The Handmaid’s Tale

Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at http://stirrup-queens.blogspot.com/.  You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Fowler (with author participation!)

Questions:

• I found it interesting that although Offred would be unable to raise any children she had, she still yearned to be pregnant.  It seemed like more than just the fear of what would happen to her if she wasn’t successful.  Where do you think her desire for a baby stemmed from?

I think she was mourning the loss of her daughter. Even knowing that she would not get to keep any new child, she had a void that needed to be filled. It was particularly cruel for a woman who has lost her child, to be subsumed into the world of enforced fertility. She had no opportunity to forget.

I have had this thought about secondary infertility … you’re forced into the world of second children, babies and pregnant women.

Even without the added pressure of society’s demands, women in the book are still desperate for pregnancy.

“One of (the women) is vastly pregnant, her belly… swells triumphantly. There is a shifting in the room, a murmur, an escape of breath; despite ourselves we turn our heads, blatantly, to see better; our fingers itch to touch her. She’s a magic presence to us, an object of envy and desire…”

but piled on top of this is the fact that women are valued only for their fecundity:

“Each month I watch for blood, fearfully, for when it comes it means failure. I have failed once again to fulfill the expectations of others, which have become my own… “

• Did you find it conflicting that the book showed a male-dominated culture, even in reference to reproducing, when in our culture it seems that women take the brunt of the responsibility? Even though male
  infertility was ignored in their culture and females were given stints with new commanders (“tours of booty,” as I came to think of it) did you feel the men were still in charge of procreation? How does this
  differ from our reality?

I found the men were rather shadowy figures. Obviously they wanted the babies, to maintain their society, but the yearning came from the women, and lot of the direct control came via the Aunts. Men seemed to recoil slightly from the reality of women’s bodies.

I can see a parallel with the more repressive societies today. Women cannot be allowed to choose their own sexuality or make reproductive choices. Although a male dominated political establishment calls the shots, it’s women, quislings, who often take the lead in knocking down other women.

It’s scary to think how some of the themes in the story are not so far to the reality in some countries today.Margaret Atwood called the novel a ”what-if tale.” The story for ”Handmaid” began to emerge in 1980, she says, as individual images ignited by newspaper items and snippets of conversation. ”I didn’t include anything that had not already happened, was not under way somewhere or that we don’t have the technology to do,” she says.

• It was at one time hard for me to put myself in the Wife’s shoes, but having dealt with infertility on a more personal sense, I find that I can sympathize with her and her role in this society.  If you had to be in this society, how could you cope with your role in it? Would you be a Wife or a Handmaid?  Could you sympathize with your counterpart?

I wouldn’t be a very desireable Handmaid as I’d keep on miscarrying! I guess as a woman who has benefited from donor eggs from a younger woman, I’d definitely be a Wife, though I hope nowhere near so cruel and uncaring. One of the things I noticed about the book was the way that women’s roles were split off into the extremes, and there was no sense of sisterhood or common interest. Either a womb, a whore or a wife.. and never they shall meet.

An image that stuck in my mind was the Commander doing his duty with the Handmaid while she lay between the legs of the Wife (and ditto with the arrangements for childbirth)

The Handmaid wasn’t acknowledged. The Wife tried to make her invisible.

There is a parallel with some women who embark on egg donation (and possibly surrogacy or adoption?) where the donor is marginalised and the recipient is in denial. I find this painful, because it makes the exchange seem exploitative, in my eyes, and because the pain of the recipient stands out, using this route to motherhood, but unable to admit that she has not conceived naturally.

~ by drownedgirl on December 10, 2007.