When I first read The Handmaid’s Tale, I was a teenager. In a few years, I would start to keep records about my reading: a log and handwritten (or typed( passages that I favoured along the way. The log in a notebook (usually practical rather than pretty) and the notes beginning with a light pencil line in the margin and a list of page numbers so I could relocate the passages and copy them (finally, erasing the pencil marks after notetaking).
These handwritten pages are either from my 1993 or 2004 reread (what you can glimpse in the photograph). I’ve always reread the same copy, a 1986 oversized paperback, Houghton Mifflin U.S. (maybe the American paperback was released before the Canadian paperback, sometimes that happened). And I have an e-file with passages too. So the page numbers correspond across the years.
It’s been interesting to see which passages resonated with which reading. At some point, the disruption in Offred’s relationship with her husband and her memories about their married life (pre-Gilead) were of particular interest. At some point, I found the intrigue (would either her present-day romance or the Commander’s illicit behaviour be discovered) most appealing. At some point, I was fascinated with the glimpses of the resistance efforts. At some point, I was obsessed about the small snippets about how Gilead worked: no single siege of world-building, but in small snippets, we learn about everything from currency and grocery shopping, to education and rituals.
Over the years, the writing of the book – the shaping of it, the crafting of it – became the most interesting element for me. I still wanted to read the story, but (maybe partly because I remembered what happened, increasingly clearly) I wanted to study the storytelling.
Once I began to recognize other layers to the book, I peered harder, eager to see more. So, about the world-building, for instance, once I realized that the way that Atwood releases that information to us, as readers, in glimpses, reflects the way that even the most observant handmaid assembles her knowledge of the world (i.e. what is visible from the restricted vision offered by the winged headpiece). Well, I was all in, keen to unravel more details like this.
It’s not necessary. One doesn’t have to peel back the layers of Margaret Atwood’s construction: one can simply enjoy the story. After all, it’s a compelling story. An archetypal story. Can she endure? What is she enduring? Will she survive? Maybe she’ll resist? How might she escape? These are burning questions.
For readers who read primarily for entertainment: this is a page-turner. And for readers who read primarily for information: the story being based on real-life events, invites historians and social scientists to recognize the author’s recreations and allusions. For writers: there are plenty of layers to consider (structure, characterization, language, themes, threading). These different access points are one of the reasons that I believe this book has endured.
There are a couple of elements which particularly have caught my interest on this read. The way time is dealt with and experienced.
Did I even notice this before? The way it’s measured in bells, yes. But also the references in the story (like when she imagines the Commander’s wife’s knitting being ripped out nightly so that she can reknit it the next day – weaving allusion, anyone?).
Maybe I’ll share more about this another day. It seems like half my notes are related to this. And also the way time’s experienced by readers. Not least of which being that the contents of the book seem to fly past. What a grim tale: how quickly we devour it. (I’ve heard some readers make this observation of The Testaments too.)
Something else that I hadn’t registered the same way on earlier readings, is the attention Atwood pays to the idea that the tenets of Gilead may resonate with some elements of Christian theology (the Puritans were an inspiration) but that Gilead was warring with some Christians as well.
As a younger reader, I was not attentive to this kind of distinction; I wasn’t equipped to recognize divergent views within a religion. Over the years, I must have gradually come to understand how divergent belief systems can be, even among theists who share a belief in the same creator: this stands out to me now, in an era when so many people are overlooking or misunderstanding or ignoring the distinction between the religion of Islam and radical and extremist Islamic sects.
Which leads me to the aspect of The Handmaid’s Tale which caught my interest hard and fast on this rereading: “Where I am is not a prison but a privilege, as Aunt Lydia said, who was in love with either/or.”
So on page eight, I am interested, yes, in the idea that, in the mid-80s, readers have a glimpse of Atwood’s early interest in prison systems. (Soon after, we would meet Grace Marks in Alias Grace. And, more recently, we have her retelling of The Tempest in Hag-Seed and The Heart Doesn’t Last.)
But what I am most interested in here is how she has identified this tendency towards either/or thinking, which seems, to me, to be at the heart of the divisiveness that proliferates on- and offline these days.
This is what I’m thinking about most at all, as I continue to turn the pages in my rereading of The Handmaid’s Tale in 2019. My notes this time around are more fragmented, more disconnected from the text itself: I put down the book more often. To revisit, to revise. To fret, to reframe. To question. To wonder.
