Handmaid\'s Tale Margaret Atwood\'s Dystopic

Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood's dystopic novel The Handmaid's Tale reveals scenarios chillingly similar to contemporary life. The rights of women in The Handmaid's Tale have been curtailed significantly, but the handmaids' suffering recalls the lives of millions of women worldwide who live under oppression and in subservience to men. However, narrator and protagonist Offred recalls the days before Gilead with some nostalgia. Although imperfect, the past at least offered hope and a chance for happiness and self-determination. Recollections of her relationship with Nick are punctuated by the memory of the fall of the United States and the utter loss of freedom and joy Offred experienced afterward. Offred's present life in Gilead comprises the bulk of her narration. Filled with references to the oppression and subjugation of women, Offred's tale describes a horrific dystopia in which women serve solely as a vessel for male sexual pleasure and childbearing. Unlike her detailed treatment of Gilead realities and her ambivalent attitude toward the anarchic past, Atwood leaves the future deliberately open. Professor Pieixoto delivers his address to the University of Denay in Nunavit in typically scholarly tone and admits that "we shall never know" Offred's fate. However, the Chair of the International Historical Association Convention was female: Professor Maryann Crescent Moon. The lowly position of women remains seemingly unchanged throughout past, present, and future in The Handmaid's Tale, although Gilead marks a severe spike in sexism compared with the relatively tumultuous past and the nebulous future.

The tumultuous past Offred describes in The Handmaid's Tale reveals a world startlingly similar to modern-day reality in which women can work but their social status was nevertheless low. Moira symbolizes the radical feminist who has at least the compunction to evoke change. Offred recalls that Moira "decided to prefer women," indicating that at least women had the ability to choose their sexual partners (p. 198). At the same time, Moira remained powerfully aware of sexism in pre-Gilead society, referring to the "balance of power" between men and women (p. 198). Moira's feminist idealism signifies the low social status of women: if women were not undervalued then people like Moira or Offred's mother would not have needed to become activists and would not have championed the eradication of traditional gender roles. None of Offred's memories are utopian, and all indicate an imbalance of power between men and women. However, life before Gilead meant that "thousands...millions" of women had jobs. Although women and men worked in different sectors, as the narrator suggests when she notes "It's a job for a man," women at least had the ability to earn their own keep and develop their talents and human potential. The past was an era in which women struggled, but in which they at least had the ability and the legal right to struggle; once Gilead was formed women would be unable to speak their minds let alone organize against the oppressors or sleep with other women. Another distinguishing feature of the past was the ability of women to rear their own children. Offred recalls the brief moments of joy she had watching Luke drive her little girl to daycare. In Gilead, women would be unable to enjoy the pleasure of motherhood because childrearing become more like a laboratory process; handmaids carried other people's babies and then handed them off so that they could become pregnant once again. However, Gilead's harsh realities had their roots in the past; if women had been valued equally to men in the past then Gilead may never have existed at all.

Gilead, the era that comprises the bulk of Offred's narrative in The Handmaid's Tale, represents the nadir of women's rights and liberties. Even compared to the nebulous past, Gilead offers women a hellish existence. In the opening chapter of the narrative, Offred states, "There was old sex in the room and loneliness, and expectation," and those sentiments and images pervade the handmaid's reality in Gilead (p. 3). Her sexual life is controlled and closely observed. Not only do the handmaids have no privacy; they sleep with their masters under the watchful eye of the wives. Their days are segmented and scheduled. Women lack autonomy and their bodies belong not to them but to the oppressors. One of the most poignant reminders of the low position of women in Gilead society is the invasive and coercive medical examination required for all handmaids. "When I'm naked I lie down on the examining table," begins Offred, retelling one of the many days in which male doctors probed her. "He deals with a torso only," (p. 67). The doctor's free reign and his dealing with her as a "torso only" underscore the position of women in Gilead. They are animals. They are machines. "My breasts are fingered in their turn," (p. 67). Using the passive voice, Offred senses the deep impersonality of the situation and just as she does several times throughout her narrative and especially in relation with the Commander, feels a modicum of compassion for men. Gilead is an oppressive totalitarian state that obliterates individual happiness and human joy but which leaves a particularly horrid mark on its female citizens. The doctor's sexual advances stun Offred, bringing to her attention the core of her predicament. Refusing his advances means prolonging her stay with the Commander and yet to give in would be to surrender her last remaining sense of dignity, her only chance for self-respect and self-assertion.