The Handmaid's Tale

''But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve.''

Imagine: You are a woman, and you have no name. Your name has been taken from you. All identity and individuality vanquished. Your name has been replaced by the word Of and the first name of your Master. You are Offred, Ofglen, Ofcharles, you are a nobody, you belong to a man who's not your husband, but someone who uses your body as a vessel for procreation. If you do not provide a child, you are banished to the Colonies, to clear away the toxic mud and die.

This is the harrowing world of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Strongly echoing George Orwell's 1984, we are witnessing the USA after a coup which established a totalitarian government. Who are the ones in power now? The Army? The Church? The two combined? Whoever they are, one of their aims is to turn women into creatures that are no longer considered human beings, but something a little superior to animals.

One of the most dramatic and poignant sequences of the book is a flashback to the day the coup took place.Offred describes the invasion in the Congress, the massacre of its Members and the President's, the day she discovers that her personal bank account has been handed over to her husband, naturally, without notice or explanation. It becomes known that the same has happened to every bank account that belongs to a woman. They have no right to have money, to work or to read.Furthermore, our narrator loses her job because the library is closed down under the threat of the army of the new State. The Constitution of the Unites States of America exists no more. The way in which Atwood describes the aftermath of the coup sent chills down my spine. The raw, but poetic language conveys the new, nightmarish, brutal reality clearly.

The relationship between Offred and her ‘‘owner'', the Commander is a complicated one. It is chilling in the sense that you feel something is about to happen, to change. There is great tension whenever the two characters are together as we share her suspicions and fear. Offred's relationship with Nick, the chauffer, is a dead-ringer for Winston's affair with Julia in 1984 and an additional reason for the reader to feel uncomfortable over Offred's future.

Her only way to escape her reality lies with her mind. Her thoughts and memories of an era of freedom. She isn't brainwashed, just as Winston wasn't brainwashed. The new States with their pious doctrines and the Ministry of Truth have failed to contaminate every single soul. There are some who remember and wish for the civilized world of the past -however problematic-, where women had identity and independence, where love wasn't a crime punished by death.

Offred takes heart only at the thought of her daughter for whom she hasn't lost hope that she is alive.It is the only way to keep her sanity, amidst the violence of her society. There is violence towards the women who are himiliated, punished for transgression and executed, there is violence towards the men who are believed to be members of the Opposition. They are vicioucly killed under false pretenses, in a way that turns the repressed women into beasts.

The Handmaid's Tale is a classic of our times. Is it original? No. After 1984 no dystopian novel can be called ‘‘original'', but unlike Orwell's bleak universe, Atwood allows a brief glimpse of hope, makes us think that all is not lost, that there are some -however few- who can fight against Hell and retain their sanity.