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Univ. of St. Thomas requires freshmen to read Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”
Here is a dreadful story from Lifesite about something that ought to bother everyone, not only Catholics.
Let’s not have university students at a Catholic school read important literature… oh no. Not something like Brideshead Revisited or Don Quixote or The Red Horse or The Canterbury Tales. No.. no… Let’s have them read a second rate novella.
Minneapolis Catholic College Requires Reading of Sexually Explicit Anti-Catholic Novel – A Handmaid’s TaleBy Hilary White
ST. PAUL, Minneapolis, October 11, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Catholic parents of students at a Catholic college in Minneapolis are outraged that their children will be forced to read the sexually explicit and anti-Christian novel, A Handmaid’s Tale by Canadian author and far-left feminist Margaret Atwood. The English Department’s faculty at the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minneapolis, has voted to use the book in all sections of freshman English as this year’s “common text”.
Catholic columnist Matt C. Abbott has reported that concerned parents have informed the university of their objections and been ignored. The group has formed to convince the university administration to drop the “sexually offensive” book and reform its English curriculum in favour of more serious literature.
Atwood is known in Canada as a major figure in the ultra-feminist, anti-religious and largely state-funded literary establishment. When it was first published by McClelland and Stewart in 1985, the book was heavily criticized, largely outside Canada, as an anti-Christian screed relying for its appeal on the titillation provided by its frequent expletives and graphically depicted sex-acts, and a heavy-handed feminist ideology.
Despite this, the book remains at the top of charts in literary circles and has received and been nominated for numerous literary awards, including the prestigious Booker Prize. It is featured as part of the high school literature curricula in the UK, the US, Germany and Australia. It has been listed as No.37 on the “100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000” by the American Library Association, as parents continue to object to its anti-Christian and sexual content.
The parents’ group, UST Class Action, says the book has no place on the curriculum of a Catholic university. They are seeking not only to have the book removed from the curriculum, but for the university to apologise and review and reform its policy. They accuse the university of deliberately choosing the book for its “anti-Christian/anti-Catholic indoctrination value”.
UST Class Action calls the book “insultingly vulgar, boorish and obscene.” The story of A Handmaid’s Tale revolves around an oppressive right-wing Christian totalitarian state in which women are forbidden to be educated, work, hold property or vote. They are separated, according to their fertility and social status, into three classes: wives, domestic servants and “handmaids” who are used as breeding stock for the ruling class of white Christian men. The story follows the adventures of “Offred” a handmaid who is given as a state benefit to a member of the elite and ritualistically raped to produce a male heir. Handmaids who attempt to resist or escape are publicly excuted as enemies of the state along with abortionists and homosexuals.
UST Class Action says, “Reading and analyzing this book is a profligate waste of the parent’s or student’s money, and a waste of the student’s time. It cheats the students of a truly quality education that includes great Western literature by Plato, Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, [and] Chesterton”.
The group wrote to the chairman of the English Department, Andrew Scheiber, on September 4, 2007. They were told that the objections were brought to the attention of Father Dennis Dease, the President of St. Thomas University who “said he would not intervene”. The group is taking their concerns to the university’s Board of Trustees.
Visit the UST Class Action website [Warning: site contains excerpts of book’s graphic content]
http://www.ustclassaction.com
GO TEAM! SINK THAT POLICY!
This is not the first year in which a dreadful book has been foisted on the students.
| 2007 | Margaret Atwood | The Handmaid’s Tale |
| 2006 | Barbara Ehrenreich | Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America |
| 2005 | Michelle Cliff | Abeng |
| 2004 | Ariel Dorfman | Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey |
| 2003 | Ralph Ellison | Invisible Man |
| 2002 | Olaudah Equiano | The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself |
| 2001 | Louise Erdrich | The Antelope Wife |
| 2000 | Oscar Hijuelos | Mr. Ives’ Christmas |
| 1999 | Mark Doty | Heaven’s Coast: A Memoir |
| 1998 | Maxine Hong Kingston | The Woman Warrior |
| 1997 | Sandra Cisneros | The House on Mango Street |
| 1996 | Mike Rose | Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America’s Educationally Unprepared |
| 1995 | Carlos Fuentes | The Old Gringo |
| 1994 | Toni Morrison | Beloved |
| 1993 | Bharati Mukherjee | Jasmine |
| 1992 | Rudolfo Anaya | Bless Me, Ultima |
| 1991 | Toni Morrison | Beloved |
| 1990 | Louise Erdrich | Tracks |
| 1989 | Homer | The Odyssey [How did this moment of sanity happen?] |
| 1988 | Nadine Gordimer | July’s People |
| 1987 | Flannery O’Connor | Wise Blood |
| 1986 | Eudora Welty | The Optimist’s Daughter |
| 1985 | William Faulker | Light in August |
Everyone… right now… stop what you are doing and say a prayer that they will review and revise the policy.
