Book Review: "The Handmaid’s Tale" by Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (Anchor, 1998)

Margaret Atwood’s 1986 novel The Handmaid’s Tale has experienced a relatively major resurgence in the last handful of years. First gaining new traction about the time of President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the book has since re-entered the public conversation because of the Hulu streaming television show and, more recently, the Supreme Court’s leaked preliminary ruling to strike down Roe v. Wade. Dark days call for dark books. While my wife read the book shortly following Trump’s election with a book discussion group, when the Supreme Court ruling was leaked, I pulled the book from our shelves to read it myself. I never had. I read it in two sittings, over the course of two evenings, and I’m of the opinion that everyone should read this book.

Atwood’s book, some have said on social media, isn’t prescient—though one could argue that it still is—it’s history. Though both positions are unfortunate and valid, it might depend on a reader’s point of view—and knowledge of history. Yes, the Salem witch trials of 1692-1693 persecuted women for a number of social causes, including factionalism, family rivalries, fraud, sexism, and socio-economic hardships. Yes, the United States government jailed tens of thousands of “promiscuous” women during World War I ostensibly to protect soldiers from prostitutes and sexually transmitted diseases. Yes, more than 60,000 people—mostly non-whites, and mostly women—were sterilized in a majority of the United States during the 20th century, well into the 1960s. And yes, the Tuskogee Syphilis Study led to the death of more than 100 untreated Black men between 1932 and 1972. Eugenics and race- and gender-based persecution is real, and more recent—still current—than we might have realized. And they could return. 

Atwood’s book is a stark, simply told story of a society in which all rights are removed for women. They cannot work. They cannot maintain their own bank accounts or credit cards. They can either work in forced labor camps, as prostitutes, as caregivers for men, or as handmaids—surrogate mothers—for the wealthy, well to do, and well positioned. Men are in charge. It’s a riveting read and well worth public attention. The most recent documented attempts to ban the book in American high schools—in 2020—failed, and the book was retained.

Not only is Atwood’s novel socially relevant and a serious warning for citizens not considering the body politic—it’s inspired me to learn more about body autonomy and integrity as human rights issues—it’s a very well written book. Largely considered a dystopian novel, I’d suggest it qualifies as social science fiction in which society, politics, and culture become the speculative technology under consideration. I view it on par with Ray Bradury’s Fahrenheit 451, Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s 1984, and Ayn Rand’s Anthem. Cautionary tales for times of societal unrest and upheaval.

The end piece, “Historical Notes on The Handmaid’s Tale,” is offered as a fictional academic paper and presentation delivered at the Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies. The paper examines the discovery and legitimacy of the document, its potential authorship, and the impact of the Gilead regime. Along the lines of social science fiction, it also mentions the “top-secret Sons of Jacob Think Tanks, at which the philosophy and social structure of Gilead were hammered out.” Yes, the persecution of women was planned and socially engineered, with the Sons of Jacob in stark opposition to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, which was entrusted to preserve and protect human knowledge in order to rise from the ashes of a collapsed society.

The Handmaid’s Tale is about the societal collapse in terms of the removal of citizens’ rights, and the first generation of women to experience it—the transition. To paraphrase the Aunts—female educators and wardens—that first generation will get used to it, and future generations of women won’t know any better because they won’t know the way things were before Gilead. That, I think, is the true horror of the book.

Quotes of Note: Margaret Atwood, "The Handmaid's Tale" II

Quotes of note from The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood:

(Page numbers gleaned from the 1998 Anchor Books trade paperback.)

"It's the possible that's the catch." (p. 117)

"[S]omeone should just give them the technology and get on with it." (p. 118)

"A man is just a woman's strategy for making other women." (p. 121)

"[W]ho can remember pain, once it's over?" (p. 125)

"[T]here will always be alliances, of one kind or another." (p. 129)

"For every rule there is always an exception: this too can be depended upon." (p. 129)

"It takes a while to get the wrinkles out, of anything new." (p. 130)

"It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out... ." (p. 134)

"[I]f you happen to be a man, ... please remember: you will never be subjected to the temptation or feeling you must forgive, a man, as a woman." (p. 134)

"[F]orgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest." (pp. 134-135)

"We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices." (p. 136)

"There's no doubt about who holds the real power." (p. 136)

"To want is to have a weakness." (p. 136)

"[A]fter a request like that there's always a next time, whether you say yes or no." (p. 139)

"You can think clearly only with your clothes on." (p. 143)

"Men are sex machines ... and not much more. They only want one thing. You must learn to manipulate them, for your own good." (p. 144)

"She was thinking about how not to think." (p. 145)

"How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all. What an available temptation." (p. 146)

