Rejecting Gilead, Embracing Carson

Review by Bill Doughty––

Retired Admiral James Stavridis writes this about author and environmentalist Rachel Carson, author of “The Sea Around Us”: “I’ve read many, many books that try to describe the power and glory of the deep ocean, but none eclipses the writing of Rachel Carson.”

Stavridis offers that highest praise to Carson in the first part of his four-part collection, “The Sailor’s Bookshelf,” reviewed late last year on Navy Reads. Great writers are drawn to other great writers.

Such is the case of Margaret Atwood, who also highlights Rachel Carson’s “The Sea Around Us” (as well as three other classics, including “Silent Spring”) in the final essay of her latest collection: “Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces 2004 to 2021.”

Just as Stavridis and Carson believe, Atwood writes, “The oceans are the living heart and lungs of our planet. They produce most of the oxygen in our atmosphere, and through their circulating currents they control climate. Without healthy oceans, we land-dwelling, air-breathing mid-sized primates will die.”

In her 2021 essay “The Sea Trilogy,” Atwood celebrates the republication of Carson’s first three books –– “Under the Sea-Wind,” “The Sea Around Us,” and “The Edge of the Sea.”

Atwood writes: “In all three of these books there is one underlying refrain: Look, see. Observe. Learn. Wonder. Question. Conclude. Rachel Carson taught people to look at the sea, and to think about the sea, in fresh ways.”

Atwood herself is perhaps best known for her fresh observations about the rise of authoritarianism and her imaginings of what might come. She is the author of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Testaments.” She’s the mind behind the demented mind of Aunt Lydia and the darkness of Gilead. Her concern about the rise of authoritarianism continues.

In the midst of the COVID pandemic, she reflected, “Totalitarianisms were preoccupying me; the worldwide drift in that direction was alarming, as were various authoritarian moves made in the United States. Were we yet again witnessing the crumbling of democracy?”

Two years earlier Atwood wrote a scathing essay called “A Slave State” about the effects of restricting reproductive freedom and a woman’s right to an abortion. Here’s a timely excerpt, in light of today’s United States Supreme Court ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade after fifty years as established precedent in U.S. law:

“Nobody likes abortion, even when safe and legal. It’s not what any woman would choose for a happy time on Saturday night. But nobody likes women bleeding to death on the bathroom floor from illegal abortions either. What to do?

“Perhaps a different way of approaching the question would be to ask: What kind of country do you want to live in? One in which every individual is free to make decisions concerning his or her health and body, or one in which half the population is free and the other half is enslaved?

“Women who cannot make their own decisions about whether or not to have babies are enslaved because the state claims ownership of their bodies and the right to dictate the use to which their bodies must be put. The only similar circumstance of men is conscription into the army…

“No one is forcing women to have abortions. No one either should force them to undergo childbirth.“

In a gripping 2015 essay, “Reflections on The Handmaid’s Tale,” Atwood writes this:

“As a generalization, let us say this: absolutist governments have always taken an inordinate interest in the reproductive capabilities of women. In fact, human societies have taken such an interest. Who shall have babies, which babies shall be ‘legitimate,’ which shall be allowed to live, and which shall be killed (in ancient Rome it was up tot he father, etc.), whether abortion shall be allowed or not, or up to what month; wither women should be forced to have babies they didn’t want or couldn’t support, and so forth.”

While many fundamentalists want to restrict a woman’s right to choose, most Americans, according to numerous polls, are not in favor of overturning 1973’s Roe v. Wade. As today’s SCOTUS decision sinks in, so does anger and resentment.

Atwood discusses the anger she witnessed in the early 1970s, “at the time of the second-wave feminist movement.”

Atwood and Le Guin

In her 2018 obituary essay “We Lost Ursula Le Guin When We Needed Her Most,” Atwood turns to Le Guin to explain the outrage women felt after decades of “suppressed anger” from “being treated as lesser –– much lesser…” Atwood quotes from Le Guin’s 2014 essay, “About Anger”:

“Anger is a useful, perhaps indispensable tool in motivating resistance to injustice. But I think it is a a weapon –– a tool useful only in combat and self-defence … Anger points powerfully to the denial of rights, but the exercise of rights can’t live and thrive on anger. It lives and thrives on the dogged pursuit of justice … Valued as an end in itself, it loses its goal. It fuels not positive activism but regression, obsession, vengeance, self-righteousness.”

About Le Guin, Atwood writes, “The long-term goal, the dogged pursuit of justice –– that took up a lot of her thought and time.”

Le Guin was a premiere voice in science fiction and speculative fantasy. She's the author of "The Left Hand of Darkness" and the "Earthsea" series.

Atwood’s collection of essays is a tribute to a wide spectrum of iterature and free-thinking wisdom. Readers will be rewarded with deep dives into the works of Shakespeare, Alice Munro, Ray Bradbury, Gabrielle Roy, Homer, Dickens, Graeme Gibson, Richard Powers, and, of course, Rachel Carson.