The older I get the more I realize there is no such thing as a nailed on reality. Rather, a temporary stage or a set-up we get to live in and experience. I have noticed that only recently, for example, living under the new Covid-19 rules which have managed to alter our surroundings quickly and significantly. Living in Poland, I have also experienced a switch of governments – from a more liberal and democratic to a right-winged and conservative one; all the way through it has seemed like a replacement of stage decoration for a new play to be acted out. This is exactly what Margaret Atwood’s celebrated book The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) is about: the change of reality. In the novel, however, this process is extreme, absurd, outrageous. Yet, the author manages to show that it is in fact possible…
Margaret Atwood imagines and presents a life in the so-called Republic of Gilead – a fictional state situated in today’s area of Massachusetts in the north-eastern part of United States. The envisaged country is run by an autocratic patriarchal government, where women are treated as second-rate and instrumentally. In Gilead they function mainly as companions to men and are valued for their reproductive capacities. Women of Gilead have imposed roles, wear imposed costumes, and behave in imposed ways – they all need to be modest, composed and conceal their bodies. No real friendships or personal memories are allowed for them. Women have no access to books, magazines, or any kind of free media. Old and unserviceable women are removed from society.
Readers learn about Gilead through the perspective of the main protagonist Offred. In the strongly hierarchical Gileadian society Offred is a “handmaid” – a young healthy female referred to as “a national resource” or a “worthy vessel.” Her main role is reproductive, she needs to become pregnant with a “Commander” and then pass the child on to the Commander and his wife who keep the handmaid under their roof. Reading Offred’s narrative is like reading her journal. The reader holds the key to the thoughts, observations and emotions that accompany her throughout the novel.
First and foremost, Offred struggles with defining and maintaining her identity – to what extent she is still an ordinary young woman, a wife and a mother from the time before Gilead? She is trying to keep alive her memory, not to forget her husband, her little daughter, and life before the regime. Basic activities, like going out to the cinema, to the beach, to a gallery, or for an ice-cream have become forbidden and seem extravagant: “Habits of former times appear to me now lavish, decadent almost; immoral, like the orgies of barbarian regimes.” Offred doesn’t want to allow for the inhuman things happening around her, like public hanging of citizens for any kind of disobedience, to become the new “normal.” Living in a modest, barren room, without any access to books, not even the Bible, she is trying to remain sane: “Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money.” A mental battle is taking place inside of her – between her own consciousness and the ubiquitous Gileadian indoctrination. Offred comes to a conclusion that the best remedy is to keep hopeful and faithful: “In reduced circumstances you have to believe all kinds of things.”
To me, Atwood’s book has become especially engaging due to the setting of the plot. Namely, Offred lives on the campus of Harvard university, which the author turned into the capital of the Republic of Gilead. As I spent a year studying there, the places described in the novel reminded me of my own multiple walks along Harvard paths. My walks, however, were different to Offred’s. I remember Harvard’s vibrant, lively, multinational, free-spirited and open-minded aura. Offred experiences a context poles apart – she is trapped in a place reminiscent of a prison. For her, the campus is grim and overwhelming. She walks around frightened and under control of the “Eyes” of the regime that came to power and changed reality overnight.
