the Handmaid's Tale

Anyone watching it?

Written in 1985 - a group of women are held in a former school and taught how to be Handmaids: womb slaves who must live with a family, be impregnated by its head, the husband, and bear children that they will give to his wife and never raise themselves. When they take on this role, even their names will no longer be their own: instead they must adopt the first name of whichever man they are assigned to, along with the prefix "Of". Our protagonist goes by Offred; we also encounter more than one Ofglen, and an Ofwarren.

But even as they prepare for this appalling fate (the alternative is expulsion to the sinister-sounding, radioactive waste-infested "Colonies" and almost certain death) the women cling to their former identities, secretly swapping their real names at night. "We learnt to lipread, our heads flat on the beds, turned sideways," our narrator tells us. "In this way we exchanged names, from bed to bed. Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June."

The psychological manipulation and identity-loss implicit in the use of the “Ofs” is a key part of Atwood’s nightmare – and yet, shorn of the novel's horrific context, the idea that a woman might be required to relinquish her own birth name and taking on a man's isn't really that strange at all. In our own culture, it's been the norm for centuries that a woman will adopt father's last name when born, and her husband's when she marries. Only comparatively recently have some people started to question the inherent oddness of this traditional, patriarchal custom and seek out alternatives.

Gilead, the transformed North America in which the novel takes place, is a religious state, led by the Christian right (or at least by those who utilise its values and dogma). All its women, no matter what their status – and no woman in Gilead holds power – must adhere to a restrictive dress code. High-ranking Wives wear blue, while the Handmaids are clad in shapeless dresses which swathe their bodies in "the colour of blood" and partially conceal their faces. The regime is preoccupied with falling birthrates, meaning that childbirth is celebrated while abortion, naturally, is banned (and doctors who performed the operation in the past brutally executed).

But when imagining these kind of monstrous laws and communal punishments, for inspiration, author, Margaret Atwood only had to look to recent history, and to the world around her.

Almost everything described in the book has a parallel in a totalitarian or religious state, military regime, religious order or cult, or, chillingly, Western society today. The modest dresses of the Handmaids, for example, recall the habits of Catholic nuns, as well as traditional Islamic dress, which may be adopted as a matter of choice by women living in free societies, but can be forced upon them by the authorities in others.

As in The Handmaid’s Tale, state intervention in women’s clothing usually also indicates a wider pattern of oppression. Iran’s Islamic Republic, which has been in power since the country’s 1979 revolution, compels women to wear the veil – according to Amnesty International, this law “empowers police and paramilitary forces to target women for harassment, violence, and imprisonment” – but is also guilty of many other human rights abuses towards women and men.

Likewise, public executions, a mainstay of Atwood’s Gilead, might seem archaic and barbaric to us – the last public hanging in Britain, of an Irishman and bomber named Michael Barrett, was in 1868 – but are still legal in Iran, and have also taken place in recent years in Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Somalia. A 2004 poll, meanwhile, revealed that two thirds of Americans were in favour of televising executions (a practice that is shown, incidentally, in Atwood's futuristic 2003 novel Oryx and Crake).

“I delayed writing [The Handmaid’s Tale] for about three years after I got the idea because I felt it was too crazy,'' Atwood said in 1986, in an interview with the New York Times. ''Then two things happened. I started noticing that a lot of the things I thought I was more or less making up were now happening, and indeed more of them have happened since the publication of the book.”

“You could say it's a response to 'it can't happen here',” she added. “When they say 'it can't happen here,' what they usually mean is Iran can't happen here, [Communist] Czechoslovakia can't happen here. And they're right, because this isn't there. But what could happen here?”

The answer, the author believed, lay in the right-wing Christian fundamentalism that still underpins many parts of American society, despite the country’s official separation of Church and State.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/horrors-handmaids-tale-arent-just-fiction-many-have-already/

I couldn't watch it but I fancied it when I read about it.
I might watch it on catch up....when I have waded through about 7 hours of Corrie.

What side is it on? Sounds interesting.

HoratioTarr wrote:Anyone watching it?

Written in 1985 -  a group of women are held in a former school and taught how to be Handmaids: womb slaves who must live with a family, be impregnated by its head, the husband, and bear children that they will give to his wife and never raise themselves. When they take on this role, even their names will no longer be their own: instead they must adopt the first name of whichever man they are assigned to, along with the prefix "Of". Our protagonist goes by Offred; we also encounter more than one Ofglen, and an Ofwarren.

