Tales of The Handmaid's Tale

   The text I selected to serve as my contemporary example of British Literature, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, is not only a fantastic example of compelling storytelling but also one of the better books I've read recently.  I chose the book because I'd heard that Atwood's fiction in particular does a good job of addressing feminism, a subject that dovetails nicely with some of the more esoteric authors--read mostly incomprehensible postmodernists--that I occasionally gravitate towards.  The Handmaid's Tale managed to live up to the hype, weaving together cutting social insight and a refreshingly self-aware first person narrative.
     Perhaps the greatest strength of The Handmaid's Tale's is the way it manages to seamlessly convey profound messages about humanity without interrupting Offred's chillingly clinical and analytic description of events.  While the argument that the entire novel functions as a sort of meta-narrative about human nature is certainly valid, there are a few specific examples of Atwood's talent that stand out.  First is Atwood's introduction of the character of Moira as a foil to Offred.  Where the latter accepts her training as a handmaid as something that is inexorable, Moira holds an Aunt hostage and escapes to freedom.  Even when recaptured and sent to Jezebel's--little more than a glorified brothel--Moira represents the capacity of the human spirit for agency even in a situation where it seems as if she has little control over her surroundings.  Instead of allowing herself to break in such a bleak situation, Moira uses her body and the power she has over the men who ironically sought to suppress that power in order to maintain her identity and individual agency.  This is not the only section of the book where Atwood uses the act of sex as a metaphor for freedom and rebellion--Offred's later physical relationship with Nick is very much characterized as her reclaiming a bit of her past self.     Equally important is the Commander's reference to the reasoning behind elevating men as superior during the construction of the Republic of Gilead--apparently many men felt as if they no longer had a distinct role to play in society after having to share their traditional societal roles.  After the new regime takes over and creates a society where men are ascendant, however, control over their bodies becomes one of the suppressed women's only forms of emancipatory action.  The text's strength lies in discussing such things while at the same time telling an entertaining, horrifying, and insightful story.
    While The Handmaid's Tale is strong in almost all of its aspects, its greatest weakness lies in the scope, rather than the detail, of its narrative.  Because the story is told entirely from Offred's perspective, much of the nature of the world is left for the reader to interpret from snatches of information Offred manages to glean from the Commander and her fellow handmaids.  Readers are granted information about a specific portion of the Republic of Gilead, but the state of the rest of the world is left very much untouched.  While the United States has been taken over by religious fundamentalists, Atwood does not discuss events happening in other countries beyond the very limited scope of Offred's experience.  While the narrative is perhaps more powerful for being limited and focusing on the experience of a single person, Atwood could aspire to grander implications by describing the state of the entire world a la 1984.  Ultimately, scope is a very minor complaint when compared to the significance of The Handmaid's Tale's message--even in the face of the blackest adversity, humans still have control over their fate.