From archive (archive) Subject: The Handmaiden's Tale From: haste#@andrew.cmu.edu (Dani Zweig) Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University To: outnews#ext.nn.rec.arts.books@andrew.cmu.edu, Date: 31 Mar 87 20:33:44 GMT The Handmaiden's Tale by Margaret Atwood Ballantine, 2/87, 395 pages, $4.95 --a review In the near future, partly because of a decline in human fertility (due to both social and environmental factors) a new wave of fundamentalism sweeps the United States. When that wave crests, the United States is the Republic of Gilead, those who cannot or will not live with the new order are destroyed, and women are chattel. The narrator is a woman. The time is the near future; most of the population remembers a freer and more humane past, and would prefer it. But the fundamentalist takeover is so smooth and is enforced so brutally, that the time to resist is past before people realize it. The techniques of terror and oppression are Americanized, but readily recognizable. When we read of Nazi Germany or the Gulag we are reading cautionary stories -- but we are also receiving lessons. We are learning the state of the art in the technology of enslaving a domestic population. If this were a science fiction book, what I have outlined would probably constitute part of the first chapter. Then, having established the background, the author would go on to the actual story. Margaret Atwood establishes the background in a more leisurely fashion: it takes her close to four hundred pages. This isn't a story that takes place in an imagined society; it is a portrait of that society, a more careful, more carefully drawn, portrait than we are used to seeing. The portrait is understated and believable. The narrator is Offred. 'Offred' is not the name she was born with; that vanished with her old legal status. The name signifies that she belongs to the household of Fred. She isn't interested in describing or explaining what happened to the United States, although we learn much of that from her narrative. She describes her own experiences. Most of her experiences have not been dramatically horrifying. Rather, she is stunned, numbed. Three years earlier she was living a life about as different from ours as ours is from that our parents led at our age. Now she is Offred, and fresh corpses of people who disapprove of the new dispensation are on daily display. Comparisons between this book and 1984 are inevitable, and justified. It seems clear that many of the parallels are deliberate. But this book is less fantastic than 1984, more believable, more banal. This isn't a science fiction book. People who pick it up expecting one will probably be disappointed. But a jaded science fiction author, in racing past the 'setup' to the action, would not give us as close and as powerful a view of this society, the potential for which may be clearly seen in our own. On the other hand, a jaded author of science fiction would probably have known better than to compromise the impact and integrity of the book by ending it with one of those tired 'scientists discussing the manuscript centuries later' epilogues. I recommend reading this book. And if it hasn't captured you after the first fifty pages or so, it won't. ----- Dani Zweig haste#@andrew.cmu.edu (arpa, bitnet, or via seismo) From archive (archive) Subject: THE HANDMAID'S TALE by Margaret Atwood From: ecl@mtgzy.UUCP Organization: AT&T, Middletown NJ Date: 8 Apr 87 02:39:28 GMT THE HANDMAID'S TALE by Margaret Atwood Fawcett Crest, 1986 (1985c), $4.95. A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1987 Evelyn C. Leeper They say that politics make strange bedfellows, and they point to the feminists and the fundamentalists marching side-by-side to "take back the night" and punish all those horrible, evil pornographers. Well, Margaret Atwood has brought new meaning to that cliche of bedfellows. In a world where the fertility rate has been drastically reduced because of pollution and who knows what other evils, the Gileadean solution is that of Rachel and her handmaid Bilhah. And this is made palatable by couching it as the solution that both the anti-pornography ("AP") fundamentalists and the AP feminists have been promoting for years. The AP fundamentalists get the strict morality, the elimination of divorce, the return of woman to her role as keeper of the home. The AP feminists get the banning of pornography, the death penalty for rape, and the elimination of violence against women. So why do I have the feeling that none of those promoting these goals today would actually want the reality Atwood gives us? Actually one of the characters makes the point best. There are two kinds of freedom, she says, freedom to and freedom from. Both the AP feminists and the AP fundamentalists have been emphasizing the freedom from: freedom from fear, freedom from violence, freedom from anything that offends, etc. (Sounds a bit like Franklin Roosevelt, doesn't it? But I digress.) They have forgotten that freedom from and freedom to have to balance out: an increase in one is only achieved by a decrease in the other. Or, as Henry Drummond says in INHERIT THE WIND, "Yes, you can learn to fly. But the birds will lose their wonder, and the clouds will smell of gasoline." In the case of THE HANDMAID'S TALE, the freedom from fear et al has been achieved by giving up the freedom to live as one chooses, to work in a profession, to have financial independence, to have an identity of one's own. The handmaids are "Ofglen" or "Offred"--which Atwood mislabels as patronymics--having given up their own names when they were recruited. The AP fundamentalists and the AP feminists have been so busy joining forces on what they want everyone to have freedom from that they have overlooked the fact that they disagree on what people should have freedom to. If they achieve their goals they may discover that the world they have made is not to their liking after all. The other interesting point about the society that Atwood portrays is that it is very similar to another science fictional society--that of John Norman's "Gor" series. Bizarre though this sounds, let's examine the two. Atwood describes women's roles as being one of five types: Marthas, Handmaidens, Wives, Aunts, or Colonists. The Marthas do the cooking and cleaning; they are the equivalent of Norman's state slaves. Both dress in drab colors and do the menial work. The Handmaidens provide procreation (and sex); they are the equivalent of Norman's pleasure slaves. Both dress in red. The Wives are the equivalent of Norman's free companions--honored and respected, living their lives on a pedestal. The Aunts are the equivalent of the slaves who train the pleasure slaves (I don't recall if there is a specific term for them). The Colonists have no direct parallel, though a disobedient slave on Gor does end up doing some sort of unpleasant/dangerous work. While it's true that these roles are not unpredictable, the parallels between Gilead and Gor are thought-provoking, to say the least. Add to this that Atwood, as part of the main character's description of her indoctrination, includes graphic descriptions of violent sex, and one wonders if those who would ban Norman's books would do the same to THE HANDMAID'S TALE. Consider the following excerpt from a proposed anti-pornography ordinance: "Pornography is the sexually explicit subordination of women, graphically depicted, whether in pictures or in words, that also includes one or more of the following: ... women are presented dehumanized as sexual objects, things or commodities...." (Note that the portrayal does not have to be favorable.) My reading of this is that THE HANDMAID'S TALE would be considered pornographic by this definition. All this indicates, of course, is that this definition is crap. I haven't said much about the book itself. That's because the plot itself is not that original, or enthralling, or amazing. It's what the book makes you think about that counts. Atwood makes you think about what can lead to this society and, conversely, what the actions and attitudes of today can lead to. It doesn't bear multiple readings the way a novel like LAST AND FIRST MEN does. It's not a masterpiece of literary style. But the thoughts it generates will stay with you long after the details of the book itself have been forgotten. Evelyn C. Leeper (201) 957-2070 UUCP: ihnp4!mtgzy!ecl ARPA: mtgzy!ecl@rutgers.rutgers.edu