Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale: Book Summary and Analysis

The Handmaid's Tale (The Handmaid's Tale) is a novel by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood published in 1985. The book is one of the most important works of the writer in which social criticism and a feminist argument predominate.

It is listed as a dystopian science fiction and futuristic work. The novel is an omen of the writer who, in the mid-eighties, showed a story that can be extrapolated to today's world.

Describes a fictional, hypothetical, and undesirable society. History written in the last century has become a best seller In our day, is there something in this fictitious and despicable society that brings us back to the present?

Summary of The Handmaid's Tale

In the Republic of Gilead, where a Puritan dictatorship of biblical inspiration reigns devised from the Old Testament, Offred, like all women, has lost all her rights and her mission in society is reduced to procreate.

Attention, from now on there may be spoilers!

The young woman lives in the home of Major Fred Waterford and his wife Serena Joy, who is sterile, with the purpose of conceiving a child for marriage.

Offred narrates in the first person the events of her daily life and in turn tries to reconstruct events from the past, about what the world was like before the implantation of Gilead.

Then, the protagonist had a relationship and, as a result of it, her daughter was born. Soon after, fertility rates fell due to pollution, the president was assassinated, and a coup took place that blew up women's rights.

In the implementation of the new regime, women are divided, according to the role they occupy in society, into different groups, whose distinction is marked by the color of the clothing.

On the one hand, maids, category to which Offred belongs, they are dressed in red and are fertile women, the future of the human race depends on them.

Likewise, maids are indoctrinated by aunts, in brown clothing. They direct and monitor that the girls comply with the rules and, if necessary, punish them if they commit any imprudence.

On the other hand, wives, dressed in blue as the Virgin Mary, are the women of high birth who are married to the commanders and enjoy a quiet and affluent life. They are sterile and need maids to ensure their offspring.

There are also marthas, masked pale green. They are adult women and cannot have children, which is why their contribution to society is reduced to cleaning and cooking for the families of the commanders.

Finally, the categories of no women Y economic wives. The former have a dark past and are tortured and banished to the border until the day of their death. The latter, dressed in striped clothing, are the poor men's wives and they have to do everything they can.

For their part, men are divided into four main categories, based on the power they exercise in society. Thus, there are: commanders, who rule in the new regime and are dressed in black; the Angels, whose function is to serve the republic; the guardians, who serve as bodyguards to commanders and eventually God's eyes, who watch the infidels who endanger the established order.

Trapped in a strict routine, Offred tries to abide by the rules and she can only leave the commander's house to do the shopping, in the company of her neighbor Deglen, or visit the doctor.

On one of her monthly visits to the doctor, he suggests that she have sex with him and confesses that the commander is sterile, which could endanger her (the system does not recognize men as infertile).

After several attempts, Offred fails to get pregnant and Serena Joy tries to convince her to have sex with Nick, the driver of her family, in exchange for her he offers her a photo of his daughter. In this way, both begin a love affair.

One night the commander proposes to Offred that she put on a suggestive disguise and takes her to a brothel. There she discovers that Moira, her best friend in the past, works as a prostitute.

Later, Serena discovers the costume and, finally, the protagonist is arrested. The novel ends with Offred being transported in a van to an unknown destination.

The epilogue, which is titled Notes on "The Handmaid's Tale", refers to a future located in the year 2195 in a conference on Gilead, in which the researchers imply that the regime described by the protagonist did not last long.

Analysis of The Handmaid's Tale

It has often been considered The Handmaid's Tale as one of the works that culminate the literary creation of the writer, nothing is further from reality. We could consider Margaret Atwood's book one of the greatest dystopias of the 20th century only comparable to the novel 1984 by George Orwell.

Although the novel has been brought to the big screen on numerous occasions, it has been the eponymous television series produced in 2017 which has brought this work back to the present day, even running out of stocks in the bookstores.

Sociopolitical context

It is essential in this analysis to take into account the sociopolitical context that framed the launch of the book.

Almost forty years after World War II, the world was still in a turbulent situation in which tensions had not disappeared from the social landscape.

The Second Feminist Wave was on the rise denouncing inequality and vindicating sexuality, family, work and women's reproductive rights.

A dystopia with touches of reality

It is possible that this context led the author to remind the reader, through a dystopian story, that anything can happen. It is like a warning about what can happen if we get carried away by ironclad policies.

This book invites us to reflect on the fragility of the system and on how the things we take for granted assumptions could change from one moment to another, and, in the words of the protagonist, she makes us see that nothing happens suddenly:

Nothing changes in an instant: in a bathtub in which the water heats up little by little, one could boil to death before you know it. Of course, there were news in the newspapers: corpses in ditches or in the woods, women beaten to death or mutilated, stained, they used to say; But it was news about other women, and the men who did such things were other men.

Oppression narrated in the first person

The writer presents us with a world in which women have been stripped of all her rights and freedoms. The clearest case is that of the protagonist, whose name (June) was taken from her with the introduction of the new regime.

Offred (Offred in English) is the name given to the protagonist when she becomes a maid. The etymology of the term Of- Fred (from Fred) already directly implies the character of the woman as the property of a man. In this case, Offred is the slave of Fred, the commander.

It is essential to take into account the way in which the author is able to catch the reader in the story from the first page of it. It is a kind of game that she plays with him constantly.

The writer shows us the protagonist's confusion within a chaotic world that not even she herself can understand. She does it thanks to the first-person account of the main character.

If the society in which she lives has turned to chaos, the writer offers us a disorderly view of events. The protagonist seems to get lost in her memories and she reconstructs them in such a way that, sometimes, it is not specified if what she narrates happened or is part of her imagination.

