THE HANDMAID'S TALE

Author: Margaret Atwood
Year: 2019 (1985)
Publisher: Norstedts
Language: Swedish (translator Maria Ekman)

 ”Gott hätte keine Welt geschaffen, wenn sie nicht unter allen möglichen die beste wäre” wrote German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in his work on good and evil (”Théodicée” 1710). He argued that in every single moment, by the grace of God, we live in the best world possible at that particular moment.  This idea takes into account death, disease, natural disasters, and the fact that the universe is in constant flux and that our sun is expected to expand into a red giant in five billion years swallowing planet Earth in the process. But Leibniz also tries to fit in war, oppression, crime, and other manufactured forms of suffering caused by human malevolence and imperfection. Leibniz argues that in an interconnected reality where each phenomenon is caused by and gives cause to other phenomena, the removal of a particular torment would generate a ripple effect throughout the system provoking more severe torments elsewhere in the world. In economic terms, Leibnitz would consider the world to operate at Pareto Efficiency.

Even though Leibniz has been thoroughly taken to task by other thinkers in the centuries after the publication of his book, an ocean of dystopian literature seems to at least partially vindicate him. All things considered, despite its apparent weaknesses and horrors (historic and present), the world could be a lot worse.

The history of fiction teaches us that there are numerous ways that this world can go down the tubes: Abuse of technology, war, environmental destruction, fascism, communism, or religious fundamentalism, to mention only a few. One example of the latter, with a super-sized side order of fascism, is Margaret Atwood’s ”Tjänarinnans berättelse” (”The Handmaid’s Tale”).

Atwood’s dystopian society is named “Gilead”, a totalitarian breakaway region of the formerly powerful United States of America in a not so distant future. The community is controlled by strict adherence to a highly arbitrary reading of the Bible where bits and pieces have been selected and amplified to support the regime, whereas most of the New Testament which preaches love, forgiveness, and communion, has been dispatched into oblivion. Due to pollution, fertility is critically low and large patches of Earth are uninhabitable. The citizens of Gilead adhere to a strict hierarchy where men rule in the capacity of Commanders through a highly effective and virtually omnipresent security police called the Eyes. The highest honour bestowed upon a woman is to become a Wife of one of the high ranking officials in the regime. Econowives are the spouses of less influential male citizens. Marthas are female servants and Handmaids are fertile women who, for any more or less random reason, are considered too sinful to be suitable as wives and are therefore distributed among the childless elites as babymakers.  Escape is unthinkable, movement between the classes only possible in one direction: downward. Although Handmaids formally outrank Marthas, most Marthas frown upon the sexually exposed Handmaids and many a Handmaid would much prefer to count among the Marthas. Still, as fertility is rare, no fertile woman can be sacrificed to cook, clean, and serve tea for her own convenience.

The story is told by the handmaid Offred; a woman with modern values and ideals who, like everybody else, is forced into submission by the rulers of Gilead. Being deemed fertile, she is deposited in the household of one of the most influential Commanders. Offred manages to record her thoughts and observations in a diary which is preserved for posterity. In fact, the final chapter recounts an academic conference where the conclusions of the then newly uncovered ancient diary are presented to a community of researchers some 200 years after the events described in the book.

There are a few symbolic features well worth considering in Atwood's novel. For starters, it is no coincidence that the story is set in what is today the state of Massachusetts. This is the most liberal state in the entire Union where more than 1/3 of the voters identify as liberal and where the Democratic Party has a crushing advantage over the GOP and other totalitarian and reactionary movements. It is one of the most urbanised states with the best-educated population. I believe that Atwood wants to warn us against complacency. If it can happen in a place like Massachusetts, it can happen literally anywhere.

In many ways, “Tjänarinnans berättelse” is a feminist book. The male dominance manifests itself long before the regime rolls out the full array of oppressive restrictions. Without notice, all women’s bank accounts are closed and the balance transferred to their husbands or male relatives. They are no longer allowed to work or own property. Women are barred from reading and studying and may not enter public space without male supervision. All this is introduced long before the institutions of the old society are dissolved and replaced with the new hierarchy and chain of command. This is another reminder from Atwood that the forces that allow this kind of upheaval are at all times dormant in our society, even today. When Offred’s (before she was renamed and handed to the Commander) bank account is closed and she informs her husband Luke, he responds by saying that things will be alright and that from now on he will simply have to pay for them both. As if this was a minor inconvenience. Despite his strongly liberal and progressive views, Luke’s patriarchal essence clouds his judgment and he becomes a symbol of the latent chauvinist that dwells in all men. Had it been the other way around, and that men were suddenly dependent on their female spouses and relatives, his reaction, supposedly, would have been much different.

But “Tjänarinnans berättelse” is much more than a critique of religious fundamentalism and the fascist theocracies that commonly follow in its wake. Atwood takes the opportunity to critique all behaviours that undermine the liberal society. Offred often brings up memories of her intellectual feminist mother before the creation of Gilead. At one point she is reminded of a demonstration her mother had organised where the activists burned pornography in the name of female emancipation. Atwood wants to warn us against using fascist techniques to reach seemingly noble goals. After all, fascists, blinded by hatred and ignorance, also believe that their causes are just. The ends, Atwood seems to say, do not justify the means. On the contrary, the means tell us a lot about the ends. And about us.

There is a lot to unpack in this novel but I would like to mention only one more observation, which is to a degree valid for most dystopias in literature and popular culture. In Gilead, no one seems to be happy. Not even the Commanders who organised the system and are watching over it, enjoy it. Everyone is miserable. And that is probably the scariest thing of all. In the fascist, illiberal, intolerant, non-democratic society that more and more people seem to idealise, no one is happy.

For the last five to ten years, Margaret Atwood is routinely mentioned among the favourites to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. After having read “Tjänarinnans berättelse”, which to be fair is the only title I have read by this author, I am not unreservedly supporting her candidacy. Atwood is, no doubt, a terrific writer but compared to some of the recent masters of the craft unto whom this honour has been bestowed in the last decades, and also to some unto whom it has not, I am not convinced that Atwood quite qualifies. I was expecting linguistic fireworks á la Saramago or Naipaul, startling brainteasers and unexpected insights á la Tokarczuk, or profound psychological or sociological analyses á la Lessing but found none of that. What “Tjänarinnans berättelse” is, is a well written, agreeable, and highly urgent novel which, other than an open mind, attention to detail, and average emphatic skills, requires little from the reader to drive the message home: Our world may not be the best of all possible worlds but every day, we risk treading on the road to a dramatically worse one.