The Handmaid's Tale by
Margaret Atwood
My rating:
2 of 5 stars
The prose is excellent but it is not an empowering or uplifting book and I did not enjoy it, perhaps in part because I do not care for dystopian, post-elliptic, or sci-fi. The primary reason I did not care for it is well-expressed by goodreads reviewer, gaby, here:
". . . I found there to be some really alarming undertones. At its core, this novel tells the story of a woman forced into captivity, who falls in love with the captor class, and is "saved" (at least potentially) by a man. I found it dissatisfying that Atwood appears to be . . . reinforcing the very gender stereotypes she aims to dismantle. Delivered from freedom, Offred does not plot a revolution. She does not attempt escape, even in death. No - instead, she becomes a bumbling schoolgirl with a schoolgirl crush on the one-dimensional house boy, with whom she does not relay a single conversation. She reverts to the most base and childish thoughts, becomes simple in her love and lust for the house boy -- so much so that she simply abandons her nascent alliance with Ofglen, the girl connected to the underground resistance. So too, I found the story arch of Moira to be a self-serving stereotype -- the once-defiant lesbian who submits, not entirely without pleasure we're meant to infer, to being a hooker in a harem. What is Atwood trying to tell us? Stripped of financial and physical freedom, are women really just giggling schoolgirls waiting to be kissed by a cute guy? Are we really so simple and shallow? Does plotting a revolution really come second to kissing behind the bleachers, when everything is on the line? In short, this is not an empowering book. And perhaps that is not its purpose. But that is why I ask, again: beneath the obvious exterior of this narrative, what exactly is Atwood trying to tell us about women? "
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Silas Marner by George Eliot