In the first part of the novel, the sensation of disorientation of Offred is transmitted before a world transformed by iron laws. She is a confused character with the events it seems, that she has been brainwashed.

Rights and freedoms of women

Often, dystopias show us a futuristic and undesirable world and we think that nothing of the described could happen. However, this novel inevitably brings us back to thinking about current affairs.

Throughout history we can reflect on the fragility of human and civil rights. Especially if we take into account the repression against women.

While at Gilead maids are treated as a mere "breeding machine" that prevents women from being owners of their own bodies, issues such as the legitimacy of pregnancy are still debated today surrogate.

All this leads us to think that, in the XXI century, we reduce the woman's body to an object at the service of others. A contract for the provision of reproductive services that does not rent only the organs but also, the consequences and physiological changes and even risks that a pregnancy.

The issue of surrogacy also leads us to think about abortion and the right of women to decide when to be mothers or not. As in Gilead, in some countries thousands of women continue to die from the illegal practice of abortion, because they have not allowed them to decide. Women's freedom of decision about her own body is still a crime.

The importance of feminism

Often reading the book reminds us that feminism is necessary and that not everything is done. Gilead women are prevented from cultivating and even forbidden to read. Nothing different from some dictatorships of the last century that promoted the illiteracy of society, especially of women whose main role was to be at the service of their homes.

We can also think of the treatment women receive, immersed in a patriarchal system, in places where a more radical interpretation of Islam prevails.

Dystopia as a warning

We could imagine that everything described above, like the protagonist imagined before the imposition of the regime, occurs in other places with very different cultures. However, what makes us feel the novel as a kind of "warning" of the author is precisely the context of the story that is embarked on a Western and Christian dictatorship.

The flashbacks of the novel become a fundamental element to empathize with the character. They show the story in a realistic way and reinforce the idea that anything that is taken for granted can change.

Offred lived in her own flesh how, due to the terrorist attacks against the government, little by little were establishing the dictatorship, which led to the gradual loss of rights and freedoms of the citizenship.

Gilead and current politics

At present, governments with radical ideas are in full swing and sow terror among the population through speeches that threaten the "invasion of the other" and the fear of "a stranger".

Little by little we are tolerating new policies that, rather than protecting rights, curtail freedoms. As Margaret warns in her novel, conformity with the established can lead to chaos.

The importance of knowing the past

It is clear that 35 years after the novel's premiere, its reading reaffirms the Confucian proverb “a people that does not know its history is condemned to repeat it”.

If we look in the book for similarities with historical events we find them. For example, the color classification of women's clothing reminds us that there were death camps during the Second World War where they differentiated with a marking system on the fabrics to distinguish the reasons why the prisoner was there. In Gilead, the color of the dresses reveals the condition of a reproductive woman or not within society.

There is also a harsh criticism of religion, since it is based on a Christian dictatorship in which there is sexual appropriation and reproductive of women on the part of men, it is seen as something normal and almost mythological in nature within religious doctrine established. Currently, there is a long way to go in this regard.

An imperishable literary work

The Handmaid's Tale it is a novel that, in a way, generates mixed feelings. The horror of the society that is described leads us to think of the cruelty of the human race, of the fragility of democratic systems and the tendency of man to “stumble twice on the same stone".

However, it also reminds us of how necessary it is to do this type of reading or the viewing of series like its namesake. They say that "culture makes us free", indeed, this book not only culturalizes but also indicates the path we should follow when using an undesirable world as a backdrop.

Atwood's book is, without a doubt, one of those novels that have the ability to remain valid over the years. A dystopia incredibly akin to the present.

Characters

• Offred, maid, her real name is June and she is the main character and thread of the story.
• Moira, maid and best friend of Offred.
• Dewarren, she is a maid and her real name is Janine, she was also recruited and indoctrinated alongside Offred.
• Deglen, she is a maid and her real name is Emily, she is Offred's shopping partner.
• Serena joy, wife of Major Fred Waterford.
• Aunt Lydia, instructor of the Gilead maids in the Red Center, place of indoctrination where they are trained before fulfilling their mission in the house of the commanders.
• Rita, she is the martha of Major Waterford's house.
• Commander Fred Waterford, the head of the new state, is the husband of Serena Joy and subjects Offred so that she can give him offspring.
• Nick, he is the guardian of the commander's house and the lover of Offred.

Margaret Atwood

She is a Canadian writer and activist. She began to write during her adolescence and in her youth she studied English philology and philosophy.

Throughout her life journey, she has been involved in the fight for human rights and women's freedoms, which she makes him describe herself as a feminist writer, since in her literary work she has captured her interest in such topics.

The Handmaid's Tale, published in 1985, has been one of the greatest successes of the Canadian and has a second part entitled Wills. Among her most outstanding works are:

• The edible woman, 1969.
• The thief bride, 1994.
• Alias ​​Grace, 1996.
• The blind assassin, 2000.
• Penelope and the twelve maids, 2005.
• Lastly, the heart, 2015.

The Handmaid's Tale adaptations

The impact of the book has led to different adaptations to the audiovisual medium. One of them in 1990 with the movie The Handmaid's Tale (The story of the maiden or The price of fertility).

On the other hand, the novel had a new adaptation, this time on the small screen. The Serie The Handmaid's Tale (The Handmaid's Tale), released in 2017, is a fiction of 36 episodes and 3 installments and maintains a certain fidelity to the book throughout its first season.

You may also like Series The Handmaid's Tale