Tag Archives: Margaret Atwood

Hag-Seed: A Tempest in a Teacup

In 2015 Hogarth launched the Hogarth Shakespeare project to have Shakespeare’s plays retold by acclaimed or (more frequently) popular novelists. Gratuitous? Yup. Lazy? Sure. Good idea? Nope. Money grab? Yahtzee! But, hey, Hollywood does it all the time, so why not?

Plus, Hogarth tapped Margaret Atwood to modernize The Tempest. So how bad could it be? Fair enough. Hag-Seed (Ms. Atwood’s adaptation of The Tempest) is not bad. At times, it’s quite enjoyable, but that’s usually when Ms. Atwood doesn’t hew to the play.

Felix is Ms. Atwood’s Prospero. Early on, we learn that his wife died shortly after giving birth to their daughter, Miranda. We also learn Miranda died when she was about 4 years old. In a former life, Felix was the artistic director of the Makeshiweg Festival, which he planned to make the “standard against which all lesser festivals would be measured.” To do this, he needed money, and that was Tony’s job. However, Felix’s failure to focus on the business side of the festival costs him. Tony convinces the board to fire Felix, and Tony replaces him. Felix has a temper tantrum and goes off the grid – changing his name and essentially exiling himself.

About 12 years later, Felix is working part-time at the Fletcher County Correctional Institute where he puts on Shakespeare’s plays with the inmates. “Power struggles, treacheries, crimes: these subjects were immediately grasped by his students, since in their own ways they were expert in them.” His program is modestly successful.

Tony and some of the more culpable board members are now important government officials. They will be at the institute to see the inmates perform My Fair Lady. Really? You ask. No, that would be stupid. They are staging The Tempest, of course. Felix plots his revenge.

The novel works best when it focuses on Felix’s interactions with the inmates and how they produce the play inside a prison – how they relate to Shakespeare’s works. They are effective and humorous fairies, goblins, and demons, and there is much to like about these passages. Ms. Atwood is adept at handling the “play within a play” aspect of The Tempest, and the prison is a perfect substitute for an island.

But the novel is less successful in addressing Felix’s need for vengeance. In The Tempest, vengeance is central to the plot. At times Prospero is monstrous in his pursuit of it. However, Prospero did not voluntarily exile himself. His brother usurped him and put him in a small boat with his young daughter – leaving them to drift on the sea. His brother clearly wanted them to die horrible deaths, so Prospero’s desire for vengeance is understandable.

Vengeance is central to Hag-Seed as well, and Felix at times is also monstrous in his pursuit of it. But his all-consuming need for vengeance doesn’t hold up. Felix exiled himself. Miranda was already dead, so her life was never at risk. If Felix’s life was in danger, he did it to himself. His desire for vengeance, which drives the plot, is gratuitous. Ultimately, and sadly, so is Hag-Seed.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Getting Mom Fixed

In The School for Good Mothers Jessamine Chan borrows from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to create a story that is new and disturbing. It’s a success.

The book opens chillingly when Frida is informed by voicemail message “We have your daughter.” Frida is having “one very bad day.” She has left Harriet, her 18 month old daughter, alone at home for a few hours, and the police have been called. Now child protective services is involved, and this admittedly terrible decision changes Frida’s and Harriet’s lives. “Mommy is on time-out.” That’s how it’s explained to Harriet. The truth is far worse. Frida has been deemed a bad mother, and she has been given the “opportunity” to go to The School for Good Mothers – an experimental one year rehabilitation program where Frida will be “fixed” (neutered?). Her parental rights are at stake, so failure has real consequences.

Motherhood has been unexpectedly difficult for Frida. “She thought that becoming a mother would mean joining a community, but the mothers she’s met are as petty as newly minted sorority sisters, a self appointed task force hewing to a maternal hard line.” It does not help that her husband has a young girlfriend and wants a divorce. Additionally, Frida is something of an outsider. She’s a first generation Chinese-American, so she is constantly battling stereotypes and covert (sometimes overt) racism.

The School for Good Mothers is a typical bureaucracy. So it’s a nightmare. When Frida informs a doctor that a mistake has been made, the response is “Oh, no. That’s not possible. We don’t make mistakes.” I say that about myself all the time. Doesn’t mean it’s true. The “bad” mothers must repeat demeaning mantras (“I am a bad mother, but I am learning to be good”) because monotony, nonsense, and humiliation will obviously make them good. Punishments are arbitrary and petty. Sometimes they’re just cruel.

As Frida soon realizes, nothing they learn relates to real life. That’s unhelpful, but it’s worse. It’s nonsense. “A mother is always patient. A mother is always kind. A mother is always giving. A mother never falls apart. A mother is the buffer between her child and the cruel world.” Unsurprisingly, the instructors spewing this crap aren’t mothers themselves.

The School for Good Mothers is soul crushing, but the story allows Ms. Chan to eviscerate society’s lies about motherhood. The school is bad, but the mothers aren’t. Some of them are desperate. Some do need help. But some just had a bad day. Society’s response is disproportionate and devastating.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

The Testaments – Why, Margaret, Why?

Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments begs many questions.

Such as how did it become the joint winner of the 2019 Man Booker Prize? Did the committee hate Bernardine Evaristo so much that they simply couldn’t stand making her book (Girl, Woman, Other) the sole winner?

Did the committee actually read The Testaments, or were they simply relying on Margaret Atwood’s reputation?

How mad were Colson Whitehead (The Nickel Boys), Susan Choi (Trust Exercise), and Ian McEwan (Machines Like Me) when the prize was announced?

Were James Patterson, E.L. James, and my Uncle Bill on the committee that year?

Did Margaret Atwood really write The Testaments? Or was it written by a Russian hacker who stole her identity but forgot to also take her brilliance?

Did this book need to be written? Isn’t any sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale (regardless of whether it is written by the real Margaret Atwood or not) bound to disappoint?

Why are the characters one dimensional and without nuance? Why is the plot predictable? Why are all the twists straight lines?

Did she write the book because the creators of The Handmaid’s Tale TV show needed more material – so they paid her a ton of money to do it?

Just because you own a cash cow, do you have to milk it?

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor