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Handmaid's Tale
Reviewer's Bookwatch, Nov, 2004 by Pogo
Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood
McClelland and Stewart
Toronto
0771008139 $TBA 324pp
Handmaid's Tale is set in the Republic of Gilead where the government is established on a twisted interpretation of Biblical laws interpreted by Christian fundamentalism. Controversial, the novel explores extremism of religious zealotry as isolated sections of the Bible get applied to daily life in a stringent society. Unlike Cat's Eye, the text is devoid of the elaborate structure of nuanced imagery and allusions which create the psychological web of Elaine Risley's anxiety, but adopts parsimony, frugal in wordplay and images, suitable to the puritanical atmosphere of the rigidly controlled society.
Accustomed to societies where clothing designates professions, red reminding us of firemen's uniforms, dull blue of surgery scrubs, navy blue of police and navy uniforms, the reader accepts the new society with its delineated classes. Credibility is established within a few pages as we see the world through an anonymous speakers eyes, glancing her appearance in a fish-eyed mirror as her uniform envelopes her from head to foot. Marthas are garbed in dull green, the drudges of household chores while Handmaids are ostentatiously hung in scarlet. Red the color associated with menstrual bloood, fertility and death with literary allusions to Hawthorne's choleric outburst at Puritanism in Scarlet Letter. We learn through her eyes of her role in the household as the Handmaid to the Commander, restricted to being the obligatory breeding rabbit to be impregnated to continue the ruling classes. Her social position is derived from a perverse interpretation of the Biblical story of Abraham and Sarah, designating Hagar as the Egyptian concubine to be driven away into the wilderness.
Trained into her new position by Aunt Lydia, a mix of sadistic Brownshirt and Madam, the speaker is subjected in a society that regiments her existence down to the details of formal greetings and acknowledgements, deprived of intellectual freedom. Reading is prohibited, viewed as stimulating individualistic thinking that may challenge the oppressive regime. Although biblically based, God is replaced by the state's restrictive theocracy instituting its own form of omniscience through a system of spies, regulations and constant surveillance. Physical movement is restricted as Handmaids appear publicly in pairs with strict agendas regarding their presence outside their respective houses, regulated by time and duties. A necessity to the state for progeny, they are easily disposed and subject to Salvagings:
"In the past," says Aunt Lydia, "it has been the custom to precede the actual Salvagings with a detailed account of the crimes of which the prisoners stand convicted. However, we have found that such a public account, especially when televised, is invariably followed by a rash, if I may call it that, an outbreak I should say, of exactly similar crimes. So we have decided in the best interests of all to discontinue this practice. The Salvagings will proceed without further ado." A collective murmur goes up from us. The crimes of others are a secret language among us. Through them we show ourselves what we might be capable of, after all. This is not a popular announcement. But you would never know it from Aunt Lydia, who smiles and blinks as if washed in applause. Now we are left to our own devices, our own speculations. The first one, the one they're now raising from her chair, black-gloved hands on her upper arms: reading? No, that's only a hand cut off, on the third conviction. Unchastity, or an attempt on the life of her Commander? Or the Commander's Wife, more likely. That's what we're thinking. As for the Wife, there's mostly just one thing they get salvaged for. They can do almost anything to us, but they aren't allowed to kill us, not legally. Not with knitting needles or garden shears, or knives purloined from the kitchen, and especially not when we are pregnant. It could be adultery, of course. It could always be that. Or attempted escape." (p 276)
Chillingly realistic, Atwood draws her perverse totalitarian state from historical precedents: the Nazi dream of world domination and the ruthless Taliban subjugation of women with its extremist punishments and public demonstrations of stoning or dismemberment. Although presented as a an advancement of religious fervor and enlightenment, the Salvagings are as brutal as the Bacchanalian orgies with maenads tearing apart their victims for human sacrifice.
Presented as a diary from an anonymous source, Atwood extends the farce through the Historical Notes of Professor Pieixoto as he discourses on its possible archeological significance. The diary, he discloses was unearthed in an area once known as Bangor, Maine. Relying on pseudo-documentation he establishes credibility by making a comparison to the so-called "A B Memoirs" and "Diary of P" excavated in the vicinity of erstwhile Syracuse, New York.
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