I just finished The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. On of my delicious readers recommended it to me and, considering how I often think about love and marriage and religion and POST APOCALYPTIC POLITICO-RELIGIOUS sexcapades, this was a great recommendation.
I am one of those dreaded readers who needs to know the end of a book before I get there. I have no qualms about spoiling the end for others (SO STOP READING THIS BLOG POST NOW IF YOU ARE ANTI-SPOILER AND HAVE ANY INTENTION OF READING THE BOOK IN THE FUTURE) because reading a book is the only time I get to peak into the future and prepare my heart accordingly. I found out, in advance, that Dumbledore dies. My husband is still disgusted with me.
I just don't like surprises.
So, if you've read The Hadndmaid's Tale, you might imagine that I am extremely EXTREMELY disappointed with the end of this book. EXTREMELY unsatisfied. EXTREMELY waggling my finger at Margaret Atwood. You don't write a work of fiction, stopping at the climax and let your story stand as a pseudo-historical document. Take me on a 300 page journey to no freaking where. Canadians ... pshaw. I can't even express how frustrated I am. Maybe Ms. Atwood has 35+ published works, but that just goes to show, she should KNOW BETTER! I will never be able to see Atwood's name on the cover of a book and not sigh and roll my eyes.
That said - I kind of liked it. 7/10. I liked it better than Brave New World (a nice group murder rather than an orgy ... po-tay-toe, pah-tah-toe). The persona character was compelling, despite a confusing plot. Some of the ideas are very interesting to explore.
It's taken me hours to find the bit I wanted to quote. Can I advise, if one plans on blogging about a book, one ought to somehow mark the parts one wants to quote. Saves so much time. But then again, carefully reviewing this, knowing how it bounces around in time, I must say Atwood does a remarkable job of NOT losing the reader)...
The basic background: In the not too distant future, something happens in America, politically, and basically all the women's rights are taken away: property, speech, movement, even reproductive rights. In this new society, all women essentially dress like nuns and their lives are limited to a few niches - wives (blue dresses), household help (green), young girls (white), and baby making machines (red). The main character is a red dress. She HAD a normal life with a guy (not quite her husband) and they had a daughter together. She was captured as part of this not-well-explained big political power shift, taken to a retraining camp, and is now essentially a concubine, trying to make a baby for the Commander and his wife. The sex act is a twisted emotionless manage-a-trios (I hope that's spelled right, some things you just know you can't Google). I'm not sure how one could tell this story without the graph details.
One night the Commander wants to play Scrabble with her. All very taboo, red dresses aren't supposed to read or write, yet alone be alone with the husbands. Whatever. So they have this "affair." Nothing matters because we never find out what happens in the end (I am still so frustrated - maybe I could ask the author what she had in mind, cuz it's making me a little crazy).
I think that's enough background for you - the bit I found interesting to quote and discuss is a conversation between our nameless main character and her "boss" (oh, and I think Atwood's computer had an issue with quotation marks, sometimes they are used, sometimes not ... another annoying thing, doubly so when you get to the "end" and find out it's not even really a "historical document" but transcription from cassette tapes, so why no quotation marks?) :
We've given them more than we've taken away, said the Commander. Think of the trouble they had before. Don't you remember the singles' bars, the indignity of high school blind dates? The meat market. Don't you remember the terrible gap between the ones who could get a man easily and the ones who couldn't? Some of them were desperate, they starved themselves thin or pumped their breasts full of silicone, had their noses cut off. Think of the human misery.
Yes, think of all you do? Me, I pluck my eyebrows. I hate it and I love how I look after I do it. One woman, who's blog I love, spent $500 to have botulism injected into her lovely face last Friday. And me, running on the treadmill, pretending like the 5K is the goal ... ha ha ha. I'd like to put in writing, to publicly vow, I am not going to Botox my laugh lines, not going to fill with gel, my saggy milk sacks, not going to pay money to sit in a cancer coffin, not going to put harsh chemical overlays on my nails, or buy into the notion that I can improve the inside by FIRST improving the outside. I mean it. (today)
...And then if they did marry, they could be left with a kid, two kids, the husband might just get fed up and take off, disappear, they'd have to go on welfare. Or else he'd stay around and beat them up. Or if they had a job, the children in daycare or left with some brutal ignorant woman, and they'd have to pay for that themselves, out of their wretched little paychecks. Money was the only measure of worth, for everyone, they got no respect as mothers. No wonder they were giving up on the whole business. This way they're protected, they can fulfill their biological destinies in peace. With full support and encouragement. Now, tell me. You're an intelligent person, I like to hear what you think. What did we over look?
