The Handmaid’s Tale

You’ve all seen the commercials on TV: The Handmaid’s Tale, a novel by Margaret Atwood, has been turned into a miniseries that will air on Hulu starting this week.

The Handmaid's Tale by [Atwood, Margaret]

And my brain did what it normally does in these instances: it decided I need to read the book before the show comes out. Because the book is always better. We all know this.

If you haven’t seen the commercials or haven’t read the book (it came out in 1985, so I’m about 32 years late to this party), the concept is not new: an extremist group has managed to overthrow the entire existing government. In The Handmaid’s Tale, men are in charge and women exist for a singular purpose: having babies.

Women can no longer have their own money or their own jobs. Children are taken from their parents to be raised and indoctrinated into the new culture by others. Married couples remain married, but only if neither person has ever been divorced. Depending on how “moldable” a woman is, she is sorted into a group:

  • Martha’s, who cook and clean;
  • Women, who wear red at all times and are loaned to other families for the sole purpose of having children;
  • Unwomen, exiled to colonies where conditions are deplorable;
  • Aunts, who train others and disperse judgement;
  • and the others, who are deemed un-trainable and only fit for work as a prostitute in the black market.

Society takes the Bible chapter Genesis literally. Especially the part where a woman is unable to have children, so she offers her slave to her husband so that the slave can have children for her. Here, Women are loaned to couples who desire children but cannot have their own; these couples are almost headed by a high-ranking official. Their given names are erased and they adopt the name of the man to whom they are loaned. For example: if a girl is loaned to a family where the husband’s name is Warren, the girl is known as Ofwarren. 

Each Woman has one goal: get pregnant. If she doesn’t get pregnant with one man, she goes to a different family and tries again. The wives all want children, more for status than anything else, and the girls know if they cannot produce a healthy child within a certain timeframe they will be shipped off to the colonies and become an Unwoman. The Women do not want this, so they comply and cooperate. Once a month, they have a Ceremony where the husband has sex with the girl while the wife literally holds her hands during the process.

So that’s the setting for this story. Our narrator is Offred, a woman who is approaching her mid-30’s and was once married with a child of her own. It is told entirely in past tense, and it jumps around like crazy. Sometimes it’s present-time. Sometime’s it’s a reflection on the life she used to lead, or the training she underwent before being loaned out. Sometime’s she gives tidbits of background information; sometimes she spends whole paragraphs describing a window.

Grammatically, it is not the easiest to read. There are no clear breaks in the text – sometimes she jumps between time periods in the same paragraph. And there are very few quotation marks, making it hard to know what is or is not said by someone else. In one sentence, someone may say something, but the very next sentence in the same paragraph is really just her internal thoughts about something that may or may not be related to what was said. It was, to me, confusing. (Granted, at the very end, a flimsy explanation is offered for this, but I thought it was a frustrating explanation.)

As you may or may not know, Margaret Atwood is perhaps more well-known for her poetry. And rightly so. This book read very much like a poem masquerading as prose. There were long and flowery paragraphs, with every item detailed in such a way that it sounded more like a poem than a novel. Some people may really enjoy this style; I do not.

Most people believe this to be an eerily relevant piece of literature, as if it somehow details the future of the USA, particularly with Trump as President. Women are wearing pussy hats to assert themselves. Democrats believe Trump will only accomplish two things: the complete destruction of the country and the complete intolerance of anything that doesn’t align with Trump-values (whatever those are, and I’m not sure even Trump knows what his values actually are). The “we’re doomed” ideas come from people on all sides of the political spectrum.

Do I think this is a forecast of what our lives will be like one day? No. To listen to Offred’s story, the culture created is horrible and undesired and, yes, there is some level of underground rebellion. But most people in the book seemed to roll over and allow it to happen. When Offred loses access to her money in the bank, her husband assures her he will take care of her, and she accepts that. When Offred loses her job, she – and all the women she worked with – merely stand up, gather their things, and walk out. When Offred is asked to have sex with the husband, she lies down and stares at the ceiling and allows it (she says in the book it is not rape, because she has consented to it). Heck, the wife even lays with her and holds her hands. 

Sure, there are spies and underground networks and probably this will culminate in a revolt at some point. But we don’t know, because the speaker doesn’t tell us.

Perhaps self-preservation is really that powerful of an idea. Perhaps when stripped of our individuality (our unique clothes and hair and independence), we allow ourselves to be dominated in every sense. Perhaps removing all family and friends creates such a feeling of loneliness that we will do anything to sate it.

Either way, The Handmaid’s Tale did not fulfill that “here’s where the country is heading” feeling that I had been anticipating. It was, to me, more of a social study than a warning. I do not think there is any way that women today would allow an infringement or reduction of the level of independence we enjoy today. I simply do not believe The Handmaid’s Tale is a viable forecast of what a potential dystopian culture could be; it just didn’t seem realistic. There are too many Hillary Clintons out there – women, even young girls – who desire to lead and they will not abandon their dreams without a fight. And, for that, I am grateful.

As Albert Einstein said: “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”

And – maybe I am unusually obtuse – I thought surely one quote in the book would have a greater impact on the story: “nolite te bastardes carborundorum”, which translates to “don’t let the bastard’s grind you down”. This phrase is everywhere – tote bags, t-shirts, even hats. I’d had it in my mind that this must be a key phrase, one so important that it determines the course of the novel and – ultimately – it Turns out, it’s merely a slang term and was meant as a joke. I think the author means this to be a battle cry, a call for women to rise up and push back and assert themselves. While Offred recites it often, not knowing what it means, I’m not sure it ever really drives her to do anything. If anything, she seems to hate it in the end.

So. It was a quick read once I got used to the poetry-feel and got better at switching between time periods and started to understand when someone was talking as opposed to Offred thinking. I found it hard to relate to Offred, though – probably because it sounded very much, to me, like she did very little to protest or go against the system. For Offred, it seemed the brainwashing had been very effective and her own will to do almost anything had practically disappeared. I had a hard time relating to that. Probably the point, for this story to be effective.

And, it has a vague ending. Offred finally takes a chance (thank goodness) and – poof! No real idea how it ends, or what her real name even was. 

Overall: 6/10*

*I know I must be missing something. Right? This was good enough for a movie in 1990, and good enough to be rehashed as a TV series in 2017. It’s Margaret Atwood, who has more awards and critical acclaim than she can count. And I just thought it was okay. I feel like I’m back in my IB Higher English class, thinking if I just squinted at it then maybe the James Joyce books would have more of an impact on my emotional state . . . Yeah, it never happened then, either. Sorry.

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