The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid's Tale was originally published in 1985.
This eBook edition was purchased and dnloaded in December, 2011






Offred, once a citizen in the state of Massachusetts in the U.S., is now a Handmaid in the early days of the Republic of Gilead (late twentieth century,) a totalitarian state predicated on religious fundamentalism as a recourse to the moral decay and societal upheaval, including declining birth rates, in the former democracy. Gilead, in addressing the need for more well-baby births, creates and dictates the role of the Handmaid, a surrogate mother for infertile couples, via a literal and patriarchal reading of Genesis 30: 1-3:

And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister and said unto Jacob, Give me children or else I die. And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel; and he said, Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees,* that I may also have children by her.

*Italics mine

Offred, a fertile woman, is assigned the role of a Handmaid; but the role, as prescribed by the Genesis passage, also entails the presence of both the wife and the Handmaid during attempts at conception; and in the event of a birth of a child, the wife plays the role of the birth mother in terms of societal recognition and esteem.

This return to Biblical precepts and melding them into intransigent law and an absolutist government creates an atmosphere of awkwardness, fear and suspicion, thereby sacrificing wisdom and compassion on a metaphorical altar to the God who needs to be appeased. As primitive a reaction to to societal misfortune as this is, it is an enduring practice as demonstrated by current events and Margaret Atwood's vision of a very possible future.


The Handmaid's Tale is a neat trick of remembering our future. By leaving the actual time unspecified, grounding the vision of the dystopian future in realistic terms (there are cars, guns and surveillance, but no UFOs, intergalactic wars or time travel), having some of her predictions come true (ATM cards, the concretization of a Middle East country as a security threat as opposed to the Soviet Union) and, adding an epilogue that provides "historical" perspective, Atwood creates a work of speculative fiction that has currency in the present as a cautionary tale against the combination of religious fundamentalism and government, the ease with which citizens can be marginalized and, how good intentions and technology can work against the society it was intended to help. Offred chronicles her life as a Handmaid (a birth mother for infertile couples) in the optimism that there will be a future audience, that her story will be a matter of future history from which something may be learned, if nothing else, "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum."


See also:
The Scarlet Letter (by Nathanial Hawthorne) - a review of the print edition of the Classic Flashback Friday: 1984 (by George Orwell; narrated by Simon Prebble) - a mini-review of the audiobook


Other Stuff: I purchased and dnloaded a copy of The Handmaid's Tale (by Margaret Atwood) from Barnes & Noble/nook. I receive no monies, goods or services in exhange for reviewing the product and/or mentioning any of the persons or companies that are or may be implied in this post.

Gerbils

This morning, while sitting in the safety of the dumping ground that is also known as my home office, I heard a skittering. My heart stopped. I thought "rats." I was ready to call off going into work in favor of completely emptying the house and quite possibly fire bombing the place, when I saw the intruder. It was our pet gerbil, Tattle (There used to be two gerbils, Rattle and Tattle; but sadly Rattle passed away two years ago.) I have no idea how Tattle got out of his cage and crossed to the other side of the house without incident; but there he was, pondering my non-fiction book shelves. After a couple of truly lame attempts to catch him, I woke up The Father of My Child (what I call DH when I'm not particularly happy to be in love) and had him capture the rodent... This brought to mind an incident a couple of years ago when we first got the gerbils:


Pulling into my driveway with my daughter in the backseat, I was confronted with the slightly alarming sight of a floor lamp peering out of a window. The bulb was directly facing me and appeared like a giant white eye staring at me. I knew something was wrong. So, instead of being sensible and calling the police, I told my daughter to get down on the floor, while I locked her in and snuck in the side door. The sight that greeted me was total chaos. The kiddie gate from the kitchen/dining room area and into the playroom was blasted into smithereens, the gerbil cage was on the floor, upside-down and smashed and, the floor lamp was leaning against a toy bin (and peering out the window.) My old crippled dog was in a corner fruitlessly endeavoring to gain purchase on the new Pergo flooring and the new dog was howling. In a way akin to knowing when there's a TV on in the house even though it may be muted and out of sight, I could immediately tell there was no one in the house. That still didn't stop me from going from room-to-room with a golf club (a Tommy Armour Golden Scot #1 driver thank you very much) which was inside the entry door. After making sure everything was all clear, with the dogs still scrambling and howling, I went out to the car, brought my daughter in and sat her in the dining room and had her eat a Happy Meal. I picked the old dog up off the floor and got her ensconced on a dog bed. I threw a dog toy outside (the howling dog immediately stopped howling and went to hunt down the toy). Then I went in to assess the damage properly.

As near as I can reconstruct, the younger dog, knocked the gerbil cage off of the counter and onto the floor. The plastic cage cracked, tubing collapsed and the two gerbils made their escape. Maggie (the dog) went ballistic and crashed through the gate to go in after the rodents. In the ensuing chase, the lamp was knocked over. OK, but where are the gerbils? There are only two possible answers: either Maggie ate them or they were hiding somewhere. Now I make the call to the Father of My Child whose bright idea it was to get gerbils as a pets for my daughter ("It will teach her responsibility") and he puts me on speaker phone while I utter the now- immortal line, "We have a problem with the gerbils." This elicits all sorts of laughter and adolescent punch lines from grown "men" who happen to be sitting in TFOMC's office. TFOMC, still giggling, manages to assure me that the gerbils were probably too fast for Maggie and are probably in the room somewhere. The room is a 4 inch drop from the kitchen and as they are only 3" extended, they are probably still in the room.

