Saturday, November 18, 2017

Handmaid's Tale --- November 2017

 Handmaid’s Tale

Nov. 2017





Politics of the Handmaid's Tale
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Magill Book Review:
Magill Book  Review: The parting "Historical Notes" clarify this tale 's supposed genesis as a series of cassette tapes found in a footlocker along the Femaleroad in Maine. Similar to the Underground Railroad that spirited slaves from the South to safety in Canada over 150 years earlier, this Underground Femaleroad led women out of their theological and social bondage in America to a free life in Europe. Now, these tapes have been transcribed and authenticated, with the results of this effort being presented to the "Twelfth
Symposium on Gileadean Studies" in 2195. As a thirty-three-year-old Handmaid, Offred had but one role in her society, one function to perform: produce babies. Her life was the ultimate denial of choice or, seen otherwise, the ultimate glory. This latter interpretation was that which enlivened her household world within the Christian theocracy that was America in the early twenty-first century. Hers was the Gileadean society. Seizing power in the late twentieth century, the Guardians killed off the Congress, President, and Constitution, replacing them with a society built on strict biblical teaching and radical social adjustment. Working then across this tableau of upheaval, THE HANDMAID'S TALE  is strongest when centered on Offred's assignment and the household where she is expected to give birth. Here Atwood develops the personalities that enliven the novel: the Commander, with his urge for surreptitious Scrabble; Nick, the Guardian/chauffeur with the latter trade's stereotypic roving eye; and Serena Joy, the gospel television starlet turned wizened hag. Unfortunately, this novel flags because it lacks both a credible explanation for the abrupt collapse of constitutional government and a clear sense of the good which has been replaced by the present evil. Although Atwood makes a feeble attempt to supply this information, it is inadequate; we must take her usurpation premise on faith. She may expect such faith and understanding from readers who have followed her through five previous novels, but this assumption cripples a novel which will, thus, be variously labeled a feminist nightmare or a prescient statement of Christian Right extremism. It is neither.

Library Journal:

In a startling departure from her previous novels ( Lady Oracle , Surfacing ), respected Canadian poet and novelist Atwood presents here a fable of the near future. In the Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States, far-right Schlafly/Falwell-type ideals have been carried to extremes in the monotheocratic government. The resulting society is a feminist's nightmare: women are strictly controlled, unable to have jobs or money and assigned to various classes: the chaste, childless Wives; the housekeeping Marthas; and the reproductive Handmaids , who turn their offspring over to the ``morally fit'' Wives. The tale  is told by Offred (read: ``of Fred''), a Handmaid who recalls the past and tells how the chilling society came to be. This powerful, memorable novel is highly recommended for most libraries. BOMC featured alternate. Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.

Kirkus:
The time is the not-so-distant future, when the US's spiraling social freedoms have finally called down a reaction, an Iranian-style repressive "monotheocracy" calling itself the Republic of Gilead--a Bible-thumping, racist, capital-punishing, and misogynistic rule that would do away with pleasure altogether were it not for one thing: that the Gileadan women, pure and true (as opposed to all the nonbelieving women, those who've ever been adulterous or married more than once), are found rarely fertile. Thus are drafted a whole class of "handmaids ," whose function is to bear the children of the elite, to be fecund or else (else being certain death, sent out to be toxic-waste removers on outlying islands). The narrative frame for Atwood's dystopian vision is the hopeless private testimony of one of these surrogate mothers, Offred ("of" plus the name of her male protector). Lying cradled by the body of the barren wife, being meanwhile serviced by the husband,
Offred's "ceremony" must be successful--if she does not want to join the ranks of the other disappeared (which include her mother, her husband--dead--and small daughter, all taken away during the years of revolt). One Of her only human conduits is a gradually developing affair with her master's chauffeur--something that's balanced more than offset, though, by the master's hypocritically un-Puritan use of her as a kind of B-girl at private parties held by the ruling men in a spirit of nostalgia and lust. This latter relationship, edging into real need (the master's), is very effectively done; it highlights the handmaid's  (read Everywoman's) eternal exploitation, profane or sacred ("We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices"). Atwood, to her credit, creates a chillingly specific, imaginable night-mare. The book  is short on characterization--this is Atwood, never a warm writer, at her steeliest--and long on cynicism--it's got none of the human credibility of a work such as Walker Percy's Love In The Ruins. But the scariness is visceral, a world that's like a dangerous and even fatal grid, an electrified fence. Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse. (Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 1985)

Summary
The Handmaid's Tale takes place in the near-future utopian society of Gilead. Its center is the geographic location formerly known as Cambridge, Massachusetts. Gilead is a theocratic Christian society of an unspecified denomination that wages war against Baptists and other denominations. Environmental pollution has resulted in a toxic environment, leading to an infertility epidemic. Women are the most prominent victims of Gilead's dystopian new order. Based on their fertility and pre-Gilead social and religious status, they are assigned specific roles and wear clothing reflecting that identity. Fertile women not already married to prominent Gileadean men (known as Commanders) become Handmaids, serving a Commander strictly for the purpose of reproduction. Commanders may have Wives, but reproduction is not their domain. Sex between a Commander and his Handmaid is a businesslike transaction: Neither removes any more clothing, or touches any more than is strictly necessary. The Handmaid lies between the Wife's legs the entire time. When a Handmaid gives birth, she sits in a special chair between the Wife's legs.
The use of "Handmaids" receives Biblical justification in "the moldy old Rachel and Leah stuff" (p. 88), referring to the story of Jacob's two wives, Rachel and Leah, who -- when they could not bear him children -- gave their handmaids to Jacob so that he might procreate, and they claimed the children as their own (see Genesis 30). The Christian doctrine of sex only for procreation further defines the clinical intercourse between Handmaids and Commanders.
Besides Handmaids and Wives, Gilead's functional identities for women include Aunts (educators/indoctrinators), Marthas (household staff), Econowives (lower class women who must serve their husbands in all capacities), and Unwomen (who refuse to participate in society and are shipped off to clean toxic waste sites). Men also have their assigned roles: Guardians (menial laborers), Angels (soldiers), and Commanders. Only one group appears to be non-gender specific: the Eyes, the secret police who monitor others' activities and thereby keep order. No regular member of Gilead knows who the Eyes are -- anyone could be an Eye:
a Handmaid, a Guardian, anyone. Not even the Eyes know the other Eyes, for they too must be monitored.
The novel's narrator is a Handmaid named Offred. As the novel progresses through her present life, she adds memories of her pre-Gilead life (of her husband, daughter, and mother), of the transitional time from 1980s U.S. society to Gilead society, and of her time at the indoctrination school for Handmaids prior to being assigned to a Commander.
The first third of the novel introduces Gilead and Offred to the reader. The conflict begins when Offred's Commander summons her to his office -- an illegal meeting for both of them -- and initiates an "affair" with her that consists of their playing Scrabble, him watching her read contraband 1970s magazines like Vogue, and their talking. Though he does want to kiss her, nothing sexual happens during these meetings. Meanwhile, the Commander's Wife, suspecting her husband to be infertile (not something to be spoken of) proposes that Offred secretly sleep with Nick, the household's chauffeur (a Guardian), and try to become pregnant by him. Offred agrees, partially because she has already failed to produce a child with two previous Commanders and her chances are running out, and partially because she is attracted to Nick and longs to feel tender physical touching; thus, she is involved in "affairs" with two men.
One evening the Commander dresses Offred in some of his Wife's clothes and sneaks her to Jezebel's, an old hotel now transformed into a secret club and brothel for Commanders and male dignitaries. Soon after, his Wife discovers that Offred has worn her clothes and confronts her. Offred's fate appears sealed; the Commander will not help her, nor will the Wife report her husband. But Nick arranges for some Eyes to arrive in a black van and whisk Offred away -- either Nick is an Eye, whisking her away to probable execution or the ranks of the Unwomen; or he is a member of the underground resistance movement, whisking her off to safety. "And so I step up" into the black van, her story concludes, "into the darkness within; or else the light" (p. 295).
The novel concludes with a section called "Historical Notes on The Handmaid's Tale," which we learn is the transcript of an academic conference panel some 200 years later. The main speaker, Professor Pieixoto, describes how he and a colleague found Offred's story recorded on tapes in a box in a Bangor, Maine; how they transcribed the tapes, and ordered them in the way that they felt made the most sense; and how they tried to identify Offred and her Commander's real names. The "Historical Notes" section makes clear the most terrifying dimension of Atwood's novel: its believability.
Questions
The following questions and answers are intended to spark discussion of this book, but are not "the final word" on it. Readers will bring differing viewpoints to the story's characters, its events, and what it all means; sharing those insights is part of what makes book groups so rewarding. Enjoy your discussion -- starting with these ideas.
Gilead's society is obviously quite sexist and repressive, yet do any aspects of it seem to be an improvement over our contemporary society?
Along with Gilead's poor treatment of women, its use of them as objects of utilitarian function only, comes a paradoxical immense respect for and veneration of them -- specifically of their

