The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

[DarkLady Juliet]

Cover of first edition:



My edition's cover:

The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel, a work of science fiction or speculative fiction, written by Canadian author Margaret Atwood and first published by McClelland and Stewart in 1985. Set in the near future, in a totalitarian theocracy which has overthrown the United States government, The Handmaid's Tale explores themes of women in subjugation and the various means by which they gain agency. The novel was inspired by Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, which is a series of connected stories ("The Merchant's Tale", "The Parson's Tale", etc.).

The Handmaid's Tale won the 1985 Governor General's Award and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987, and it was nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award, the 1986 Booker Prize, and the 1987 Prometheus Award. It has been adapted for the cinema, radio, opera, and stage.

The film (1990):

[DarkLady Juliet]

I finally got around to read it. I liked it a lot, it's not so tragic as I expected. It is quite disturbing, though, the feeling that it could indeed happen (theoretically, of course) this or any other similar dictatorship in our modern world, coming from our equals, with the same background and similar education makes you think about it.

The characters are well depicted. Besides the initial role assigned to them, we discover the real person in each one. Masks are taken off, everyone is fighting to survive in the place they have been assigned. Adaptation to survive.

There are times when I thought that the Commander

wanted to make the Handmaid's life easier, more humanlike. But no, he is just acting as if she was his lover, pretending he has a parallel relationship, cheating his wife, behaving as if he was a man in search of whatever his wife won't give him, not just children, but entertainment, conversation, showing off in front of other man. A scenification of his power.

On the other side Serena seems to

want to smooth the Handmaid's job, by proposing her to cheat the Commander and have somebody else's child, with the real aim to recover her husband. She feels so downtrodden, surely she knows about the secret life the Commander leads.

Hope on the recovery of the society

comes in the end, in the form of the Handmaid's diaries. Even if the don't know what happened to Luke and the child.

The fact that we know everybody else's names except that of the Handmaid, might be a device to view this character as any of us: we have our lives, our wishes and they can be pulled off from us. How would have we reacted in any of the circumstances? As Serena, as Offred, as Moira, as Nick...?
Does she refuse to tell her real name, to difference the life she is living as Offred, from the life she feels or wants as hers?