The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a novel about a dystopian future in which many are enslaved and fertile women are forced to conceive children in a country owned by religious extremist men, these women were known as handmaids. The story primarily focuses on a handmaid who used to be known as June and her thoughts as she tries to survive in The Republic of Gilead. She is emotionally and physically abused as she serves her “biological duty” of bearing children to create a family for Commanders, even though the Commanders are part of the reason her family was torn apart and the life she had before Gilead is gone. She does not know where her family is and has begun to abandon the thought of ever seeing them again.
June, now known as Offred, is forced to obey laws and rules to ensure her survival. The world is seen through her eyes and her motivations evolve as she discovers more about the faults in Gilead. Commanders can be persuaded and some of the world before Gilead is still there, the world she knows and longs for. She even comes to find that her daughter is still alive. Thanks to Mayday, she now also knows there are others like her fighting to be free and destroy Gilead and its creators.
Many concepts were discussed in class that can be seen throughout the book. The ones that primarily make an appearance in The Handmaid’s Tale are liberal feminism, misogyny, privilege, oppression, and rape culture. Liberal feminism is displayed throughout the book in many areas, but it is most evident when June is taken to a place called Jezebel’s. The idea of liberal feminism according to course material is when feminists will use the state of a current system to create a beneficial situation for themselves and other women. The women working at Jezebel's had created a system for them to work and make their own money through prostitution. They were also able to wear clothing for their line of work that had otherwise been made illegal by The Republic of Gilead. This was huge because under Gilead women were treated as property, and were given color-coded uniforms, and tasks that they had to do without any benefit to them. Handmaids even went by names such as Offred or Ofwarren indicating they belonged to a certain Commander.
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Takes adjusting to; a lot of poetic descriptions.
Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2021
I devoured all 300 pages in one sitting. Pretty much overnight. I will start by saying it took an adjustment period in order to get over the lack of quotation marks. Perhaps it was to really emphasize the lack of person, the lack of autonomy the various characters had, especially the handmaidens.The book skips in and out of time, between the before and after, as a way of the character coping with her bleak life. She retreats into her past to remember her lost life. She went from being educated with a college degree, wearing flip flops and short shorts, to a full-bodied religious garb and strict religious rights, enforced in a brutal regime of abuse and death to force submission. Even the Wives, the Elite women along side the men, live in repression; they are allowed some luxuries, but still hidden behind a veil, not allowed to read or write, and live mostly like pampered pets.This tells the story of one woman’s life from one of freedom, at the cost of the potential violence of modern, secular men, to being protected and guided under what amounts to slavery. The lack of a produced child is a death sentence.It is dystopian in that many women cannot reproduce due to radioactive spills, fallout, as well as issues such as pollution and climate. Thus the subjugation of women, and those deemed lesser by the Elite. Breeding is a luxury as well as a need of the Elite. They use surrogates, using Biblical teachings as their rationale.Characters are still human though. The Commander is at first a sympathetic curiosity, bonding over forbidden activities such as Scrabble and the reading of forbidden magazines and books. Yet as you get to know him, you are repulsed by his blatant disregard for women’s lives, and his feelings of entitlement to be able to bed different women. His exploitation is no different than the German Soldiers who took Jewish Mistresses; he has all the power to both protect and give substance to her bleak life, as well as the means to utterly destroy her at any point. She is disposable, while he is immune to consequences. It is a take of utter exploitation.Margaret’s poetry voice is strong; it takes an adjustment period to start to understand, and the first 100 pages are rather slow, droll to a point. But like an artist, it starts with the beginning outlines of the picture, of a woman afraid to give more because she is utterly and totally repressed, and slowly colors in with the texture as the woman becomes more brave in her newfound luxuries and escapes.10/10 would read again.
Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2021
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