capacity to bear children. When Offred's college friend Moira writes a paper for class on date rape, Atwood is reminding her readers of what Gilead has expunged: the misogynist and violent sexual treatment of women. Women are held in such esteem that rape is a capital crime. As one of the Aunts tells the Handmaids, "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. Don't underrate it" (emphasis added, p. 24). No longer do citizens suffer from confusion in interpersonal relations, nor over one's role, position, and purpose -- these things are settled for them. No longer must women suffer the "indignity" of singles' bars, blind dates, and personal ads; no longer must they worry about being beaten by a husband, or being left with children to feed on a measly paycheck. Before Gilead, money "was the only measure of worth, for everyone" and women "got no respect as mothers" (p. 219).

Consequently, when Gilead was first forming itself and banned pornography and prostitution, Offred "wasn't sad to see them go. We all knew what a nuisance they had been" (p. 175). For feminists, nuisance is an understatement -- pornography and prostitution are the most demeaning of social acts toward women, as they reduce women to commercial objects for men's use. One point of particular brilliance about Atwood's novel is its conflation in Gilead of extreme right-wing attitudes with extreme left-wing attitudes. Both are a form of fascism, of dictating proper thought. Offred's mother, a 1960s feminist, participated in a few porn-burnings herself, and her vision of female independence from men leads to a vision of functional sex exactly like Gilead's: "I don't want a man around, what use are they except for ten seconds' worth of half babies. A man is just a woman's strategy for making other women….Just do the job, then you can bugger off" (p. 121).

Gilead's procreative objectification of women has freed them from sexual objectification -- they no longer have to wear makeup, oil themselves for tanning "like roast meat on a spit" (p. 55), dress in certain ways, or starve themselves and/or have surgery to obtain the right figure (as all bodies are cloaked in uniform, figure-disguising robes). But how have things really changed? If contemporary society's rules about women's attractiveness obstruct their ability to be their natural selves, Gilead's behavioral strictures also force women (and men) into unnatural roles. "I wait," Offred says prior to attending a night of ceremonial intercourse with the Commander. "I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as once composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born" (p. 66) -- she might as well be describing her pre-Gilead self preparing for an old-fashioned date, putting on makeup, doing her hair, transforming herself into "a made thing, not something born."

Though Gilead is a blatantly patriarchal society, do the men really have it better than the women do?

Early in the novel, Atwood gives us a portrait of two Guardians at a barrier. Guardians "aren't real soldiers. They're used for routine policing and other menial functions, digging up the Commander's Wife's garden, for instance" (p. 20). They are not permitted to have Wives; indeed not even all "real" soldiers are awarded a Wife. For the Guardians even to look at Offred is to risk a grave offense, and because they are not allowed a sexual partner, they suffer in that way as well.
They will suffer, later, at night, in their regimented beds. They have no outlets now except themselves, and that's a sacrilege. There are no more magazines, no more films, no more substitutes; only me and my shadow [Ofglen], walking away from the two men, who stand at attention, stiffly, by a roadblock, watching our retreating shapes (p. 22).

Nor is it much easier for more powerful men. At the ritual Bible reading prior to the Ceremony, Offred sympathizes with the Commander:

To be a man, watched by women….To have them putting him on, trying him out, trying him out…We're all watching him. It's the one thing we can really do, and it is not for nothing: if he were to falter, fail, or die, what would become of us?…[It] must be hell, to be a man, like that…It must be very silent. (pp. 87-88)

Every move made by those in power, because they are in power, carries extraordinary significance. They are watched by the disempowered and by their peers in power -- the Eyes are everywhere, watching. The commanders cannot misstep. Their personal relations too are dictated; for them having sex isn't making love, it is performing a duty, and it must be done as mechanically and coldly as possible. Those in power are asked not to be human, just as those without power are. When Offred's Commander, straining for a personal connection, asks her to kiss him as if she meant it, she observes that his plight is "so sad" (p. 140). Ironically, though her name is derived from his and links her identity to him -- Offred meaning of Fred, or Fred's -- she has a name more personalized than his. He is the Commander only; he has no personal self; his identity is entirely one of public function (we only learn his real name, Frederick R. Waterford, from historians 200 years after the fact).

In contemporary North American society, we might make an analogy of the Eyes with the media. It's everywhere, watching everything everybody does -- most especially those in power. We seem to require that our leaders be perfect, that they never misstep, nor ever have in the past. Every act, even the most personal, reflects upon their leadership, their character, and our ability to trust them. This fact of modern life is a vicious twist on that feminist dictum that the political is personal.
Who is in power in Gilead? Where does power ultimately reside?
The easy answer is that power resides with the Commanders, but even among the Commanders a hierarchy exists. From Ofglen we learn, for example, that Offred's Commander is "way up there…at the top…the very top" (p. 210). But we also know that a Commander who has a child is promoted -- thus Offred's childless Commander has some room to rise, if his Handmaid delivers. Nevertheless, ambiguity surrounds his power and position, as Offred realizes: "I know he's a Commander, I don't know what he's a Commander of. What does he control, what is his field, as they used to say? They don't have specific titles" (p. 185). And the Eyes scrutinize the Commanders, just as closely as they do everyone else. No one is above the law. Offred's Commander is killed "probably soon after the events" in the book, "in one of the earliest purges," for "liberal tendencies," for "being in possession of a substantial and unauthorized collection of heretical pictorial and literary materials," and for "harboring a subversive" (p. 309). He is still subject to a higher social authority, but we never know whom.
If power were located in a single place or person, one could organize against it, possibly overthrow it. Power in Gilead, however, does not work this way. Instead, individuals internalize

the social values and rules, and perpetuate the system that controls them. We see this most clearly in the Aunts, the women who instruct the Handmaids. As women, they become Gilead's most effect instrument for controlling its women: "For this there were many historical precedents," notes the "Historical Notes" section; "No empire imposed by force or otherwise has ever been without this feature: control of the indigenous by members of their own group"(p.308). We also see this in the Handmaids' interactions with one another. They are compelled to travel in pairs, so that each Handmaid feels the other watching her and will behave for fear of being reported. You never know who might be an Eye, or what non-Eye might report you to the authorities. You suspect everyone; you suspect you are being watched even when you are alone. This works because the central authority is invisible and unverifiable.

