book:the handmaid's tale by margaret atwood review: i would like to believe that my perspective on this book is not skewed by either my adoration of margaret atwood or the fact that I was about the visit canada (but not ottawa -- atwood's birthplace) just as i was finishing up this book. So, those things aside, (and i know i'm not breaking any news here) i insist that this book is one of the best atwood has written. from the narration (you don't even know her name for most of the book! that is, unless you read the back-of-the-book synopsis...), to her descriptions of the still, stark, and boring yet forever-afraid lives that these "handmaids" live, to the gradual relating of how life was before and how vastly different it all became in such a short period of time.... you can't help but be freaked out by the idea that this could happen to you, too, in this country, with the pro-life, anti-woman, christian right conservative types taking over, or that it was already happening elsewhere.
so appropriate that i was finishing it in massachusetts (it's boston!) and that the war in afghanistan had just started. hearing about the plight of the afghan women and how their former lives, as doctors, teachers, and members of the government, had been ripped away from them and they had been forced into covered and silent submission was all just too eerie and similar.
but beyond that, you get wondering how similar your normal life is to this seemingly abnormal one you're reading about. are you just a baby incubator? a necessary tool in the propagation of the species? are the things you do just there to keep you occupied and content, preparing you for mommyhood? on the other hand, are you even fertile right now? will you ever actually be able to have a baby? will it make you less of a woman or contributing member of society? how will your partner feel about your inability? should you just try to have a kid right now so you can figure out what your role is? huh huh huh?
see what i'm saying? it really gets you thinking about femaleness and how it is so vital to the species, how vital you are, or you aren't, based solely on this one trait -- whether you can have a baby or not. of course, in a modern society, especially one so incredibly overpopulated, it seems not to matter so much -- you can be a very productive member of society without having children. it sometimes even feels selfish or stupid or wasteful to have a child when so much in the world is so fucked up and there are so few resources to go around. yet, that competition remains and acts as some kind of test for your worth and validity as a woman. it's turned around on you so that if you don't have kids, you must prove that you aren't selfish by contributing ten-fold to helping others and aiding society and making a difference and really being someone. the poor, poor infertile wife in this book...continuously knitting scarves that she'd only unravel upon completion or give to someone who didn't want it, tending to the flowers she had spawned in her meticulously kept garden, ordering the domestic workers about to forever reinforce her authority. she had to make herself useful, despite not being allowed to work or able to reproduce.
and the men…! Don’t even get me started about the ways that the men in this book got under my skin and made me look at the men all around me. Just the fact that prostitution and sexual manipulation and abuse continued in a society where the woman’s body was supposedly so revered that it had to be hidden away and protected.... Sounds a lot like afghanistan, right?
anyway, all around, an excellent book that everyone should read, men and women. and i still want to go to ottawa, damn it! oh well, someday.
