Daily Inspiration Quote by Margaret Atwood

Atwood’s line lands like a moral command dressed as self-defense: refuse the identity that power wants to pin on you. The phrasing matters. “This above all” borrows the grave authority of Shakespearean advice, then pivots from etiquette or virtue to something harsher and more modern: survival as a choice you keep making. Not “refuse victimhood exists,” not “never be hurt,” but refuse to let harm finish the job by rewriting your inner narrative.

The subtext is classic Atwood: systems don’t only punish bodies; they recruit minds. Victimhood can become a script that flatters the oppressor by accepting the terms of the story. “Refuse” is the crucial verb. It implies agency in a landscape designed to drain it away, and it also implies ongoing effort. You don’t graduate out of vulnerability; you practice resistance in small, stubborn acts of interpretation: naming what happened, rejecting shame, insisting on complexity.

Context sharpens the edge. Across Atwood’s work, especially where women are surveilled, contained, or commodified, the real terror isn’t merely violence but the way violence gets normalized, even internalized. So the line functions as both warning and tool: don’t collaborate with your own diminishment. It’s not a feel-good slogan; it’s a strategy for staying politically legible. If you accept “victim” as your whole identity, you become easy to manage: pitiable, disposable, narratively complete. Atwood insists on the opposite - an unfinished self, still capable of refusal.