Scan barcode
A review by emeraldgarnet
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
4.0
"There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it." (Ch. 5).
The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopia that shows 'at what cost freedom?'
There is irony in what happened to Serena Joy, who used to campaign and give speeches asserting that women should stay at home: "She doesn’t make speeches any more. She has become speechless. She stays in her home, but it doesn’t seem to agree with her. How furious she must be, now that she's been taken at her word." (Ch. 8).
Gilead's emphasis on 'modesty' has made the female body an ever greater focal point. When bathing, the narrator does not want to look at her body: "I avoid looking down at my body, not so much because it’s shameful or immodest but because I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to look at something that determines me so completely." (Ch. 12).
The narrator has become a shadow of what she once was: "Does he know I’m here, alive, that I’m thinking about him? I have to believe so. In reduced circumstances you have to believe all kinds of things. I believe in thought transference now, vibrations in the ether, that sort of junk. I never used to." (Ch. 18).
The narrator loses her agency while waiting for Luke: "The message will say that I must have patience: sooner or later he will get me out, we will find her, wherever they’ve put her. She’ll remember us and we will be all three of us together. Meanwhile I must endure, keep myself safe for later. What has happened to me, what’s happening to me now won’t make any difference to him, he loves me anyway, he knows it isn’t my fault. The message will say that also. It’s this message, which may never arrive, that keeps me alive. I believe in the message." (Ch. 18).
Overall I liked this novel. The world Atwood created was weird but that level of control would not be impossible if someone wanted to implement it. However, I found the narrator uninspiring as she was so willing to lose her agency first for Luke and then for Nick. Then again, that could have been Atwood's point.
The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopia that shows 'at what cost freedom?'
There is irony in what happened to Serena Joy, who used to campaign and give speeches asserting that women should stay at home: "She doesn’t make speeches any more. She has become speechless. She stays in her home, but it doesn’t seem to agree with her. How furious she must be, now that she's been taken at her word." (Ch. 8).
Gilead's emphasis on 'modesty' has made the female body an ever greater focal point. When bathing, the narrator does not want to look at her body: "I avoid looking down at my body, not so much because it’s shameful or immodest but because I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to look at something that determines me so completely." (Ch. 12).
The narrator has become a shadow of what she once was: "Does he know I’m here, alive, that I’m thinking about him? I have to believe so. In reduced circumstances you have to believe all kinds of things. I believe in thought transference now, vibrations in the ether, that sort of junk. I never used to." (Ch. 18).
The narrator loses her agency while waiting for Luke: "The message will say that I must have patience: sooner or later he will get me out, we will find her, wherever they’ve put her. She’ll remember us and we will be all three of us together. Meanwhile I must endure, keep myself safe for later. What has happened to me, what’s happening to me now won’t make any difference to him, he loves me anyway, he knows it isn’t my fault. The message will say that also. It’s this message, which may never arrive, that keeps me alive. I believe in the message." (Ch. 18).
Overall I liked this novel. The world Atwood created was weird but that level of control would not be impossible if someone wanted to implement it. However, I found the narrator uninspiring as she was so willing to lose her agency first for Luke and then for Nick. Then again, that could have been Atwood's point.