The Handmaid's Tale

Insofar as my male brain permits such thoughts, I’ve seldom thought about the concept of feminism. Not for lack of trying mind, but to me the word sounds almost naughty, like an upper-class euphemism for a broad lesbian subculture involving police hats and pony whips. On a slightly more serious note, it makes me think of over enthusiastic fifty-something women chanting about how any sentence in which the word “women” is not immediately followed or preceded by the phrase “integral part of our society” (with the permissible inclusion of the word “are”) is an affront to half the world’s population and a deftly chauvinistic statement leaked from the lips of a half-baked redneck who couldn’t start a fire if he rubbed both his nuts together under the desert sun.

Having said that, if The Handmaid’s Tale is what one might call a feminist book, then my deluded opinion may be somewhat abated. At least in the long term. But this book is hard to classify; some people choose not to preclude it from the genre of science fiction (no, no aliens, no spaceships, stop it. Seriously.) while others, the author herself included, choose to label it as “speculative fiction” which, for all its ambiguity, is perhaps a more accurate title.

The book depicts (?) an unnamed protagonist, later known by the patronymic slave name “Offred” (Of Fred) whose physical appearance, in the 312 pages of the book, is a pithy, one-line statement about halfway through, quoted as "I am thirty-three years old. I have brown hair. I stand five seven without shoes". There’s some explanation at the end as to why there’s such a sparse account of her person, and indeed of the disjoined narrative too, but despite the fact – maybe because of the fact - that she’s so anonymous, I can’t help but feel drawn to her. It’s just that.

Allow me to elaborate by using an example my old English teacher used. In an impersonal situation in which two people are getting to know each other, when one leans back on a chair, the other leans forward. When one leans forward, the other draws back. I suppose that’s subject to personal character traits and general feelings toward the other person, but I still find it to be true. Nietzsche would disagree.

The setting takes place in what can accurately be described by anyone of a sane mind as a dystopia. The assassination of the President and Congress results in a powerful religious sect gaining power and imposing its lifestyle on the rest of the population; ordered familial structure, communities without violence, laws and morals based on strict, biblical teachings from the Old Testament. A society in which there is no imperfection, because imperfection does not exist. It has been eradicated. People are happy because we tell them they are happy. This is how people should live. (This is all links to my theory that what is perfect about perfection is that it is imperfect)

Offred is one of many “handmaids”, a euphemistic term for a concubine, a young, fertile woman given to man and woman of higher caste as a vessel for carrying babies in order to support the population of this loony bin (apparently in the future birth rates have decreased dramatically and only 1 in 4 children are born healthy – the rest are “shredders”). She relates to us via dubious chronology certain events of her life, most of which taking place while in the possession of Commander Fred (get it yet?), while others take place during her childhood, teenage years or at the re-educational Red Center.

She implicitly describes how oppressed women especially are in this new society by telling of her daily routine, which involves always travelling with a partner (to “police each others’ actions”), never being allowed out of the community, forced sexual intercourse, involuntary transfers to another man when she is unable to bear the previous one children, and of sweet little anecdotes of her former life. That, while being far from perfect, is something that tugs her heart strings and she often breaks into a solemn, melancholic yearning for that familiarity back with abrupt topic changes and explicit emotive language.

The ending caught me off guard, to be honest. The book moves at a slow, almost leisurely pace (although admittedly this changes in the latter half of the novel) and I was genuinely caught off guard by what the author did there. What I like about this Margaret Atwood is that she leaves just enough to the imagination to leave you questioning (what they do the “unbabies”, the masked men on the Wall), while providing enough to keep you satiated. Or at least I did think that, until the end.

The topics explored in the book are somewhat controversial when you dissect them, but are mostly philosophical philandering and “What If?” scenarios. The totalitarian theocratic government that rules the population with an iron fist is something that has happened in the past, but the fact that it occurs now on American soil is disconcerting to the average Western reader. We read about societies like these that have long since passed into the annals of time, or about societies in the Middle East that oppress women and have strict laws that are upheld vigorously, but this hits a lot closer to home. A scary thought indeed.

But still, I haven’t even mentioned what the two most important themes are yet. It’s never said that they are, and to another maybe they aren’t, but from what I picked up from the book you’d have to be of a very different mindset to not proclaim them as the two most key elements in the novel. You see, the protagonist is stripped of her former life, her former name, all her former titles and responsibilities and placed into an entirely new setting. In context, it sounds horrible, but millions of people have gone through the exact same thing, whether through immigration or involuntary resettlement, and many of those people have been able to build up from that, a new life, a phoenix from the ashes.

They do it because they have freedom.

They do it because they have love.

When you are deprived of these things, you are deprived of your humanity. You become an animal in a cage that needs not affection, but food, minerals, instruments of life to keep your blood flowing, to keep the mitochondria in your cells respiring. Our main character has neither, she bravely clings onto memories that fade more and into the Forgotten by the day; a subservient but rebellious women who is haunted by a lack of love (manifested in the form of her lost loved ones?) and the oppression of a patriarchal regime.

And, as in the fairy tales as in the history books, humanity prevails in the face of adversity. The happiness of the sentiment that statement might encapsulate is varnished by accounts of humans standing up to oppressors and tyrants, slaves against masters, weak against strong, but undermined by the knowledge that it’s humans standing up to humans, and any damage against our race is entirely self-inflicted, like an alcoholic on a mid-week binge.

I don’t believe in karma, or ying-yang, at least not individually. Some people live chaste and modest all their lives only to wind up with cancer or solitude as their retribution. Some people live like kings of old in all manners of amoral and malevolent ways and are rewarded with women, money and power by their hatred sown.

If this tangent makes no sense to you, then I blame you not, but everything written is what I’ve derived from what I feel to be my interpretation of the book. A devout male who happens to be an agnostic myself, its feminist undertones and religious overtures made it, ironically, a lot more interesting to me, so I can do naught but recommend it to all and sundry, especially those like me and especially those with an interest in dystopic, sci-fi, romantic or feminist themed books.

Love, freedom aaand...chocolate. And sex. Hmm, maybe you could mix all four together. Is this what God thinks?!