Love, I said.
Love? said the Commander. What kind of love?
Falling in love, I said. The Commander looked at me with his candid boy's eyes.
Oh, yes, he said. I've read the magazines, that's what they were pushing, wasn't it? But look at the stats, my dear. Was it really worth it, falling in love? Arranged marriages have always worked out just as well, if not better.
...
Those years were just an anomaly, historically speaking, the Commander said. Just a fluke. All we've done is return things to Nature's norm.
Is he right? I certainly enjoy having reproductive freedom, and all the other's, but I wonder what the stats really are. Does choosing your mate make for a happy marriage, happy life? Some people really, really suck at spouse-picking. Certainly, it's no guarantee. And women are much more likely to be living in poverty ... I mean we have freedom, but it's still not fair. Who do we have to blame for the disparity? Just ourselves, right? It's my fault I chose to get married before I finished my education. All the choices after that have made me increasingly dependent upon my dear husband. At this point, my life is so completely entrenched, so fully supported by his continuing commitment to his marriage vows, if he falters, my world collapses.
I don't know, this would have been a great book to read and discuss in college. I doubt this book would ever be an acceptable Book Club book, at least not in my 'hood. So, I read for entertainment, escape, information. This book let me down a little. I spent a lot of time getting to know the persona, caring, then the author just leaves me hanging. Cheap, says me. Lazy. Now, I'll always wonder in my mind, what ever happened to that red dress woman. The persona was kind of weak (like me), let things happen, take a little power here and there ... but we never get to see how it pays off or ruins her.
My husband would NEVER have let me write a book like this ;)
post script - having just now read the wikipedia article about this book - I'm a little offended. She won the Arthur C. Clark award for this, then went on to mock Sci fi, saying it's all chemicals and rockets or squids in space. I'm liking this author less and less. Clearly, she is a literary snob and completely unaware of what good sci fi really is. See if I ever pick her up again. hmmm, maybe an author's personal views DO effect how I read their books. Except I wasn't THAT impressed to begin with.
17 Brilliant Bits of Inspiration:
Hmm... maybe I don't need to read this after all...
I'm not sure that I believe anything can be better than Brave New World. That has to be one of the most life changing works of fiction I've ever read. Ok, I didn't necessarily like it... but it changed the way I viewed government and world politics.
BTW, so glad to hear there are more ending peekers in the world. I knew Dumbledore died too. I also knew that another modern character had a baby before I got to that part of the book (the name of which shall remain a mystery).
Hey, are you talking Harry Potter too? no ... Wait .. who? Like I said, I don't like surprises, email me or tell me here, but I must know of whom you speak!
Such passion! I think that's great. I wish you would have been in our discussion group.
The ending can be frustrating, I agree. But at least you cared about the character and wanted to know her fate, that shows some success of the book. Whether the ending is Atwood failing to confront a resolution or our inability to deal without one, well, that's maybe another subject for debate. But I find it moving that every women (that I've known) who reads this story cares about Offred. Maybe part of our agony and anger arises when her story is cut off, and she is silenced. We want to know. We want to hear her voice in the end, not the satirized clinical voices of people discussing whether or not she was even real. To us as readers she was very real, and we cared. Also we do make judgements about what is right and wrong, in direct contrast to the ending masculine voice dictating: "we must be cautious about passing moral judgement upon the Gileadeans" (302).
I'm curious, were you able to tease out the meaning of the ending without having heard Offred's whole story first?
In some ways I would think this narrative would escape your desire to know the ending and the meaning of the ending going in. So, even if you read the ending first, you still wouldn't be emotionally prepared for what it would put you through as a reader?
Nolite te Canadianas carborundorum?
