Who Has Also Done the Blind Assassin

The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)

Written by Margaret Atwood

Who has also done The Blind Assassin,

Princess Prunella & the Purple Peanut

Characters

Offred

The Commander

Serena Joy

Nick

Ofglen

Moira

Introduction

The Handmaid's Taleis adystopian novel, a work ofscience fictionorspeculative fiction,written byCanadian authorMargaret Atwood in 1985. Set in the near future, in atotalitarianChristiantheocracywhich has overthrown theUnited Statesgovernment,The Handmaid's Taleexplores themes of women in subjugation and the various means by which they gainagency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale

It is the world of the near future, and Offred is a Handmaid in the home of the Commander and his wife. She is allowed out once a day to the food market, she is not permitted to read, and she is hoping the Commander makes her pregnant, because she is only valued if her ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she was an independent woman, had a job of her own, a husband and child. But all of that is gone now...everything has changed.

www.amazon.com/Handmaids-Tale-Margaret-Atwood

Awards

The Handmaid’s Tale

1985 –Governor General's Award for English language fiction(winner)

1986 –Booker Prize(nominated)

1986 –Nebula Award(nominated)

1987 –Arthur C. Clarke Award(winner)

1987 –Prometheus Award(nominated)

Margaret Atwood

Governor General's Award, (1966, 1985)

Companion of theOrder of Canada, 1981

Guggenheim fellowship, 1981

Los Angeles Times Fiction Award, 1986

Foreign Honorary Member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1988[40]

Canadian Booksellers Association Author of the Year, 1989

Trillium Book Award, 1991, 1993, 1995

Government of France's Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, 1994

Helmerich Award, 1999,

Booker Prize, 2000

Prince of Asturias Awardsfor Literature, 2008

Nelly Sachs Prize, Germany, 2010

Dan David Prize, Israel, 2010

Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, Canada, 2012

Los Angeles Times Book Prize"Innovator's Award", 2012

Reviews

Atwood's chilling tale of a concubine in an oppressive future America is more vital than ever by Charlotte Newman September 26, 2010

www.theguardian.com

This year sees the 25th anniversary of the publication ofMargaret Atwood's dystopian classic, and to honour the occasion, the book has been reissued by Vintage.The Handmaid's Taletells the story of Offred – not her real name, but the patronymic she has been given by the new regime in an oppressive parallel America of the future – and her role as a Handmaid. The Handmaids are forced to provide children by proxy for infertile women of a higher social status, the wives of Commanders. They undergo regular medical tests, and in many ways become invisible, the sum total of their biological parts.

Offred remembers her life before the inception of Gilead, when she had a husband, a daughter and a life. She had been a witness to the dissolution of the old America into the totalitarian theocracy that it now is, and she tries to reconcile the warning signs with reality: "We lived in the gaps between the stories."

Offred's tender remembrances of times past provide relief from the brutality of her new life, in which her body has become a cause of discomfort for her. Her former life is presented through glimpses of her university friends, her husband, her freedom. They are shadowy memories made all the more indistinct by Atwood's lyrical prose, in which facts appear to merge into one another, and history appears immaterial; Offred is kept alive by her inner life, and reality and history become a kind of symbiotic mirage.

Fiercely political and bleak, yet witty and wise, the novel won the inaugural Arthur C Clarke award in 1987, but Atwood has always maintained that the novel is not classifiable science fiction. Nothing practised in the Republic of Gilead is genuinely futuristic. She is right, and this novel seems ever more vital in the present day, where women in many parts of the world live similar lives, dictated by biological determinism and misogyny.

Book Review: The Handmaid’s Tale by Mary McCarthy February 9, 1986

www.nytimes.com/books

Surely the essential element of a cautionary tale is recognition. Surprised recognition, even, enough to administer a shock. We are warned, by seeing our present selves in a distorting mirror, of what we may be turning into if current trends are allowed to continue. That was the effect of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four,'' with its scary dating, not 40 years ahead, maybe also of ''Brave New World'' and, to some extent, of ''A Clockwork Orange.''

It is an effect, for me, almost strikingly missing from Margaret Atwood's very readable book ''The Handmaid's Tale,'' offered by the publisher as a ''forecast'' of what we may have in store for us in the quite near future. A standoff will have been achieved vis-a-vis the Russians, and our own country will be ruled by right-wingers and religious fundamentalists, with males restored to the traditional role of warriors and us females to our ''place'' - which, however, will have undergone subdivision into separate sectors, of wives, breeders, servants and so forth, each clothed in the appropriate uniform. A fresh postfeminist approach to future shock, you might say. Yet the book just does not tell me what there is in our present mores that I ought to watch out for unless I want the United States of America to become a slave state something like the Republic of Gilead whose outlines are here sketched out.

