Louis Homon and Margaret Atwood

There is a wide gulf separating the French-Canadian work Maria Chapdelaine by Louis HTmon and The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, but there are also certain characteristics linking the two works as expressions of a certain worldview, especially toward the role of women in society. HTmon writes a realistic account of rural life among French Canadians in the early part of this century, while Atwood offers a speculative dramatization of a dystopian society such as might develop in the future if certain trends she perceives in contemporary society continue. One thing that links the two works is a certain view of women and their ability to transcend the roles given them by society, though Atwood is quite self-conscious in presenting this theme while HTmon merely demonstrates an attitude toward women without making it a central or overt issue. The differences have more to do with the widely separated eras in which the works were written than with the sex of the author or the fact that one is French-Canadian and the other from English-speaking Canada.

Setting is important in both works, and the setting indeed dominates the HTmon work as the young woman who is the central character represents the French Canadian peasant living close to the land and experiencing all of the hardships that such a life entails. For such people, the change in seasons is a major event, especially the coming of winter and the coming of spring, the first leading to harsher times and the second promi

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ttled the same land, leaving to her generation the role of carrying on a tradition: For this is that we may abide in that Province where our fathers dwelt, living as they have lived, so to obey the unwritten command that once shaped itself in their hearts, that passed to ours, which we in turn must hand on to descendants innumerable. . . (HTmon 160-161). Margaret Atwood writes from a very different perspective in a very different society, and the heritage her women are bound to is less a specific ethnic or regional one than the common plight of women throughout history. She has set her work in the U.S., the giant nation to the south that often overwhelms Canadian social and cultural sensibilities. Atwood raises a number of feminist issues in her novel, a book embodying a vision of a dystopian society, or a utopian society that does not work and does not serve the interests of the majority of its population. The novel is narrated by its protagonist, a young woman known as Offred who has been kidnapped by her government and separated from her husband and child. She is forced into slavery as a Handmaid, or surrogate mother, for a powerful couple that cannot have children of their own. This story is set in a future where such

Category: Literature - L