Atwood provides an amazing image of this power process when describing Offred's small room. "Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath, and in the center of it a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out" (p. 7). This image evokes both the presence and the absence of the watching eye. Atwood explicitly connects Gileadean power with divine omniscience: "The Eyes of God run over all the earth" (p.193) -- yet he does not inhabit it.

Why Scrabble?

For one thing, as Offred surmises, he wants to play Scrabble with her because "it's forbidden, for us. Now it's dangerous. Now it's indecent. Now it's something he can't do with his Wife. Now it's desirable. Now he's compromised himself. It's as if he's offered me drugs" (139). In a strictly utilitarian society, games have value only insofar as they keep people from being mischievous -- but in this case, playing a game is one way of being mischievous. Therefore, playing games becomes desired because it is forbidden, and that desire can acquire erotic overtones. It is "indecent," it is something "he can't do with his Wife" -- Offred clearly plays the role of the other woman. She herself finds the game "voluptuous" (p. 139), and her "tongue felt thick with the effort of spelling" (p. 156). Later she tells Ofglen that what she does with the Commander in his office is more or less "kinky sex" (p. 223).

Language is power -- before the Bible was translated into English, for example, only the very few educated in Latin could read it; only they had access to God's word, and thus could control the message delivered to the masses. Similarly, in The Handmaid's Tale, only those in power have access to the Bible, and can make it say what they want: "From each," says the slogan, "according to her ability; to each according to his needs. We recited that, three times, after desert. It was from the Bible, or so they said. St. Paul again, in Acts" (p.117) -- but we readers know better; we know that this phrase comes from Karl Marx. Those without access to the Bible, however, cannot verify the phrase's source; they are in the hands of the authorities. Note also the subtle play with pronouns: from each according to her ability; to each according to his needs. It is no coincidence, then, that Atwood sets the novel in Cambridge, Massachusetts, home of Harvard, the symbol of higher learning -- of book learning -- in North America. The Eyes' headquarters in the university and its libraries further implies how much power resides in knowledge -- and in books as its vessels.
If reading gives access to knowledge, writing conveys the power to create knowledge. Those who can write can write (or rewrite) history, as well as their own stories; this gives them a
measure of control over their own fate, as well as history's fate. In Scrabble, you score points by creating words out of letters. As a letter and word game, it symbolizes the very tools of power that Offred and so many others are denied in Gilead. By letting Offred play Scrabble, the Commander goes beyond a titillating violation of their prescribed roles; he is really playing with fire by encouraging her interest in language's power.
What do you think motivates the Commander to risk his life by having a taboo relationship with Offred?
Offred initially suspects that the Commander deeply needs genuine human connection, the kind of intimacy (sexual or otherwise) prevented by Gileadean rules. Even his relationship with his Wife appears perfunctory, emotionless. Offred sees him as sad, and she feels that she has a certain power over him because she has something he needs. Perhaps, however, her estimation of him is too kind. When he takes her to Jezebel's and she runs into Moira, her old college classmate turned Jezebel sex toy, Moira tells Offred that some of the Commanders "get a kick" out of taking their Handmaids to Jezebel's. "It's like screwing on the altar or something: your gang are supposed to be such chaste vessels. They like to see you all painted up. Just another crummy power trip" (p. 243). Moira's speech actually offers two motives: first, his need for the excitement and stimulation of breaking rules; and second, his need to exercise personal power.
Earlier, the Commander told Offred that men created Gilead partly out of boredom.
There was nothing for them to do…. There was nothing for them to do with women…. [Sex] was too easy. Anyone could just buy it. There was nothing to work for, nothing to fight for….You know what [men] were complaining about the most? Inability to feel. Men were turning off on sex, even. They were turning off on marriage." (p. 210)
In creating Gilead, a society with so many rules that every act, word, and glance carries significance, men created a space for excitement, conflict, risk, and transgression. This also appears to be one of Offred's reasons for having the affair. Nineteenth century paintings of women in harems "were paintings about suspended animation; about waiting, about objects not in use," she tells us. "They were paintings about boredom" (p. 69). Although dangerous, meeting secretly with the commander, is just plain "something to do….Something to fill the time, at night, instead of sitting alone in my room. It's something else to think about" (p. 163). Atwood may be suggesting that people need more than something to do; they need conflict, and will invent it when it isn't there, because it helps them feel alive, and it helps provide meaning to life. "People will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot" (p. 215). To have a plot, one must have action, and some sort of tension. There are no conflicts in an ideal society like Gilead.
In terms of the Commander's desire for personal power, we might read his "need" for intimacy with Offred as something he lets her believe, because this belief will help him get what he wants. He is, after all, the one with all the power. He has her file; he knows everything about her. He knows she is a book and word person -- by letting her read and play Scrabble, he feeds her the drug she will most relish. He engages in conversation with her the way a drug-supplier might with an addict: "[H]aving felt the relief of even that much speaking," Offred thinks, "I want more" (p. 185). His invitation for non-sexual intimacy eventually is about sex, as we learn when he leads her to a room at Jezebel's. He wants to be intimate with her on his terms, not as a result of his public position. But what he wants he does not get: sex with Offred at Jezebel's is just as mechanical and empty as sex with her on Ceremony nights. No amount of power or manipulation can foster true intimacy.
His need for power, control, and excitement make him sad and pathetic -- but also human. He and his wife "don't seem to have much in common" anymore, they rarely talk. "That's what I was there for, then," concludes Offred. "The same old thing. It was too banal too be true" (p158). As in pre-Gilead society, it turns out that men have affairs because they are bored.
What do you think of Offred's relationship with Nick?
Is it true love? Is it a romance that flowered only by circumstance? Is it only in such extreme circumstances that intensely passionate love occurs? These questions matter because Atwood intends us to wonder about the precise nature of Offred and Nick's relationship. On the one hand, we should perhaps celebrate it and cheer for them: in a world that privileges social utility over personal love, the latter cannot be fully denied. On the other hand, for a novel critical of patriarchal society and generally promoting feminist concerns, it perhaps has a hard time celebrating a conventional love-story ending in which girl meets boy, they fall in love, and boy rescues girl. Moreover, Offred's involvement with Nick gives her the strength to survive Gilead -- paradoxically reinforcing women's dependence on men. Moreover, this "strength" is passive at best, because it is merely her resignation from struggle:
The fact is that I no longer want to leave, escape, cross the border to freedom," she says. "I want to be here, with Nick, where I can get at him….I have made a life for myself here, of a sort. That must have been what the settlers' wives thought, and women who survived wars, if they had a man….Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations. (p. 271)
With a man, she no longer needs to fight society; with a man, she can survive, can in fact surrender. Is this the womanist perspective Atwood sanctions? Once Offred has decided to surrender to Gilead with Nick, it does not take long for her to decide to surrender altogether, with or without him:
Dear God, I think I will do anything you like. Now that you've let me off, I'll obliterate myself, if that's what you really want; I'll empty myself, truly, become a chalice. I'll give up Nick, I'll forget about the others, I'll stop complaining. I'll accept my lot. I'll sacrifice. I'll repent. I'll abdicate. I'll renounce….I don't want pain….I want to keep on living, in any form. I resign my body freely, to the uses of others. They can do what they like with me. I am abject. (p. 286)
And it is exactly at this moment of resignation that Nick rescues her, or that he takes her away to be disposed -- we never know. Or maybe there is no difference between the two fates, not for a feminist author anyway. For a woman to be saved by a man, for her to repeat and reinforce that old story of frail female dependence on male strength, might that amount to very much the same thing as her being disposed of and silenced by patriarchal power? Because either way, Offred's story ends here.
Do you care for the open-ended ending? Why do you think Atwood chose to do it?
Offred's own tale leaves her fate ambiguous; the "Historical Notes" section clarifies things only a little. We learn that she made it to a safe house along the Underground Femaleroad, and we can assume that Nick was a member of the underground and did rescue her. Or can we know and assume these things? Nothing in the tapes indicates that Offred made it to the house.

