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Great Novels: The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood

Although an ostensibly futuristic novel, the terrifying power of The Handmaid’s Tale lies in the fact that it is really about the present. Atwood’s novel vividly exposes the potentially disastrous consequences of contemporary social and cultural trends, taking them to their most extreme logical, and horrifying, conclusions. Finding herself “increasingly alarmed” by the events of the 1980’s – including the growth of religious fundamentalism in America and the Iranian revolution – Margaret Atwood’s response was The Handmaid’s Tale. In her fictional creation, plummeting Caucasian birth rates as a result of nuclear waste has led to a world rife with infertility. In order to ensure the survival of the human race, American extremists invoke military rule and create the Republic of Gilead: “they shot the President and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency”. In this horrifying monotheocracy, men reign supreme, and women are divided into categories based on their childbearing abilities. Those who are able to procreate are termed Handmaids, swathed in symbolic red clothing, and “assigned” to men of superior social status. They are forced to engage in a weekly Ceremony in which they must have sex with these “Commanders” (who have often retained their wives from the pre-Gilead world) in order to bear children. Those who fail to conceive are eventually exiled to radioactive waste sites and left to die, along with those too old to bear children. Gilead justifies itself on biblical grounds, claiming it is woman’s duty to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth”: the idea of surrogate mothers stems from the story of Rachel in Genesis, who used her maid to bear her children. The novel is told from the point of view of Offred, Handmaid to the Commander Fred – the Handmaids are named according to whom they belong. We are never told her real name. Past and present are juxtaposed, as Offred recalls her pre-Gilead existence with her daughter (whom she never sees again) and her partner, Luke. Atwood uses such narrative juxtaposition to illustrate how extremist beliefs in the pre-Gilead world have culminated in such a shocking dystopia, where life among women is conducted in silence – only greetings such as “Blessed be the fruit” are allowed – for fear of public executions at the hands of “The Eyes”. Distrust and fear are prevalent in the society, as are poignant descriptions of the loneliness of the Handmaids: they are isolated even amongst other women, who are either Marthas (assigned to be household servants) or Econowives (wives of a lower social status). Every sentence in this carefully-crafted novel resonates with multifaceted significance, questioning the very essence of relationships between men and women, and causing the reader to re-evaluate gender assumptions. This is a novel pervaded by violence, sex, terror, but also by contemplation, analysis and – occasionally – by hope. Its brilliance cannot be conveyed in that single description, however. Gilead’s attitudes towards women, homosexuals and abortion are exaggerations of commonly held views at Atwood’s time of writing, either by common people or by extremists. Christian fundamentalists believed (and indeed still believe) that homosexuality was an abomination; in the novel, homosexuals are labelled “gender traitors” and hanged. Doctors who perform abortions are also hanged, a reference to the fundamentalist belief that abortion is against God’s word and should be re-criminalised. In fundamentalist doctrines, women are urged to return to “traditional roles”, i.e. child-bearing; in the novel that is their only function. Atwood exaggerates these elements of her present to a point where they become graphic and shocking; she takes common beliefs to their natural conclusions, and Gilead is the embodiment of these beliefs. By amalgamating these recognizable elements of our present in one novel, Atwood shockingly reveals what we could be capable of. The concerns of the novel lie in our present, but Atwood uses the future to present them in a more vivid, and therefore disturbing, way. Her dystopian vision is utterly terrifying because it could easily have been real
By Elly McCausland

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