… I just can't see the intolerance of the far right, presently directed not only at abortion clinics and homosexuals but also at high school libraries and small-town schoolteachers, as leading to a super-biblical puritanism by which procreation will be insisted on and reading of any kind banned…

The new world of ''The Handmaid's Tale'' is a woman's world, even though governed, seemingly, and policed by men. Its ethos is entirely domestic, its female population is divided into classes based on household functions, each class clad in a separate color that instantly identifies the wearer - dull green for the Marthas (houseworkers); blue for the Wives; red, blue and green stripes for the Econowives (working class); red for the Handmaids (whose function is to bear children to the head of the household, like Bilhah, Rachel's handmaid in Genesis, but who also, in their long red gowns and white wimple-like headgear, have something of the aura of a temple harlot); brown for the Aunts (a thought-control force, part-governess, part-reform-school matron). The head of the household - whose first name the handmaid takes, adding the word ''of'' to show possession -''Offred,'' ''Ofwarren'' - is known as the Commander. It is his duty to inseminate his assigned partner, who lies on the spread thighs of his wife…

''The Handmaid's Tale'' contains several such touches of deft sardonic humor - for example, the television news program showing clouds of smoke over what was formerly the city of Detroit: we hear the anchorman explain that resettlement of the children of Ham in National Homeland One (the wilds of North Dakota) is continuing on schedule - 3,000 have arrived that week. And yet what is lacking, I think - what constitutes a fundamental disappointment after a promising start - is the destructive force of satire. ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' had it, ''A Clockwork Orange'' had it, even ''Brave New World'' had it, though Huxley was rather short on savagery. If ''The Handmaid's Tale'' doesn't scare one, doesn't wake one up, it must be because it has no satiric bite…

Allusions, References and Noteable Notes

The novel's title was inspired byGeoffrey Chaucer'sThe Canterbury Tales, which is a series of connected stories ("The Merchant's Tale", "The Parson's Tale", etc.).

In interviews and essays Atwood has discussed generic classification ofThe Handmaid's Taleas "science fiction" or "speculative fiction", observing:

I like to make a distinction between science fiction proper and speculative fiction. For me, the science fiction label belongs on books with things in them that we can't yet do, such as going through a wormhole in space to another universe; and speculative fiction means a work that employs the means already to hand, such as DNA identification and credit cards, and that takes place on Planet Earth. But the terms are fluid.

Hugo-winningscience fiction criticDavid Langfordobserved in a column: "(...The Handmaid's Tale, won the very firstArthur C. Clarke awardin 1987. She's been trying to live this down ever since.)" and goes on to point out:

Atwood prefers to say that she writes speculative fiction—a term coined by SF authorRobert A. Heinlein. As she told theGuardian, "Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen." She used a subtly different phrasing forNew Scientist, "Oryx and Crakeis not science fiction. It is fact within fiction. Science fiction is when you have rockets and chemicals." So it was very cruel ofNew Scientistto describe this interview in the contents list as: "Margaret Atwood explains why science is crucial to her science fiction." ... Play it again, Ms Atwood—this time for theBook-of-the-Month Club: "Oryx and Crakeis a speculative fiction, not a science fiction proper. It contains no intergalactic space travel, no teleportation, no Martians." And one more time: onBBC1Breakfast Newsthe distinguished author explained that science fiction, as opposed to what she writes, is characterized by "talking squids in outer space.""

In distinguishing between these genre labelsscience fictionandspeculative fiction, Atwood stated that while others might be using the terms interchangeably, whether classified as "science fiction proper" or as "speculative fiction", her narratives give her the ability to explore themes in ways that "realisticfiction" cannot do.

Some of the underpinnings of the Republic of Gilead come fromthe Bible, especiallythe Book of Genesis. The primary reference is to the story ofRachelandLeah(Genesis 29:31–35; 30:1–24). Leah, Rachel's sister and the first wife of Jacob, was fertile and was blessed by God; but Rachel, Jacob's second wife, was thought to be infertile until much later in her life. Rachel and Leah compete in bearing sons for their husband by using their handmaids as proxies and taking immediate possession of the children they produce. In the context of Atwood's book, the story is one of female competition, jealousy, and reproductive cruelty.

