Every so often, a sci-fi scenario finds its way into the serious fiction shelves. The Handmaid’s Tale is one of those works. So even if the name of the author is Atwood, don’t expect to find it next to Asmiov on the bookstore racks. You will have better luck looking adjacent to Jane Austen.
Why are most of the high lit sci-fi novels based on dystopian future societies? If you look at 1984 by Orwell or The Road by Cormac McCarthy or Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, they all build their emotional force by painting the future in dark, foreboding tones. The Handmaid’s Tale is much the same, and it is not out of place when considered alongside these classics of the genre. And not just for the gloomy totalitarian nature of the world it depicts. Atwood is a forceful, nuanced writer, and mostly avoids the clichés and banalities associated with fiction of this sort.
Her novel presents a Taliban-type society in which a centralized theocracy controls all aspects of day-to-day life, and is especially oppressive in the restrictions it imposes on women. Imagine the type of political and social structure most anathema to subscribers to Cosmopolitan or viewers of the E cable network and you will have some idea of what Atwood is conceiving. In other words, this is a world in which old issues of Vogue magazine are contraband, makeup is strictly prohibited, high fashion non-existent and sex limited to the needs of procreation. . . . Well, maybe not completely. There are still some kinks in the process, and the world’s oldest profession has adapted to the new world order.
What ushered in this new era? Atwood is sketchy on the details, but in a prescient passage she mentions that the ruling powers used the fear of Islamic extremists as justification for its own theocratic extremism – a fairly interesting detail from a book published in 1985.
Atwood is adroit in structuring her narrative, using flashbacks and shifts in chronology, and mixing first and third-person accounts, in constructing her tale. Her writing takes on an ascetic tone that is well suited to the subject matter, but she adds just the right dose of metaphor and poetry, while never getting too flashy in a story that requires a certain amount of starkness in order to set the right mood. A surprising epilogue adds a satirical element that contrasts effectively with the main thrust of the narrative.
As with Orwell, the political angle her is obvious at every turn in this novel. But this book never collapses into mere polemic. And Atwood’s characters often surprise you, rising above the cartoonish good-guy versus bad-guy structures of so many dystopian novels. This is no Atlas Shrugged . Hence, in a book focused on the oppression of women, Atwood takes time to offer some insightful details on how the patriarchal structure controls the men in society as well. Even the most successful participants in the system are forced into hypocrisy and subterfuge.
All in all, this is a first class novel which has held up with the passing years, and has well earned its status as a modern-day classic. When Atwood wrote this book, many would have seen class differences as the main driver of future global conflicts, and may even have envisioned a day when theology no longer figured much in current events. But the oldest belief systems have proven to be the most persistent and deadly. By focusing instead on theocratic impulses and religion as a channeling force for tyranny, this author has created a work that is still highly relevant today.