And our child fixation
Ihad barely begun ovulating when I first read The Handmaid’s Tale. I slipped a copy off a shelf of the library and devoured it in a day: this dystopian tale of a theocratic dictatorship, Gilead, in which women are so subjugated and controlled that those with “viable ovaries” are kept as handmaidens whose sole purpose is to breed, a purpose from which, if they deviate, they will be sent to their death.
Intellectual pursuits are banned (“thinking can hurt your chances”) and the handmaidens are forbidden from writing, or reading books. Reading is a right I relished from a young age, though, and this is a book I would re-read every few years, while all the while it took on deeper meanings for me, as I grew from being a girl, to being a teenager dreaming about the future and what it might hold, to being a woman, with all the societal expectation that brings.
Last Sunday, I watched the excellent first episode of the ten-part Hulu television adaptation of the novel starring Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss which is now screening on Channel 4; Moss plays the handmaid Offred while British actor Joseph Fiennes stars opposite her as Commander Fred Waterford, to whom she has been assigned for procreation purposes.
The series has been such a hit in the US that a second series was recently announced. Meanwhile, over here the book has soared to the top of the charts since last Sunday, having had already benefited from a resurgence of interest following Trump’s election, thanks to readers finding stark contemporary resonances in its dystopian story of a world in which women are stripped of their rights, and his presidential policies.
Fertility
Watching the series opener, which featured a haunting cameo from Atwood herself, the story made an impact on me once again and brought even more to the fore aspects of the novel that had struck me on first reading. Reinforcing the fact that fertility is at the heart of the book are some of the lines which resound in the TV adaptation: “Fertility is a gift directly from God. He left you intact for a biblical purpose” TheHandmaid’sTale.