“The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario. Quality and Quantity of her writings are notable. Atwood was attributed for drawing attention to Canadian writers, but she was humble to have highlighted that creation of new presses run by authors was one of the primary factors in the sudden explosion of Canadian writers. Atwood’s books usually engage with the power language exhibits and the importance of storytelling and to convey a person’s viewpoint by writing or speaking. She became well known as a feminist writer in the 1970s.

            ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Margaret Atwood is a dystopian novel and brings the tale of a new world of Gilead. Ordered around a young American woman’s escape to Canada, Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ portrays the flight from “Americanness”.  There is a conflict of world views represented by the Christian fundamentalists who take over America on one hand and on the other hand, there are women who suffer outcomes of such fundamentalist governance. In the novel, there is also Atwood’s inter-cultural theme of United States in the cultural opposition to Canada. This particular notion is expressed in gendered terms, that is, American culture is characterized as masculine and Canadian culture as much feminine.

            According to the novel, Handmaid is a term, created by the government of Gilead, used to address fertile women who are made to live in the households of the higher ranked officials whose wives are unable to bear children. The narrator of the novel is a handmaid named Offred. Captured in the world of supervision, strict regulation and punishment, the protagonist is always with hope that she will be reunited with her husband and daughter and gets her freedom. Offred also shows a form of hybridity but in the context of the novel becoming hybrid becomes an important aspect of survival. The social rules imposed by the Gileadean regime would not accept Offred as such and thus forcefully enters into the sectarian role and she must in turn act in a convincing manner to survive. The hybrid character is seen in her status as a survivor.

Everyone’s identity in the novel is questionable and problematic. Though some people who are in powerful statuses are given more privileges than others, everyone is repositioned. Women are divided into classes such as handmaid, wife etc. Women are not allowed to read, work outside their homes or even spend money. They are not technically allowed to do anything that is need of knowledge. The marginalized women and those who are fertile are used to produce children and subjugated by the government and patriarchal society.

            In the Gileadean Society of ‘The Handmaid’s tale’’, though the powerful also live in restricted manner, the handmaids are confined and are sanctioned only to certain outings and ceremonies. If they fulfil the sole purpose of bearing the children of the commanders or other higher ranked officials, they are rewarded by being allowed to stay alive. They are forced to give birth to the children but are not allowed any right over them. Thus their lives are characterised by no freedom and absolute confinement to their houses.

            According to Atwood and her novel, everything is a re-interpretation of something else and nothing represents the truth or reality. Language is also used by Offred in a manner in which she thinks of words and analyses them, using them to distract her and survive in the world.

            Throughout the story there are concepts of rebellion, resistance, and also questions of identity, survival, and hybridity addressed.