The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood (1985)

I feel as if this is a book everyone has read – that in itself makes me nervous – reviewing a book that is so loved, so iconic and so well-known. I feel as if I don’t need to write a long re-hash of the plot – though in the unlikely event that there is someone who hasn’t read this book I will attempt to give a spoiler free taste of it.

“But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.”

I first read The Handmaid’s Tale somewhere between 1987 and the early 1990s. My Virago edition dates from 1987, and I feel like I have always had this book in my possession – and hard though it might be to believe, I didn’t have an absurd tbr back then, so it stands to reason I would have read it around the time I bought it. I had wanted to re-read it for a while, so when my very small book group chose to read it, I was delighted. Certain books stay with us– on some level at least, no matter how many books come after. When I read The Handmaid’s Tale all those years ago I was quite young, and the story horrified and haunted me – I loved the novel and was devastated by it at the same time. Dystopian fiction worried me, I was at an impressionable age during those latter years of Thatcher’s Britain. A few years earlier when I was still at school I had had a similar reaction to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (I left school in 1984 aged sixteen, I had read the book in the early 80s and convinced myself it would all come true). This time I flew through the novel in two days, breathless with admiration, it really is the most astonishingly brilliant, and deeply affecting novel – and still feels frighteningly relevant.

Margaret Atwood takes us to a terrifying, near future, the former United States, now called Gilead, a war is being fought, disease and pollution has had a drastic effect on fertility. The entire government have been assassinated and replaced by a new social order, a totalitarian theocracy intent on ensuring the continuation of the population. Atwood’s depiction of this society – with its rules and punishments is absolutely breath-taking, it reads as a warning. A strongly feminist novel, The Handmaid’s Tale explores the subjugation of women in an unforgettable way.

“But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest. Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn’t really about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn’t about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it’s about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.”

Offred is our narrator a thirty-three-year-old woman, forced to live as a handmaiden in the home of a high-ranking commander and his wife – her task; – taken from a literal interpretation of the Old Testament – is to breed for them. Offred (literally of-Fred, the commander’s first name is Fred) having found to be fertile, having had a child in the time before – was forcibly taken to the Red Centre, where she was prepared and instructed in the ways of her new life, that of a handmaid. Here she meets Moira – a friend from the time before.

“The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you’ve been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil”

In flashback, we get a glimpse of the time before – Offred as she is now called -knows her former name to be forbidden. She had a partner – Luke, a daughter, friends, had enjoyed a college education a job, a good life. Flight across the border to Canada was attempted and violently stopped. There is the sense of life continuing perhaps fairly normally in the outside world.

The society of Gilead is a strictly hierarchical one, all women are categorised – having a set role they must live by. The Aunts control the handmaids, the Marthas work as household servants, wives naturally enough are the women who enjoy the greatest social standing, while Econowives are married to lower ranking men, and do not enjoy the prestige of the wives, jezebels are those women forced to work as prostitutes while unwomen are those who are sterile, widows, gay or have been politically resistant to the new order. All handmaids are placed in a commander’s home for two years, if they fail (always their fault) they will be moved to another household – their name changing with each placement. Infertility is high, but the handmaids must conceive – and bring a healthy child into the world, these are rare enough events, but each handmaid is desperate to be successful. Too many failures will mean banishment to the colonies – toxic waste, near starvation and certain death. Sex is conducted within ‘the ceremony’ an act of hideous humiliation for both handmaid and wife (shudder!).

Women’s lives in this society are strictly controlled – they are no longer permitted to own property, have money, read, vote, make any decisions for themselves. The time before is rarely referred to, and in this new society women are pitted against each other. Econowives and Marthas dislike the handmaids seeing them as sluts – and the handmaids have little chance of forming friendships – as the Eyes are everywhere and the punishments for straying outside the rules frightening indeed.

I’m not going to say any more about the plot – so many people seem to be reading this classic novel at the moment. Then of course there is the new TV series – in which Margaret Atwood makes a cameo appearance, and is one of the producers. I made a remark on Twitter about Offred’s before name being revealed in the first episode – and Margaret Atwood herself replied – oops – apparently this was implied in the book and I missed it (oops) and this name was chosen by readers. I hadn’t known that obviously. So, who feels silly now? I do. Anyway, my book group friends and I are going to have so much to talk about – I can’t wait.