Notes on A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

***warning: spoilers***

A Handmaid’s Tale is one about a 33-year-old, previously liberal but forcefully turned Victorian woman during the early 2000s who is thrown into a dystopian, Old Testament-based society reminiscent of George Orwell’s Oceania. Though the plot is nearing on about fifteen years before now, the story line is still relevant AF to the contemporary lives of western women,

despite the novel being inspired by a man-written narrative published in 1949. Atword captures not only the struggle modern women have within a heavily patriarchal society (ugh), but also the complex relationship women have with each other (sigh).

The prose is written by Offred’s relationships, which I find is a painfully legitimate way to define one’s purpose in life, though I prefer to think that defining one’s self-worth with respect to experience is more fulfilling; In any case, Offred’s relationship with herself, the fucked up totalitarian government, her new child-bearing duties, and her romantic partners -- who though eventually became a driving force in her downfall, not unlike Julia to Winston Smith, always came second to an angle bent in her favor -- all play a role in defining her sarcastic, shade-throwing, independent moxie. She encapsulates a feminist demeanor while being clever yet petty, reluctantly submissive yet domineering, all regardless of her self-proclaimed weakness to the survival instinct.

The element of Atwood's writing that impressed me most while reading and continues to linger in the story’s ghost is is how she managed to capture the malicious yet completely silent relationships women often have with one another before, and perhaps even after, becoming properly acquainted. Every encounter with a woman is accompanied by intimate, communicative eye contact or the deliberate lack thereof, as well as a series of internal questions and opinions that mull for weeks. Atwood’s audience likewise finds themselves with the same queries and impressions that Offred has, though no explicit terms were uttered. Every relationship, of sorts, Offred develops with her “classmates,” the Aunts, the Wives, is astonishingly evolutionary even though words may not even have been exchanged.

Of course, there are wider, possibly more significant overarching themes that one can take from the story; I just find this particular message incredibly well done and unique to Atwood, hence why I chose to comment upon specifically that. I am far from blind to the commentary on political control over women's bodies, child marriage, the definition of femininity, freedom, etc., that Atwood translates throughout this work.

If you’re a bit of an angry woman looking for someone to truly understand your experience of life as a woman, Atwood devises a beautifully written, constantly word-played, no chill narrative with levels of relatability that is felt, rather than explained. You’ll want to rescue Offred and then befriend her.