116 LITERATURE The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood Literature along the way In her famous dystopian novel1 The Handmaid’s Tale, first published in 1985, Canadian author Margaret Atwood describes the Republic of Gilead, which has replaced parts of the United States. There, life has to be lived according to the principles of the Puritans and other conservative religious fundamentalists. The story has been adapted to several formats, such as a TV series and a graphic novel, and Atwood has written a sequel to it called The Testaments, which was published in 2019. 1 The imaginary society portrayed in The Handmaid’s Tale is set in the near future. It has problems with human reproduction as most men are infertile due to environmental pollution. For this reason, women who have already given birth to children are trained to be surrogate mothers for high-ranking officials. As ‘Handmaids’, these women are ‘walking wombs’, losing their identity so completely that they even carry the names of their ‘Commanders’, e.g. Offred (= of Fred). In monthly ceremonies, the Handmaids are subjected to sexual intercourse with the Commanders – in the presence of and as surrogate for their wives. Any children they conceive are raised by the Commander’s wife while the Handmaids are sent to another household to boost the birthrate once again. Before you start reading, discuss these questions with a partner. Share your ideas with the class. 1 What do you think such a state could look like in general? How could society be different from today? 2 What could a resistance movement in Gilead look like? Now read parts of the novel and answer the question below. 2 The narrator of the story, called Offred as a Handmaid (we are never given her real name), describes her room and clothes. A chair, a table, a lamp. Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath2, and in the centre of it a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out. There must have been a chandelier3, once. They’ve removed anything you could tie a rope to. A window, two white curtains. Under the window, a window seat with a little cushion. When the window is partly open – it only opens partly – the air can come in and make the curtains move. I can sit in the chair, or on the window seat, hands folded, and watch this. Sunlight comes in through the window too, and falls on the floor, which is made of wood, in narrow strips, highly polished. I can smell the polish. There’s a rug on the floor, oval, of braided rags. This is the kind of touch they like: folk art, archaic, made by women, in their spare time, from things that have no further use. A return to traditional values. Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want? 1 Dystopian novels portray negative aspects of present-day society, like poverty or oppression, as a political warning. They present worst-case scenarios of already existing threats to humanity. Atwood famously claims that everything she wrote about in The Handmaid’s Tale had happened in the real world at some point in time. 2 wreath: Kranz 3 chandelier: Kronleuchter 1 Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODE3MDE=