MEMORARE, O piissima Virgo Maria,non esse auditum a saeculo, quemquam ad tua currentem praesidia,
tua implorantem auxilia, tua petentem suffragia,
esse derelictum.
Ego tali animatus confidentia,
ad te, Virgo Virginum, Mater,
curro, ad te venio, coram te gemens peccator assisto.
Noli, Mater Verbi,
verba mea despicere;
sed audi propitia et exaudi.
Amen.
In English translation, the prayer is:
Remember, O Most Gracious Virgin Mary,that never was it known that anyone who fled to Thy protection,
implored Thy help or sought Thy intercession,
was left unaided.
Inspired by this confidence,
I fly unto Thee, O Virgin of Virgins, my Mother;
to Thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful.
O Mother of the Word Incarnate,
despise not my petitions,
but in Thy clemency, hear and answer me.
Amen.
College? Heck, my little sister was required to read that for her HIGH SCHOOL Advanced Literature class….
I read it out of curiousity… waste of time is a good description.
Comment by Jenny Z — 13 October 2007 @ 11:27 amI wasn’t forced to read that one in high school as many of my Canadian friends were, but instead got Margaret Laurence’s dreadful “The Stone Angel.” I did see Handmaid’s Tale as an opera set by the COC, and didn’t particularly care for it. I much prefer Robertson Davies…
Comment by TO — 13 October 2007 @ 11:53 amMy High School Literature class was based around Atwood. I had assumed when I signed up for the course that we would be reading the classics- instead, as I learned on the first day of classes, the provincial school board wished to “expand our minds” with unconventional pieces and authors. Pretty much the same thing happened in all my English classes throughout High School- we had the mandatory play by Shakespeare, sometimes a “conventional” piece, such as Death of a Salesman or To kill a Mockingbird, but always with the radical stuff, like Atwood.
Sad. Schools need to be teaching the classics of literature- Homer, Virgil, Horace, Dante, Chaucer…
Comment by Jonathan Bennett — 13 October 2007 @ 11:54 amThe Odyssey [How did this moment of sanity happen?]
Could there be a radical feminist version of The Odyssey that we’re unaware of?
Comment by Henry Edwards — 13 October 2007 @ 11:57 amI’ve read it, and it’s garbage. Fortunately, it’s so obviously garbage that any college student with half a brain will be able to identify it as such. On the other hand, a freshman English instructor at a Jesuit colege in the 1970s made us read “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”, and I was the only student in the class who thought that reading it was a waste of a perfectly good hour of my life. I had to pay $12.00 (in 1971 dollars) for the damned thing, too.
Comment by Michael R. — 13 October 2007 @ 12:08 pmMr. Edwards asks if there could be a feminist “Odyssey.” Why of course! By our dear Ms. Atwood herself:
:-)
http://www.amazon.com/Penelopiad-Myth-Penelope-Odysseus-Myths/dp/1841957178
Comment by Ronald McCloskey — 13 October 2007 @ 12:11 pmWhile the University of Dayton does something similar, they only use the book during freshman orientation. Beyond that, it’s unread.
Comment by Andy K. — 13 October 2007 @ 12:14 pmI did my PhD work in American lit. in the 90’s. There was one constant in literary studies at the time: no reading list approved unless it had works from racial minorities and gay/les/trans on it. It didn’t matter who you put on the list or what work of theirs you chose…the only question asked: where’s the black woman and the gay guy? To even suggest that we choose lit based on some objective literary criteria was heresy. It was all about politics, politics, politics. I’m sorry to see that our Catholic universities have fallen for this nonsense. Anyone wanting a good, solid education in the western tradition, come to the University of Dallas. You can take Literary Tradition with me in the spring! Fr. Philip, OP
Comment by PNP, OP — 13 October 2007 @ 12:53 pmHold up now…”Wiseblood” (and Flannery O’Connor in general, along with Walker Percy and Thomas Merton) is EXACTLY the kind of stuff that needs to be taught in our Catholic Colleges…Modern Catholic voices who are not closet Episcopalians…O’Connor was a life long devout Roman Catholic growing up in and writing about the anti-Catholic South…a woman who defended the Real Presence by stating “Well if it’s a symbol then to Hell with it…that was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.”
