Review: The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

I have heard talk about this book for ages, since it is something of a modern classic. For some reason I never understood the plot of the book, and thought it was a Jane Eyre type thing. Don’t ask me why…But perhaps for this reason I never got around to reading it. Having read and loved Jane Eyre I figured that was enough of that. But recently I saw a video on Youtube where it was discussed and the plot briefly summarized. And then I found out that the plot was completely different from what I thought it was. So i ordered it from my library and read it. And liked it!

The book is about a dystopian society where women are reduced to one of a few categories. There are the demure Wives, the servant Marthas and the Handmaids. These so-called handmaids are “issued” to the elite families of the society and here they are meant to be impregnated by the husband, so they can give birth to a child for the wife. 

We meet our particular handmaid as she starts a new “posting” in the house of “the Commander”. She tells us about her life now, and her life as it used to be. Until a few years earlier, it seems the society was much like ours, and this woman had a small family of her own. In glimpses she tells us of this family and her life before. We only get a very few glimpses of how things got to be they way they are now, but the few we do get are quite chilling. The scariest thing about this book is the fact that the woman’s life was so similar to ours now, and in only a few years everything changes. Her child is lost, her husband is gone, her body is not her own anymore. Everything is dictated and watched and controlled. You think this sort of thing could never happen in real life, but the scary bit is that the story of how it happens in this book does not sound ridiculous or illogical. All the steps that led to this society seem feasible. 

We don’t get a full detailed account of everything that happened that lead to the society, and while that can be frustrating for people like me who do like neat stories with everything tied up and explained, it adds to the feeling of reality that permeates the story. The narrator is concerned with telling the things that affect her life, and don’t see the need to explain the political system in great detail. This is a personal account of one life under this system, and the choices you have to make in a world where all options are no longer open to you. 

I gave this book 3,5 stars on Goodreads