Mod A – Tempest & Hag-Seed – Essay 19/20

Resource Description

How does Atwood’s Hag-seed explore notions of control and liberation in textual conversation with Shakespeare’s The Tempest? (20 marks)

Texts are a product of their socio-cultural context whose meaning is shaped by ideologies of their period. However, the reimagining of texts through distinct lens allows for an enhanced understanding of ideas of control and liberation as they are mirrored and contrasted in
conversation. Textual conversations with Shakespeare’s play The Tempest (1610-1611) is initiated by Margaret Atwood’s 2016 novel Hag-seed to consider common resonances and dissonances to reshape meaning. The significance of Jacobean religious beliefs in Shakespeare’s context as a factor of control and influence on the individual is translated to action of folly in Atwood’s relatively secular context. Similarly notions of colonisations as an inhibition to liberation is mirrored by Atwood’s insight into human self-determination as a universal trait from a postcolonial lens.

Shakespeare demonstrates the notion of control as an imposition of the contextual presence of religion over an individual’s action. Gonzalo’s juxtaposing assertion to “weigh…our sorrows with comfort” relies on an understanding of Jacobean religious beliefs to characterise the
optimistic Gonzalo for the salvation within suffering. However, these values are jeopardised in Antonio’s metatheatricality in his belief that “what’s past is prologue” wherein values of predestination endemic to Elizabethan Protestantism is used to justify the murder of Alonso.