21 December 2019
Another year is
ending, I try not to get overly anxious about the books that I have not read
and the writings that I have not completed. Time seems to accelerate as you grow
older. When you age, you wish you could shed the worst of youth and gain the
best of age, but I realise that it does not happen. Perhaps I could save time
if I care less about grooming and appearance
but then I believe vanity is a force of
life. Looking your best is essential
even if you are not feeling your best. It is as
essential as making your bed after you wake up on mornings when you are not
ready to face your day.
7 Jan 2020
Glad to have
read The Handmaid’s Tale and its
sequel, The Testaments by Margaret Atwood before my vacation. Margaret
Atwood’s prose never fails and I would have liked to take my time but I could
not slow down my reading as I was going on a trip with my family for Christmas
and New Year. I would not be able to cart along the hard copy because where I was going I would need the luggage space
to pack some warm clothing. I do not want to lug along a carry- on so I have to
pick one novel that could fit into my handbag that contains my travel documents
and stuff. I also bring along another novel in my check-in luggage.
The theme for The
Handmaid’s Tale is not new in light of novels such as Nineteen Eighty-Four
written by George Orwell. The premise of
the story is about subjugated women in a patriarchal society in dystopia of
Gilead, a totalitarian society in what was formerly the United States. The tale
is about fundamentalist and tyranny regime that treats women as property of the
state, and due to plummeting birth rate resulting from birth control,
sicknesses, uncontrolled use of chemical insecticides, herbicides and biological
and nuclear warfare, some women are
made handmaids on account of their rare abilities to give birth and they are
assigned the role to breed. Some of these handmaids tried to resist to gain
independence under the fascistic rules. The women under the regime carry on
living either as Aunts, Wives, Marthas or
Handmaidens. Wives are the highest ranking women in Gilead and they are women
who are perceived as being ‘pure’ and moral. They enjoy privileges of marrying to
high ranking men such as the Commanders and they have Marthas and Guardians who serve as
domestic servants and chauffeurs. Marthas are housekeepers, they take care of
the domestic chores at the Commander’s household. By becoming an Aunt in the oppressive
Gilead regime, the woman escapes redundancy or suffers the fate of being sent
to infamous colonies. There are many
women willing to serve as Aunts because of a genuine belief in what they call “traditional
values” or for the benefits and little power they might thereby acquire. Dissenters will be hanged at the wall or sent
out to die slowly of radiation sickness so those who want to survive will
thread carefully around the repressive regime under the watch of the Eyes. Not
all hopes are lost because there are Mayday operatives working underground to overturn
the Gilead government. Mayday is derived
from French word ‘M’aidez’ Help me.
In Handmaid’s
Tale, the protagonist June Osborne was married to Luke and had a child. She was caught while attempting to flee the regime. She became enslaved as a Handmaid and she has only
one function: to breed. Her child and Luke are no longer with her. Thirty-three
year old June, who stands ‘five seven without shoes’, is now Offred, the Handmaid to Commander Fred
Waterford who is one of the founders of Gilead. One of the main characters, Aunt
Lydia warns Offred and the other Handmaids to be careful of Wives but at the
same time to forgive them as they are defeated women who cannot bear children.
In the voice of
Offred aka June,
‘ The
Republic of Gilead, said Aunt Lydia, knows no bounds. Gilead is within you.
Doctors lived there once, lawyers,
university professors. There are no lawyers any more , and the university is
closed.’
‘ I would
like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe
it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better
chance.
If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have
control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off .
It isn’t a story that I’m telling.’
The Handmaid’s
Tale suggests that women are
complicit in a patriarchal regime and some of the women have to become the opportunistic collaborators to survive.
‘There is
more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In
the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from.
Don’t underrate it .’
The
Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale is set fifteen years after the events in Gilead. Aunt Lydia from The
Handmaid’s Tale is amongst those aunts who have been selected by the Chief
Commander to form an elite group of women who are assigned the tasks of
creating and overseeing the laws and uniforms governing Gilead’s women. A
statute has been erected in honour of her many contributions. Aunt Lydia used
to be a judge. Is Aunt Lydia a villain or a heroine?
The Testaments is told in the voice of
three women, namely Aunt Lydia, Agnes and
Daisy. Agnes has grown up in Gilead and is being groomed to marry a commander.
Daisy is a feisty teenager living in Canada with her adoptive parents who run a
thrift store.
Margaret
Atwood has cleverly put together a story that tells us how Gilead’s downfall
came about. While The Handmaid’s Tale
is gloomy and prescient, enter a ray of hope in The Testaments and the story ends with triumph over misogyny. Excellent prose and fascinating plot.
Here is an excerpt from The Testaments
Part
one: The Ardua Hall Holograph
Only
dead people are allowed to have statues, but I have been given one while still
alive. Already I am petrified.
This
statue was a small token of appreciation for my many contributions, said the
citation, which was read out by Aunt Vidala. She’d been assigned the task by
our superiors, and was far from appreciative. I thanked her with as much
modesty as I could summon, then pulled the rope that released the cloth drape
shrouding me; it billowed to the ground, and there I stood. We don’t do
cheering here at Ardua Hall, but there was some discreet clapping. I inclined
my head in a nod.
My
statue is larger than life, as statues tend to be, and shows me as younger,
slimmer, and in better shape than I’ve been for some time. I am standing
straight, shoulders back, my lips curved into a firm but benevolent smile. My
eyes are fixed on some cosmic point of reference understood to represent my
idealism, my unflinching commitment to duty, my determination to move forward
despite all obstacles. Not that anything in the sky would be visible to my
statue, placed as it is in a morose cluster of trees and shrubs beside the
footpath running in front of Ardua Hall. We Aunts must not be too presumptuous,
even in stone.’
About the plot in The Testaments, Lucy Feldman has written two articles in Times.
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