
Everyone knows a classic fairytale and the messages they seek to portray, but what happens when your traditional fairytale is forced to come to terms with societal pressures of today? Margaret Atwood is a very influential author who shines light upon many societal problems by using a very unorthodox approach to convey messages about the unrealistic expectations set forth by society and mainstream media. She is mainly a fictional author who usually uses her stories to highlight a specific gender role but also writes as a political poet to convey her message, as is the case in her poem “There Was Once.” In this poem she starts it as any normal fairy tale would with a very a generic opening but it quickly develops into a dialogue between two characters. The main author who starts to write the fairy tale is being critiqued about his opening line about how it does not show the true light of what society is like. The poem is formatted in such a way that it forces the issues that Atwood wants to highlight by having the confrontational character being very straightforward and honest while the author of the original story is passive and mends his story to how the other character want it. The formatting specifically highlights the problems that Atwood wants us to see but it goes on to show how society as whole is responsible for these problems.

The poem starts out by the author of the fairytale saying, “there was once a poor girl, as beautiful as she was good, who lived with her wicked stepmother in a house in the forest”(511). Immediately, the other character challenges this statement by saying that the forest is not the correct image of our society and that it needs to be portrayed in an urban setting to properly show what society is like. Atwood’s use of irony here is very intriguing because although her meaning is very straightforward in the sense that yes, a forest is not an accurate interpretation of society now and an urban setting would be better suited, but the original author was simply trying to tell a story that would teach a lesson, not trying to portray today’s society. This confrontation in the poem between the author and the other character highlights the first problem of today’s society, how rude and brash people can be. The character commentating on the original story is not polite in any way and simply butts in and attempts to correct the author. The author feeling overwhelmed with the situation simply corrects his opening line and replaces the word forest with suburbs. Atwood did an amazing job showing how an overbearing individual can completely silence those who may not have the will power to stand up for themselves. Right away, even with this slight change in the author’s story, his message has already been skewed and simply because of the other ill-mannered character.

Atwood continues to highlight how society is responsible for making those who don’t have everything, have nothing at all when in fact the term poor is all relative. The author telling the fairytale calls the girl poor in the first line stated above and defends himself by stating, “the whole point of the story is that the wicked stepmother makes her wear old clothes and sleep in the fireplace”(511). The character critiquing the author now follows up by saying to, “come down to the park, come to the subway stations after dark, come down to where they sleep in cardboard boxes”(511). This highlights the issue that many face in America and around the world. Many are raised to believe that they have nothing but in reality they have everything. They have the world at their fingertips through the help of public education but instead they are put down time and time again by others and told they can’t achieve anything beyond what those who came before them have done. This creates an endless cycle of people being stuck in the same routine without progress toward advancement generation after generation. 

Atwood then ends her poem by specifically highlighting the negative images that girls and women are being portrayed with. She at first uses the fact that the term beautiful for describing the girl is not a good description because, “women these days have to deal with too many intimidating physical role models”(512), and that the character needs to be portrayed as more average. This brings one of the more controversial problems to light about how mainstream media and the ads that are run with it tend to body shame and belittle girls into thinking that being beautiful is being perfect. But what media doesn’t want you to know is that the models and actresses are either covered in make-up or digitally altered before the advertisement or mean of digital media is posted. This puts unneeded pressure on girls to think that they need to be perfect and in turn cause many social and eating disorders that can consume an entire person’s identity. Atwood continues to bring to the light some challenges that women face when she calls out the author for calling the girl a girl instead of a woman by calling this type of speech, “condescending paternalistic terminology”(513). Although Atwood is explicitly talking about the terminology that the author uses for a female, she is referring to all derogatory terminology that is used to call women. 

This terminology that deprives women of their confidence is not fair and will only help to segregate men and women further,. The poem starts by highlighting the issue of how someone’s brashness and rudeness can completely change a person from their original opinion and how we need to let everyone stand as an individual with their independent ideas. Atwood then goes on to explain how belittling someone can not only cause harm to them but society as whole because if no individual makes progress, then society won’t progress either. She finishes by highlighting the culture that women are forced to live in now and how they must break free of societal standards that are not proper and will only cause them harm. Atwood does a fantastic job of highlighting key problems in society through her use of dialogue in her poem, “There Was Once.”

 