| Although most of Margaret Atwood's works explore feminist themes, her dystopic novels in particular offer a unique lens to further understand and explore her ideas and in particular, the intersections between power and gender. Atwood's own reflections on power relations bear an uncanny resemblance to Michel Foucault's thoughts and analysis on the dynamics and implications of power, particularly in Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality Volume I. For example, Atwood claims: "power is our environment. We live surrounded by it; it pervades everything we are and do" (qtd in Somacarrera 43). In his The History of Sexuality Volume I, Foucault asserts a similar argument and therefore both Atwood and Foucault describe power as ubiquitous. Three of Atwood's dystopic novels, The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake and The Year of The Flood, provide fertile ground for tracing the connections between Atwood's and Foucault's analyses of power, resistance, and identity. |
