"1984," "Brave New World," "The Handmaid's Tale": In Canada, author Margaret Atwood overturns censorship of literary classics
The Alberta government wanted to remove novels deemed "explicit," including "1984" and " Brave New World," from school libraries. Canadian author Margaret Atwood tweeted out against the censorship, prompting the government to suspend its plans.
A tweet can make a government back down. Canadian author Margaret Atwood (world-renowned for her dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale , in which a totalitarian regime enslaves women in the United States) has just demonstrated this.
While the Premier of the province of Alberta, Danielle Smith, decided at the end of July to remove from school libraries works containing an "explicit description of a sexual act" , on the grounds of combating pornography, the writer expressed outrage at the concrete effects of this measure.
Because nearly 200 books were threatened by this law, which was due to be implemented on October 1. Novels such as Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1984 by George Orwell, and The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood were included on the list of novels to be banned from libraries.
Faced with this censorship of works that invite us to think freely about the world, the writer accused the government of taking high school students for "stupid babies" , while publishing on Twitter a mocking story in which "Jean and Marie had five children without ever having sexual relations" and lived happily, believing themselves to be good Christians while practicing "rapacious and selfish capitalism" .
The tale ends with Danielle Smith wearing the dress of the slaves from The Handmaid's Tale . The Prime Minister and her government, stung to the quick and perhaps overwhelmed by the reactionary lobbies putting pressure on high schools, have, following this message, suspended their project "until further notice" , assuring that only pornography (but is there really any in high schools?) should be targeted and not "literary classics" .
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