JLD
To lump her in the same pile as Margaret Atwood is ludicrous.
Comment by Jean-Delacroix — 13 October 2007 @ 1:06 pmThe book listed for the previous year is Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.” I’ve read this book, and would personally recommend it to others, as a commentary on the challenge of a large segment of the American population in earning a living wage, the endeavor of which is a tenet of Catholic social teaching. If you’ve never had to clean toilets, wait tables, or stock shelves for a living, you’d be wise to learn how “the other half” is forced to live.
That’s at least one more “moment of sanity” accounted for.
Comment by David L Alexander — 13 October 2007 @ 1:43 pmMy freshman year at St. Thomas I had to read the same book. Please PRAY for the University of St. Thomas. There is a real conflict on campus and it seems that the faculty are polarized. It is a conflict between the reign of Christ the King, and the “spirit of the world” with its modern liberal relativism. At times the university seems poised for a grass-roots renewal of Catholic identity, but this renewal is vigorously opposed by liberal sectors. These sectors want to define Catholic identity as refering primarily to having elements of an intellectual tradition but basically open to all ideologies, rather than a safe place within the kingdom of Christ to engage the liberal arts. The real issue seems to be spiritual. The year perpetual (more or less) Eucharistic adoration was introduced appeared to be a year of unprecedented ideological conflict, and it is hard for me to see this as coincidental. It seems that there are significant groups of students dedicated to a Catholic renewal and very signifant groups who, as typical college students, are not so concerned. Then there are smaller but aggressive groups of students opposed. However the faculty is another story (and they are not without a hand in fomenting the aggressively opposed student groups). They seem to be compartmentalized and clearly divided. These divisions have gone so far that some professors post ideological messages from their office windows, or wear ideological lapel pins. There are also appears to be quiet conflicts in acceptance and the preservation of faculty. There are rumors that there have been attempts by one or other sector to inflitrate the other. But in the end it really seems to be a spiritual conflict. Please pray for the University of St. Thomas, and pray for Fr. Dease. This is certainly an issue related to the salvation of souls, as many freshman enter somewhat clueless in this area, and are shaped (I know that college students are supposed to be critical and intellegent, but human nature is what it is) by what they encounter at the university. A.M.D.G.
Comment by Mark — 13 October 2007 @ 2:05 pmDavid,
Ehrenreich is a socialist, a Marxist. It’s one thing to have sympathy and appreciation for the lower classes and the work they do, it’s quite another to demand that the state give them a more comfortable lifestyle with someone elses hard earned money. Ehrenreich came to speak at my commencement ceremony last year. Everything she said was watered down communism. She’s not an ecomonist and doesn’t realize that raising the minimum wage only hurts the poor, and she is by no means a Christian. Marxist economic theory is incompatible with Christianity.
Comment by Michael — 13 October 2007 @ 3:56 pmMichael:
I am familiar with the other views espoused by Ehrenreich. My endorsement was confined to the book alone. The case could also be made, and has been by more than one pope (and Bishop Sheen on television in the 1950s, as I remember), that unchecked capitalism is also incompatible with Christianity.
Comment by David L Alexander — 13 October 2007 @ 4:50 pmYou know, I like Flannery O’Connor’s work, and I realize she was a devout Catholic at a time and place where that wasn’t exactly fashionable, but I don’t like Wise Blood at all and would never recommend it to anyone.
Comment by dcs — 13 October 2007 @ 5:48 pmWise Blood
Read it many times – an excellent story and more wonderful after every read. This woman was/is a saint in my mind. (Walker Percy freaks me out – in a good way.)
m
Comment by mike — 13 October 2007 @ 6:27 pmNote the date when Flannery O’Connor was read—1987—20 years ago. Since then most of the works listed here are feminist-post-colonial-gay-lesbian-transgendered-poke
asharp-stick-in-the-tradition’s-eye sorts of stuff. Sure, O’Connor is a classic, faithful Christian writer. But she hasn’t been read in