Second novel in my modern-day lit foray.

The Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood

Near-future dystopian novel written in the 1980s details a societal reactionary theocratic takeover that, in the name of protecting women, ultimately controls and subjugates them. Admittedly, the new society fetters men as well to an extent. Only those high in power can possess wives. After the chemical war that accompanies the transition into this neo-Puritanism drastically reduces the fertility of the populace, women who can still bear children are classified as handmaidens and, in the great tradition of the patriarchal Old Testament figures, assigned to high-ranking men with infertile wives.

I’ve read most of the major dystopian novels, which is probably more than enough for a lifetime, but I was intrigued by the markedly female focus of this more contemporary one. Initially I thought Atwood might just be angry at all religion, considering it the natural precursor to some sort of totalitarian government such as this one, but as she mentioned asides about Jews and Catholics and Quakers and Baptists aiding refugees or being attacked by the reigning forces, I realized she was targeting a very specific vein of religious thought.

The theocratic hegemony here is led by those who take cursory readings of passages such as those describing the concubines of Abraham or Paul’s instructions to women to keep their heads covered and consider their ignorant interpretation automatically valid. The novel is a striking illustration of what such ultimately damaging views can wreak. It’s an incredibly instructive lesson: We need to look at everything in its context, and we need to recognize that our tradition may have altered and expanded and grown to encompass the new understanding that we have garnered of the nature of ourselves, and of each other.