But even as they prepare for this appalling fate (the alternative is expulsion to the sinister-sounding, radioactive waste-infested "Colonies" and almost certain death) the women cling to their former identities, secretly swapping their real names at night. "We learnt to lipread, our heads flat on the beds, turned sideways," our narrator tells us. "In this way we exchanged names, from bed to bed. Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June."

The psychological manipulation and identity-loss implicit in the use of the “Ofs” is a key part of Atwood’s nightmare  – and yet, shorn of the novel's horrific context, the idea that a woman might be required to relinquish her own birth name and taking on a man's isn't really that strange at all. In our own culture, it's been the norm for centuries that a woman will adopt father's last name when born, and her husband's when she marries. Only comparatively recently have some people started to question the inherent oddness of this traditional, patriarchal custom and seek out alternatives.

Gilead, the transformed North America in which the novel takes place, is a religious state, led by the Christian right (or at least by those who utilise its values and dogma). All its women, no matter what their status – and no woman in Gilead holds power – must adhere to a restrictive dress code. High-ranking Wives wear blue, while the Handmaids are clad in shapeless dresses which swathe their bodies in "the colour of blood" and partially conceal their faces. The regime is preoccupied with falling birthrates, meaning that childbirth is celebrated while abortion, naturally, is banned (and doctors who performed the operation in the past brutally executed).

But when imagining these kind of monstrous laws and communal punishments, for inspiration, author, Margaret Atwood only had to look to recent history, and to the world around her.

Almost everything described in the book has a parallel in a totalitarian or religious state, military regime, religious order or cult, or, chillingly, Western society today. The modest dresses of the Handmaids, for example, recall the habits of Catholic nuns, as well as traditional Islamic dress, which may be adopted as a matter of choice by women living in free societies, but can be forced upon them by the authorities in others.

As in The Handmaid’s Tale, state intervention in women’s clothing usually also indicates a wider pattern of oppression. Iran’s Islamic Republic, which has been in power since the country’s 1979 revolution, compels women to wear the veil  – according to Amnesty International, this law “empowers police and paramilitary forces to target women for harassment, violence, and imprisonment” – but is also guilty of many other human rights abuses towards women and men.

Likewise, public executions, a mainstay of Atwood’s Gilead, might seem archaic and barbaric to us – the last public hanging in Britain, of an Irishman and bomber named Michael Barrett, was in 1868 – but are still legal in Iran, and have also taken place in recent years in Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Somalia. A 2004 poll, meanwhile, revealed that two thirds of Americans were in favour of televising executions (a practice that is shown, incidentally, in Atwood's futuristic 2003 novel Oryx and Crake).

“I delayed writing [The Handmaid’s Tale] for about three years after I got the idea because I felt it was too crazy,'' Atwood said in 1986, in an interview with the New York Times. ''Then two things happened. I started noticing that a lot of the things I thought I was more or less making up were now happening, and indeed more of them have happened since the publication of the book.”

“You could say it's a response to 'it can't happen here',” she added.  “When they say 'it can't happen here,' what they usually mean is Iran can't happen here, [Communist] Czechoslovakia can't happen here. And they're right, because this isn't there. But what could happen here?”

The answer, the author believed, lay in the right-wing Christian fundamentalism that still underpins many parts of American society, despite the country’s official separation of Church and State.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/horrors-handmaids-tale-arent-just-fiction-many-have-already/

A SUPERBLY written piece! And a clever sideways look at the subjugation of women the world over, in the name of culture or religion. Everyone from the Amish to the Zoroastrians (from A-Z, see what I did there? )  is implicated,  .... some more so than others lol.

eddie wrote:What side is it on? Sounds interesting.

Channel 4

Syl wrote:I couldn't watch it but I fancied it when I read about it.
I might watch it on catch up....when I have waded through about 7 hours of Corrie.

7 hours of Corrie? Jesus.....I'd rather stick needles in my eyes.

HoratioTarr wrote:

Syl wrote:I couldn't watch it but I fancied it when I read about it.
I might watch it on catch up....when I have waded through about 7 hours of Corrie.

7 hours of Corrie?   Jesus.....I'd rather stick needles in my eyes.

So would I.

eddie wrote:

HoratioTarr wrote:

7 hours of Corrie?   Jesus.....I'd rather stick needles in my eyes.

So would I.

I never watch soaps...or those inane quiz shows...or light entertainment shows. Can't abide them.

I don't consider Corrie a soap, its more a way of life, I have watched it since I was a kid...the only TV programme I am bothered about recording when I'm away, its brilliant.