At first I thought it would be a difficult read for me because the narrative jumps from the present to the past, or to random memories and thoughts, but I gradually got used to it and really enjoyed the book. It was something new for me.
I finished the book today and I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m pretty creeped out.
Despite the fact that the book was published in 1985, it seems very up-to-date. The idea that such a regime was created (among other reasons) because >!“men could no longer control women” seems too real. I believe that there are men who would like to have women fully in their power. To control what they can wear, what they can do and especially what they must do.!<
In many countries, the government tries to control birth rate by banning abortions. Ideas against the freedom of women similar to those in the book can actually be seen in today’s society.
I can’t formulate it well, but the emergence of similar restrictions for women, even if not in such a drastic form, does not seem unrealistic to me.
Did you have similar feelings after reading this book ?
Thank you for your input !
I didn’t know about the inspiration by Iran before this discussion but I will definitely learn more about it.
I think yes. But as I said - similar - not precisely the same. Arranged or forced marriage still exists. I read that there are groups online which call for violence on women, rape included (more radical incel groups).
I hope not.
I agree that she basically took every bad thing that has ever happened to women and made a regime out of it. But I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. At the very least, it shows what has been going on somewhere in history (or the possible future, if we’re talking about abortion laws). And if it makes people learn more about such wrongdoings (or realize that they are/were real) and educate themselves about the issue of limiting freedom, then the book has the right effect.
While that is the primary inspiration that Atwood herself cites, I would say that the main trigger for her writing the novel was the rise of the evangelical right in America under Reagan.
It’s very hard to understand now just how dominated America was by the liberal, urban upper middle class from the forties to the late seventies. The Republican party was still just the party of rich people who didn’t want to pay tax, and the Democrats had increasingly dropped their traditional base in the South. Even when there was a nominally right-wing President, the balance of power rested with liberals. Eisenhower basically laughed at the members of his party who wanted to repeal Social Security and it was under Nixon that abortion was legalized; Nixon’s administration also created the EPA.
Basically, the reason Fox News keeps going on about the ‘liberal elite’ is because it strikes a chord for the Boomers, who grew up when America was a much more liberal country.
Then Reagan won the 1980 election and the liberal upper middle class lost. their. shit.
They couldn’t understand where these people had come from. Kind of like the shock when Trump won only even more so, because by 2016 everyone was used to the religious right but in the late 1970s it wasn’t seen as a serious force in politics. Previously evangelicals hadn’t voted as a block; Southerners had voted Democrat in line with their economic interests while conservatives elsewhere in the country had voted for the Republic ideals of self-reliance and American patriotism more than their religious stance. It was Reagan (or his campaign managers) who took advantage of the South’s swing away from the Democrats to pull the evangelicals and other religious groups into a powerful religion-based voting demographic.
A lot of liberals had blithely assumed that religion was a Medieval relic that wasn’t a real force in American society any more. So Reagan’s victory triggered a not inconsiderable amount of hysteria along the lines of: ‘we’re only one step away from a Christo-fascist theocracy’.
They weren’t, of course. Nor were they in 2000 when Bush won and we had to go through the whole song and dance again. But that didn’t stop Atwood jumping on the bandwagon.