While reading this, I kept going back and forth over, given the current state of the world, whether this was a great time for me to decide to read this book, or an absolutely terrible one. I'm still not sure. For a book that is two decades old (and 1998 being 20 years ago is its own kind of horrifying), this remains depressingly relevant. More so, in many ways, than it would have been even two years ago.
So the protagonist of this story (who's name we never learn) lives in a United States that has become a theocracy, due in no small part to the social unrest caused by a sharply declining birthrate. As someone who had borne a healthy child (before the US became a dictatorship) she is assumed to be fertile, and as such, she is given to a high-ranking but childless member of the new regime to bear the child his wife hasn't managed to. The child will then be the official's and his wife's child in every way that matters, in the tradition of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. As for our Handmaiden? If she gives birth to a healthy child, she will be rotated to another official who needs a child. If she does not, after a certain amount of time, she will be shipped to "the Colonies" where she will perform dirty dangerous labor for a short time before she dies.
Cheerful stuff.
The sexism, the myths about biologically determined male needs for polygamy, the victim blaming for rape victims, the shaming, all of it, is way more relevant than I would have guessed a few years ago. Progress is ephemeral and all that. Hence my ambiguity on whether or not now was a good time to read this book. A few years ago, I would have thought it a masterpiece, and a triumphant indicator of how far we've come as a society. Maybe I was just more naive then, but I'd like to think it wasn't JUST that. I know I'm not the only one who thought we as a country were collectively better than we've shown ourselves to be.
I've been feeling all outraged out lately, so I'm sure that's colored by reaction to this book. There's no question in my mind that it's a masterpiece, but just because a book is a masterpiece doesn't mean I necessarilyenjoyit.The Geek Feminist Revolutionleft me fired up to go out and smash the patriarchy.The Handmaid's Talemostly left me tired.