"Judgment: emotion inappropriate to the occasion." (p. 146)

"Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently." (p. 153)

"Goddesses are possible now... ." (p. 153)

"What was in [magazines] was promise. They dealt in transformations; they suggested an endless series of possibilities... . They suggested one adventure after another... . ... The real promise in them was immortality." (p. 157)

"What's dangerous in the hands of the multitudes, ... is safe enough for those whose motives are ... [b]eyond reproach... ." (p. 158)

"You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself." (p. 161)

"Men at the top have always had mistresses... ." (p. 163)

"A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze." (p. 165)

"Do you think God listens ... to these machines?" (p. 168)

"[T]here was more than one way of living with your head in the sand... ." (p. 172)

"Keep calm... . Everything is under control." (p. 174)

"Ours is not to reason why... ." (p. 179)

"You can't stick your hand through a glass window without getting cut... ." (p. 180)

"Adolescents are always such prudes." (p. 180)

"No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well." (p. 181)

"Don't let the bastards grind you down." (p. 187)

"You can't help what you feel ... but you can help how you behave." (p. 192)

"This is what you have to do before you kill... . You have to create an it, where none was before." (pp. 192-193)

"That's one of the things they do. They force you to kill, within yourself." (p. 193)

"[A] little pain cleans out the mind... ." (p. 194)

"What we prayed for was emptiness... ." (p. 194)

"I don't believe for an instant that what's going on out there is what You meant." (p. 194)

"[K]eep the others safe, if they are safe. Don't let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves." (p. 195)

"Maybe you appreciate things more when you don't have much time left." (p. 200)

"I like to do things right, is all... . No sense otherwise." (p. 208)

"There's hardly any point to my thinking, is there? ... What I think doesn't matter." (p. 211)

"You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs... ." (p. 211)

"Better never means better for everyone... . It always means worse, for some." (p. 211)

"Draw a circle, step into it, it will protect you." (p. 211)

"God Is a National Resource." (p. 213)

"[P]eople will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning." (p. 215)

"There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind." (p. 221)

"There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power." (p. 222)

"If you worked out enough, maybe the man would too." (p. 226)

"All you have to do ... is keep your mouth shut and look stupid." (p. 236)

"Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder." (p. 262)

"I would like to be without shame. I would like to be shameless. I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how ignorant I was." (p. 263)

"[I]t is never too late... ." (p. 269)

"I should have taken things into my own hands while I had the chance." (p. 293)

"[T]he world is full of weapons if you're looking for them. I should have paid attention." (p. 293)

"Our job is not to censure but to understand." (p. 302)

"As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes." (p. 311)

Quotes of Note: Margaret Atwood, "The Handmaid's Tale" I

Quotes of note from The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood:

(Page numbers gleaned from the 1998 Anchor Books trade paperback.)

"It's good to have small goals that can be easily attained." (p. 13)

"The threshold of a new house is a lonely place." (p. 14)

"I'm ravenous for news, any kind of news; even if it's false news, it must mean something." (p. 20)

"The young ones are often the most dangerous... . They haven't yet learned about existence through time." (p. 20)

"Everything is meant." (p. 21)

"There are no lawyers anymore, and the university is closed." (p. 23)

"There is more than one kind of freedom... . Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from." (p. 24)

"We were a society dying ... of too much choice." (p. 25)

"All children are wanted now, but not by everyone." (p. 26)

"What I feel is that I must not feel." (p. 33)

"Those who can believe that ... stories are only stories have a better chance. If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending." (p. 39)

"How furious she must be, now that she's been taken at her word." (p. 46)

"The future is in your hands... ." (p. 47)

"Nolite te bastardes carborundorum." (p. 52)

"Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it." (p. 56)

"Nothing changes instantaneously." (p. 56)

"[M]aybe boredom is erotic, when women do it, for men." (p. 69)

"[M]inor discomforts are instructive." (p. 79)

"[F]lowers ... [a]re the genital organs of plants." (p. 82)

"Any news, now, is better than none." (p. 82)

"[Y]our name is like your telephone number, useful only to others... ." (p. 84)

"You can't expect a child to lie convincingly." (p. 85)

"For our purposes your feet and your hands are not essential." (p. 91)

"Arousal and orgasm are no longer thought necessary; they would be a symptom of frivolity merely, like jazz garters or beauty spots: superfluous distractions for the light-minded." (p. 94)

"[N]obody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from." (p. 103)

"[T]here must be a resistance, a government in exile. Someone must be out there, taking care of things." (p. 105)

"Maybe the life I think I'm living is a paranoid delusion." (p. 109)

"The greater the risk the greater the glory." (p. 113)

"A thing is valued ... only if it is rare and hard to get." (p. 114)