The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale is a 1985 science fiction novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. It describes the horrors of a United States in which a religious movement has gained ultimate power, at a time where pollution has caused the majority of women to be sterile.

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

Themes

A revolution has taken place in the United States. The Constitution has been abrogated and a new order - the Republic of Gilead - has been established, one that rules with the Bible in hand. Most citizens have been stripped of their freedoms. All religions - including Christianity - have been suppressed. African-Americans and others who do not conform to the new societal norms are deported to regions where pollution has reached toxic levels - if they are lucky. The government enforces its dictates with mass liquidations and ritualized executions of religious and political dissidents.

Women are most affected: no longer are they allowed to read, wear make-up, or to choose their clothes. There are five types of women in this new society: Wives, Aunts, Marthas, Handmaids and Econowives.

Wives are at the top of the social structure: they are infertile women married to the Commanders who are the ruling circle of the new military dictatorship.

Aunts have the duty of training and monitoring the Handmaids. In return they receive - relatively speaking - a substantial degree of personal autonomy.

Marthas are also infertile and are deemed unfit for membership in the ruling class but are willing to accept their status as servants to the Commanders and Wives.

A Handmaid is a fertile female whose sole purpose is to have sex once a month with her Commander, to provide him with children who will be treated as the offspring of his Wife.

The Econowives' place in the social order is not clearly defined: they are married to males who are below the status of Commander and expected to carry out all the tasks which, among the other women, are apportioned by class. Why the Econowives are required to do this when they are (implicitly) capable of bearing children and thus, would be as valuable as Handmaids, is not explained.

Plot

The story is told from the perspective of Offred, the handmaid. "Offred" is the name given to her by the new order, since she "belongs" to, or is "of" her Commander, whose first name is Fred. She does not state her "real" name. (In the 1990 film adaptation, Offred gives her real first name as Kate; however, this was not derived from the novel.) In fact, none of the characters in the novel are identified as having surnames, which enhances the atmosphere of other-worldliness.

Offred's assignment to the household of the Commander is not her first, but it differs from her prior experience in that she is given, in various disjointed episodes, glimpses that all is not as it seems in the new world and that the people in her life, while paying lip service to society's mores, seek various means of expressing their individuality.

Offred's oversteps the bounds of her official role initially by playing Scrabble with Fred, which lead to greater straying beyond the boundaries set for her kind.

Slowly, it begins to dawn on Offred that the Bible is only used as a crutch; she seems to remember that the verses quoted at her were not actually in the book, but how can she verify this if she is not allowed to read?

Appendices following the story proper treat Offred's narrative as a historical document, implying an academic setting even farther into the future. In this respect The Handmaid's Tale is similar to Egalia's Daughters by Gerd Brantenberg, Dune by Frank Herbert or The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.

Adaptations

A 1990 film adaptation of the novel was directed by Volker Schlöndorff. It starred Natasha Richardson, Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall. The libretto of Poul Ruders' opera, which premiered in 2003, is also derived from the novel.