Sign in with FacebookStacey's Reviews > The Handmaid's Tale
The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood (Goodreads Author)
by Margaret Atwood (Goodreads Author)
Stacey's review
bookshelves: time-i-will-never-get-back, dystopia
May 08, 08
bookshelves: time-i-will-never-get-back, dystopia
Recommended for:
masochists
Read in May, 2008
** spoiler alert **
I feel vaguely guilty about my opinions of this novel, considering that it seems to be generally regarded as a feminist classic. (Why yes, I would say I'm a feminist, thank you.)
It's terribly unbelievable though, to me. Are we to accept that thousands of modern young women and educated men, would tolerate the complete eradication of their rights and freedoms, to the point of pretending not to know how to read, lying on their backs between the legs of rich old women and accepting the reproductive efforts of old men-- all in the (apparently) short span of less than five years?
Sure there are whispers in the story of both personal and larger rebellion, but these seem like tokens, and the real intent is to have us believe that the most extreme example of police state and misogyny that the mind can conceive, is possible regardless of how quickly that state develops!
Normally, I'm able to suspend my disbelief in order to enjoy nearly anything I watch or read, (I'm easy that way- Ha!) but with Handmaid I find my third voice constantly mocking me with her "Oh come ON! No WAY!"
It's terribly unbelievable though, to me. Are we to accept that thousands of modern young women and educated men, would tolerate the complete eradication of their rights and freedoms, to the point of pretending not to know how to read, lying on their backs between the legs of rich old women and accepting the reproductive efforts of old men-- all in the (apparently) short span of less than five years?
Sure there are whispers in the story of both personal and larger rebellion, but these seem like tokens, and the real intent is to have us believe that the most extreme example of police state and misogyny that the mind can conceive, is possible regardless of how quickly that state develops!
Normally, I'm able to suspend my disbelief in order to enjoy nearly anything I watch or read, (I'm easy that way- Ha!) but with Handmaid I find my third voice constantly mocking me with her "Oh come ON! No WAY!"
Sign into Goodreads to see if any of your friends have read The Handmaid's Tale.
sign in »
Comments (showing 1-5 of 5) (5 new)
date
newest »
newest »
I completely agree, and can't help thinking that I might have felt differently about this if I had read it in my early 20s instead of my late 30s. I wonder though, if I would have found it quite so implausible, if she had allowed more chronological time for the main story to have come about? Aside from that, I'm really not crazy about her writing in general. Something about her structure and cadence is jarring to my thought processes, and not in a good way. Maybe it's the tendency to write mostly in present tense (I always find that difficult in a novel,) or her excessive use of sentence fragments in almost-but-not-quite stream-of-consciousness writing.
Still, in retrospect, I'm glad I'm familiar with the work, since it has become so highly influential, and that's the primary reason I read it.
Yes some books you have to read because they are so influential. You may not like them and find yourself wondering why they created such a fuss. But at least you can say you read them. Slaughterhouse Five and Catch-22 are other "modern classics" that I have trudged through. Though they were bigger deals when my parents were in college I felt like I had to read them. If for no other reason than to say I had.
It doesn't have to be completely plausible to be interesting and compelling, this is after all, fiction. To each their own. But now that it's 2012, and female reproductive rights are now continually challenged, do you think this book should continue to be read and discussed?
Well we broke up and a few years later my fiance (now my wife of twenty years) read the book in one of her classes. She also saw the movie. Now my wife is a very capable person and a free thinker. A feminist in her own right. After all she grew up in the Greater Portland area.
She told me tht while the premise was interesting she found it very implausible. Many of her criticisms match yours.
I know Margaret Atwood is a feminist. I also suspect that she is one of those Canadians that does not like the United States. It comes out in this novel.