Topic > Margaret Atwood and her contribution to literature and society

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian author born in 1939. When Atwood was eleven she spent half the year in northern Ontario because her father worked as an entomologist, one insect scientist. One of the many things she enjoyed doing while away from school was writing. At the age of six, Atwood was already writing plays, poems, comics and even began a novel. His writing began to reemerge when he was in high school. At the age of sixteen he decided to pursue writing as a lifelong career. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Atwood was a well-known feminist activist in the 1960s, which is why her writings in the 1970s and even today are praised by feminists. Although she is a feminist advocate, she does not identify as a feminist author. As we know, the feminist movement began in the 1960s, a time when women were fighting for gender equality. During this time/movement Atwood was inspired and inspired through her writings about her views on feminism. For example, in 1969 she wrote her book “The Edible Women”, which contains many feminist elements and ideas. In 1994 Atwood gave a talk titled "Spotty Handed Villainesses: Problems of Female Bad Behavior in The Creation of Literature." The purpose of this talk was to show how women are portrayed in literature, focusing specifically on evil or evil women. For example, the title says it all. This speech is very significant because it reflects how feminist Atwood is. It also shows his inspirations for his stories/poems. In his speech Atwood focuses on a couple of things. One of the main things she focuses on is the fact that in literature women are capable of doing harm and this should not be ignored, in fact it needs to be recognised. Another topic that Atwood covers extensively in his speech is that evil characters are very important in literature because they make the story interesting. In Atwood's speech she says: "Evil women are necessary in narrative traditions, why shouldn't their multidimensionality be given literary expression?" This quote goes back to Atwood's focus that women are capable of harm. This quote shows Atwood emphasizing the idea that women can be evil, she says that the serotype that says women are not evil in literature should die because "evil women are necessary in narrative traditions... they exist in life, so why shouldn't they exist in literature?”. Furthermore, Atwood also claims that evil characters are the most interesting because they make literature more enjoyable and this in a way shows his writing style. Many of Atwood's works have been influenced by waves of feminism. As mentioned above, Atwood's book “The Edible Woman” was written around the same time as the emergence of feminism. In this book gender is one of the biggest themes. This is important because it shows that the feminist movement is one of the reasons why the author tends to write a lot about women in society. The fact that Atwood is known as a good writer helped shape why she writes about feminism because many feminists admired her during that time because of her literature. Although Margaret Atwood is a highly respected feminist, some believe she is not a good feminist. Atwood “has lost her feminist luster for many millennial feminists (and feminists of other generations) since November 2016, when she signed a petition calling for an independent investigation,.