Review: Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale"

          In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood brings her acute sense of a woman’s perspective to a dystopic vision of America. Atwood’s mastery of the element of suspense fuels her enthralling vision of dystopia in the 20^th Century. America has fallen, succumbed to racial fears and prejudices, and been replaced by an inchoate, totalitarian “monotheocracy.” The Constitution has been suspended; religious freedoms and individual liberties have been replaced with government sanctioned executions, prayers, and procreation rituals. In a day when our fears and entitlements have led us to more readily embrace federally regulated controls, allowing more and more infringements into our individual rights, Atwood's vision of a totalitarian regime is stunningly poignant. It shows us what can happen when too much power resides at the top, and too little freedom remains for the individual.

          The monotheocracy that has replaced the United States has only recently risen to power. The new government’s doctrines are still developing; its initial founders still run the country. They are assisted in their endeavors by a secret police force that ensures all skeptics and heretics are eliminated. The new government’s army is constantly at war with religious and secular enemies on its borders. Yet, this story does not take place on the frontier, nor does it follow the work of the secret police. The tale focuses instead on the greatest domestic issue facing the nascent government: a dwindling population.

          Atwood’s protagonist is one of the so-called “handmaids,” a certifiably fertile woman assigned to a top ranking military or party official and his wife, so that they may conceive a child through her. Much of the population has become sterilized due to pollution and other chemical contaminants; contraception also helped dwindle the population of the United States, before it became a monotheocracy. Now contraception is illegal, and the handmaid is a vehicle for desirable population growth. The handmaid is less than a concubine, but more than a surrogate. She occupies an in-between state. The notion of handmaids is new, and Offred, the story’s protagonist, is one of the first handmaids provided to various commanders. Handmaids serve on a rotating basis. They try to conceive a child, and if they are successful, move on to a new commander and his wife after a period of weaning. They leave the child behind, for the commander and his wife to call, and raise, as their own. If the handmaid is unsuccessful, then she is transferred after her period of assignment is up. A handmaid who consistently fails to bear a child becomes an “unwoman,” a designation that carries with it assignment to a colony, where they will live out their days farming or cleaning up the contaminated waste of the former United States.

          The handmaids are often associated with slaves, in Atwood’s narrative. They must obey their commander, and especially the commander’s wife. They must keep up their strength for child-bearing. They are looked down upon by other servants, and are often despised by their commanders’ wives. They are permitted daily walks in town, and do much of their household’s shopping, but they must always travel in pairs. Most importantly, the arts of writing and reading are forbidden them. Like slaves, they are prohibited from touching pen or paper, prohibited from looking at books. In the markets, all shop names have been white-washed out, and handmaids must identify each shop by the pictures on its sign.

          Offred’s story is marked by dispossession. She has lost family, friends, and even her true name to the new government. She will even lose the name “Offred,” when she is transferred, because the name belongs to the house that she serves. Her story is characterized by trauma, a trauma marked by flashbacks and fragmented memory. Her tale is a recollection of recollections, a pieced together story made from memory, but delivered in her own voice. Her tale, in its telling, is a crime against her society, but it is a crime that she has desperately needed to commit, and it is certainly not the greatest crime that she has ever committed, as her story reveals.

          Overall, Atwood tells an excellent story, one full of suspense and intrigue. Her themes revolve around women and the abuses of them by their society. Her story also focuses on the nature of writing. In true Atwood fashion, the narrative seeks to give voice to a people disposed of their natural voice, a people who have been deprived of the instruments of communication (reading and writing) that we most often take for granted. The narrative nods to the power of the written word, and there are some veiled allusions to literary theory. Although this is not the best Atwood novel that I have read – it is bested by her more recent dystopic vision in Oryx and Crake – and it is not even her best novel focusing on women – falling to the highly acclaimed Blind Assassin – it is certainly worth a read.

JCM

17 January 2013