Born in 1939 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Margaret Atwood worked as a cashier, waitress, market research writer and film script writer before publishing her own poetry in 1961. The publication of The Edible Woman in 1969 won her fame as a novelist. Atwood's novels became part of a new wave of fiction writing by feminists who wrote both to entertain and to dramatize the plight of women. In 1986 Atwood published The Handmaid's Tale. In part, the novel was a response to the decade's rise of right-wing politicians and preachers who had fomented a backlash against the gains made by the feminist movement in the 1960s and '70s.
Feminism before the 1960s. After women gained the vote in Canada in 1918 and in the United States in 1920, the feminist consciousness seemed eclipsed by other issues. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, clamor for economic reform took precedence over questions of discrimination, and during World War II, women, whether feminists or not, joined the work force as men left their jobs to fight overseas. During the late 1940s and the 1950s, most women across North America returned to the traditional gender roles of mother and housewife.
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