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kp_741 's review for:
The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood
This book was pretty solid and I found myself engaged much of the time despite not being this book’s target audience. I found interesting the parallels with the civilian Nazi and the willing participants in the Gileadian state- that people will tolerate totalitarianism as long as they’re given tiny freedoms and the right to oppress another. Maybe I’m dense and I’d always heard there was no innocent German, but this book made that concrete instead of an abstract for me.
On the note of me being dense, Luke was dead right? Am I right in thinking he’s dead and she just either didn’t see it or didn’t want to accept it? No catch at any rate given he was ALREADY MARRIED! Why is this so often a recurring theme in women’s lit/film? These men aren’t real so why do they always HAVE to be married. They’re almost never single or widowed or divorced or in a polyamorous yet asexual commune. Always unobtainable and yet somehow obtained to the detriment of all. To that end, I did actually appreciate that the male gaze was co-opted and actually used by women, to oppress women. That was a novel idea. Seems like we are getting to a point where some of the fringes of feminism (the ones on TikTok) need pruned for running the same path as so many other ideologies that they actually begin to be a tool of oppression rather than tolerance and freedom. But what do I know? I’ve got a male gaze and a mansplaining mouth and the male touch hands and a body that manspreads and so forth.
This was excellent at world-building and I’ll probably revisit it at the some point. It’d be sooner if Offred wasn’t just so damned boring and confused all the time. And I get that it’s meta and that’s the point if women are reduced to reproduction only that it would be (is, at times) their reality, but it does make for a tedious read here and there.
On the note of me being dense, Luke was dead right? Am I right in thinking he’s dead and she just either didn’t see it or didn’t want to accept it? No catch at any rate given he was ALREADY MARRIED! Why is this so often a recurring theme in women’s lit/film? These men aren’t real so why do they always HAVE to be married. They’re almost never single or widowed or divorced or in a polyamorous yet asexual commune. Always unobtainable and yet somehow obtained to the detriment of all. To that end, I did actually appreciate that the male gaze was co-opted and actually used by women, to oppress women. That was a novel idea. Seems like we are getting to a point where some of the fringes of feminism (the ones on TikTok) need pruned for running the same path as so many other ideologies that they actually begin to be a tool of oppression rather than tolerance and freedom. But what do I know? I’ve got a male gaze and a mansplaining mouth and the male touch hands and a body that manspreads and so forth.
This was excellent at world-building and I’ll probably revisit it at the some point. It’d be sooner if Offred wasn’t just so damned boring and confused all the time. And I get that it’s meta and that’s the point if women are reduced to reproduction only that it would be (is, at times) their reality, but it does make for a tedious read here and there.