Freedom from and freedom to

What does freedom mean to you?

For me, no-one writes more compellingly about freedom (especially female freedom) than Margaret Atwood. I first read her dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale when I was a Dr Marten-wearing, charity-shop-outfitted twenty-something. I was studying literature and full of youthful feminist fire and the book spoke to me—as it has to many through the decades—of the consequences of repression and control of the female body. Despite the constraints of a repressive regime, Atwood’s central character, Offred, shows remarkable fortitude. She is not deterred by her lack of choices. Her spirit and desire to communicate remain. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, she writes, in Latin, in a hidden corner of her closet. Don’t let the bastards get you down.  

Subversive text, secret code. It is the only choice she has for self-expression.

Close though dystopian fiction can sometimes be to ‘real life’, if you are free to read this, you are not subject to a totalitarian regime (this is with the acknowledgement that there is heinous oppression in some parts of the world—and how fortunate are we, not to be?). Nevertheless, Atwood’s novel cautions against taking that freedom for granted. Aunt Lydia, one of the women conscripted to ‘educate’ the young women in the new regime, says this: 

‘There is more than one kind of freedom—freedom to, and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it.’

The irony, of course, is that Offred and the other female characters in the novel have no ‘freedom from’ anything whatsoever. They may be taken care of in the homes of the Commanders: housed, fed and clothed. But the price they pay is to be infantilised, exploited and imprisoned. 

Freedom from does not equal freedom to.

Image: Roger Bygott

Freedom from = empowerment

This might look like: releasing ourselves from old habits or structures; from concerns about the ways other people might judge us; from self-sabotage; from limiting thoughts about what we’re capable of doing in the world.

Freedom to = abundance

The ability to speak and act from our truth; the joy of experiencing growth; expansiveness of creative flow; permission to dream; the imagination to call in yet more pleasure and ease. 

Back when I first read The Handmaid’s Tale, full of optimism for the future, I imagined my whole life would be defined by ‘freedom to.’ Other things got in the way, though. I kept myself small. I limited my creative vision. I listened too closely to the critical voices—the internal ones, as well as those on the outside.

Once I accepted that I was the owner of my own stories, I was free to change them. Like Agatha, the central character of my audio drama, The Cloistered Soul (broadcast on BBC Radio 4), I now have more agency and freedom to express (rather than just freedom from other people’s stories). At the end of my play, Agatha makes the choice to leave the religious order and the faith that has constrained her. ‘This is me,’ she says—in the final line as she walks decisively away from the convent to which she has dedicated her life—‘rewriting my story.’

‘Freedom from’ or ‘freedom to’? How will you edit your script?