Nightmarish vision. . . OFNOW
T Author and journalist discovered The Handmaid’s Tale as a teenager. She’s a selfdescribed fan girl of the new TV adaptation. Erin Kelly
wenty- three years ago, I read a book and it brought me to life. I was 17 when I discovered Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, about a near- future America run by a totalitarian, far- right regime where women’s rights had been erased. The Handmaid’s Tale is often called a “cult” book but that suggests a tiny, if slavishly dedicated, readership. But this is a multimillionselling novel, published in more than 40 languages and which has never been out of print. It has a Folio Society special edition ( an honour generally reserved for literary classics) and is currently the 11th bestselling book on Amazon.
It has been a ballet, an opera, a graphic novel, a 1990 film starring Natasha Richardson, and is now a television series. Thus far, the trailer alone has had six million views, and counting, on YouTube.
The lavish drama boasts 10 episodes, a huge budget and a glossy cast led by Mad Men star Elisabeth Moss.
I have loved this book for more than half my life.
The Handmaid’s Tale was a once- in- ageneration novel, like Toni Morrison’s Beloved or Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not The
Only Fruit. The subject matter bordered on worthy, but where you might have expected a sermon, instead there was magic. It drew on history to underline the horrors women were still facing globally. It taught me the realities and responsibilities of womanhood.
This is the high- school required reading that you also buy for your best girlfriends; as accessible as it is powerful. Some of Atwood’s novels are intimidating doorstops but
The Handmaid’s Tale is an easy read; short and breathless, performing as well as a thriller as it does a polemic.
It is the feminist bible that transcends gender. It was actually a young man who first turned me on to the novel — the tattered copy I still own was a gift from my teenage boyfriend ( I forgave him so much because of his love for the book). I didn’t so much read through the night as travel through time and space, and I closed it awestruck and as furious as if it had been a news report. I am impatiently waiting for my daughters — aged 8 and 4 — to reach an age where I can share it with them.
The book centres on the Republic of Gilead — a nightmarish vision of the future, built on 17th century puritan values. Environmental pollution and raging, sexually transmitted infections have shrunk the population. Fertile women are rounded up and enslaved as “handmaids” — baby incubators for the ruling classes: high- ranking commanders and their barren wives.
The narrator is Offred ( which literally means of Fred — handmaids take the name of their commander, or state- sanctioned rapist). Like all other handmaids, she wears a full- length red cloak. A stiff white bonnet hides her face. As a teenager obsessed with Boots No 17 makeup, I was scandalised that handmaids weren’t allowed cosmetics and loved Offred’s tiny rebellion of using her daily pat of butter not as sustenance, but moisturiser.
Unco- operative handmaids are killed, hanged from the walls of Harvard in a public lynching ritual known as the “women’s salvaging”. The lucky ones get off lightly, having their eyeballs gouged out without anaesthetic.
You can see why such a visually rich book cried out for a screen adaptation. Already, it has spawned dozens of new Facebook discussion groups, but there are scores of
book clubs and societies. You can get a ready- made handmaid’s outfit online if you live too far from Ikea to repurpose a white lampshade and damson velvet curtain. I have an unshowy bluestocking friend who is threatening to theme her upcoming hen night around the novel.
Such costumes can also be used to more powerful effect. Two months ago, women protested proposed legal changes restricting abortion in Texas by dressing as Atwood’s handmaids and sitting peacefully in the Senate Gallery. They were surrounded by court officials and armed police within minutes. It looked like a parody of the book.
Indeed, the parallels between Gilead and our world right now have not gone unnoticed, as Atwood says: “The control of Tale Handmaid’s women and babies has been a feature of every repressive regime on the planet.” Saudi Arabia being the obvious example. In April, 24- year- old Dina Ali Lasloom had her mouth taped shut, arms and legs bound, and was forced on to a plane from Manila to Riyadh, after attempting to seek asylum in Australia.