The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Blurb (on back of book): Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. 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 Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. 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. But all of that is gone now . . .
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.
MY OPINION: ****
I read this book for my AP Lit class and ended up loving it, surprisingly. I had always planned on reading this book (it was on my 2020 summer reading list that I never ended up finishing) and I'm glad that I got the chance to read it, even if it was one of the infamous "forced reads."
I genuinely liked this book. Most of my classmates were actually on the opposite end of the spectrum and hated this book with a passion. I found an interesting correlation between 19*4 haters and THT lovers and vice versa. As someone who hated 1984, which we all know, I wasn't really sure what to expect from this book, which I know is heavily influenced by Orwell's so-called "masterpiece."
As someone deeply involved in women's rights work, I found the idea of a society in which women are treated as property and used for their bodies simultaneously very intriguing and very horrific. In the introduction, Atwood mentions that she wanted to only include elements in her dystopian society that are real and have occurred before in past societies. Atwood succeeds in weaving that fear factor into her book, as everything is written so realistically that you can almost just imagine this really happening to us, especially in light of the abortion rights crisis and lack of women's rights in this day and age.
There are so many things I could say about this book that I want to be able to say, but alas, this review would be a whole book long. I'll try to briefly touch upon the points which I think are most important to mention but just know there were so many other things I want to be able to say.
To start off with my small list of critiques:
I wasn't a fan of the length of the book. As my classmate-haters pointed out, this book in which virtually nothing really happens was very long and drawn-out. There were times when we would read long passages that seemed to go on and on about something so mundane and inane that I would question why I was subjecting myself to this. It's a fairly dense book and the writing isn't always very clear so it's hard to understand what is going on or why this passage about a pillow is being written about so extensively. However, I did appreciate the writing style and with so many things that I loved about this book, it's easy to overlook the long-winded aspect.
The historical notes were a little long-winded for my taste. We get to see the aftermath of Gilead, which was interesting, but it felt unnecessary to have an entire after-section to basically explain what the book was about. I think we should have been able to understand the book from the actual book??
Moving on to the things I loved:
I really liked how this book did not feature Offred/June as a revolutionary and instead showcased an ordinary woman trying to adjust to a new, horrible system in which her entire worth and value is reduced to her body and fertility. We don't see the generic dystopian protagonist (see: Katniss Everdeen) in which the MC sees injustice, rises up, and succeeds in overthrowing some authoritarian or equally horrible regime. Instead, we see a very flawed, very common woman with weaknesses of her own. She's not trying to get rid of the new system and her "rebellion" is very silent throughout the book, with muted actions and trespasses.
I just wrote an essay on the political aspects of this book so I don't really want to get into it. I just want to say that cruelty was a very useful device in manufacturing a hierarchical society in which an entire group of people is silenced and made subject to a dictatorial regime. I found it particularly interesting that the execution wall was our very own Harvard University's famous red walls.
I read an interesting quote about how this book only became a female dystopia when it featured white women. I think this is very accurate, especially when looking at this book from a historical standpoint. I love history (I even plan to be a history major) and thus I know a fair amount about past societies. With my interest in gender studies, I have researched various treatments of women in other civilizations and can really start to see what that quote meant, especially when looking at the horrors of American slavery. Basically everything that happened to the women in this book happened to real-life enslaved women back when slavery was on the rise. However, since it's told about mostly white women, suddenly, this idea became a horrible dystopia, a fantasy. I think that's something that is very interesting and important to think about when reading this book in particular.
I found the various social classes to be interesting. Even in this futuristic society, social hierarchies remain the most integral part of keeping a society together. The Handmaids are towards the bottom of the pack, valued for their ability to reproduce but treated as nothing more than an object as a result of their "material" value. The Marthas are the cooks and housekeepers, as well as the nannies should we get the fortuitous event of having a baby be born. I personally would like to be a Martha if I had to choose because they kind of had the better bit of life in this new society.
The Wives were the "highest" on the social scale but some of the most unhappy women in the entire population. They're married to the Commanders but are infertile and thus must watch their husbands getting with their new Handmaid of the month in the hopes of gaining a child. I thought it was interesting to see how someone at such a high point on the scale could still have such a horrible life, even in comparison to the Handmaids, who are much lower.
The Aunts are somewhere in between and are the teachers and mentors to the Handmaids. I think they were some of the most despicable characters, sometimes even worse than the men. They thrived on pitting women against women, which really helped solidify the foundations of their horrible society. I do think it was realistic; people in positions of power will do anything to maintain that power, even if it means exploiting people of their same population. We see it time and time again in history.
Luke was not a good man and I didn't like how he was sort of romanticized throughout the book. His flaws are clearly put on display but Offred/June never seems to really point them out as being wrong. I also think the whole thing with her daughter was never really concluded and while that may be the point, I would have liked to have known what happened. There were a lot of fairly interesting side characters that I won't go into but that I think really added to the story overall, such as Moira and Ofglen. Every character felt very well-written, real, and different from each other, which I really liked.
I haven't watched the show (I saw the first episode and that's about it) but I heard it follows the book pretty closely but is a lot more graphic; I'm interested in checking it out but I'm not sure when I will have the time. Otherwise, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a scary look at what a dystopian future could look like if we women were ever subjected to the objects some people want so desperately for us to be seen as.
Main Character: Offred/June
Sidekick(s): Nick, Ofglen, Moira, etc
Villain(s): Gilead, objectification, death, etc
Dystopian Elements: This book featured a dystopian society.
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