欧宝娱乐

I first read this in the late 80s: shocking, though a little far-fetched, I thought. When I joined GR in 2008, I gave it 4* from memory, but reread a year later with GR book group and gave it the full 5*.

In 2019, I skimmed it again before reading the follow-up, The Testaments (see my review HERE). Gilead no longer feels far-fetched.


Review from 2009

A wonderful hybrid: a book that is eminently readable, but packed with fascinating and thought-provoking ideas and symbolism.

It's set in the near future in a dystopian totalitarian theocratic state where many are infertile, so there has been a backlash against permissiveness and women are subjugated to the point where they are not allowed to read or write (even shop signs are just icons). Of course, the regime never considers that men could be at fault in any way, including their fertility or lack of.

Offred tells the story of how she became a handmaid, assigned to one of the elite, purely for breeding purposes.

Truer than you want to think

All the many and varied restrictions, practices, divisions and penalties imposed by the regime have really been applied somewhere in the world, albeit not all at the same time and place. One of the things that stops the book being gloomy is the resilience of the human spirit: there is a resistance movement among the lower classes and even amongst the elite, illicit things go on. The fear of being caught creates a good sense of tension.

Faith and ritual

Faith and ritual are important, both to the regime as a means of control and, in a different way, to individuals as a way of making life bearable.


Image: A game of Scrabble (.)

Symbolism

The symbolism is rich, especially tulips and the colour red. The handmaids' sole purpose is procreation, their cycles are closely monitored, everything they wear is red and other important red items (such as a path) are pointed out. Whilst the shape of tulip flowers clearly echoes genitalia, they are also likened to a wound and teeth, and they and other flowers are described in different ways to indicate fertility or sterility. Serena Joy's knitting is a compulsive form of reproduction with sinister echoes of Dickens' Madame Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities.

Themes and questions

The big questions are around ownership of oneself and one's body, and about motherhood (biological versus adoption).

The state is patriarchal, but an army of matriarchal "aunts" enforce rituals and build a hive mentality to support each other and hence the regime. Are the handmaids prostitutes (is Nick too)? No, because they have no choice. They are slaves. They "sell" their bodies for the survival of themselves as individuals and of the human race. The aim is (supposedly) solely procreation, not anyone's pleasure (the wife is always present).

Do the ends justify the means, and should the handmaids accept some responsibility for going along with it? The more you read (including the follow-up, The Testaments), the more you realise that's not possible. And if "context is all", what is truth? You could read this several times and never come up with exactly the same answer.

See also

* The Testaments, obviously, which Atwood wrote 30 years later, to show how Gilead fell and how Aunt Lydia came to be Aunt Lydia: see my review HERE.

* The 1990 film of Handmaid, which many dislike (and I don't really remember). However, the screenplay was by Harold Pinter, and it starred Natasha Richardson, Faye Dunaway, Robert Duvall and Aidan Quinn. See .

* The 2017-2019 TV series. Series 1 was a pretty good adaptation of Handmaid, but series 2 and 3 took the story further, with new material. See .

* When She Woke has many parallels, but I didn't like it: see my review HERE.

* Fahrenheit 451: see my review HERE.