Read The Handmaid's Tale (1998)

What do You think about The Handmaid's Tale (1998)?

Margaret Atwood didn’t make up anything in this book. All of the things that take place in the Republic of Gilead have happened at some point in history (which now includes 1985, the year the book was published). She also arrived at the society depicted in the book by taking certain attitudes, both feminist & conservative, prevalent at the time, and taking them to extreme conclusions. So the place and the culture she depicts are believable. What comes across as far-fetched is the rapidity with which it occurs. In a little over a decade, America becomes so louche and licentious that the morally aggrieved have overthrown the government and set up a totalitarian theocracy totally at odds with the history of American governance. In a scant 10-15 years? I don’t really see that happening. Recently, I saw “the final cut” of Blade Runner. It takes place 11 years from now, but the world depicted looks like it should be 150-200 years from now. Things rarely change as quickly as novelists imagine. Architecturally, Manhattan in 1988 looked pretty close to how it does today. Watch a film from the 90's, and you’ll see people dressed in much the same clothes you see today. Margaret Atwood had a clear idea of what sort of shape the story would take: it is a diary. The curtain is pulled back slowly, and we only know as much as our narrator knows. Even the “Historical Notes” section at the end doesn’t really answer that many questions. It definitely swings the open ending in one direction, but it doesn’t really give you that much extra information on the society of Gilead or how it came about. We never find out that much, and that’s kind of frustrating. I blame this largely on the narrator’s passivity. Passivity is a trait that rarely endears me to protagonists (or to real people, for that matter). She says she wants to know, but she just doesn’t make that much effort to find out. There is an echo of Nineteen-Eighty-Four when, much like Winston Smith, she is broken down. “They can do what they like with me. I am abject,” she says. This is in marked contrast to Ivie, the heroine of V For Vendetta. Ivie is active and engaged. It’s an interesting comparison as V For Vendetta and The Handmaid’s Tale have many similarities. Both were written in the early eighties. Both appear to take place in the late nineties. Both imagine a radical change in society coming after a perceived moral decline occurs in concert with ecological or nuclear disaster. Both feature secret police organizations called the Eyes. The biggest difference is that the government in The Handmaid’s Tale is explicitly theocratic, whereas the government of England in V For Vendetta is of the fascist and nationalist stripe. But the government of Gilead appears to have racist policies too, and the government in V For Vendetta certainly uses religion to legitimize its actions.This book is heavy (in the figurative sense). There is no comic relief whatsoever. It is a near-total chronicle of misery, from start to finish. And it is depressing, in a way. It is depressing to think about how easy it can be for a small group of fanatics (whether they be communists, fascists or religious zealots) to take over a country. All they need is for the silent majority to look the other way, to keep quiet, to believe their promises of security & virtue and let them get away with it. That’s the easy thing to do. The hard thing to do is to stand up and voice dissent. There is always a minority that choose that path. But the bigger the majority you have looking the other way, the easier it is to deal with the dissenters and malcontents (preferably quietly).
—Dalton Hirshorn

I found The Handmaid’s Tale to be one of the most compelling books I’ve ever read and definitely one of my favourites of this year.In a world that has reverted back to a day where totalitarianism is commonplace and accepted, women known as “handmaids” are given (literally) to elite couples that are unable to have children, with the sole purpose of reproducing for them. If they do not fulfil this purpose, they are sent to the “colonies” to either work in agriculture or clear up toxic pollution, which eventually kills them. Patriarchy is at the root of all laws and so the freedom of all women, not just handmaids, is severely restricted. There is severe punishment (including death) for those who disobey.Absolutely nothing in the novel was unbelievable, which is mainly why it is so terrifying. Atwood writes about some circumstances that may seem extreme and distant to us but are currently present in “other” countries and societies. Atwood has then applied these circumstances to a futuristic United States. This enables us to fully grasp the implications of control of freedom, especially sexual freedom, because whether we admit it or not, the events that bring out the most emotion in us are those that happen to us directly. This is partly why I loved this book so much. It is an important text to advocate women’s rights, it’s a text to create awareness, and it does it by using one of my favourite genres.Another reason is that the novel is also extremely intelligent. I couldn’t help but notice that every phrase, every word, every object, every character, every dialogue had its purpose. Nothing was there without good reason, from finding out that Offred’s name is not just oddly futuristic (“Of Fred” as in “Property of Fred”) to describing a football stadium and redbrick walls (as way of showing that the story is set near an abandoned Harvard University).I cannot recommend this book enough. It’s just brilliant. I also reviewed this book over on Pretty Books.
—Stacey (prettybooks)

I was really struck, upon rereading this, at how much this book could be seen as a commentary on the Harvard/Radcliffe relationship. Of course, there is the obvious parallel to the Iranian revolution of 1979, and the deft discussion of the Second Wave feminist movement, but now that I have spent a bit of time with Radcliffe history, I have to wonder how much of it Atwood, a Radcliffe alumna herself, was influenced by in writing this. The line that really made me think was the mention of graduation exercises in Harvard Yard, with the male grads in black and the female grads in red - Radcliffe women, though allowed to take Harvard classes at the time Atwood was attending, were still awarded separate diplomas and did not recieve the same priviliges as male students. The Handmaids, of course, wear red and are second class citizens. Radcliffe students were not allowed in the Lamont undergraduate library for quite a while, and the Handmaids were not allowed the gift of literacy. Radcliffe women certainly struggled with a myriad of contradictions in sexuality and sexual expression in an effort to be taken seriously as scholars and as equals.Okay, maybe that's just conjecture. Still, The Handmaid's Tale is a hell of a book, with beautiful prose and an intricate philosophy.
—Summer