:)
No, exactly, when I skipped ahead, I thought it was like some transcript from some stuffy English Lit profs analyzing the book, I skimmed it and there were too many big, smart sounding words to keep my attention, so I kept reading my story. THEN when the story was abruptly OVER and all I had was the big stuffy words to try to figure out what happened, I read them carefully. It was too frustrating. I mean, I'm in REALITY historical documents are just like that, but ... no, Atwood makes us care, even though we don't fully understand or maybe even really believe - and to critique her writing, she does a great, amazingly great job of making sure the reader knows WHEN they are, despite all the time lines.
Drives me crazy.
Oh, and Janet - it was the last Stephanie Meyer Twilight book, right? Cuz I also read the END of that one and it sucked too! Don't spend the whole book gearing up for a battle and end in peace! (sorry, more spoilers, who cares?!)
How do these people get published?
Also maybe cut the literary snob a little slack. :) I got from the Wikipedia entry that Atwood reacted that way to her work being defined as science fiction, when as a young writer she didn't see it fitting her limited perception of the genre. What she said wasn't fully aware of the complex, good lit that is scifi, but since then she seems to have mellowed.
"Atwood has since said that she does at times write science fiction, and that Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake can be designated as such."
"stuffy English Lit profs"... :)
Sheesh, I agree the end is satirized, but I've told you what I do for a living right? LOL. Guess I'll go wear tweed. :)
I should have said "all English Lit Profs who read MY blog, excluded" or something. You're not one of the stuffy ones (I hope). Sometimes that tone, that academese drives me crazy. Communicate the idea already. That, and my dictionary is big, a pain to lug around, and I'm lazy.
"I feel the need, the need for Tweed" - Tom Cruise in Dead Poets Society II - Tomes of Thunder.
I remember feeling the same way at the end of this book, but I still found it a very interesting read. I guess you're not going to want me to recommend "The Blind Assassin." Actually I don't know if I can. I tend to forget a books plot about a month after I read it and I really can't remember what that book was about, but hey, it came highly recommended by NPR.
I'd recommend watching the movie- it's one of the better adaptations that I've seen, and it does help to clear up some parts of the book.
Margaret Atwood goes back and forth on whether she writes science fiction- as a very long time SF fan she ticks me off about half of the time, and the other half I think that she's great. Of course, I'm Canadian, and I think that there's a clause somewhere that says that we have to like her somewhere.
I actually like the Handmaid's Tale a lot, but not quite as much as I did when it was first published as it isn't nearly as frightening now. When Jerry Falwell at al were still holding the purse strings and providing the mailing lists, it was a much more timely and realistic (as much as near-future SF ever is) depiction of what could happen if you take certain political and social views to an extreme. I read somewhere (I think that it was David Brin), that the hardest thing to write in science fiction is something set 50 years or so in the future, because you have to make a guess about which ideas are still going to be around, and then run with them.
Of course, I also did read it in University, so that might have coloured my views a bit :-)
I forgot to mention- if you like books with satisfying endings, read A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. It's my comfort book when I want to believe that there is a plan :-)
Okay, I have lots to say about this book...but SPOILER ALERT.....DO NOT READ if you do not want to hear spoilers.....
First, I have to ask, what do you mean by your comment that your husband would not 'let' you write a book like this?!
Are you joking? Is this a subtle commentary on the book?
Anyway, I last read this book when I was a senior in high school (Thank you Dr. Alice Price wherever you are---you are the reason I do what I do!). I have very vivid memories of it, though. I have to say that I think the ending is purposefully vague....it is more chilling if we do NOT know exactly what happened to Offred. Plus, there is the obvious hint that she DID get away by the existence of the tapes....I mean, how else would they exist?
I would also like to comment that I love love love the opening scene of the book, where Atwood sets up her narrator almost as a plural....a group of women, an us....and ends with the name "Alma" I always said that I wanted to name my daughter Alma, but it does not work with either my or my husband's name (and side note: no, I did not change my name when I got married but Olivia has her Dad's last name). The narrator opens with the quiet insistence upon self-naming, the importance of declaring your identity even if it is to a seemingly empty space of nothingness (which later ends up to be somewhat true).
