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Books are meant to leave an impression. Great writing can make readers laugh and cry, and it can carry them to new places and take them on exciting adventures. And the very best books can haunt you.
So it is with Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.” I first read the 1985 novel in college, and it left such an impression on me that despite only reading it once, the disquieting fear that I was left with has lingered throughout the years.
Now, Hulu has brought the book to the small screen (it was previously made into a movie in 1990). Before its debut on April 26, I reread the novel in preparation for what looked like a spectacular television experience.
If you haven’t followed the multitude of articles recently written about the book and Hulu series, the basic plot is as follows: In the near future, fertility rates have dropped dramatically, and the American government is overthrown and replaced by the Republic of Gilead, a patriarchal theocracy.
Society is restructured with military commanders at the top. Women have no rights and are organized into specific castes: wives, handmaids and servants. For whatever reason, many men — and their wives — are sterile. Women who are capable of reproduction are rounded up and forced to act as handmaids — the bearers of the commanders’ children. The handmaid is only a vessel through which the couple she belongs to has a child.
The novel itself follows Offred, the handmaid of a commander named Fred (her name denotes his ownership of her). and her life in his home. She is in the first generation of women subjected to life under the new republic. She can still remember her life from before. She had a husband, a daughter, a job. But all of this came to an end when America fell.
Atwood is purposely vague about the back-story. There is a hint about terrorists who were blamed for the assassination of the president and Congress. Martial law was declared to keep people safe.
Despite the militarized state, most citizens went about their lives, believing the action was taken to keep people safe. Offred (whose real name isn’t known in the book, but who is called June in the show), famously says, “Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.”
Offred recalls the day her bank account was frozen. She remembers being let go from her job. The law suddenly changed: women could not work, could not own property, could not have money. Second marriages were considered null and void. As her husband was previously married, they tried to flee, but were unable to cross the border into Canada before she was captured and forced to be a handmaid.
It’s easy to look at this scenario and say, “This would never happen in America,” but Atwood’s plot is so frightening because it is plausible. For years, “The Handmaid’s Tale” represented a scary fable of what could be if only one group controlled the government, if religion wasn’t separate from the state, and if our democracy failed.
For some, the book is currently being reexamined as a possible prediction for what could happen if women’s rights (particularly reproductive rights) continue to be threatened.
“The Handmaid’s Tale” has been required reading in schools around the country and has been banned just as often. I genuinely think it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read and that it should be on everyone’s reading list. If you’re not a reader, take advantage of a free month of Hulu, and start watching the powerful and very true-to-the book show.
Finally, never, ever forget Atwood’s words: “Better never means better for everyone. … It always means worse, for some.”
