Appropriating history in Margaret Atwood's novels The handmaid's tale and Alias grace : an honors thesis (HONRS 499)

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Authors
Knapp, Erin P.
Advisor
Papa, Lee
Issue Date
1998
Keyword
Degree
Thesis (B.?.)
Department
Honors College
Other Identifiers
Abstract

This analysis of Margaret Atwood's appropriation of history is limited to two of her works, The Handmaid's Tale and Alias Grace. The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel that illustrates what could happen to our society if the ideologies of Ronald Reagan and the Religious Right of the 1980's were to become governmental policy. The fight against the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion, and pornography and the support for religion in government and censorship are traced for their oppressive effects on the women of the fictional society Gilead. Alias Grace is a historical novel based on Atwood's own research into the real case of Grace Marks, a celebrated murderess of the nineteenth century, and Victorian society itself. In the life of Grace and the lives of the characters around her, the restrictive aspects of the Victorian myth, the popularity of the Spiritualist movement, and nineteenth century theories on mental illness work together to document the gender inequality of the time period. Margaret Atwood's use of historical events and societal restrictions of the Reagan and the Victorian era are shown to serve as a way to give oppressed women a voice in literature that they could not have otherwise. The societies in both of the novels, when compared to each other, are found to have similar views concerning the rights of women.