Two hundred years have passed, and Gilead has ceased to exist. Any number of events could have brought the tapes to a house that happened, at one time, to be part of the Underground Femaleroad. Professor Pieixoto and his colleague "reasoned" that the house was "possibly" a "safe house" where "our author [Offred] may have been kept hidden in, for instance, the attic or cellar"; however, like a good clinical researcher, they also concede that there's no way to know whether or not the tapes might have been moved to the house later (p. 303). If Offred did make it to a safe house -- she obviously made it somewhere for a period of time and with the resources to record her story -- we do not know of her fate after that. She perhaps made it to Canada, the way slaves and Vietnam-era draft dodgers did. Or perhaps she was caught. As readers, we simply not know.

The unresolved ending actually engages us more deeply with the novel, because Atwood leave us thinking instead of having the final word. Spelling out Offred's fate would have silenced readers' imaginations -- just as Gilead's powerful elite silenced others' use of language: only Commanders have access to the Bible; the Eyes control Harvard library; pictures replace words on commercial signs; reading and writing is proscribed for all but a few men. Conversation is also limited according to one's station. In sum, language use in Gilead is a one-way proposition because public dialogs are the first defense against tyranny. The open ending of the novel embodies its supportive message about the necessity of dialogue. Rather than closing the discussion, Atwood refuses to impose an ending on us, and give us the story's final ending; in doing so, she encourages us to think about -- and discuss it -- instead. In a way, it is Atwood's way of playing Scrabble with her readers -- the next words or ideas are ours.

How does the "Historical Notes" section affect your understanding of the novel?

At different points in the novel, Offred talks directly to her audience. "Dear You, I'll say," and "I'll pretend you can hear me" (p. 40).Later, she talks to God in much the same way. "I feel very unreal, talking to You like this. I feel as if I'm talking to a wall. I wish You'd answer. I feel so alone" (p. 195). If God were to talk back, given his stature, what would transpire would hardly be a conversation -- God's silence is necessary for us to realize our full humanity. The novel's one-sided conversations further invite readers to reflect on what they might say or do in Offred's place. The manner in which Piexioto and his colleagues piece together Offred's story (or, at least, their version of it) enacts a similar conversational process: we question how closely their interpretations capture what really may have happened. In the end, we readers do not have access to the tapes; we only have what Pieixoto and friend have given us.
Pieixoto also represents a type of objective intellectualism that is "cautious about passing moral judgment" upon societies like Gilead, because a professor's job "is not to censure but to understand" (p. 302). As Atwood intends, these academic researchers become another set of readers who help to create the story we hear. At the same time, however, they are men who make sexist jokes -- Offred's tale is all about her tale, or "tail" (p. 301) -- and who demean her spoken account (despite its eloquence) as mere "crumbs" about Gilead, stating that they'd much have preferred data from the Commander's computer (p. 309-310). They focus on the identity of Offred's Commander, rather than hers. Male discourse and imposition seems to have won the day. We imagine what else these academic professionals may have overlooked, or misunderstood. Finally, Atwood also seems to want readers to judge Gilead, the way we ought to pass judgment on actual instances of inhumanity, like the Holocaust. The contrast between Offred's personal, emotional account and its vaguely dismissive handling by these male scholars invites our judgment.
About the Author
Born in Ottawa, Canada in 1939, Margaret Atwood is a prolific author of novels, poetry, children's books, literary criticism, plays, and television scripts. In college, Atwood gained awareness of Canada's unique literary tradition (separate from "American" or U.S. literature); her works -- fictional and scholarly -- reflect that strong literary tradition.
Atwood helped to form the Canadian Writers' Union, and supported the creation of a writing school for Native Americans; she has been a public advocate for other social issues, from AIDS research to the environment and free trade. Atwood often weaves serious social (often feminist) concerns into highly readable fiction, leavened by wit and humor. Her many award-winning novels include The Handmaid's Tale (1986), Cat's Eye (1988), Alias Grace (1996), The Blind Assassin (2000), and Oryx and Crake (2003). A 1990 film adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale -- written by playwright Harold Pinter, assisted by Atwood -- differs from the novel in significant ways; in 2017, Hulu released a series based on the same novel.




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From Gale Literary Sources

PERSONAL INFORMATION:

Born November 18, 1939, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; daughter of Carl Edmund (an entomologist) and Margaret Dorothy Atwood; married Jim Polk, 1968 (divorced 1973); partner of Graeme Gibson (a writer) since 1973; children: Eleanor Jess Atwood Gibson. Education: University of Toronto, B.A., 1961; Radcliffe College, A.M., 1962; Harvard University, graduate study, 1962-63 and 1965-67. Politics: "William Morrisite." Religion: "Immanent Transcendentalist." Memberships: PEN International, Amnesty International, Writers' Union of Canada (vice chair, 1980-81), Royal Society of Canada (fellow), Canadian Civil Liberties Association (member of board, 1973-75), Canadian Centre, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (honorary member), Anglophone (president, 1984-85). Addresses: Home: Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Agent: Lavin Agency, 1123 Broadway, Ste. 1107, New York, NY 10010.


