For the most part, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It reminded me, in many ways, of George Orwell’s 1984 in that a completely disturbing reality is recounted by our narrator in an unvarnished and matter-of-fact way. Offred (I hesitate to call her this) conveys the image of those hanging from the Wall much in the same manner that she describes the brown toast and runny eggs she had for breakfast. I think these detached descriptions are what make Atwood’s Tale especially chilling.
That being said, there was a particular scene near the beginning of the novel where Ofglen and Offred are studied and essentially “othered” by the gaze of Japanese tourists (pp.31). [Are they happy? How can they be happy? I can feel their bright black eyes on us, the way they lean a little forward to catch our answers, the women especially, but the men too: we are secret, forbidden, we excite them…. “Yes, we are very happy”, I murmur. I have to say something. What else can I say?] They, in their red veils, become objects; Subordination personified. I suppose, in many ways, this constitutes the perspective that many Westerners in “the time before” might have had about women who wear hijabs or burkas. I would argue that this perception not only reflective of racialized stereotypes, but rests entirely on issues of white privilege. While I can’t be certain that Atwood was attempting to address debates of gender subordination in countries that uphold these customs, I took a bit of an issue with how this scene played out. If Atwood was indeed attempting to connect the exploitation of the Handmaids to women who, for religious reasons or otherwise, wear veils outside of her dystopian universe, she, as a privileged Canadian woman, would have assumed the authority to speak for them.
Again, despite this, I considered this novel a compelling and cleverly written read.
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