I don't understand The Handmaid's Tale

[PeaceBaby]

The central issue of the novel is control.

Control =/= money. While it is true that certain control can be useful for obtaining wealth, the sort shown in the book is not at all.

Wealth can be measured in more than strictly financial ways.

As far as being relevant in the here and now:

Is abortion still an issue, today?

Are gay rights still an issue, today?

Do certain religious groups still seek to "outlaw" these practices? One could argue that conservative religious extremists see these as abominations of God's laws, and these then become their platforms for political action.

The novel is a commentary about what happens to a society when religious ideology fuses with a government's mandate to solve social issues.

And in this novel, the government is a totalitarian regime controlled by men, with reproduction as the core locus of control.

 

[Haphazard]

And yet, we have since discovered that women are workers too. And workers contribute to the wealth.

Gay people won't reproduce, but that doesn't mean that they are still not contributing to the expansion of wealth Thus the debate is not gays but rather their marriage.

 

[Lark]

^ have you read the book "The Handmaid's Tale", Lark?

I have, at least I'm pretty sure that I have, its about a handmaiden, a female reproductive slave, its told in past perspective narrative as a recording that's discovered in a future after the fact.

 

[Haphazard]

I have, at least I'm pretty sure that I have, its about a handmaiden, a female reproductive slave, its told in past perspective narrative as a recording that's discovered in a future after the fact.

Yep, that's the one.

 

[Zarathustra]

Yep, that's the one.

Oh, in that case, I must've read it, too.

 

[Haphazard]

Perhaps I should have been tipped off by this:

Q: It's hard to pin down a genre for this novel. Is it science fiction?

A: No, it certainly isn't science fiction. Science fiction is filled with Martians and space travel to other planets, and things like that. That isn't this book at all. The Handmaid's Tale is speculative fiction in the genre of Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Nineteen Eighty-Four was written not as science fiction but as an extrapolation of life in 1948. So, too, The Handmaid's Tale is a slight twist on the society we have now.

Amazon.com disagrees with you, Ms. Atwood.

1984:
#1 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( P ) > Pynchon, Thomas
#2 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Authors, A-Z > ( O ) > Orwell, George
#4 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( O ) > Orwell, George

Brave New World:
dystopia(67)
futuristic fiction(42)
aldous huxley(41)
science fiction(41)

classic literature(39)
classic(18)
literature(15)
classics(14)

huxley(13)
dystopian(9)



You have offended science fiction fans everywhere.

 

[PeaceBaby]

H, you should really just do a little research. Atwood, as well as other some other authors who write futuristic fiction, rail against their novels being called "science fiction" because the genre tends to be snubbed. That's all. Historically, she has objected to the label, but tends to be less vocal about it now.

 

[Haphazard]

H, you should really just do a little research. Atwood, as well as other some other authors in the genre, rail against their novels being called "science fiction" because the genre tends to be snubbed. That's all. Historically, she has objected to the label, but tends to be less vocal about it now.

I know they tend to get "snubbed". I know very well the politics behind the label "science fiction and fantasy." This is why you should proudly stick up for Science Fiction and Fantasy, to prove the worth of the genre, to prove that 'genre' is simply a label for convenience on book shelves and not the be all to end all assignment of your books.

That attitude is exactly what causes things to happen like they do in her novel, don't you know! It doesn't matter the genre but the content of the novel's pages, whether that genre be science fiction or romance or gay or quaker! If the content of the novel is good, then that's all the more reason for it to be correctly labeled Science Fiction!

 

[PeaceBaby]

That attitude is exactly what causes things to happen like they do in her novel, don't you know! It doesn't matter the genre but the content of the novel's pages, whether that genre be science fiction or romance or gay or quaker! If the content of the novel is good, then that's all the more reason for it to be correctly labeled Science Fiction!

"It doesn't matter if she's fertile or not, she's still a woman and has value" - is that what you are trying to (ironically) say?

At any rate, an author generally feels a right to classify their own works - they did write them, after all.

 

[Haphazard]

"It doesn't matter if she's fertile or not, she's still a woman and has value" - is that what you are trying to (ironically) say?

At any rate, an author generally feels a right to classify their own works - they did write them, after all.

It's not really the author that gets to classify, it's the publisher, because they did publish them. It's all about the money, after all -- or perhaps they give the author more rights in Canada, I have no idea.

Do people not realize that by 'distancing' themselves from Science Fiction, they are making it worse? She's gone past calling her book a woman that has value and dressed it in a suit to masquerade as a man.

It's the money, the money. If people think of her book as "science fiction" they will not buy it because they think so little of science fiction. This doesn't stop some people, however: look at Kurt Vonnegut.

 

[PeaceBaby]

^ I didn't say the author gets to "classify" their own work, at all. I am saying they likely feel the right to do so. Irrespective of nationality.

Read this too: Why don't we love science fiction? - Times Online

 

[Haphazard]

Pushing aside the Science Fiction in favor of being "great literature" give an inflated label to "literary fiction," which has just as much crap as the "science fiction" genre, perhaps more so, because there is more push to have one's novel labeled as it.

Which is disgusting.

 

[Coriolis]

I read The Handmaid's Tale, years ago, so my memory of it may be a bit rusty. It made a big impression on me precisely because I saw in contemporary society the seeds of what could all too easily lead to the kind of society depicted. It wasn't that I actually thought this might happen; I relied, perhaps naively, on mitigating better impulses to stop things before they got that far. I saw it more as the logical endpoint of many of the arguments used by opponents of reproductive freedom and women's empowerment. In other words, if someone did not espouse the type of reproductive control and enforced gender roles shown in The Handmaid's Tale, it was inconsistent for them to espouse the more modest forms of control showing up on actual ballots and legislation.

If I recall correctly from the book, the U.S. as a political entity had disintegrated or fragmented due to factors that may not have been well specified. Gilead thus encompassed geographically just a subset of the current U.S. The protagonist's attempt to flee with her family at the start of the book shows that things were different just across the border. The deterioration of her status after college may seem rapid, but is not unrealistic. The Nazis' restrictions on Jews were implemented just as quickly, broadly, and effectively.

 

[Haphazard]

I perhaps do not see the coherency in society that you do. It's nice that you do, I suppose, because you believe you can get things done, but also that things like that seem more attainable. I see degeneration anarchy as more likely.