Consider the Alternatives: Teaching liberal feminism through Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale"

Abstract

This essay focuses on the implementation of fundamental values mentioned in the Swedish curricula in the English language classroom with the help of literature. More specifically, the essay focuses on the ideas of everyone’s equal value and right to the same opportunities, considered here to be a liberal feminist value, and how this may be discussed with the help of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, an arguably liberal feminist novel. The novel’s focus on oppression in many forms – based on gender, economic class and profession, for instance – makes it a suitable tool in helping students understand and expose oppressing structures both within the novel and in society. The aim of this essay is to provide concrete examples of these structures within The Handmaid’s Tale, and to argue the case for such themes to be discussed in the Swedish school system.