Book Review: The Handmaid’s Tale
Spoiler Alert
By Ludmila Rishkova
February 28, 2011
-“I have made a life for myself, here, of a sort”
What we do not know inspires mystery, opens doors unto possibilities, and allows the fear of ‘what-ifs’ to build itself a nest in one’s heart. It is easy to fear the unknown as one populates it with his own imagination, but what about the fear of something that we do know? On the news, we see horrid things happen in another country. Our high school history classes gloss over the horror of events of a recent past. Our local papers speak about savage events that sometimes occur walking distance from our own homes. It never happens to us, always to others, but the chilling fact of it all is that, although we know that we have escaped it this once, it does not mean we will escape the next time. Some blessed ones keep on with their daily lives. Others less fortunate stop and wonder: what if it happened to me, what would I do and how would I do it? Most naturally we imagine ourselves playing a heroic role, but deep down we know that reality isn’t like this. In reality, things happen too fast or too subtly for us to harness them and gain control. Instead, we do what humans do best, we adapt.
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale may not be science fiction according to the lady herself, but it sure does have the post-apocalyptic feel that appeals to all science fiction lovers. It is a tale that brings historic tyrannies of man back to life. It is also a tale of adaptation.
The Republic of Gilead attaches little value to the former ways of what was once the United States of America. Behaviour directly linked to the past is deemed heretical. Women no longer have money, independence, or even the right to read, but are rather assigned distinct, and bound, social roles. They are at the service of men: the Marthas take care of household chores. The Commanders’ Wives are bound to social obligations and supervision of the household. The Handmaids are singled out for their viable ovaries. Their role is the most ambiguous one. They are at once sacred and yet they are perceived as whores. Their lives are monotonous, every move is controlled and their sexual role is that of a vessel to be filled. They are transitory. If they can bear a child, it would never be theirs but would remain in the household it was born into, to be raised by the Marthas and cherished by the Wives. A Handmaid’s life is empty, and several manage a way of filling it by killing themselves.
Offred is our means to the story. Suicide, for her, is a fantasy, just like her past life, and both are tightly linked together. She has had a husband once, and a daughter. She was once a University student who was monetarily and intellectually independent. Memory is her most dangerous safe place.
Everything she loved has been taken away. She has no close connections, except those of her imagined past and even memory is playing tricks on her. Her daily life consists of going to the food market, two by two with another Handmaid, picturesque in their red dresses and white headdress. Conversation is brief and dangerous, as one never knows who’s safe and who isn’t. And still in a world where everything has been thought out and most loopholes have been weeded out, one can find camaraderie. Ofglen is Offred’s partner. Together they manage to exchange some news, give each other some hope, but mostly they let each other know that they aren’t completely and utterly alone.
Then there is the Commander, who besides the monthly romp, if one may call the ritual-like child-making a romp, takes pleasure in nightly escapades with Offred. He lets her read.
Later, there is the arrangement with the Commander’s wife. Barter is still in fashion, and for an exchange of one service against another, Offred finds herself in the arms of Nick, the driver whose bare arms she once quietly coveted. With a little deviance, Offred grows blasé. She gives in to sex, and something not quite resembling love. She lets herself believe that there is nothing she can do. She grows cowardly, and thinks of herself first. The only risk she takes is the nightly visit to Nick.
Her end is ambiguous, we’re not sure of her fate, nor whether it was better or worse than what she had grown accustomed to. The only thing we know is that if she escaped the Republic of Gilead, she did not do so thanks to her bravery and hard work.
The tale ends with Historical Notes on Offred’s story, which gives a sense of harsh realism to the novel and a glimmer of hope for Offred. What is so fearful here is not the unknown, but the possibility of what once has happened to happen again. History, after all, has a horrible habit of repeating itself and although the Notes indicate that times have changed since the Republic of Gilead, the initial problems of deeming a woman’s point of view not quite satisfactory remains. The lingering feeling at the end of the book is a sad one as it is quite obvious that nothing has been fixed for good. The reader is left with a sense that wheels of Historical oppression of both men and women may be set in motion once again, and that again man will learn to adapt to it by sheer desire of survival.
This may not be Science Fiction, but the speculative nature of the book and the sheer, convincing horror of it all make of The Handmaid’s Tale a fabulous and hard to put down read that can captivate even the most diehard adversaries of literary fiction.