CAREER:
Writer. Worked variously as a camp counselor and waitress; University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, lecturer in English literature, 1964-65; Sir George Williams University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, lecturer in English literature, 1967-68; York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, assistant professor of English literature, 1971-72; House of Anansi Press, Toronto, editor and member of board of directors, 1971-73; University of Toronto, writer-in-residence, 1972-73; University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, writer-in-residence, 1985; New York University, New York, NY, Berg Visiting Professor of English, 1986; Macquarie University, North Ryde, Australia, writer-in-residence, 1987. Founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada; inventor of the LongPen and associated technologies; cofounder and a director of Syngrafii Inc. Subject of the documentary In the Wake of the Flood, directed by Ron Mann, 2010.
AWARDS:
Recipient of numerous honorary degrees, including Trent University, 1973, Queen's University, 1974, Concordia University, 1980, Smith College, 1982, University of Toronto, 1983, Mount Holyoke College, 1985, University of Waterloo, 1985, University of Guelph, 1985, Victoria College, 1987, University of Montreal, 1991, University of Leeds, 1994, Oxford University, 1998, Cambridge University, 2001, Laurentian University, 2001, Harvard University, 2004, Bard College, 2010, National University of Ireland, Galway, 2011, Ryerson University, 2012, Royal Military College of Canada, 2012, and the Sorbonne; E.J. Pratt Medal, 1961, for Double Persephone; President's Medal, University of Western Ontario, 1965; YWCA Women of Distinction Award, 1966 and 1988; Governor General's Award, 1966, for The Circle Game, and 1986, for The Handmaid's Tale; first prize in Canadian Centennial Commission Poetry Competition, 1967; Union Prize for poetry, 1969; Bess Hoskins Prize for poetry, 1969 and 1974; City of Toronto Book Award, Canadian Booksellers' Association Award, and Periodical Distributors of Canada Short Fiction Award, all 1977, all for Dancing Girls and Other Stories; St. Lawrence Award for fiction, 1978; Radcliffe Medal, 1980; Life before Man selected a notable book of 1980, American Library Association; Molson Award, 1981; Guggenheim fellowship, 1981; named Companion of the Order of Canada, 1981; International Writer's Prize, Welsh Arts Council, 1982; Book of the Year Award, Periodical Distributors of Canada/Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Letters, 1983, for Bluebeard's Egg and Other Stories; Ida Nudel Humanitarian Award, 1986; named Woman of the Year, Ms. magazine, 1986; Toronto Arts Award for writing and editing, 1986; Los Angeles Times Book Award, 1986, and Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction, and Commonwealth Literature Prize, both 1987, all for The Handmaid's Tale; Canadian Council for the Advancement and Support of Education silver medal, 1987; Humanist of the Year award, 1987; Royal Society of Canada fellow, 1987; named Chatelaine magazine's Woman of the Year; City of Toronto Book Award, Coles Book of the Year Award, Canadian Booksellers' Association Author of the Year Award, Book of the Year Award, Foundation for Advancement of Canadian Letters citation, Periodical Marketers of Canada Award, and Torgi Talking Book Award, all 1989, all for Cat's Eye; Harvard University Centennial Medal, 1990; Order of Ontario, 1990; Trillium Award for Excellence in Ontario Writing, and Periodical Marketers of Canada Book of the Year Award, both 1992, both for Wilderness Tips and Other Stories; Commemorative Medal for 125th Anniversary of Canadian Confederation; Trillium Award, Canadian Authors' Association Novel of the Year Award, Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Canadian and Caribbean Region, and Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, all 1994, and Swedish Humour Association's International Humourous Writer Award, 1995, all for The Robber Bride;Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), 1994; named best local author, NOWmagazine readers' poll, 1995 and 1996; Trillium Award, 1995, for Morning in the Burned House;Norwegian Order of Literary Merit, 1996; Booker Prize shortlist, and Giller Prize, both 1996, both for Alias Grace; International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award shortlist, Dublin City Library, 1998; Booker Prize, 2000, International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award nomination, and Dashiell Hammett Prize, International Association of Crime Writers (North American branch), 2001, all for The Blind Assassin;inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame, 2001; Booker prize shortlist and Governor General's literary award nominee, both 2003, both for Oryx and Crake; Enlightenment Award, Edinburgh International Book Festival, 2005; Prince of Asturias literary prize, Fundación Príncipe de Asturias, 2008; Crystal Award, World Economic Forum, 2010; Dan David Prize, 2010; Nelly Sachs Prize, Germany, 2010; Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, Canada, 2012; Los Angeles Times Book Prize Innovator's Award, 2012; Red Tentacle Prize, Kitschies, 2015, for The Heart Goes Last; Imagination in Service to Society Award, Arthur C. Clark Foundation, 2015; gold medal, Royal Canadian Geographical Society, 2015; Golden Wreath of Struga Poetry Evenings, Macedonia, 2016; PEN Pinter Prize, 2016; Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, National Book Critics Circle, Winner, Carl Sandburg Literary Awards, Peace Prize, Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, Lifetime Achievement Award, PEN Center USA, Franz Kafka Prize, Franz Kafka Society and the city of Prague, all 2017; Best Graphic Novel Prize, Aurora Awards, 2017, for Angel Catbird, Volume One.

WRITINGS:

POETRY

  • Double Persephone, Hawkshead Press (Ontario, Canada), 1961.
  • The Circle Game, Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI), 1964, revised edition, House of Anansi Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1978, reprinted with an introduction by Suzanne Buffam, House of Anansi Press (Berkeley, CA), 2012.
  • Kaleidoscopes Baroque: A Poem, Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI), 1965.
  • Talismans for Children, Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI), 1965.
  • Speeches for Doctor Frankenstein, Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI), 1966.
  • The Animals in That Country, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1968.
  • The Journals of Susanna Moodie, Oxford University Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1970.
  • Procedures for Underground, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1970.
  • Power Politics, House of Anansi Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1971, Harper (New York, NY), 1973.
  • You Are Happy, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1974.
  • Selected Poems, 1965-1975, Oxford University Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1976, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1978.
  • Marsh Hawk, Dreadnaught Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1977.
  • Two-Headed Poems, Oxford University Press, 1978, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1981.
  • Notes Toward a Poem That Can Never Be Written, Salamander Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1981.
  • True Stories, Oxford University Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1981, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1982.
  • Snake Poems, Salamander Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1983.
  • Interlunar, Oxford University Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1984.
  • Selected Poems II: Poems Selected and New, 1976-1986, Oxford University Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1986.
  • Morning in the Burned House, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1995.
  • Eating Fire: Selected Poetry, 1965-1995, Virago Press (London, England), 1998.
Also author of Expeditions, 1966, and What Was in the Garden, 1969.

NOVELS

  • The Edible Woman, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1969, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1970, reprinted, Anchor Press (New York, NY), 1998, Playwrights Guild of Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2012.
  • Surfacing, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1972, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1973, reprinted, Anchor Press (New York, NY), 1998.
  • Lady Oracle, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1976, reprinted, Anchor Press (New York, NY), 1998.
  • Life before Man, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1979, reprinted, Anchor Press (New York, NY), 1998.
  • Bodily Harm, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1981, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1982, reprinted, Anchor Press (New York, NY), 1998.
  • Encounters with the Element Man, William B. Ewert (Concord, NH), 1982.
  • Unearthing Suite, Grand Union Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1983.
  • The Handmaid's Tale, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1985, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1986, reprinted, Chelsea House Publishers (Philadelphia, PA), 2001.
  • Cat's Eye, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1988, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1989.
  • The Robber Bride, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1993.
  • Alias Grace, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1996.
  • The Blind Assassin, Random House (New York, NY), 2000.
  • The Tent, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday (New York, NY), 2006.
  • I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth, Walrus Foundation (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2012.
  • The Heart Goes Last, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2015.

"MADDADDAM" TRILOGY

  • Oryx and Crake, Nan A. Talese (New York, NY), 2003.
  • The Year of the Flood, Nan A. Talese (New York, NY), 2009.
  • MaddAddam, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday (New York, NY), 2013.

STORY COLLECTIONS

  • Dancing Girls and Other Stories, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1977, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1982, reprinted, Anchor Press (New York, NY), 1998.
  • Bluebeard's Egg and Other Stories, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1983, Anchor Doubleday (New York, NY), 1998.
  • Murder in the Dark: Short Fictions and Prose Poems, Coach House Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1983.
  • Wilderness Tips and Other Stories, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1991.
  • Good Bones, Coach House Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1992, published as Good Bones and Simple Murders, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1994.
  • A Quiet Game: And Other Early Works, edited and annotated by Kathy Chung and Sherrill Grace, Juvenilia Press (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada), 1997.
  • The Tent, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2006.
  • Moral Disorder: And Other Stories, Nan A. Talese (New York, NY), 2006.
    • Stone Mattress: Nine Wicked Tales, Nan A. Talese (New York, NY), 2014.

