Some of you may have seen the TV show, currently airing every Sunday, on Channel 4 in the UK. But did you know it was first a book? Let me inform you... It's my all-time favourite book: a bold, innovative, dystopian prophecy of a Puritan society, where women are essentially baby-making machines, or slaves to their male counterparts. It was written in 1985, an age of militant feminism and US "Reaganomics", by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, who also helped to create the television drama and quite frankly, I think it's a work of genius. I'll tell you why...
It's relevant...
...to 1985, to 2017 and to the future as well. In fact, it's the only book I've read that I think has become more relevant through the ages. What began as a rejection of the growing militancy of the sexes in the 1980s is now relevant to issues like the wage gap, religion vs LGBTQ+ and the ethics of abortion. It is a clear warning of what society could become, so is always relevant for the future, especially as our current global political climate seeks to send us backwards.
It's new...
...with a controversial writing style used to dislocate the reader, Atwood gives us a potentially untrustworthy narrator who takes us on a tour her society, Gilead, through her eyes. It's an innovative writing method, as it has an anti-linear structure - meaning the events happen out of chronological order - and we never find out the true order of events.
It's open...
The ending is left open, ambigous, with Offred being taken away in a black van, never to be seen or heard from again. In the closing section of the book, 'Historical Notes', a future lecturer from Denay, Nunuvit (a pseudonym for 'Deny none of it') comments on the "success" of Gilead and praises it for its long reign. The line "Any questions?" from a fictional lecturerer commenting on the Gileadian society, many years in the future, leaves the reader puzzled and able to draw their own interpretations.
It's frightening...
...given the current circumstances, Atwood invites us to consider what 'going backwards' actually means. The DUP, who Theresa May currently intends to form a coalition with, are remnant of the Puritan rule present in Gilead, with rights stripped for anyone not white, male and heterosexual. The quote from the book "Her fault!" which the Handmaids are pressured to chant at a woman who was raped, is a frightening prophecy for what our society could become.
