WHAT I had enjoyed as a speculative fiction novel years ago is now, 31 years after its publication, deemed a prophetic insight into the rightist, conservative, religious-fundamentalist political environment that is America today.
Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency and his recent anti-immigrant, anti-transgender, and anti-Muslim executive orders and others that curtail human rights upheld during the Obama administration echo to a degree the political environment of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
The book is enjoying a resurgence in sales, along with other similar novels exploring fascist and authoritarian themes, including Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and George Orwell’s 1984.
All these books went into our intellectual hopper decades ago, but as cautionary tales of “what might have been” had dictators all over the world not been overthrown as most of them were after the two world wars when these books were written. Nowhere in my imaginings did I conceive that these would turn out to be tales of “what will be.”
Atwood, a feminist, posits an anti-woman culture in her dystopian novel, set in a future Massachusetts where the status of women has been reduced to being the property of men, who have installed a Christian fundamentalist state called Gilead, where the word of Bible is the law.
Women are either Wives, Handmaids (bearers of children), Marthas (household servants, those who cannot bear children), and Econowives. They all wear color-coded uniforms and are barred from reading and enjoying many other freedoms.
The women serve the men, who are ranked in strict hierarchy, with the leaders of the state, the Sons of Jacob, called Commanders. Guards are Guardians, soldiers are Angels, and only those men who have served to the satisfaction of the regime are issued their own women.
And because sexual repression has been known to never work—there will always be conduits for pleasure—some women are Jezebels, recruited to dress up in tawdry sequined costumes from before to entertain the Commanders and their cronies.
The Handmaids do not have their own names but are called by a combination of the possessive ‘of’ and the first name of the Commander they are assigned to—such as “Ofwarren” and “Ofglen.”
The protagonist, Offred (we never learn her real name), is torn from her husband Luke and their daughter and assigned to serve a Commander by bearing him a child that he and his Wife will rear as their own. Her attempts to remedy her situation form the basis of the story.
In Gilead, religion is the state and is used as a framework for imposing patriarchal order upon society. Contradictory thought and action are not tolerated. Under their version of Christian fundamentalism, the state and condition of women suffers. They are stripped of their identities to curb individual thought and possible protest or uprising. Those below the rank of Wife are not seen as individuals in themselves but as entities with specific service functions. Even Wives have to toe the state line or be summarily executed.
To divert women’s pent-up rage and emotion into different channels, elaborate mandatory rituals are invented, such as Birth Day (when a baby is born), and Prayvaganza (for assemblies, mass weddings). The Women’s Salvaging is the public execution of women who have committed crimes, while in Particicution—an echo of the secret rites of the Maenead—a male offender is given over to the women to be torn to pieces at their hands.
(Atwood gives a nod to the Philippines in her epilogue: ‘Salvaging’ had spread from its origin in the Philippines to become a general term for the elimination of one’s political enemies.)
Gilead clearly models the characteristics of an authoritarian state: the suppression of opposition, the curtailment of human rights and basic freedoms, and the strict regimentation of the economy and society. These are the autocrat’s ploys for gaining and maintaining control over the populace to benefit the few who are in power.
The Handmaid’s Tale is no longer a speculative tale, but one that could very well be reality in our lifetime. Along with the lessons from the historical past, reading it will help us understand why fascism has never, and will never, work. Any dictatorship must be opposed, lest we once again lose our humanity.
Dr. Ortuoste is a California-based writer. Follow her on Facebook: Jenny Ortuoste, Twitter: @jennyortuoste, Instagram: @jensdecember