Review of the novel The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

“Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it really isn't about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn't about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.”*

   As an individual who has never experienced the desire to have children, there are many moments, innumerable probably, in which it is terrifying to be a human with working reproductive organs. Every month, no matter the precautions I’ve taken or the acts I have not engaged in, I am grateful for not being pregnant. It’s a quiet celebration, just as it was a silent waiting agony until that very second of negative confirmation. 

     It’s becoming a more frightening predicament recently, and not just for me. There are intensely loudening rumbles all throughout the country from individuals, groups and organizations who would outlaw the right of those with viable reproductive organs to have control over those very organs. Just a few days before the time of this post’s publication, Mississippi, proceeded by a handful of other states, passed a measure of law drastically limiting the time in which a woman may obtain services to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. This is even in cases of proven rape or incest. The restrictions and rules are becoming more encompassing and strict with every step away from the 1973 federal ruling in the case of Roe v. Wade that is taken.

     I'm not one to throw my politics out there all the time, at least not in the last couple of years or so. I sincerely attempt to listen to others’ opinions, feelings and viewpoints on the world. There are as many possibilities and contexts as there are human beings on the planet. And I value that there does not exist only one way to take aim at an issue, especially one so multidimensional as abortion services. But I am also done apologizing for stating something that is a rock hard truth for so many of us in the world. Perhaps this timidness to speak fact is an unfortunate part of my past and ongoing cultural education - the distinct feelings of guilt for making others uncomfortable despite the reality of what I am attempting to say.

     I truly value that the ability to give birth is something so precious to so many out there. And I am not at all attempting to belittle the struggle many go through to bear the children they so dearly desire and love. Nor do I mean to imply that intense self-reflection and thought should not be an integral part of the process of these choices. They certainly must be given proper weight. I simply mean to restate that there are those who mistakenly believe that a woman does not know what is best to do with her own body - that the choice should not be up to her, or that there should be drastic limits placed upon a severely few number of possibilities. It frightens me to no end. I worry about what the implications of these rules and restrictions mean for the future and for those who will be directly affected by them, that being everyone.

     This line of thinking led me to once again pick up Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. Set within a bleak dystopian future where the ability to reproduce has been sharply curbed by the effects of world pollution and gross misuse of genetic science, those few woman of childbearing age and potential are kept as broodmares for the rich and powerful. Or, as they are more politely called, handmaidens. This fictional mono-theocratic society no longer allows these women to obtain education or read, work jobs, or have their own families. They have been reduced to their most base function - as viable wombs - not the dynamic, feeling, loving human beings of infinite potentials that they may have been in a different time and place. 

     Despite the bleak and horrific premise, it is at times a startlingly gorgeous narrative, consummated through Atwood’s stark yet sensual language. The prolific author has always possessed the most unique ability to write of her characters’ inner lives in plain but also lush, detailed prose. Thus, she renders so relatable what, for most other writers, can never be made known despite stacking countless words upon phrases upon paragraphs upon pages of explanation.

     Whatever the methods that Atwood employs - be they great details of science fiction or tiny, affecting moments of subversive action - the results are stunning. This is a message book; I have to admit that. But it is also a well-told yarn, a satirical fable that sweeps up readers with a stealth ease. And, as if in the grip of a mysterious and unseen river current, one is carried along through the story until that final page and final line. Then, when deposited back on the shore of reality, there is a shivery sensation of truth to the fiction inscribed within the book’s thin confines. It is quiet but unmistakable.

*excerpt from the novel