In the current climate it is very easy to focus on the big picture of the Handmaid\u2019s tale: a take over of the US by religious fanatics leads to the wholesale oppression of women. \u00a0This would however, be a disservice to what is an incredibly personal tale. \u00a0At its heart, this is a book about what happens when you treat people as things, and what people in that position will do to survive. \u00a0By focusing the story down to one person, the misogyny in the Handmaid\u2019s tale expands beyond its setting to stand in for the depredations leveled against women in the past, present, and most distressingly, the future.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not a spoiler to say we never learn the real name of the protagonist, and Atwood is judicious in doling out her past, and by extension, how the world fell. \u00a0We start with a character who has chosen sexual slavery and forced motherhood over some worse fate and who appraises her room for the ways to commit suicide. \u00a0Surprisingly however, the tone of this book is, well not upbeat, but not bleak either. \u00a0The horror of the setting is both softened and sharpened by the pedestrian nature of much of Offred\u2019s life and her attitude as she goes shopping and potters around the house; the familiarity is comforting, but being constrained to these roles is just another form of oppression.<\/p>\n
This is an explicitly feminist book, and it is impossible to separate Offred\u2019s traits from her gender. \u00a0We see a range of responses to becoming a handmaid from outright defiance to broken acceptance, and almost all of them have terrible endings. \u00a0Offred is strong in a way that is unusual in popular culture, in that she always tries to make the best of her situation no matter how terrible, and improves her lot by leveraging small advantages rather than making grand gestures. \u00a0She fights, but she fights in inches, in a society where defiance will literally lead her to be declared unwoman.<\/p>\n
Through all these battles Atwood does not ignore the oppression of other groups, from the \u201cgender traitors\u201d, to the Marthas, but they all exist at the periphery of Offred\u2019s perception.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n