The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood has rather (in)famously stated that she does not consider her science fiction novels to be science fiction. Regular readers of science fiction will disagree, but it is not all that surprising that she might not include The Handmaid’s Tale in the genre. It’s not just that the book is beautifully written and psychologically insightful (criteria which seem to exclude works from the science fiction category, regardless of their content, in the eyes of some literary critics). It also makes no attempt to extrapolate logically into the future. Yet it is a wonderful example of the sort of “what if” scenario, without moving into the impossibility of fantasy, that makes the best science fiction so engaging, and it fits well into the dystopian tradition of Nineteen Eighty-Four. By placing it first in their sequel to David Pringle’s 100 Best, which began with Orwell’s novel, Damien Broderick and Paul Di Filippo make the comparison explicit, reclaiming both novels for the science fiction tradition.

In the world of The Handmaid’s Tale, the United States has undergone a coup by Christian fundamentalists, who institute a totalitarian system and institutionalize their tenets in regard to gender and reproduction, establishing a new society known as Gilead. The impetus for this upheaval is a fertility crisis, with most of the population seeming to have become sterile, thus legitimizing, in the eyes of the fundamentalists, extreme sanctions against abortion, birth control, or any activities among women that could detract from their reproductive role (such as having any power whatsoever in society). If anyone doubts the provenance of such political views within the United States, look into the movement agitating for a “Personhood” constitutional amendment, which would define a fertilized egg upon conception as a person, thus potentially allowing for the prosecution of abortion recipients and providers (as well as the users of some types of birth control) for murder, as is done in Atwood’s novel. This might seem an extreme position, unlikely ever to be implemented, but the Congressional bill was co-sponsored by the current Republican candidate for Vice-President of the United States, and a similar amendment has been on the ballot twice as a referendum at the state level in Colorado. It can’t happen here? Maybe, but hopefully the wide popularity of Atwood’s book helps decrease the likelihood, just as Orwell’s anti-totalitarian warning is sometimes credited with helping keep us vigilant against the potential inroads of Big Brother.

Atwood is not interested in explaining how we would get from here to there, giving the novel the feel of a thought experiment or a fable. Some doubt is shed on the provenance of the first-person manuscript by the “historical notes” inserted at the end of the book, purporting to be the proceedings of an academic conference on “Gileadean Studies” in 2195, by which time Gilead seems to be something of a historical footnote. Looked at from this perspective, the manuscript known as “The Handmaid’s Tale” could be “accurate” or not, but almost certainly represents the “truth,” in the broadest sense, about the experience of a woman who lived through that period of history. It also might be useful to read the novel as an alternate history, since the few clues we are given as to what happened seem to indicate that the revolution occurred right around the time the novel was published in 1985, which Atwood certainly knew would invalidate the novel as “prophecy” as soon as it was published. (There’s a reference to there being “no dates after the mid-eighties” amidst the graffiti observed by the Handmaids in the former school that has become their training center.) The cause of the fertility crisis is unspecific. “The air got too full…of chemicals, rays, radiation, the water swarmed with toxic molecules… Not to mention the exploding atomic power plants, along the San Andreas Fault, nobody’s fault, during the earthquakes, and the mutant strain of syphilis no mold could touch.” Atwood seems to be saying: How could these things not have consequences? Take your pick. But we are clearly not meant to read this as a specific prediction about how the future is likely to play out.

In Gilead, the Handmaids are women believed to be fertile, who are given a choice between forced labor camps and service as reproductive vessels for politically powerful men (“Commanders”), whose wives (and often the men themselves, though they are never blamed) are sterile. Renamed after their Commanders—the narrator is Offred (of Fred)—the Handmaids have an odd sort of status, both revered and reviled. “It’s forbidden for us to be alone with the Commanders. We are for breeding purposes: we aren’t concubines, geisha girls, courtesans. On the contrary: everything possible has been done to remove us from that category. There is supposed to be nothing entertaining about us, no room is to be permitted for the flowering of secret lusts; no special favors are to be wheedled, by them or us, there are to be no toeholds for love. We are two-legged wombs, that’s all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices.”

The novel is about power. While the Handmaids gain some social standing because of the importance of their role, it is useless to them for any purpose other than basic survival, since their agency as human beings is eliminated. The most moving passages of the book are those which detail Offred’s reaction to her situation. Taken from her husband and daughter, whom she can never expect to see again, denied the possibility of a meaningful relationship with any other human being, not even allowed to read, her life is a series of ritual actions (including what can be seen as a monthly ritualized rape by the Commander, with his Wife present), punctuated by stretches of boredom. Her mind reacts by dreaming, attempting to relive past memories, and looking for even the slightest chance to exert her individuality or agency, without being caught. She takes satisfaction in finding a strange Latin phrase carved in the woodwork by a previous occupant of her room, and yearns to engage in petty pilfering of the Commander’s household. Suicide among the Handmaids is common, and the homes of the Commanders have been carefully furnished to minimize the possibility.

The situation, while consistent with Gilead’s religion and society, is not psychologically tenable for anyone. It seems clear that such a society cannot last, though we do not see how it ends. When her Commander approaches her offering a more personal relationship, Offred is so desperate for the slightest hint of meaning in her life that she cannot resist. It is not really sex the Commander is looking for by cultivating this illegal activity. “He wanted me to play Scrabble with him, and kiss him as if I meant it. This is one of the most bizarre things that’s happened to me, ever. Context is all.” Despite its grim scenario, The Handmaid’s Tale is not without a bit of dark humor, usually involving this type of contextual dissonance. Everyday objects remembered from her previous life take on ironic significance in this strange new world. A ritual execution of a rapist by a mob of Handmaids reminds Offred of the surging crowd at a rock concert. There are no rock concerts, of course, in Gilead.

In 1985, the first big surge of what has come to be known as the “religious right” was becoming clear. Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority was flexing its muscles. Televangelists were growing in popularity. The Commander’s wife could have been modeled on Tammy Faye Bakker, one of a long line of leaders of the Christian right who didn’t practice what they preached. (The downfall of Jim and Tammy Bakker came a couple of years after publication of The Handmaid’s Tale, and could be seen to be foreshadowed by the Commander’s and the Wife’s actions in the novel.) Ronald Reagan was entering his second term as president—a politician who was routinely considered to be “too far-right” ever to be elected during the 1970s. Atwood was not trying to predict the future, but she was reacting to the then-current political environment and trying to get her readers to consider the social implications of religious fundamentalism in conjunction with political power. The treatment of women in the Muslim world must have been on her mind as well. And while this can be read as a sort of feminist manifesto, the novel makes clear that Gilead is not turning out quite the way the male leaders had hoped either.

Today, popular elected politicians (generally male) are attempting to legislate women’s reproductive choices, outlaw abortion even in cases of rape and incest, and perpetuate a myth that women who have been raped are unlikely to become pregnant, an idea which seems to be derived from the belief that women will “fake” having been raped in order to more easily get an abortion. Whatever each individual’s personal feelings about these issues, Atwood’s novel reminds us that we should consider the consequences of imposing our religious views on society as a whole. There was a reason behind that whole “separation of church and state” thing. The Handmaid’s Tale, then, remains useful food for thought. At least for now, it remains on the shelf next to Nineteen Eight-Four. It would be nice if they both became irrelevant.