If you, too, have been rereading The Handmaid’s Tale, what has stood out for you in this reading? If you have recently read it for the first time, what drew you to reading and surprised you about the book?
I love so much that you have kept all the notes from all your readings of the book. What a treasure! I suspect I will be rereading the book before I read The Testaments, maybe early next year.
Well, it’s the 15th today, so my reading of The Testaments is poised to begin. I have a feeling that rereading THT will be useful, but how useful, that I’ll know soon enough.
The thing that stood out in my mind, after reading The Handmaid’s Tale for the first time, was the scene where she rubs butter on her face. Whenever I thought of The Handmaid’s Tale that’s what I thought of. I still wonder why… but I’m guessing it’s because I used to hate putting anything on my face, and so putting butter on my face seemed unbearable. Now I think the most interesting thing about it is trying to find clues as to how things work behind the scenes and who’s involved. I’m wondering if The Testaments will help me with that. I’ll soon find out!
You have brought up so many things to think about in this post!
The butter! I still remember the first time I noticed the butter. How odd that struck me. This time I noticed the details about the cream that the Commander obtains for her, too, how it wasn’t very good quality, but she was still pleased to have it. And how a product was something she particularly yearned for. (But, then, she was already reading the books in his study, and playing Scrabble by then, even occasionally sipping on a drink, so maybe there weren’t that many other requests she could make, practically speaking? Yes, I was trying to pay attention to that this time, too, to see how it meshes with (or conflicts with) information we get in the second book. Just a couple more days!
Hmm I really like this idea you raise about the either/or problem. You, and Atwood, are so right, that online culture has led to this division among people. Why can’t we meet eachother in the middle? Why does it have to be either/or? Handmaid’s Tale is the kind of book that rewards a re-read, which is why people can’t seem to get enough of it 🙂
Why can’t we even acknowledge that there is a middle, let alone whether we’d be willing to meet there?! So often now, conversations are shut down before they can begin: lines are drawn, sides claimed (or assigned), and that’s that. Honestly, I’m still thinking about why/how this particular book has become such a touchstone. Do you have any theories? It’s hard not to point to the 2016 U.S. election, but of course it’s not that simple: that was just a symptom of a broader shift…
Well, women’s reproductive rights suddenly being under attack by the far right probably has alot to do with it. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of this in Ontario yet, but a bill has been proposed here in Alberta that will give doctors and nurses the right to perform or REFUSE TO REFER a person based on their conscience. i.e. if a doctor doesn’t want to provide contraception/abortion/any sort of medical care to someone based on his religious beliefs, he doesn’t have to AND he’s not required to refer them elsewhere either. WTF????
That’s a great connection you’ve drawn. It’s only recently (since the mosque shooting in Montreal) I’ve actually even thought much about how different governance is between provinces, so that’s news to me about the challenges to reproductive rights in Alberta. Over the summer I watched a really interesting video from the library called Birthright: A War Story. It’s entirely American and I wasn’t expecting to learn much that would apply, but what I did learn was how complex the legal processes around this issue are, how powers on both right and left work for years to direct changes that don’t surface into the public view until things are well under way, how insidious this process is, and how apathetic we are, as citizens, “trusting” that we know when we need to act.
How special that you still have your notes from all those years ago. I can see how rewarding it is to track your reactions over multiple rereads.
One aspect that I can say was true with every reading was that I would always expect it to be a slower/denser/harder read, but then I’d just race through it. Even this time, I resisted stopping to write things down or flag passages: I just wanted to keep turning the pages.
I read it when I was about 18 and then this year at 47 – it was a very interesting experience. I didn’t really think about where I would have been in that system when I was young, whereas I thought a lot about that this time.
I think that was true for me too. I remember thinking really seriously about this on my 2011 reread though. Until then — maybe because it’s not something Offred is preoccupied by, given her own position (of relative privilege) — I didn’t see very far past Offred’s gaze, to the various hierarchies that were supporting the system. And I don’t think I gave the Unwomen much of a thought at all.
Like you, it’s yonks since I read this and I’m sure my reactions would be very different. I am keen to revisit it, but a little nervous, I confess…
I reread in 2004 and then again in 2011, and I was quite anxious in 2011 because between them I had read an unusual number of classics and literary prizewinners in that preceding seven years, and I was sure that I would find my taste had changed and that Atwood’s novel just wouldn’t be “all that”. But I found even more layers to it than I’d recognized before. Don’t be afraid: it won’t disappoint!