Are you 'free from', or 'free to'?

Exploring the nuances of freedom

How free are we really?

This was the focus of last month’s Inquiry of Reading—an online, monthly event that uses literature as a launch pad for exploration about what it is to be human. I’m excited to host this new venture because literature—rather like a good question—is a powerful tool for insight and transformation. For Inquiry of Reading, participants gather from across the globe and this feels to me to be especially important: it allows for a sharing of perspectives that is shaped by our different cultural experiences.

When it comes to freedom, no-one writes more compellingly than Margaret Atwood, whose 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale (broadly described as ‘dystopian’, or sometimes as ‘speculative fiction’) was our novel for exploration last month.

I first read The Handmaid’s Tale as an undergraduate: a Dr Martens-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 so 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 grind you down.  

Subversive text, secret code. It is the only choice Offred 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 who ‘own’ them: they are housed, fed and clothed. But the price they pay is to be infantilised, exploited and imprisoned. 

Freedom from does not equal freedom to.

Photo by Hanna Zhyhar on Unsplash

Freedom from = empowerment

What does this ‘freedom from’ look like in our lives? It might involve releasing ourselves from old habits or structures; from concerns about the ways other people judge us; from self-sabotage; from limiting thoughts about what we’re capable of doing in the world.

Freedom to = abundance

And how do we experience ‘freedom to’? It might be 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 pleasure and ease. 

Of course, it’s never linear. We journey back and forth between these states of being, these different relationships with (and to, and from) freedom. 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’—but other things got in the way. I kept myself small. I limited my creative vision. I listened too closely to the critical voices: my own 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.

These days, I feel more often in possession of agency and freedom to express (rather than just freedom from other people’s stories). For me, writing is a way to explore the key issues and challenges that define my life. In Agatha, the central character of my audio drama The Cloistered Soul (which was commissioned and broadcast by the BBC), I see my own path.

At the end of the 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 (re)write your story?

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Are you curious about how literature might prompt questions about life?

Come and join us each month for Inquiry of Reading! For our next gathering, we’ll be looking at Mohsin Hamid’s The Last White Man, a fable about racial identity, loss and power. The word to focus our discussion will be transformation.

We meet next on Sunday 24 September between 4pm and 4.45pm UK time. It’s free, online and open to all. Best of all, there’s no prior reading or preparation involved (I share a short extract for us to discuss)—so if you don’t have time to read the book, you can still benefit from coming along, gleaning insights from others and sharing your ideas.

You can find out more about it, and book your place (via Eventbrite), here.