Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel The Handmaid's Tale is most possibly her darkest novel to date. The Handmaid's Tale single handedly confirmed Atwood as a powerhouse writer, and earned her many awards including Canada's top literary prize, the Governor General's Award for fiction.

The Handmaid's Tale is actually Atwood's sixth novel, and it marks her first foray into dystopian literature. A dystopia is the opposite of a utopia, and here Atwood has painted a very dark picture of a post-pop-culture society that has been soundly thrown into a new form of government that is based on the most fundamental, radical and indeed, the most horrible sets of Christian patriarchal ideals and beliefs.

And The Handmaid's Tale is just that, a tale written in a diary of sorts, as told by a young woman who lives as what is known as a "handmaid" in this time under this new oppressive government. Basically, handmaids are young woman whose primary purposes in life are only held for their reproductive capabilities, making them nothing more than pieces of private property.

And like the central character of Atwood's second novel, Surfacing, we never learn her real name, however we do learn the name given to her for identification purposes as setup by the new state: Offred. The novel explains this unusual noun as being a word that is "composed of the possessive preposition and the first name of the gentleman in question." Simply put, she is "Of Fred."

The Handmaid's Tale is brilliant in its setup, turning class and societal structure upside down. It tears away all that is uniquely democratic and possibly worthwhile from our society, and replaces it with something that is quiet perverted in its own rights. In fact, a direct correlation could be drawn from the USA's own constitution to the overthrow that occurs in this novel.

The new government in The Handmaid's Tale has been founded by radicals, who suspended the Constitution after the United States fell into chaos, with their president having been shot and Congress wiped out. The radicals restructured society in the hopes of a more promising future, one where the burdens of women are uplifted and removed.

And like we all too often do today, many of the characters in The Handmaid's Tale often dream for what existed in the past, and at times, you can almost hear them saying, "I remember when..." In fact, the novel seems to sublimely suggest that the basic fundamental freedoms that women have lost, have also been lost for men as well. It's an interesting and powerful suggestion, one that could shake society and its values down to their very core.

For me, The Handmaid's Tale could have been even more powerful if it had not been so easily dated. Indeed, with the events of the 20th Century firmly behind us, the time frame of the novel seems a bit dated, and as such, loses some of its powerful mystique that lies in the basic possibility that it could happen. Luckily however, the ideas behind The Handmaid's Tale are not dated. And in fact, I'd argue that given the magnitude of the events preceding 9/11 to the seemingly minimal events as caused by the Unibomber, or a sharpshooter in Washington, DC, they do not seem so overwrought or shocking anymore.

Upon its publication, The Handmaid's Tale was quickly made into a movie starring Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall. I don't know how successful or how true this film was to the book, but in all honesty I'm not sure The Handmaid's Tale would even make a good motion picture. After seeing the DVD for the movie, the casting seems wrong, the characters seem too clean. Even Robert Duvall seems too young. But in the end, for me there are just too many inner thoughts and ideas floating around that would be too difficult to transpose to the big screen. But that is not to say that Atwood's other work could not translate to the big-screen well, as I do believe novels like The Edible Woman, Surfacing and Lady Oracle could all make for some very compelling cinema.

In the end, The Handmaid's Tale is worth reading, for its simplicity and ferocity of prose and storytelling, as well as for its deeply crafted characters and unique situations. The Handmaid's Tale makes you think, and strongly consider the world around us, as well as the motivations that drive us all towards our varied ends. Without a doubt, after having read Atwood's first six novels, it is her strongest to date.

Grade: A

(c) October 15, 2002, Steven H. Lee

Atwood's Novel Oeuvre Reviewed...

7. Cat's Eye
6. The Handmaid's Tale
5. Bodily Harm
4. Life Before Man
3. Lady Oracle
2. Surfacing
1. The Edible Woman







Recommended: Yes