Another important scene for me is the stolen butter/moisturizer...where Offred simultaneously insists upon her personhood by finding and using the only cosmetic available to her, and yet at the same time reminds us of her status as commodity.
There are just so many chilling moments in the whole book, but mostly what I find so compelling is that while Atwood creates a dystopia where men are supposed to control and run everything, it is the WOMEN in the book who actually oppress each other and hold each other down. The various men in the novel (as I recall) offer various levels of 'freedom' to Offred....the women, the wife, the Aunt, the other handmaids who spy on her, the one pressuring her to go underground, even her friend Moira, all from a network of suppression that supplants and works even better than the larger ideological network of Gilead. I mean, isn't the re-education center called the "Rachel and Leah Center." The various statuses available to women are based upon their reproductive capability, not their inherent value as women....I mean, isn't this a larger commentary on how women treat each other in our own society?
I think it is also important to remember that this book was written in the 1980s, 1988 I think, but I'm not sure. I mean, this was the height of the televangelist 'movement' (if you could call it that), or at least before they all fell and everyone got disillusioned in the 90s. Sometimes I think of the 90s as the decade of disillusionment...I mean, come on, when this book was written the Cold War was still on and there was still probably some significance with the colors (The Red Center, etc.). I mean, at the time Atwood was writing, people still watched space launches and the Olympics and stuff like that. There was no Jerry Springer, OJ, Bill Clinton, etc,. Anyway, I digress.
My overall point is that I think you are selling this book short if you judge it by reading its ending first and then going back...I think it is meant to be deliberately vague, kind of like The Turn of the Screw or that movie Ghost World....it is supposed to make you think and reconsider all that you have just read....it jars you both into and out of that particular world. I mean, one question is what ever happens to Offred's daughter? Who knows? And that to me is quite chilling. The contrast between the anti-intellectualism of the Gilead regime and the hyper-intellectualism of the lecture creates a polarity that invites questions....where does that leave Offred? Where does that leave us?
I know you did not like the ending, but I would like to highly recommend a couple of other books that are also extremely well-written and really make you think....they are 1) "Kindred" by Octavia Butler (definitely identifies as sci-fi)....about a black woman who (somehow) travels back in time to slavery times
and
2) The Giver by Lois Lowry...another dystopian take, but this one was written for kids and won a Newberry. My sister had some interesting comments on this one....she said it wasn't a dystopia, but it was about a cult. I thought it was an interesting take on children's lit.
Anyway, this is long enough.
Catherine
PS--I would like to point out that we English Lit people are not all stuffy and stuff....the ending is probably a bit of a parody of sorts, after all. Plus, it's like a work-speak we all use on our jobs, and sometimes even we get a little tired of it when we hear too much jargon.
Hey O - The husband comment was a little of both. I think an author owes their readers something. I bought the book, invested my time, invested emotion. I just don't think this author took care of me. WHEN I write a book, it'll be a whole story. Greg would figuratively bash my head in if I didn't give the reader a payoff.
This is a great book for college classroom discussion, I could write a million papers off it, but, as a humble reader, I feel jipped. What did she teach me? Go with the flow and everybody dies?
In most societies, in OUR society, it is the WOMEN who keep the WOMEN down. How much more could women accomplish in a day if we had short hair, no make-up, no high heels, but sturdy shoes, no flirty skirts, but nice grey jump suits? Function, not form. My Utopia has no style, ha ha. It's a grey day today, snow again ... maybe I'm just frumpy. I should find something uplifting to read next.
For uplift, I highly recommend The Color Purple. It has lots and lots of uplift in it, though you might not think so at first.
Or Beloved. That's another one with uplift.
I think I will continue to read your blog, even though M. Atwood is my favorite writer. Of course, that probably doesn't mean very much considering that this is like my second or third comment. On with the literary opinion from a complete stranger!
In a certain sense, Handmaid's Tale is a piece of metafiction. It says quite a bit about how story itself gets created. In that way, the ending works as a sort of reminder: you're reading a story here, not a piece of nonfiction. It's sort of ironic that the framing device the ending creates makes the rest of the book seem like it could be nonfiction even as it reminds you that it's a story.
