore.”
Atwood challenged herself to only include events in the book that had happened “somewhere at some time” before in history. She borrowed the conservative dress meant to both repress and protect women from the Puritans, the persecution of rebellious women from the Salem Witch Trials, the restriction on abortion from Nazi Germany and the notion of “handmaids” providing children for barren mistresses from the Bible.
MORE See Who Is on TIME’s List of the Most Influential People of 2017
Handmaid’s Tale, then, is not so much a parable or a warning as a projection based on history. How can people avoid repeating humanity’s mistakes and creating our own version of her dystopian Gilead? “They might vote—just to begin with,” she says.
- TIME's Top 100 Photos of 2021
- Inside Frances Haugen's Decision to Take on Facebook
- Why We Should Stop Freaking Out About Inflation
- Austria's Plan to Make COVID-19 Vaccines Compulsory Is Dividing Citizens — and Experts
- Inside the 80-Year Quest to Name Pearl Harbor's Unknown Victims
- Buying a House Feels Impossible These Days. Here Are 6 Innovative Paths to Homeownership
- 'They're Very Close.' U.S. General Says Iran Is Nearly Able to Build a Nuclear Weapon
- A Charter School's Racial Controversy Reveals the Real Battle For America's Classrooms