    OTHER

    • The Trumpets of Summer (radio play), Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC-Radio), 1964.
    • Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature, House of Anansi Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1972, House of Anansi Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2012.
    • The Servant Girl (teleplay), CBC-TV, 1974.
    • Days of the Rebels, 1815-1840, Natural Science Library, 1976.
    • The Poetry and Voice of Margaret Atwood (recording), Caedmon (New York, NY), 1977.
    • Up in the Tree (juvenile), McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1978.
    • (Author of introduction) Catherine M. Young, To See Our World, GLC Publishers, 1979, Morrow (New York, NY), 1980.
    • (With Joyce Barkhouse) Anna's Pet (juvenile), James Lorimer, 1980.
    • Snowbird (teleplay), CBC-TV, 1981.
    • Second Words: Selected Critical Prose, House of Anansi Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1982, 2000.
    • (Editor) The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English, Oxford University Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1982.
    • (Editor, with Robert Weaver) The Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English,Oxford University Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1986.
    • (With Peter Pearson) Heaven on Earth (teleplay), CBC-TV, 1986.
    • (Editor) The Canlit Foodbook, Totem Books (New York, NY), 1987.
    • (Editor, with Shannon Ravenal) The Best American Short Stories, 1989, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1989.
    • For the Birds, illustrated by John Bianchi, Firefly Books (Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada), 1991.
    • (Editor, with Barry Callaghan; and author of introduction) The Poetry of Gwendolyn MacEwen, Exile Editions (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), Volume 1: The Early Years,1993, Volume 2: The Later Years,1994.
    • Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut (juvenile), illustrated by Maryann Kovalski, Workman (New York, NY), 1995.
    • Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature (lectures), Oxford University Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1996.
    • Some Things about Flying, Women's Press (London, England), 1997.
    • (With Victor-Levy Beaulieu) Two Solicitudes: Conversations (interviews), translated by Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1998.
    • (Author of introduction) Women Writers at Work: The "Paris Review" Interviews, edited by George Plimpton, Random House (New York, NY), 1998.
    • (With others) Story of a Nation: Defining Moments in Our History, Doubleday Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2001.
    • Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing (lectures), Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2002.
    • (Author of introduction) Christian Bok, editor, Ground Works: Avant-Garde for Thee,House of Anansi Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2002.
    • Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes (juvenile), illustrated by Dusan Petricic, Key Porter Books (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2003.
    • Moving Targets: Writing with Intent, 1982-2004, House of Anansi Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2004.
    • Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda (juvenile), illustrated by Dusan Petricic, Key Porter Kids (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2004.
    • (With others) New Beginnings: Sold in Aid of the Indian Ocean Tsunami Earthquake Charities, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2005.
    • Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose, 1983-2005, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 2005.
    • The Penelopiad (part of the Knopf "Myth Series"), Knopf (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2005.
    • Curious Pursuits: Occasional Writing, 1970-2005, Virago (London, England), 2005.
    • Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, Virago (London, England), 2008.
    • Wandering Wenda and Widow Wallop's Wunderground Washery, McArthur & Co, 2011.
      • In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination (essays), Nan A. Talese/Doubleday (New York, NY), 2011.
      • (With Johnnie Christmas and Tamra Bonvillian) Angel Catbird, Volume One (Graphic Novel), Dark Horse (Milwaukie, OR), 2016.
      Author of "Positron" e-book serial, Byliner Inc., 2002--. Contributor to anthologies, including Five Modern Canadian Poets, 1970, The Canadian Imagination: Dimensions of a Literary Culture, Harvard University Press, 1977, and Women on Women, 1978. Contributor to periodicals, including Atlantic, Poetry, New Yorker, Harper's, New York Times Book Review, Saturday Night, Tamarack Review, and Canadian Forum.
      MEDIA ADAPTATIONS:
      Reflections: Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer, a six-minute visual interpretation of Atwood's poem by the same name, was produced by Cinematics Canada, 1972, and by Universal as Poem as Imagery: Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer, 1974. The Journals of Susanna Moodie was adapted as a screenplay, Tranby, 1972; Surfacing was adapted for film, Pan-Canadian, 1979; The Handmaid's Talewas filmed by Cinecom Entertainment Group, 1989, and was adapted as an opera by Danish composer Poul Ruders, for the Royal Danish Opera Company. The Atwood Stories, adaptations of Atwood's fiction, appeared as six half-hour episodes on W Network. Alias Grace was being adapted for film by Working Title Films. Union Pictures planned to produce a four-part miniseries based on The Blind Assassin. Many of Atwood's books are available as sound recordings, including The Tent,Doubleday, 2005.

