{"id":11754,"date":"2019-05-10T14:38:07","date_gmt":"2019-05-10T18:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=11754"},"modified":"2019-05-29T18:58:38","modified_gmt":"2019-05-29T22:58:38","slug":"handmaids-tale-walking-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/05\/10\/handmaids-tale-walking-tour\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Handmaid\u2019s Tale\u2019: A Walking Tour Of The Novel\u2019s Cambridge Settings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Margaret Atwood was living in West Berlin in 1984, the city still divided by the Berlin Wall, when she began writing the story of Christian fundamentalists who assassinate the president to reshape American society to repress women, the story of Offred, a woman trapped in this misogynist dystopia.<\/p>\n

It became Atwood\u2019s 1985 novel \u201cThe Handmaid\u2019s Tale.\u201d \u201cThe immediate location of the book,\u201d she wrote in The New York Times<\/a> in 2017, \u201cis Cambridge, Mass., home of Harvard University, now a leading liberal educational institution but once a Puritan theological seminary.\u201d<\/p>\n

I decided to track down the story\u2019s settings. Significant portions of the book recount the characters walking Cambridge. So I assembled this walking tour below, following in the footsteps of the fictional Offred around Cambridge\u2019s real Harvard Square and surrounding communities: \u201cI open the front gate and close it behind me, looking down but not back. The sidewalk is red brick.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Aunt<\/a>
Aunt Lydia (Caroline Worra) leads the handmaids in Boston Lyric Opera\u2019s production of \u201cThe Handmaid\u2019s Tale,\u201d running through May 12, 2019. (Photo: Liza Voll)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe Handmaid\u2019s Tale\u201d has become a sensation since its adaption as a Hulu television series (pictured at top), which debuted in 2017. The third season is scheduled to debut on June 5, 2019.<\/p>\n

And Boston Lyric Opera is performing an opera adaptation of the book<\/a>, written by Danish composer Poul Ruders and librettist Paul Bentley in 2000, with newly revised orchestration commissioned by the Boston company, on Friday, May 10, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, May 12, at 3 p.m. They\u2019re staging it at Harvard\u2019s Lavietes Pavilion in Allston, \u201ca basketball gymnasium that recalls the book\u2019s fictional \u2018Red Center\u2019 [re-education facility] and numerous other locations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Cambridge<\/a>
Cambridge sign in Harvard Square, Cambridge, May 9, 2019. (Greg Cook) Cambridge, May 9, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIn a way, \u2018The Handmaid\u2019s Tale\u2019 is my book about my [Amerian Puritan] ancestors,\u201d Atwood wrote in her essay \u201cWriting Utopia\u201d<\/a> about the origins of \u201cThe Handmaid\u2019s Tale\u201d in her 2005 nonfiction collection \u201cWriting With Intent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Atwood did graduate studies at Radcliffe College in 1962\u2014including research into \u201cmy New England ancestors as well as the Salem witchcraft trials.\u201d Her English forebearers settled in Massachusetts and New Hampshire until the American Revolution, when they sided with the Loyalists. When that didn\u2019t work out so well, they went into exile in Nova Scotia.<\/p>\n

“You often hear in North America, ‘It can’t happen here,’ but it happened quite early on,\u201d Atwood told The New York Times<\/a> in 1986. \u201cThe Puritans banished people who didn’t agree with them. So we would be rather smug to assume that the seeds are not there. That’s why I set the book in Cambridge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople think of Harvard as the home of liberal democracy, but in fact in the 17th century it was the home of a theocracy, so I thought it would be salutary to set it here, and anyway it was funny,\u201d Atwood told The Harvard Crimson<\/a> in 2013. \u201cHarvard was not originally amused by it. They were not amused by the bodies hanging on the Harvard wall. They were a bit sniffy about it when they reviewed it. They\u2019ve come ’round. They\u2019ve come ’round.\u201d<\/p>\n

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