Handmaid's Tale, Part One

When I started this book, I was immediately taken in by the tone of the narrator, Offred. Right away, we're thrust into her strange-yet-oddly familiar world, one which seems rooted in the past but set in the near future. I have to admit that I was confused for a good portion of the novel, but that confusion aided to my enjoyment of the book. We get no prologue that alerts us to the circumstances in which Offred finds herself; we're just there with her, as if she's confiding to us and assumes that we'll know why things are the way that they are.

The establishment of "Gilead" as a place where women are subjugated to men seems like a paranoid nightmare, but it works because we can almost see such an event occuring, even in our present day. The "sexual revolution" was met with an equally committed conservative response, and the rise of Reagan and evangelicals in the Eighties didn't bode well for all the achievements made by feminists in society during the Seventies. On some level, it's tempting to dismiss the whole novel as unrealistic, yet we don't get to distance ourselves from it. We're in Offred's shoes, and we see this world through her eyes.

The whole system of handmaidens seems to relate to the article that we had to read this week, "Sexual Evolution." By taking the fun out of sex (for, as the article shows, it seems that humans get more enjoyment out of it than our closest relatives in the animal kingdom), the new system prides itself on reducing sex to the basic rite of copulation. There's nothing erotic about the threesome scenes, where the handmaid and Serena Joy lay on the bed while the Commander tries to impregnate the former. It's strictly business, and essential for the "survival" of the nation.

In that aspect, as in so many others, the Gilead of the novel recalls Nazi Germany. Not only dedicated to eradicating any "unwanted" peoples (Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, etc.), the Nazi regime also instituted breeding facilities to further the "pure Aryan race" that Hitler and his followers wanted to rule the world. We also get a suggestion of Gilead's similarities to Nazis when the conference at the end discusses the racial policies and efforts to emigrate Jews from the country's shores. That the boats loaded with Jews sink to the bottom of the ocean is simply convenient to the powers that be.

In terms of science fiction, this novel doesn't fall into what I consider some of the genre's more stereotyped hallmarks (no talking robots, no glamorous trips to outer space, no real futuristic dialogue save for a few terms here and there, mostly double speak on the part of those in charge). But it is definitely a dystopic vision that would be in accordance with some of the more fanciful sci-fi visions of the future. Blade Runner is in some ways an easy comparison, because it also deals with a society where members are regulated into less-than-human status even as they're bred (or in BR's case, manufactured) to be productive members of the society.

I'm going to cut short my post on this aspect of the novel so that I can write in my next post about Offred, our mysterious narrator.