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A surprisingly great dystopian novel �� considering it was written by a woman (Just Kidding!)

The name given to the narrator of this story speaks volumes: Offred, meaning of Fred, that is belonging to Fred or property of Fred. Those names, like Oftom, Ofdick, Ofharry, are given to certain kind of women in the fictional state of Republic of Gilead, a successor and replacement of today’s United States of America. In this patriarchal and partial theocratic military dictatorship women like Offred (whose real name from the “times before�� is never revealed) are the ones who still can give birth to healthy children. Due to some apocalyptic events in the past most women can’t, so the fertile ones had become some kind of scarce resource. One would think that Offred and her peers should be supported and pampered by society considering that only they guarantee the survival of the human race. But the opposite is true. The “handmaids�� (that’s what these women are called) are actually at the bottom of the castes society established in Gilead. Without being asked they are assigned to a household and have to see to it that a healthy child is born from the ritual union with the “commander�� of the house. If this doesn’t work, the handmaids are banished to the “colonies��, where they are usually exposed to lethal toxins and radiation and become what is called an “unwoman��.

The concept of handmaids isn’t new. Even in the Bible there are several examples in which a wife, a mistress, gives her handmaid to her husband in order for him to lay his “seed�� in the female servant. The child, if any, is then returned to the wife. An absurd notion! Or is it? A look at on Wikipedia shows how differently this topic is handled in individual societies. In this novel, however, surrogacy is neither gainful nor altruistic, but enforced. How small of a difference is this? I wonder.

Just for fun I checked one passage from the Bible �� Genesis 30:1-4 �� that deals with “handmaids�� and check the different translations on biblegateway.com. Perhaps Margaret Atwood took this or a similar passage as an inspiration for her novel. Here’s the version from the :

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�� anger was kindled against Rachel: and he said, Am I in God�� 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.
And she gave him Bilhah her handmaid to wife: and Jacob went in unto her.

I wanted to know how the words I underlined are translated in other versions and, although this has nothing to do with the book, I found some intriguing results: The “maid�� / “handmaid�� becomes a “servant girl�� in the , “servant�� / “slave�� in , and a “slave girl�� in the ! The paraphrase of intercourse, the “go in unto her�� from above, becomes “sleep with her�� in the Living Bible and God’s Word Translation, “have sexual relations with�� in the , and “have physical relations with�� in the International Children’s Bible. And I haven’t even checked the other dozen or so English versions, let alone other languages.

Back to the book�� In addition to the ill-treatment of handmaids in Gilead there are quite a few more examples of how this new American/Gilead society works (or doesn’t work): The prohibition of literature (women are not allowed to read, whatsoever), brain-washing, checkpoints on every corner, torture, public executions and display of the executed, the outlawing of certain words and expressions, songs, and technology that could become dangerous, and a war that may or may not actually take place to keep the population in line with the crude ideology. All of these are perfect ingredients to build up and keep an oppressive regime. I just hope that no one will take this book as a manual. The first part of the book strongly reminded my of Iran shortly after the Islamic revolution in 1978/9. A former co-worker, born in 1970 in Tehran and a member of an Armenian family, told me some stories about that time and how things have changed for the worse, practically over night and especially for women. Some of what she told me weren’t very far from the depictions in this book.

Of course I didn’t read this book by accident. I thought about re-reading 1984 ; when Orwell’s book become #1 bestseller in books on Amazon the day after the “alternative facts�� (a.k.a “truthful hyperbole��) issued by Kellyanne “Ofdonald�� Conway. But I realized that I still know too much about 1984 to really enjoy it at this point in time. This book was the next best thing. And it turned out I’ve made the right choice.

Utterances by the so-called president of the USA about women and ingratiation to the Christian fundamentalists and “pro-life�� advocates and ultra-right nationalists make me think and fear that some kind of Gilead is no longer totally out of the question. Only a few months ago I would have seen this quite differently.
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UPDATE 19 Oct 17

Margaret Atwood recently was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. In her acceptance speech she also talked about The Handmaid’s Tale:

The book was published in 1985 in Canada, and in 1986 in Britain and the United States. Although my rule for it was that I could put nothing into it that human beings had not done, somewhere, at some time, it was regarded by some critics with disbelief. Too feminist, yes, with all its talk of controlling women and their never-ending bodies, but also too far-fetched. It could never happen there �� not in the United States �� because then, during the Cold War, wasn’t the United States viewed as a power for good? Didn’t it stand for democracy, liberty, and freedom �� however imperfectly enacted on the ground? Confronted by closed systems such as the Soviet Union, America was open. Confronted by top-down tyrannies, America promised the dream of opportunity, based on merit. Even though America had some very sinister history to overcome �� weren’t those the ideals? Yes. They were.
But that was then. Now, some thirty-odd years later, this book has returned, because suddenly it no longer seems like a far-fetched dystopian fantasy. It has become too real. Red-clad figures are appearing in state legislatures in silent protest at the laws being enacted there, largely by men, to control women. Their aim seems to be to push back the clock, to the nineteenth century if possible. What sort of world do these legislators want to live in? They want a very unequal one: so much is clear. An unequal one in which they themselves will have more power, and other people will have less. If you put the ants in charge of the picnic, the ants will rearrange the picnic for themselves: there will be no people, only egg sandwiches and cookies. The ants at least know what sort of a world they want to live in, and they are very frank about it. Ants are not hypocritical.

Read the whole speech here:
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UPDATE 26 Jul 18

Women dressed as Haindmaids are demonstrating in front of the Argentine parliament in Buenos Aires for legal abortion. [Photocredit: AFP]



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