The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. First published 1985
Isbn 0 09 974091 5 Pages: 324
Won the Governer General’s Award, The Arthur C. Clark Award
I’ve just read this for the second time. I’ve read a large amount of Margaret Atwood books but as a fan of hers my fandom mostly lies in her Maddaddam trilogy. I suppose I’ve read Oryx and Crake three times; the original time not long after its release and then re-readings after the second and third book in the trilogy were released. So I’ve invested a lot of reading time into them. I realised after I read Maddaddam earlier this year that I don’t have a great memory for what actually happens in her other books, so I have decided they are all due a second reading, and I have started with The Handmaid’s Tale.
The book can be given a number of genres. It’s set in a dystopian future, and is also given the genres of science fiction and speculative fiction. The novel is set in the near future, in an American society that has been overthrown by a christian leadership. The powers in the world have shifted so the women have none. Parts of the bible are taken quite literally and this has changed women's roles in society. Women are able to be the wives of high ranking men. Alternatively they can be household help, or like the protagonist Offred, they are used as vessels for childbearing, producing offspring for upperclass men and their wives who cannot conceive.Whilst Offred’s story shows the reader the world she lives in, she also goes back to what her life was before and how everything got to this point.
Margaret Atwood has said that this is speculative fiction rather than science fiction because science fiction uses things we do not have yet whereas speculative fiction uses what is already here. I don’t know what I think about this idea. I don’t know why something has to be science fiction because it’s set somewhat in the future. This book isn’t about science, it’s about people and how they have been able to shift the powers in control of a country to the point where it’s almost like a religious cult has been able to take over and apply it’s bizarre ideals. To be fair their is one important science aspect, and that’s the issue of reproduction. It doesn’t say exactly what has happened but it appears that the chemicals in our water and food supply has meant that a lot of women are unable to have children. So women that are able to are pretty much given to higher ranking families to use as surrogate mothers, given that they are able to conceive.
There are aspects of the book that are really brutal. I can imagine parts of it as a V for vendetta-ish after curfew scene, everything red and black with a huge cross in the background. The two novels have similarities. The Handmaids cannot go out alone. They are told of men’s brutality, they are told they could be raped and that sex should be without love or passion and that it is function, anything else is demonized. And yet these women lived before the regime so they know different. On the outside things are working and the only battle against the system is inside, because for it to be anywhere else would be futile.
Overall this book is great. I love it even after reading it again. It remains exciting even vaguely remembering what’s coming next.
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