Many post-apocalyptic visions of the future do not recognize the existence of women’s reproductive autonomy. When the continued propagation of the human race is at stake, pregnancy seems to become both unavoidable and newly desirable to female characters. Carrying children becomes the fictional woman’s obligatory biological occupation, and it does not matter whether her pre-apocalypse-self was characterized as wanting, or even thinking about children. The pregnant woman, or the mother with a young child, is a symbol of hope for the survival of humanity – whether she has a say in the matter or not. In many cases, this serves as a cover of sorts for hetero-masculine power fantasy: before the apocalypse, the beautiful woman might have denied the male access to her body, but now she is super pumped to have his babies.
Post-apocalyptic narratives are typically characterized as a vehicle for dismantling contemporary societal structures and norms, but so often they seem used instead to reinforce traditional gender roles, heteronormativity, and patriarchal family constructs. Perhaps as if to say that if an apocalyptic event occurred, it would restore what was ‘supposed’ to be the ‘natural’ order of things. In Stephen King’s post-apocalyptic novel The Stand, pregnant heroine Frannie makes depressing commentary on this phenomenon when she says, “Women were at the mercy of their bodies. They were smaller. They tended to be weaker. A man couldn’t get with child, but a woman could—every four-year-old knows it. And a pregnant woman is a vulnerable human being. Civilization had provided an umbrella of sanity that both sexes could stand beneath” (King 648). Men in such narratives are glorified for being violent, emotionally-callous survivalists; women become vulnerable vessels who require protection, and must bear and raise the next generation as their duty to the human race.
Into this longstanding tradition comes Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam. It makes little commentary on it, and in some ways, I felt, really reinforced this played-out reinforcement of gender roles in post-apocalyptic fiction. She plays the trope straight: all female characters who can get pregnant, do get pregnant. The characters are paired off into heterosexual, monogamous family units – unless, of course, they are killed off. Worse, Amanda expresses repeatedly that she does not want to carry her pregnancy to term, and Toby pretty much ignores her, and then the situation is simply dropped, and never addressed again within the narrative. The next time it’s brought up is to say that Amanda gave birth and apparently this is a happy ending. No matter that we never see any indication of her changing her mind, that she doesn’t want the child. No matter that it is an especially dangerous pregnancy (with a Craker baby!) that could easily have killed her in childbirth – an early-term, plant-induced (the “herbs” Toby mentions knowing about) abortion might have been LESS dangerous, without modern medicine so many women die in childbirth in the best of circumstances! Amanda is never allowed a decision other than giving birth, and the question of abortion is placed entirely in Toby’s hands, excluding Amanda entirely. And when Toby decides to do nothing (not even to discuss it with Amanda, to run down her options!), there is never any discourse about it in the text. This makes it all too clear that in Atwood’s post-apocalyptic world, like so many others, reproductive choice no longer exists.
