Why should you read "The Handmaid's Tale"? - Naomi R. Mercer

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Margaret Atwood's speculative fiction masterpiece "A Handmaid's Tale" explores the consequences of complacency and how power can be wielded unfairly. Atwood’s chilling vision of a dystopian regime has captured readers' imaginations since its publication in 1985. How does this book maintain such staying power? Naomi R. Mercer investigates.

Lesson by Naomi R. Mercer, animation by Phuong Mai Nguyen.

In Margaret Atwood's near-future novel,
"The Handmaid's Tale,"

a Christian fundamentalist regime
called the Republic of Gilead

has staged a military coup
and established a theocratic government

in the United States.

The regime theoretically
restricts everyone,

but in practice a few men have structured
Gilead so they have all the power,

especially over women.

The Handmaid's Tale is what Atwood calls
speculative fiction,

meaning it theorizes
about possible futures.

This is a fundamental characteristic

shared by both utopian
and dystopian texts.

The possible futures in Atwood's novels
are usually negative, or dystopian,

where the actions of a small group
have destroyed society as we know it.

Utopian and dystopian writing
tends to parallel political trends.

Utopian writing frequently depicts
an idealized society

that the author puts forth as a blueprint
to strive toward.

Dystopias, on the other hand,

are not necessarily predictions
of apocalyptic futures,

but rather warnings about the ways
in which societies can set themselves

on the path to destruction.

The Handmaid's Tale was published in 1985,
when many conservative groups

attacked the gains made
by the second-wave feminist movement.

This movement had been advocating greater
social and legal equality for women

since the early 1960s.

The Handmaid's Tale imagines a future
in which the conservative

counter-movement gains
the upper hand

and not only demolishes the progress
women had made toward equality,

but makes women completely
subservient to men.

Gilead divides women in the regime
into distinct social classes

based upon their function
as status symbols for men.

Even their clothing is color-coded.

Women are no longer allowed to read

or move about freely in public,

and fertile women are subject
to state-engineered rape

in order to give birth to children
for the regime.

Although The Handmaid's Tale
is set in the future,

one of Atwood's self-imposed
rules in writing it

was that she wouldn't use any event

or practice that hadn't already
happened in human history.

The book is set
in Cambridge, Massachusetts,

a city that during
the American colonial period

had been ruled by the theocratic Puritans.

In many ways, the Republic of Gilead
resembles the strict rules

that were present in Puritan society:

rigid moral codes,

modest clothing,

banishment of dissenters,

and regulation of every aspect
of people's lives and relationships.

For Atwood, the parallels
to Massachusett's Puritans

were personal as well as theoretical.

She spent several years studying
the Puritans at Harvard

and she's possibly descended from
Mary Webster,

a Puritan woman accused
of witchcraft who survived her hanging.

Atwood is a master storyteller.

The details of Gilead,
which we've only skimmed the surface of,

slowly come into focus through the eyes
of its characters,

mainly the novel's protagonist Offred,

a handmaid in the household
of a commander.

Before the coup that established Gilead,

Offred had a husband, a child, a job,
and a normal, middle-class American life.

But when the fundamentalist regime
comes into power,

Offred is denied her identity,

separated from her family,

and reduced to being, in Offred's words,

"a two-legged womb for increasing
Gilead's waning population."

She initially accepts the loss
of her fundamental human rights

in the name of stabilizing
the new government.

But state control soon extends
into attempts to control the language,

behavior,

and thoughts of herself
and other individuals.

Early on, Offred says,

"I wait. I compose myself.

My self is a thing I must compose,
as one composes a speech."

She likens language
to the formulation of identity.

Her words also acknowledge
the possibility of resistance,

and it's resistance, the actions of people
who dare to break the political,

intellectual,

and sexual rules,

that drives the plot
of the Handmaid's Tale.

Ultimately, the novel's exploration
of the consequences of complacency,

and how power can be wielded unfairly,

makes Atwood's chilling vision
of a dystopian regime ever relevant.