The name "Gilead" is also from Genesis and means "hill of testimony" or "mount of witness".

Within the text, Atwood often juxtaposes Christian ideas with the protagonist's harsh reality, demonstrating the oppression exercised over the handmaids. They are unable to discern real quotes of the Bible from made up ones. This is a point of controversy, but ultimately reflects the possible result of outlawing the act of reading and/or writing. An example of this is seen in Chapter 20: "From each according to her ability; to each according to his need". Here the protagonist questions its origin, thinking it to be fromthe book of Acts. The basis of the corrupted quote actually comes fromKarl Marx, but does exist partially within the Bible (Acts 11:29 & Matthew 25:15), the former of which inspired its communist usage.

In this novel characters are segregated by categories and dressed according to theirsocial functions. The complexsumptuary laws(dress codes) play a key role in imposingsocial controlwithin the new society and serve to distinguish people by sex, occupation, andcaste. People are segregated by race (African Americans are referred to as the Children of Ham, and Jewish people as Sons of Jacob), as well as by gender – and women are subdivided into castes according to their role in society.

TheAmerican Library Association(ALA) listsThe Handmaid's Taleas number 37 on the "100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000".[15]Atwood participated in discussingThe Handmaid's Taleas the subject of an ALA discussion series titled "One Book, One Conference".

The book's place in school curricula and assignments has been challenged on a number of occasions:

·  1990: Challenged atRancho Cotate High School,Rohnert Park, Californiabecause it was said to be too explicit for students.

·  1992: Challenged inWaterloo, Iowaschools, reportedly because of profanity, lurid passages about sex, and statements defamatory to minorities, God, women, and the disabled.

·  1993: Removed from theChicopee, Massachusettshigh school English class reading list because of profanity and sex.

·  1998: Challenged for use inRichland, Washingtonhigh school English classes along with six other titles because the "books are poor quality literature and stress suicide, illicit sex, violence, and hopelessness".

·  1999: Challenged because of graphic sex, but retained on the advanced placement English list, atGeorge D. Chamberlain High SchoolinTampa, Florida.

·  2000: Downgraded from “required” to “optional” on the summer reading list for eleventh graders in theUpper Moreland School DistrictinPhiladelphiadue to “age-inappropriate” subject matter.

·  2001: Challenged, but retained, in theDripping Springs, Texassenior Advanced Placement English course as an optional reading assignment. Some parents were offended by the book’s descriptions of sexual encounters.

·  2006: Initially banned by Superintendent Ed Lyman from an advanced placement English curriculum in theJudson, Texasschool district, after a parent complained that the novel was sexually explicit and offensive to Christians. Lyman had overruled the recommendation of a committee of teachers, students, and parents; the committee appealed the decision to the school board, which overturned the ban.[17]

According to Education Reporter Kristin Rushowy of theToronto Star(16 Jan. 2009), in 2008 a parent inToronto, Canada, wrote a letter to his son's high school principal, asking that the book no longer be assigned as required reading, stating that the novel is "rife with brutality towards and mistreatment of women (and men at times), sexual scenes, and bleak depression."Rushowy quotes the response of Russell Morton Brown, a retiredUniversity of Toronto English professor, who acknowledged that "The Handmaid's Talewasn't likely written for 17-year-olds, 'but neither are a lot of things we teach in high school, like Shakespeare. ... 'And they are all the better for reading it. They are on the edge of adulthood already, and there's no point in coddling them,' he said, adding, 'they aren't coddled in terms of mass media today anyway.' ... He said the book has been accused of being anti-Christian and, more recently, anti-Islamic because the women are veiled and polygamy is allowed. ... But that 'misses the point,' said Brown. 'It's really anti-fundamentalism.'"In her earlier account (14 Jan. 2009), Rushowy indicates that, in response to the parent's complaint, aToronto District School Boardcommittee was "reviewing the novel"; while noting that "The Handmaid's Taleis listed as one of the 100 'most frequently challenged books' from 1990 to 1999 on theAmerican Library Association's website", Rushowy reports that "TheCanadian Library Associationsays there is 'no known instance of a challenge to this novel in Canada' but says the book was called anti-Christian and pornographic by parents after being placed on a reading list for secondary students in Texas in the 1990s."