The Handmaid’s Tale

Hello, this is Heather! Lydia just uploaded some fantastic poetry, so if you haven’t already, please do go and read it; her and Shani write beautifully. On the topic of Lydia, she lent me this book a few weeks ago; I haven’t been able to review it for a while since I’ve been ill and pent up with writing UCAs stuff, but here’s a very short review on it.

Author: Margaret Atwood

Published: 1985

Publisher: McClelland and Stewart

My rating: ★★★★

This dystopian novel certainly has some moments that make the reader withdraw in revulsion. It takes place after the society has changed, meaning women have no rights to own property or be independent. The narrator, known by the name of Offred, has lost her money, her job, her husband and her daughter because of this revolution. For those of you innocent to the meaning of a handmaid, it is someone hired to have a baby with the man of the family when the wife is deemed infertile. The theme of feminism is adamant throughout as women are exploited and abused by men in this society. Even the upper class, married women feel little love and seem to have no control over their marriage.

I am glad to report there is not much explicit sex written about (it would have made my train journey to Leeds on which I read the book a tad awkward). The whole procedure of making love is treated in the antithesis of a romantic or spontaneous thing; the wife being present the whole time and the protagonist not going into specific details on what is going on. I think this really shows how traumatic but also automated it became for the protagonist. It is merely a routine, a job to her, yet she twists what is happening in her language, making it seem like a dentist appointment. There is a definite theme of distance, the book being void of proximity or love. Offred never names her child, perhaps to create a sense of detachment between them, nor does she ever disclose her genuine name, so she seems to not even know herself.

The reader sympathises with how lonely the narrator is but also the confusion. There is scarcely any detail on exactly what happened to cause the revolution, which is quite scary; imagine going to work one day and finding that you’ve been fired… and you have no money… and your husband owns all you have. It’s a terrifying thought that so little control can be grasped in these situations. I was a little confused at how the protagonist could remember some aspects of the past but not others. She spends so much time on a daily basis reflecting on the past that one would have thought she’d have at least painted a version of most vital life events in her head – yet she seems to remember random little things and forget some quite big other bits of the past. Aside from that, I really liked the writing style. 

“I sit in the chair and think about the word chair. It can also mean the leader of a meeting. It can also mean a mode of execution. It is the first syllable in charity. It is the French word for flesh. None of these facts has any connection with the others.”

Comments like the above I felt should have been more frequent in the tale. Firstly, it’s something that we all think about sometimes, the quirky ways of our language and the way the strict definitions of words, much like Offred’s identity, get muddled amongst the ever-changing nature of society. She is focusing on something familiar, the patter of language, looking at words like they hold a secret meaning that could free her from a society where she is banned from reading. 

Lydia and I both tirade the ending of the novel, which is, kindly worded, ambiguous. I was disappointed to learn there are no sequels and even Wikipedia could not enlighten me of what happened in the ending – it seems Atwood decided to leave the reader completely alone in deciphering what happened. I suppose it’s like a cycle; Offred is puzzled when the society is changed and confused on what is going on, much like the reader when they reach the end.

I really enjoyed Atwood’s writing style, blending Offred’s past in beautifully with the present in a surprisingly not confusing way. Her plot is something scary but different, it’s just a shame the ending is not expanded on further.