Her life has been flipped and made forfeit. The hope is that she will become pregnant when a prominent man’s wife cannot. Now she’s another’s property, one of the handmaids sent from one man’s house to another. She’s gone from wearing flip-flops and sundresses to a full-body religious habit, color-coded red to match her subservient role. The Handmaid's Tale is told in first person by a woman who’s lived in our present day (more or less), as well as in this dark fundamentalist Tomorrowland. I can embrace the connection to the Reagan administration, in the same way I can embrace Orwell's fear of communism in 1984, but to imagine an unchanging, puritanical Massachusetts requires a bit too much. In recent decades, Massachusetts is also one of the least religious states, so it's an odd setting for a theocracy, too.Ītwood chose Massachusetts for its puritanical history. Massachusetts is a liberal bastion when it comes to American women's reproductive rights, so it's an odd setting for this brand of nightmare. Even so, it's hard to accept Atwood's dystopia when it's set in the U.S., in the near future-and in Massachusetts, one of the most progressive states in the country, one of only sixteen states in the union with state constitutional protections for abortion (since 1981, I believe). Extremism continues to hurt people every day, especially in some parts of the world, especially in some states. Fundamentalism has hurt people, particularly women, for millennia. I'm a heathen bastard and no fan of religion.
Atwood imagines the extreme of the extreme and in the process completely misunderstands American evangelicalism. This ruins the foundation of The Handmaid's Tale because most American fundies would balk at this world. While that premise does give me the heebie-jeebies, Atwood’s taken the idea to a literal extreme to make a point. The religiosity of the Reagan era inspired Atwood's dystopia, in which fundamentalist Christians have taken over society.
(This is no train wreck like José Saramago's Blindness, but it's bad enough.) Simply put, if you can ignore whether you agree or disagree with Margaret Atwood's ideas about politics, religion, and women's rights, the plot and setting make no sense. Even so, The Handmaid's Tale frustrates me a lot-and not only because it contains run-on sentences and needlessly abandons quotation marks. It makes numerous "best of" lists, the kinds with 99 other books everyone should read before dying. More than thirty years have passed since The Handmaid's Tale was first published in 1985, but many still think of it as the go-to book for feminist fiction.
The Handmaid's Tale is the first-person account of one of these enslaved women. They are slaves to men and the biblical, patriarchal society in which they live. The main idea remains the same.Įxtremist Judeo-Christian beliefs have won America's culture war. I've rewritten large parts of it for clarity. Massachusetts Turns Into Saudi Arabia? More than thirty years have passed since The Handmaid's Tale was first publi It's been almost five years since I wrote my review. Extremist Judeo-Christian beliefs have won America's culture war. It's been almost five years since I wrote my review. įunny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.more Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke when she played with and protected her daughter when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Ha Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead.