The Handmaid’s tale is a story of a future Dystopian Totalitarian Theocracy as experienced by one of its victims. The USA has been overthrown the President assassinated and all members of congress machine-gunned. In its place the republic of Gilead is a society based on Puritan values from the early colonisation of New England. The founders of Gilead insist they act on the authority of the Bible. The language is altered to give everything biblical references. With lack of outside contact Gilead is intent of making the horror of the state seem normal and hence acceptable. Gilead is experiencing dangerously low reproduction rates. Handmaids are assigned to bear children for elite couples that have trouble conceiving.
The Handmaid narrator Offred tells the story of her daily life frequently slipping into flashbacks, which allow the reader to reconstruct the events that lead to the creation of Gilead, her capture and virtual imprisonment. Much of Offred’s tale concerns her inner torment to accept her fate or resist. Others such her friend Moira and walking partner Ofglen resist but suffer dreadful consequences. The reader is prompted to consider what she would do in a oppressive totalitarian society. Offred’s flashbacks to the time before Gilead show an intolerant feminist society where porn magazines are burnt. Her husband is not altogether unhappy when the founders of Gilead suddenly deny women jobs and bank accounts. They no longer belonged to each other; instead, she belonged to him. Men therefore may not be much assistance to women facing this type of slavery.
Margaret Atwood is careful not to introduce anything new in Gilead. It has all happened before. Gilead only brings it all together in a more modern time.
At the end of the novel members of a future academic conference are discussing Gilead and the tape recordings from the Handmaid’s Tale. The academics mostly have Native American names and the conference takes place a city inside the Arctic Circle. Jokes are made about White Americans to suggest they no longer exist or are not important. It is suggested that one should not be too critical of Gilead (they were dealing with different times) promoting a strongly relativist morality. Having just suffered with Offred the horrors of Gilead to hear her life discussed in front of an amused audience, joked about, and treated, as a quant relic is another gut-wrenching experience for the reader. This part suggests that despite the horrible injustices of Gilead it might happen again in some form.
I found the novel very absorbing and disturbing. As a reader I had direct access to Offred’s thoughts, torments and pain.
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