The Handmaid's Tale | |||||
Margaret Atwood | |||||
Vintage, 324 pages | |||||
A review by Martin Lewis
Following a coup that leaves the government of the United States dead, a fundamentalist Christian regime establishes the state of
Gilead in New England. Immediately all women's rights (to vote, to own property, to make any decision) are revoked.
The constant civil war that followed the coup (and continues in the background of the novel) has left swathes of the continental
USA blighted and the majority of women infertile. Inspired by the biblical tale of Rachel and Bilhah, Gilead decrees that all
fertile woman are forced to act as Handmaids, surrogate mothers who will bear the children of infertile couples. The term
"surrogate mother" implies perhaps modern pleasantries like in vitro fertilisation; such things are prohibited, it actually
means enforced ritualised rape.
The novel takes the form of a memoir by one of these Handmaids, an unnamed woman who is only ever identified as Offred, a
patronymic of ownership. Because she was her husband's second wife, her marriage was declared void and her young daughter
taken away from her. Never learning the fate of her husband, she is inducted into a training camp for Handmaids where she
is indoctrinated by cattle prod-wielding Aunts. The Handmaid's Tale is composed of her memories of the camp, the time before
the coup and her stay in the house of the commander who gives her her name. These memories combine to build an extraordinary
portrait of an ordinary woman in extraordinary circumstances. Like Margaret Atwood's depiction of Grace Marks in Alias Grace, the
portrait of Offred is complex, contradictory and totally beguiling. Rather than the bitterness and rage we could plausibly
expect, instead we find almost a sense of ennui, a fact Offred notes:
While Atwood's prose is flawless and the mosaic-style composition works well, some elements of the construction niggle. In
all post-catastrophe novels, it is generally best to keep the actual how-we-got-there-from-here transition off stage. Atwood
does not do this and her depiction of the ease of the rise of Gilead and the apathy with which people greet its beginnings
does not ring true. A more serious problem is the framing device, which serves almost as an insult to the main narrative
of the novel. This 'Historical Notes' appendix, while not fundamentally altering the text, seems an unnecessary blunt, even
cruel, way to end such an astonishing narrative.
The Handmaid's Tale can be read as a cautionary tale, not in the sense that Atwood believes a similar turn of events could
come to pass but rather as a reminder not to forget woman's rights are a fairly recent development. In Offred's memories of
before Gilead, she is dismissive of her radical feminist mother, believing her to have become irrelevant. This fairly brutal
irony about the superficiality of the appearance of the permanence of female emancipation is the heart of the novel, as all
dystopias stem from a fear of the removal of liberty. It is Atwood's astonishing skill as a writer and the brilliancy of her
characterisation that provides this idea with its power.
Martin Lewis lives in South London; he is originally from Bradford, UK. He writes book reviews for The Telegraph And Argus. |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
If you find any errors, typos or anything else worth mentioning,
please send it to editor@sfsite.com.
Copyright © 1996-2014 SF Site All Rights Reserved Worldwide