      Sidelights

      As a poet, novelist, story writer, and essayist, Margaret Atwood holds a unique position in contemporary Canadian literature. Her books have received critical acclaim in the United States, Europe, and her native Canada, and she has been the recipient of numerous literary awards. Atwood's critical recognition is matched by her popularity with readers. She is a frequent guest on Canadian television and radio and her books are often best sellers.
      Atwood first came to public attention as a poet in the 1960s with her collections Double Persephone,winner of the E.J. Pratt Medal, and The Circle Game, winner of a Governor General's Award. These two books marked out the terrain her subsequent poetry has explored.
      Double Persephone concerns "the contrast between the flux of life or nature and the fixity of man's artificial creations," as explained by a Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor. The Circle Gametakes this opposition further, setting such human constructs as games, literature, and love against the instability of nature. Human constructs are presented as both traps and shelters; the fluidity of nature as both dangerous and liberating. Sherrill Grace, writing in Violent Duality: A Study of Margaret Atwood, identified the central tension in all of Atwood's work as "the pull towards art on one hand and towards life on the other." This tension is expressed in a series of "violent dualities," as Grace termed it. Atwood "is constantly aware of opposites--self/other, subject/object, male/female, nature/man--and of the need to accept and work within them," Grace explained. "To create, Atwood chooses violent dualities, and her art re-works, probes, and dramatizes the ability to see double."
      Linda W. Wagner, writing in The Art of Margaret Atwood: Essays in Criticism, asserted that in Atwood's poetry "duality [is] presented as separation." This separation leads her characters to be isolated from one another and from the natural world, resulting in their inability to communicate, to break free of exploitative social relationships, or to understand their place in the natural order. "In her early poetry," Gloria Onley wrote in the West Coast Review, Atwood "is acutely aware of the problem of alienation, the need for real human communication and the establishment of genuine human community--real as opposed to mechanical or manipulative; genuine as opposed to the counterfeit community of the body politic."
      Wagner, commenting on The Circle Game, noted that "the personae of those poems never did make contact, never did anything but lament the human condition." Wagner added, "Relationships in these poems are sterile if not destructive." In a review of True Stories Robert Sward of Quill and Quireexplained that many reviewers of the book have exaggerated the violence and given "the false impression that all thirty-eight poems ... are about torture."
      Suffering is common for the female characters in Atwood's poems, although they are never passive victims. In her later works, her characters take active measures to improve their situations. Atwood's poems, West Coast Review contributor Onley maintained, concern "modern woman's anguish at finding herself isolated and exploited (although also exploiting) by the imposition of a sex role power structure." Atwood explained to Judy Klemesrud in the New York Times that her suffering characters come from real life: "My women suffer because most of the women I talk to seem to have suffered." Although she became a favorite of feminists, Atwood's popularity in the feminist community was unsought. "I began as a profoundly apolitical writer," she told Lindsy Van Gelder of Ms., "but then I began to do what all novelists and some poets do: I began to describe the world around me."
      Atwood's 1995 book of poetry, Morning in the Burned House, "reflects a period in Atwood's life when time seems to be running out," observed John Bemrose in Maclean's.
      Noting that many of the poems address grief and loss, particularly in relationship to her father's death and a realization of her own mortality, Bemrose added that the book "moves even more deeply into survival territory." Bemrose further suggested that in this book, Atwood allows the readers greater latitude in interpretation than in her earlier verse: "Atwood uses grief ... to break away from that airless poetry and into a new freedom."
      Atwood's feminist concerns also emerge clearly in her novels, particularly in The Edible Woman,Surfacing, Life before Man, Bodily Harm, and The Handmaid's Tale. Some of her novels feature female characters who are, as Klemesrud reported, "intelligent, self-absorbed modern women searching for identity. ... [They] hunt, split logs, make campfires and become successful in their careers, while men often cook and take care of their households."
      The Edible Woman tells the story of Marian McAlpin, a young woman engaged to be married, who rebels against her upcoming nuptials. Her fiancé seems too stable, too ordinary, and the role of wife too fixed and limiting. Her rejection of marriage is accompanied by her body's rejection of food; she cannot tolerate even a spare vegetarian diet. Eventually Marian bakes a sponge cake in the shape of a woman and feeds it to her fiancé because, she explains, "You've been trying to assimilate me." After the engagement is broken off, she is able to eat some of the cake herself.
      Reaction to The Edible Woman was divided. Nevertheless, many reviewers noted Atwood's at least partial success. Tom Marshall, writing in his Harsh and Lovely Land: The Major Canadian Poets and the Making of a Canadian Tradition, called The Edible Woman "a largely successful comic novel, even if the mechanics are sometimes a little clumsy, the satirical accounts of consumerism a little drawn out." A Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor described The Edible Woman as "very much a social novel about the possibilities for personal female identity in a capitalistic consumer society."
      In Life before Man Atwood dissects the relationships between three characters: Elizabeth, a married woman who mourns the recent suicide of her lover; Elizabeth's husband, Nate, who is unable to choose between his wife and his lover; and Lesje, Nate's lover, who works with Elizabeth at a museum of natural history. All three characters are isolated from one another and unable to experience their own emotions. The fossils and dinosaur bones on display at the museum are compared throughout the novel with the sterility of the characters' lives. As Laurie Stone noted in the Village Voice, Life before Man "is full of variations on the theme of extinction."
      Life before Man is what Rosellen Brown of Saturday Review called an "anatomy of melancholy." Comparing the novel's characters to museum pieces and commenting on the analytical examination to which Atwood subjects them, Peter S. Prescott wrote in Newsweek that, "with chilly compassion and an even colder wit, Atwood exposes the interior lives of her specimens." Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Marilyn French made clear that in Life before Man, Atwood "combines several talents--powerful introspection, honesty, satire and a taut, limpid style--to create a splendid, fully integrated work." The novel's title, French believed, relates to the characters' isolation from themselves, their history, and from one another. They have not yet achieved truly human stature. "This novel suggests," French wrote, "that we are still living life before man, before the human--as we like to define it--has evolved." Prescott raised the same point. The novel's characters, he wrote, "do not communicate; each, in the presence of another, is locked into his own thoughts and feelings. Is such isolation and indeterminacy what Atwood means when she calls her story 'Life before Man'?" This concern is also found in Atwood's previous novels, French argued, all of which depict "the search for identity ... a search for a better way to be--for a way of life that both satisfies the passionate, needy self and yet is decent, humane and natural."
      Atwood further explores this idea in Bodily Harm. In this novel, Rennie Wilford is a Toronto journalist who specializes in light, trivial pieces for magazines. She is, Anne Tyler explained in the Detroit News,"a cataloguer of current fads and fancies." Following a partial mastectomy, which causes her lover to abandon her, Rennie begins to feel dissatisfied with her life. She takes on an assignment to the Caribbean island of St. Antoine in an effort to get away from things for a while. Her planned magazine story, focusing on the island's beaches, tennis courts, and restaurants, is distinctly facile in comparison to the political violence she finds on St. Antoine. When Rennie is arrested and jailed, the experience brings her to a self-realization about her life. "Death," Nancy Ramsey remarked in the San Francisco Review of Books, "rather than the modern sense of ennui, threatens Rennie and the people around her, and ultimately gives her life a meaning she hadn't known before."
      Anatole Broyard in the New York Times, claimed that "the only way to describe my response to [Bodily Harm] is to say that it knocked me out. Atwood seems to be able to do just about everything: people, places, problems, a perfect ear, an exactly right voice and she tosses off terrific scenes with a casualness that leaves you utterly unprepared for the way these scenes seize you." Tyler called Atwood "an uncommonly skillful and perceptive writer," and went on to state that, because of its subject matter, Bodily Harm "is not always easy to read. There are times when it's downright unpleasant, but it's also intelligent, provocative, and in the end--against all expectations--uplifting."
      In The Handmaid's Tale Atwood turns to speculative fiction, creating the dystopia of Gilead, a future America in which fundamentalist Christians have killed the president and members of Congress and imposed their own dictatorial rule. In this future world, polluted by toxic chemicals and nuclear radiation, few women can bear children; the birthrate has dropped alarmingly. Those women who can bear children are forced to become Handmaids, the official breeders for society. All other women have been reduced to chattel under a repressive religious hierarchy run by men.

