Review: The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Atwood is an acquired taste. Kind of like green olives or caviar. You need to commit to the experience, then find the fortitude to push through the first few pages— or put the book down and try again in a few weeks/months/years. As our experiences change so does our relationship to and engagement in the text. It was finally time for me to crack this one open. I was ready.

First, one must understand that Atwood’s style is detached and informal, messy and chaotic. The narrator, Offred (not her real name, but rather a generic label given as a way to further strip her of her individuality), tells the story through a sharing of her memories, sometimes stopping mid sentence to admit to being unreliable and then retelling the narrative as it “really” happened. It can be difficult to follow as she meanders from past to present with little structure. The beauty, however, is that once you have immersed yourself, the stories she tells become all-encompassing in their horror.

When this was initially published, many found it to be almost too dystopian in nature. Women’s rights are set back decades, and men are running the show. A contingent of seditious far-right Christian men kill the president, shoot up the Capital and leave every politician and left-thinking scholar in a tangled pile of decay following a bloody coup. It’s a new day, where woman serve to either procreate or indulge their husbands. Single women become Handmaids, who bear children for those wealthy and unable, settling between the legs of the wives and spreading their own, while the husbands attempt to impregnate them. The positional logistics are repeated again when it’s time for the Handmaid to give birth, after which the baby, should it survive, is ceremoniously given to the man who impregnated her and the wife who wrapped her own legs around the Handmaid as she conceived. Many of the babies, due to contaminates in a decaying world, are born only to die. There is no prenatal testing, no option to terminate. Babies who aren’t perfect when they emerge from the Handmaid’s womb are labeled shredders. No one is quite sure what becomes of them, though the implication is that they are killed or left to die. Those who refuse to become Handmaids (too old, too ill, too poor) are sent to Colonies, where the work is both dangerous and demeaning. One day might mean cleaning up rotting corpses from a recent battle. The next might bring a radioactive area that needs to be decontaminated. Life for colonists is difficult and short. It can be equally so for those who agree to be handmaids as they face a three strike rule, sent from household to household to be impregnated. Failure equates to death. There is always the option to perhaps become a prostitute and work in one of the forbidden clubs run by those in charge—the men with means. Women who choose this option are first sterilized so as not to muddy the waters of the organization. The written word has been abolished for women, men are the keepers of all monies, and a community wall serves as a showcase for detractors and those insistent upon resistance and rebellion, where hooded bodies hang from hooks as a warning: a reminder of what it means to say “no”. Women who remember the past are living out their days/months/years by paving the way for a generation that will know no different—girls born to become receptacles and incubators.

More recent readers, and those who reflect back, will find themselves with goosebumps and the tiny hairs standing on the backs of their necks. The far right, in the shadow of January 6 and led by the resounding bass of the Supreme Court, has begun the march over the rights of women, and while many are lowering their gaze and standing ostrich-like, head deep in the sand, the band continues to play. Atwood reminds us of the consequences of such ignorance and feigned obliviousness.

Five big stars, another certain spike in my level of anxiety and a few guaranteed nightmares—and I am waiting a bit before tackling the next book in the series. I need to reset and make sure the world isn’t truly imploding.

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