The Handmaid’s Tale
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Margart Atwood
1985, 400 pages
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, once the United States of America. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets, where pictures have replaced words because women are forbidden to read. She must lic on her back once a month and pray that the Commander maker her pregnant, for Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable.
Offred can remember a time when she lived with and made love to 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…
What ever happened to utopian futures? Seems that they went out of style some time before the cold war. *sigh*
This was my first Margart Atwood book. Her Wikipedia article has an entire section about her beefs with the term science fiction, so I will tow party line and say that this novel is speculative fiction, and I would have to say that it fits more into the latter than the former. It is told in the first person by a woman who has seen the transition from the modern world we know and love, to a brutal totalitarian, sexist theocracy. one of the things that I felt shocked by was how easily the propagandists and those in power made the new policies that robbed women of their status bit by bit, how quickly the end of the world came. Offred’s flashbacks to her former life made her current situation that much more heartbreaking.
Somehow, even through all the bleakness, Atwood has managed to make me see the glimmers of goodness in Offred’s life, and that to me is a great skill. This book was wonderful. I think I would recommend it as a gateway drug for my science fiction hating peers, as “it’s not sci-fi” at all.
I’m sold… I’ll def read it.