The Handmaid's Tale

Damn, that was some intense shit. And timely! Timely because the f-word has been coming up again and again in my life these days: from the office to casual evenings with lady friends. The f-word being “feminism”. Inadvertently, I have found myself in a froth of angry femrage as things such as unequal pay, gender policing, gendered toys and other patriarchal nonsense have been much bandied about in my social circle.

So a feminist dystopia was just perfect. Also wonderful was that it was set in Cambridge, MA. Doubly wonderful was that I IDed Cambridge from the merest VIBE, man, from the mere mentions of a “subway stop near a river”, “the city beyond”, “the university” with “red bricked walls”. This protagonist! She speaks of Cambridge! It was nice to have that vindicated with more blunt mentions later on (like when she's like, “over the river... IN BOSTON”).

Anyway, I was meant to read this 15 years ago in AP English class. I didn't, because I was sometimes a lazy student. I read it now instead! It was marvelous. Probably better as an adult feminist lady, rather than a silly teen.

Offred (get it?) is a red-cloaked “handmaid” in a weird, Near Future land (Cambridge, Massachusetts, ahem) where men are men and ladies are TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY SUBJUGATED. Seriously, it is awful. Offred is called of-Fred, for firsts. For seconds, she has to wear the equivalent of a giant red, shapeless sack and a dog cone - lest she SEE too much, that crazy hussy! She is to be quiet and look down and NEVER EVER READ and every month, on ovulation day, she gets sexed by “the Commander”, the older dude who is head of household in the mansion where she lives. He does this while she LAYS ON HIS ACTUAL WIFE, who pretends to be the one getting sexed. It is awful. Godawful. It is so crazy, in so many ways.

Anyway, this is clearly a land where Republicans - ha, I kid! - Tea Partiers - still kidding! sort of kidding! - okay, Texas Tea Party-type Republicans (!?) - have taken over New England (horror of horrors). The birthrate is down, eco-problems lead most babies to be born with three heads, and religious fundamentalism grips the land. Women have now become “Econowives” (baby chamber/cleaner/cook for the poor), or fancy “Wives” (baby chamber for the wealthy), or “Handmaids” (baby chamber for the wealthy, if the fancy Wives can't cut it), or “Marthas” (as in Stewart, i.e. cooks/cleaners for the wealthy), or “Aunts” (gender police at the crazy re-education centers). There are obvious echoes of the Holocaust, Iran in the 1970s, post-Taliban Afghanistan, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, and basically any dystopia, real or imagined. The plot also follows the usual narrative arc, with the usual heartbreaking betrayals and horrifying moments of seeing the human spirit get crushed. What did Orwell say? A face getting smashed under a boot, forever and ever? That stuff.

It's really a bummer.

It's also beautifully written, with dense, layered wordsmithery, with lots of Georgia O'Keeffe-y meditations on blooming flowers and sex organs and touch and sensation and repression and the lusty soil, etc. The wordplay is clever, sometimes to the point of self-indulgence, but, oh Margaret Atwood, I can't get annoyed at you. It was all too good.

The epilogue is clever to the point of ZANY; like, I wanted to just put the book down and scream from delight, like a little kid. (Does anyone else get that? With books? Just me?) It's also semi-reassuring, though the dystopian ambiguity (think 1984's ending, or Brazil's, etc) is relatively intact. So don't worry, hard-hearted readers, there is no Disneyfication! It is horrible, start to finish. Offred has (one of the?!) worst lives ever!

And that's the crux of it, of course. That, like any good dystopian book, it eventually (or has already) COMES TRUE. This picture circulated my social media toobs a while ago, and, yes, it's ironic. And also very sad. And also indicative of Orwell's predictive genius. Dude was writing about 1930s Fascism, and he basically predicted the world of Snowden and Manning. Similarly, M.T. Anderson wrote (the mind-blowingly awesome) Feed a few years before Facebook, but he basically predicted the world we're getting: a world where Google/Facebook want to become not only the interface between you and the Internet but, preferably, between you and REALITY, so you can just consume, consume, consume. Cuz, you know, their shareholders! i.e. Google Glass/Oculus Rift, and so forth.

Similarly, with this, Atwood isn't (only) describing the shape of things to come, but she's also describing, well, the sorry history of Afghanistan, or any country where women's rights have taken HUGE, brutal steps back. Just look at this. It's awful, and tragic, and scary. It makes me want to donate to Planned Parenthood (do it) like crazy.

Oh! And I haven't even gotten into the wonderful, textured portrayal of actual feminism that Atwood portrays, what with Offred's awesomely ancient 1970s Women's Lib mom or her awesomely punk, riot grrrl lesbian BFF from college, Moira. It is great. But I feel this review has already gotten too long so I'll just say READ IT READ IT READ IT. CONSUME CONSUME CONSUME.