MAY - The Handmaid's Tale

May review for Book Riot's Read Harder 2017: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, 1985. [book you've read before category]

This is my third time reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. The first was in a high school class, pleasantly holding the dystopia at arm's length, enjoying the language and the narrative as purely fiction. The second reading was for a college class in 2012, called Women in Myth, and it was during Mitt Romney's bid for president. It was terrifying then, what with the "binders full of women" nonsense, but I never thought it would be MORE apropos than it was at that time. Gag. This, my third time through, comes on the heels of Trump's presidency and subsequent attempt at gutting women's healthcare and reproductive rights. I went back to it because my girlfriend had never read it, and we wanted to watch the new 2017 Hulu adaptation together. The Handmaid's Tale is a supremely important story to read, especially on the shady road our country seems to have turned down, and it makes me happy to see that it's topping the Bestseller lists once again.


The gist of Handmaid's Tale is the story of Offred, a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead in the not-so-distant future. Women can no longer own property, work, or read, and those that proved fertile before have been re-purposed as Handmaids, a ceremonial surrogate for important Commanders and their Wives. The Handmaid's Tale, a tongue-in-cheek nod to Chaucer with the title, follows Offred from a seemingly unimportant day through her revelations about this new society and what she can do in it. 

I am really enjoying the Hulu series thus far. It is visually stunning, the music is perfectly curated, and it is so fulfilling to see Offred brought to life as a little more savvy and a little more fiery than in the book. Elizabeth Moss does a fantastic job of playing this up. I enjoy that we have given Offred a "real" name, one that we can cling to as a part of the time before. I can see that a narrative like Handmaid's Tale would be difficult to recreate exactly, especially if the idea was to have the narrative to continue on for more than one season, and I approve of the way the writers have reimagined some of the narrative, giving voice to more of the characters, rather than relying solely on Offred's experiences. I like Alexis Bledel's Ofglen, the acknowledgement of her sexuality and its place in the fucked up world of Gilead. I look forward to seeing how the showrunners expand on said fucked up world, watching the Handmaids fight against their situation. 

Screencap from 2017 Hulu adaptation

Which brings me to the phrase. The rallying cry for three decades' worth of feminists (thanks, Margaret, for the tattoo ideas): Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Offred finds it in her closet, scratched into the baseboard, and she asks the Commander about it in their nightly Scrabble sessions. It is sort of an in-joke that really only makes sense if you're studying Latin--the joke is that it's sort of a fake Latin-sounding phrase. There are different layers to the in-joke now that Offred has found it and shared it with her predecessor, a circle apart from that in which the phrase was created. It was a taking-back, I like to think, of realms barred to the Handmaids: the realm of female friendship and intimacy, as well as the realm of scholarship and academia. 

I am sure I will revisit Handmaid's Tale at another point in my life, hopefully once our government has veered away from its dystopian teachings. It has meant too much to me to be one and done. (Or three and done, as the case may be...) Even though my life is not nearly as hard or as dangerous as Offred's, I take solace in her strength and her fight. I will continue to watch the Hulu series and continue to learn from Gilead. I'll be back. Until then, Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, bitches.