       The Handmaid's Tale is a radical departure from Atwood's previous novels. Her strong feminism was evident in earlier books, but The Handmaid's Tale is dominated by the theme. As Barbara Holliday wrote in the Detroit Free Press, Atwood "has been concerned in her fiction with the painful psychic warfare between men and women. In The Handmaid's Tale ... she casts subtlety aside, exposing woman's primal fear of being used and helpless." Atwood's creation of an imaginary world is also new. As Mary Battiata noted in the Washington Post, The Handmaid's Tale is the first of Atwood's novels "not set in a worried corner of contemporary Canada."  
      Atwood was moved to write her story only after images and scenes from the book had been appearing to her for three years. She eventually became convinced that her vision of Gilead was not far from reality. Some of the anti-female measures she had imagined for the novel actually exist. "A law in Canada," Battiata reported, "[requires] a woman to have her husband's permission before obtaining an abortion." Atwood, speaking to Battiata, pointed to repressive laws in the totalitarian state of Romania as well: "No abortion, no birth control, and compulsory pregnancy testing, once a month." The Handmaid's Tale does not depend upon hypothetical scenarios, omens, or straws in the wind, but upon documented occurrences and public pronouncements; all matters of record." Stephen McCabe of the Humanist called the novel "a chilling vision of the future extrapolated from the present."
    • Yet, several reviewers voiced a disbelief in the basic assumptions of The Handmaid's Tale. Mary McCarthy, in her review for the New York Times Book Review, complained that "I just can't see the intolerance of the far right ... as leading to a super-biblical puritanism." And although acknowledging that "the author has carefully drawn her projections from current trends," McCarthy asserted that "perhaps that is the trouble: the projections are too neatly penciled in. The details ... all raise their hands announcing themselves present. At the same time, the Republic of Gilead itself, whatever in it that is not a projection, is insufficiently imagined." Richard Grenier of Insight observed that the Fundamentalist-run Gilead does not seem Christian: "There seems to be no Father, no Son, no Holy Ghost, no apparent belief in redemption, resurrection, eternal life. No one in this excruciatingly hierarchized new clerical state ... appears to believe in God." Grenier also found it improbable that "while the United States has hurtled off into this morbid, feminist nightmare, the rest of the democratic world has been blissfully unaffected."
      Despite what he saw as a flaw, French saw The Handmaid's Tale as being "in the honorable tradition of Brave New World and other warnings of dystopia. It's imaginative, even audacious, and conveys a chilling sense of fear and menace." Prescott compared the novel to other dystopian books. It belongs, he wrote, "to that breed of visionary fiction in which a metaphor is extended to elaborate a warning." Prescott went on to note: "Wells, Huxley and Orwell popularized the tradition with books like The Time Machine, Brave New World and 1984--yet Atwood is a better novelist than they." Christopher Lehmann-Haupt identified The Handmaid's Tale as a book that goes far beyond its feminist concerns. Writing in the New York Times, the reviewer explained that the novel "is a political tract deploring nuclear energy, environmental waste, and anti-feminist attitudes. But it [is] so much more than that--a taut thriller, a psychological study, a play on words." Van Gelder saw the novel in a similar light: "[It] ultimately succeeds on multiple levels: as a page-turning thriller, as a powerful political statement, and as an exquisite piece of writing."
      In The Robber Bride, Atwood again explores women's issues and feminist concerns, this time concentrating on women's relationships with each other--both positive and negative. Inspired by the Brothers Grimm's fairy tale "The Robber Bridegroom," the novel chronicles the relationships of college friends Tony, Charis, and Roz with their backstabbing classmate Zenia. Now middle-aged women, the women's paths and life choices have diverged, yet Tony, Charis, and Roz have remained friends. Throughout their adulthood, however, Zenia's manipulations have nearly destroyed their lives and cost them husbands and careers. Lorrie Moore, writing in the New York Times Book Review, called The Robber Bride "Atwood's funniest and most companionable book in years," adding that its author "retains her gift for observing, in poetry, the minutiae specific to the physical and emotional lives of her characters." About Zenia, Moore commented, "charming and gorgeous, Zenia is a misogynist's grotesque: relentlessly seductive, brutal, pathologically dishonest," postulating that "perhaps Ms. Atwood intended Zenia, by the end, to be a symbol of all that is inexplicably evil: war, disease, global catastrophe." Judith Timson commented in Maclean's that The Robber Bride "has as its central theme an idea that feminism was supposed to have shoved under the rug: there are female predators out there, and they will get your man if you are not careful."
      Atwood maintained that she had a feminist motivation in creating Zenia. The femme fatale all but disappeared from fiction in the 1950s due to that decade's sanitized ideal of domesticity; and in the late 1960s came the women's movement, which in its early years encouraged the creation of only positive female characters, Atwood asserted in interviews. She commented that "there are a lot of women you have to say are feminists who are getting a big kick out of this book," according to interviewer Sarah Lyall in the New York Times. "People read the book with all the wars done by men, and they say, 'So, you're saying that women are crueler than men,'" the novelist added. "In other words, that's normal behavior by men, so we don't notice it. Similarly, we say that Zenia behaves badly, and therefore women are worse than men, but that ignores the helpfulness of the other three women to each other, which of course gives them a power of their own."
      Francine Prose, reviewing The Robber Bride for the Washington Post Book World, recommended the book "to those well-intentioned misguided feminists or benighted sexists who would have us believe that the female of the species is 'naturally' nicer or more nurturing than the male." Prose found the book "smart and entertaining" but not always convincing in its blend of exaggerated and realistic elements. New York Times contributor Michiko Kakutani also thought Atwood has not achieved the proper balance in this regard: "Her characters remain exiles from both the earthbound realm of realism and the airier attitudes of allegory, and as a result, their story does not illuminate or entertain: it grates."
      Alias Grace represents Atwood's first venture into historical fiction, but the book has much in common with her other works in its contemplation of "the shifting notions of women's moral nature" and "the exercise of power between men and women," wrote Maclean's contributor Diane Turbide. Based on a true story Atwood had explored previously in a television script titled The Servant Girl,Alias Grace centers on Grace Marks, a servant who was found guilty of murdering her employer and his mistress in northern Canada in 1843. Some people doubt Grace's guilt, however, and she serves out her sentence of life in prison, claiming not to remember the murders. Eventually, reformers begin to agitate for clemency for Grace. In a quest for evidence to support their position, they assign a young doctor, versed in the new science of psychiatry, to evaluate her soundness of mind. Over many meetings, Grace tells the doctor the harrowing story of her life--a life marked by extreme hardship. Much about Grace, though, remains puzzling; she is haunted by flashbacks of the supposedly forgotten murders and by the presence of a friend who had died from a mishandled abortion. The doctor, Simon Jordan, does not know what to believe in Grace's tales.
      Several reviewers found Grace a complicated and compelling character. "Sometimes she is prim, naive, sometimes sardonic; sometimes sardonic because observant; sometimes observant because naive," commented Hilary Mantel in the New York Review of Books. Turbide added that Grace is more than an intriguing character: she is also "the lens through which Victorian hypocrisies are mercilessly exposed."
      Prose, however, writing in the New York Times Book Review, thought the historical trivia excessive. "The book provides, in snippets, a crash course in Victorian culture." Prose added: "Rather than enhancing the novel's verisimilitude, these mini-lessons underline the distance between reader and subject." She also noted that some readers "will admire the liveliness with which Ms. Atwood toys with both our expectations and the conventions of the Victorian thriller."
      "Dying octogenarian Iris Chasen's narration of the past carefully unravels a haunting story of tragedy, corruption, and cruel manipulation," summarized Beth E. Andersen in a Library Journal review of Atwood's The Blind Assassin. The novel, which earned its author the Booker Prize, involves multiple story lines. It is Iris's memoir, retracing her past with the wealthy and conniving industrialist Richard Griffen and the death of her sister Laura, her husband, and her daughter. Iris "reveals at long last the wrenching truth about herself and Laura amid hilariously acerbic commentary on the inanities of contemporary life," wrote Donna Seaman in Booklist. Interspersed with these narrative threads are sections devoted to Laura's novel, The Blind Assassin, published after her death.
      Seaman called the work a "spellbinding novel of avarice, love, and revenge." Andersen noted that some readers may guess how the story will pan out before the conclusion, but argued that "nothing will dampen the pleasure of getting there." Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times called The Blind Assassin an "absorbing new novel" that "showcases Ms. Atwood's narrative powers and her ardent love of the Gothic." Kakutani also noted that Atwood writes with "uncommon authority and ease."
      Atwood has remained a noted writer of short stories as well as novels. Wilderness Tips and Other Stories, published in 1991, is a collection of ten "neatly constructed, present-tense narratives," reported Merle Rubin in the Christian Science Monitor.
      =========
      The Politics of The Handmaid's Tale
      Gorman Beauchamp
      The Midwest Quarterly. 51.1 (Autumn 2009): p11.  From Literature Resource Center.
      Copyright:   COPYRIGHT 2009 Pittsburg State University - Midwest Quarterly

      Source Citation   (MLA 8th Edition)
      Beauchamp, Gorman. "The Politics of The Handmaid's Tale." The Midwest Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 1, 2009, p. 11+. Literature Resource Center, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GLS&sw=w&u=plan_smcol&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA209400824&it=r&asid=39707d2d4866854728c1e36cd78e5402. Accessed 18 Nov. 2017.
      Gale Document Number:  GALE|A209400824






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