Book #19: The Handmaid’s Tale

Author: Atwood, Margaret

Published: 1985

Rating: Mature

Genre: Dystopian fiction, Speculative fiction

Synopsis : Offred narrates her life as a Handmaid. She wears a hood that covers her face and her hair, only showing to expose her eyes like a horse wearing blinders. The dress she wears is a stark red to label her as a handmaid belonging to the Commander. Every so often, the Ceremony occurs and her real duty is fulfilled. She is to lie on her back between his wife’s legs and wait for the Commander to impregnate her. They don’t have sex, and they don’t make love. They barely touch each other; they’re just doing their job. She calls it fucking.

The Ceremony (Left to Right: Commander, Handmaid, Commander’s Wife)

The reason they do this is because of the new society of Gilead (formerly known as North America) that they live in. Reproductive rates are below the line of mortality rates, thus she and numerous other handmaid’s are assigned to a married Commander. Even her name has been stripped and changed to match his own like property. The handmaids all have barely any freedom to do anything but meagre tasks to help around the household. Why should they be able to do anything? They are nothing but their wombs and fertility. That being said, the right for women to be able to read, to have property, handle currency, pursue any hobbies; all have been taken away from them.

Throughout the novel, Offred has flashbacks of her life before the dystopian society of Gileadean and the events that triggered the new shift. Touching on the history of feminism and her mother’s involvement, Luke, her husband and her missing daughter, she finds herself compelled towards finding a way out but torn to conform to the new society. With the flashbacks becoming more and more frequent, she begins to act out and seek escape with Moira, a friend from the past with a knack for rebelling against the new ways.

My Thoughts: I’ll be honest, when I first got into this book…I had a hard time swallowing it. It was strange in every way, it made my stomach turn at just the thought and horror that not only the narrator goes through but all the women of society. Full of oppression, suffocating religious values and more, one can’t help but want Offred to just get out of there. It reminded me a lot of Anthony Burgess’ Clockwork Orange or even Orwell’s 1964 with how the environment was set up; kooky and inside-out. Not only that, but Atwood did have me at the edge of my seat and very tense. I couldn’t finish it in one sitting for sure because of how uneasy it made me feel just reading it. But I guess that made it an even better experience. It’s really something else when an other can back you up into a corner and get you to feel more than you’re comfortable with. I still remember having to go through the scenes where the Ceremony was taking place, and all her gritty word choice to describe sex was enough to make me shudder. And while feeling all these mixed, messed up emotions of disgust and anxiety, Atwood opens up her readers’ minds to the reality of these issues. Sure, once they’re compiled and put into context with the way society works today, it seems too wrong. But the scary part is that everything The Handmaid’s Tale has happened at one point or another–and still happening today.

– N