Now comes my least favorite part. I am a bacillophobe and not particularly fond of any rodent of any stripe (or color.) And now I'm being asked to track two of these f!@#ers down. OK, calling upon my experience in the Omousa bin Laden Tour of Duty (2002) I start taking apart the room. I followed the poop. In their frantic bid for safety, they pooped all the way to their hiding places. I capture them in one of those clear plastic balls that gerbils and hamsters can roam around in. Then the clean-up. EEEEEEEW! A gallon of bleach later (which reminds me I must stop wearing black when I undertake these adventures) the room is in order and smelling "Mountain Fresh." I am now out the door to get a rug shampooer, a new gerbil enclosure, a new kiddie gate and, a doghouse. And I'm using TFOMC's credit card. That'll teach him to put me on the speaker phone!

The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Introduction and Notes by Nancy Stade

General Consulting Editor, George Stade

The Scarlet Letter was first published in 1850.

This trade paperback edition was published in 2005.

Why should we read the Classics? One reason is for the history not only of the time and place; but for the ideas that have found expression through the writer. Roughly 4500 years ago, some scribe marked up The Epic of Gilgamesh into clay tablets. We have an intriguing glimpse into the time and place and some action points to string a story together; but we don't have a sense of what the characters were really thinking or what sensibility guided their thought processes. What was it like to live in a world where you perceived time as circular and cyclical, not linearly? How did the concepts of civilization, a major shift from the nomadic and animistic lifestyle change their worldview? How did the oral tradition and sense of history transmute their own sense of culture? Unfortunately, it is unlikely that we will ever know because the story contains no explanation. It is no more than a historic artifact celebrated for being the oldest written story. The Classics, however, tell us more. The Classics provide a sense of "interior history," ideas that had currency when they were written and still inform our culture today.

But why should you read The Scarlet Letter? The events that make up the main body of the work were not contemporary to the writer so how could he posit a credible story that reflects a mindset of a society that he could not have possibly have experienced? But the thing is, he did. No, Hawthorne did not live in the 17th century; but he did live in a small town with a strong cultural legacy to that time and; family ties bound him to the history of which he wrote. He was living with the effects a Puritanical society that embedded itself into the political consciousness of his day and, actually still lives with us even now (Don't fool yourself that because we don't put people in stocks or force them to wear a scarlet "A" upon their breasts, that we don't excoriate adulterers, especially if they happen to be public figures.) Hawthorne builds the first bridge between the events of 1650 and 1850 by creating prologue in which he discovers the documents that purportedly contain the events of the main body of the story. The second bridge is the one created by the reader's connection to the text. The second bridge is a meta-literary experience that elevates the text from being an artifact to being historically relevant, something from which, like all history, we can extricate meaning to our current lives.

The Scarlet Letter is an exposition of how religious and political thought cohered to create an inheritance of our American culture: a paradox of sex and sexuality, religious freedom that incarcerates and the punishment that frees. Hester Prynne falls in love with a man and gets pregnant by him; but does not enjoy the benefits of marriage which apparently include not being shoved into a jail cell, being publicly called out for her sin, reminding everyone else of her indiscretion by wearing a red "A" upon her chest and, being pretty much excluded from town life. Had she been married to the man, this would not have happened. So, falling in love and having sex with the man is a sin when the sanctity of marriage is not conferred by the town-church; but falling in love and having sex with a man becomes the consecration of life affirming values when you add in the public endorsement of marriage. It's a fine line between hypocrisy and relative morality. Hester Prynne is punished for her transgression; but her moment in the the town square (wherein she is brought out before all the townspeople) is meant to be an occasion for her not only to renounce her sin; but to give up the name of her lover as well so that he too may be free of guilt. Only through renunciation can the opportunity exist for forgiveness. There is an celebratory atmosphere to the denunciation of Hester Prynne. A zealful, but compassionless event in which Hester Prynne's pride is sacrificed to the self-righteous crowd. Except that Hester doesn't renounce her sin, give up her lover's name and, the public does not forgive or even really seem inclined to do so (after all the punishment begins before the possibility of her renouncement.) Ironically, Hester Prynne's punishment actually does free her: Her isolation forms her into a woman of independent thought, devoid of the hobbling dictates of the Puritan community.

The Scarlet Letter offers a lot in terms of ideas as to who we were, who we are and through the second bridge, who we can be.

Other Stuff: The Scarlet Letter (by Nathaniel Hawthorne) qualifies for

• The What's in a Name? Challenge #5 hosted by @BethFishReads as a "book with something you'd carry in your pocket, purse, or backpack in the title [e.g.] Sarah's Key, The Scarlet Letter, Devlin Diary"

I purchased The Scarlet Letter (by Nathaniel Hawthorne) from the Barnes & Noble store in Medford, OR. I receive no monies, goods or services in exchange for reviewing the product and/or mentioning any of the persons or companies that are or may be implied in this post.

"Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

--- John 8: 32