Thursday, May 16, 2019
Back in the days before I started posting on Goodreads, I used to keep records of books that I'd read in a Word file. I'm not sure this passes for a book review, but here it is (SPOILER ALERT):
8/7/2001 The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood A real page-turner—I
picked this up at the library at about 6 PM 8/6 & finished it 8/7 at 3 AM.
A religious cult gains control of a portion of the US, &, in a world
in which all money changes hands thru 1 centralized computerized bank,
instantly reduces all women to men’s property by confiscating all of their
financial assets and turning them over to the women’s male relatives or
husbands, and having all women in their jurisdiction fired, all on the same
day. From that day on, women are
forbidden to have independent incomes. Since very few women are fertile (and
the men ain’t doing much better), high-status men, called Commanders, whose
Wives don’t have children (officially, only women are sterile) are given
Handmaids to bear them children. The
Handmaids, in red uniforms, are allowed to leave the house only 1x/day to go
shopping. Otherwise, they can do
absolutely nothing but sit in their rooms and stare at the walls. They may watch only ½ hr. of religious
TV/mo., and there’s no longer such a thing as movies. Reading
is strictly forbidden for almost all women—a woman caught reading 3 times has
her hand cut off. No one is allowed to
have sex in any form outside of marriage.
(Unmarried men are even forbidden to keep their hands in their pockets,
for fear of what they’ll do with them there.)
Useful women who aren’t Wives but who can’t bear children are enslaved
as Marthas (live-in servants). Women of
uncertain fertility (?) or lower-class women (?) are distributed to
lower-echelon men as Econowives (all-purpose wives who do the Marthas’ chores
and the Handmaid’s childbearing). Women
who aren’t considered useful (such as seniors), Handmaids who fail to bear
healthy children after 3 attempts, anyone who is considered subversive, and
Gender Traitors (homosexuals) are killed or sent to the Colonies to be worked
to death cleaning up toxic waste.
Marthas are afraid to take days off for any illness whatsoever, or even
to show or admit that they’re ill, for fear that they’ll be sent to the
Colonies. Scary reading.
I've never seen the television show. The book was frightening enough. If you'd like to understand why I'm publishing this review at this late date, see my next post.
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