Written by: Edwige Edouard
As we enter Women’s History Month, there is a surplus of women who we can celebrate that continue to push boundaries. We can talk about the women who have impacted the music industry by using their platform as a way to uplift listeners around the world, or the women in STEM fields who continue to progress society and document breakthroughs. Or we can talk about the many women in literature who write, have written, and will continue to write about their fight for equality. But what if there was a world where everything went wrong? A world where women couldn’t progress because they were forced not to? A world where men with extremist values won and took over “the land of the free”? Enter Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
I remember reading this book in my AP Literature class in my junior year, and if I’m being honest, it’s one of two books that I remember liking from that entire class. The Handmaid’s Tale is an interesting story that feels more like a countdown than a piece of speculative fiction. As Atwood said herself in an interview, “… with The Handmaid’s Tale, I didn’t put in anything that we haven’t already done, we’re not already doing, we’re seriously trying to do…” Throughout The Handmaid’s Tale, topics such as religious extremism, oppressive governments, women’s rights, and more are mentioned. The book talks about this fictional world in such brutal detail, and every aspect within it feels so gritty that it’s difficult to not want to destroy the Republic of Gilead in every single way possible.
Even though it’s been 40 years since its publication in 1985, the book still holds up to this day. For example, take the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June of 2022 which made it extremely difficult for women to get an abortion within states that are vehemently pro-life/anti-abortion. Take multiple stories of women who, because of Roe v. Wade’s overturn, had to travel past state lines just to get an abortion because their doctors were at risk of losing their jobs in the state they live in. Roe v. Wade itself was a massive win for women, their reproductive freedom, and the 14th Amendment. Stripping rights away from women for religious beliefs is what the Republic of Gilead relies on heavily in The Handmaid’s Tale. Not only that, this book has been banned in multiple states (predominantly Republican states like Florida, Texas, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, Wyoming, etc.) because the book was deemed to be “sexually explicit, violently graphic, and morally corrupt” with some parents arguing that the book is “detrimental to Christian values.” While yes, this book is very explicit and graphic, that’s the point. “The Handmaid’s Tale” represents a nation (not a world, because we’re only in Massachusetts throughout the story) where men in power don’t share a morsel of empathy or understanding — where they can do what they want with very little to no pushback.
All in all, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a book that is still a powerful speculative fiction after 40 years, and is a book that I will continue to love dearly.
Featured Image Caption: The Handmaid’s Tale TV series on Hulu, Season 2 Episode 6.