More, though, what struck me about your post was this sentence: "Now, I'll always wonder in my mind, what ever happened to that red dress woman." Yep, you probably will! I first read this book 18 years ago and I still think about Offred.
Thanks for your post---it made me want to reread H.T. again!
Okay, I was thinking more and more about this book and I have more to say....what do you mean by the comment that you could write a million college papers off it? Does that mean that college is somehow different from real life? I am also intrigued by your comment that this book would not fly as a book group book....why not?
Like Amy, I want to reread the book, especially since I last picked it up in 1993. However, my handy used bookstore had every other Atwood book BUT this one.
Anyway, on with my comment. I really think you are selling the book (and yourself) short if you judge it based upon its rather abrupt ending. I don't think that Atwood got lazy......as Amy suggests, she's pointing out what we as readers do to books on a daily basis. We dissect them, we analyze them, etc. etc.
One of the persistent thematic elements of the book for me is the concept of naming....maybe because naming is important to me. Offred (as I recall), never gets an actual name. There is also the play on the word 'offered' In doing this, I think Atwood points to one of the troubling aspects of our own society...how women's names get effaced in favor of their husbands and fathers. I reminds me, in a way of TS Eliot, where he says that Cats have 2 names, the names their owners call them and the names they call themselves. We never get to know who exactly Offred is...we only know who she is in relation to the people around her as well as who she was in relation tot he people of her past. BTW, I have to point out, she was married to her husband, he was just divorced I think. I doing this, Atwood mirrors the situation that women of today all too often find themselves in...we often find ourselves defining ourselves in relation to others. I mean, one of the things that I refused to do when I got married was to change my name. This was partly because my husband has an Irish last name and my name is Catherine and I do not want to sound Irish (I am of Polish descent). But in choosing this, I did not want to a) alter my identity or b) efface who I had been previously. I could have hyphenated or added it on as a second last name. but I did not want to. But when I think about it, keeping my own name means choosing my father's name.....where does my mother come in? I mean, my husband's last name is Irish, but he is like 1/8 Irish....on his mother's side he is Jewish and even on his father's side his grandmother is eastern european? So where are all these women and their names and their words and what words and marks have they left behind for us to remember them?
To me, this line of thought links directly back to your post about hugs being the province of moms and wisdom and direction being the province of dads.....Atwood's book tries to question this, not to mention the rigid roles that women are forced into 'choosing.'
Anyway. Just thought you might reconsider the book as a whole. In a way, I DO think of Offred's story as uplifting, because she DOES persist, she does survive, she does insist upon telling her tale in a world where she and other women are repeatedly confined into ungilded cages....I honestly am not sure if I would be able to persist like that.
I know, I just KNOW there are other books that end this way...with an abrupt, clinical ending....(well at least one), but I just can't think of any...but the only other books that I can think of in this vein are things like The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Light in August. In other words, all Faulkner, and I don't think that's accurate.
Anyway, thanks for rekindling my interest in Atwood and The Handmaid's Tale, and my selves-in-relation to others.
I'm so glad you're a reader of my silly blog, Catherine, I really am.
I generally liked the book, I hated the ending - the end is the last thing you remember.
If I die today, my story, this blog, would end suddenly, no one would know what happened ... it's not SO unrealistic ... just harshly jarring.
I think it would be an AWESOME book club book, I just meant this would never never be an LDS book club book, i.e. not in my 'hood. (they don't go so much for the F-bombs and sex scenes - we, like the women in the book, pretend things are not so ugly in the world). I'm a rebel - my parents never limited my reading, if I am offended by a book, I put it down. If bad things or profane words are true to the character and story, it's not offensive.
There are so many ways to analyze this book, it's so layered and touches on so many important feminist themes, one could write a million papers on it, IF only I still had English papers to write or could make money writing English papers (HEY! that is an idea, black market English papers. I should link to my special black market site - it's not illegal for me to write papers and sell them, is it? Immoral, sure, but who am I to judge what desperate college kids do with my offerings?)
In conclusion, good writer, interesting book, UNSATISFYING END.
the end.
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