Haunted by a Handmaid

Written in 1984, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is a literary gut punch. It has been saddled with nearly every literary label under the sun from science fiction or feminist to dystopian or speculative fiction. Truly, it is an amalgamation of all of these terms because it borrows a bit from each area. The horror of the novel, however, lies in its inherent possibility.

The story takes place in the not-too-distant future. The president has been assassinated and Congress "machine-gunned" by a group of Islamic fanatics...or so the citizens are told. The Constitution is suspended and a new law is in place: women are no longer allowed to hold property or jobs, own or acquire money, and are no longer allowed to read. The government has been overthrown by an extreme Christian-fundamentalist theocracy who turns the United States into the Republic of Gilead. Because of the high rate of birth defects and the plunging numbers of healthy Caucasian births, any woman of childbearing years with "viable ovaries" is taken from her family and forced to train as a Handmaid. Handmaids have but one responsibility: become pregnant and carry that child to term. These women are garbed in red with white "wings" around their face to act as blinders. Other women are chosen to serve as household servants or Marthas, and wear green. The highest rank of women is that of the Wives, who wear blue. Each household is run by a Commander, the husband of a Wife. If the Commander and his Wife are unable to conceive (which, in this government, is always the fault of the woman, never the man), they are assigned a Handmaid. The Handmaid lays with the Commander once a month in hopes to conceive. After three failed pregnancies, the Handmaid is declared an Unwoman and sent off to The Colonies to clean up toxic waste (with an expected lifespan of no more than three years).

Punishment in Gilead is taken very seriously. If a woman is caught reading (a sin for women in Gilead), the third offense is punishable by the removal of a hand. Attempts at escape are met with instant death and any kind of dissention from the government or their official brand of Christianity is rewarded with either a Salvaging (public hanging) or a Particicution (a ceremony in which you are beaten, then dragged in front of a mob who will rip you apart). There are very few friendships in Gilead, as the Eyes (government spies) are everywhere and executions are frequent. However, the novel's main character Offred ("Of-Fred", named for her Commander) retains hope that she will someday be reunited with her husband Luke and their daughter. Through the horrors that exist in Gilead and the novel, the reader is buoyed on by Offred's recollections of her former life and by the quiet hope to which she clings.

Often considered a sister novel to works such as George Orwell's 1984 or Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, Atwood's story of a simple Handmaid is a tale that is sure to haunt any reader for years to come.

For other reviews of this novel, please see the following:
Powell's Books
Amazon Reviews
Good Reads

Bookmark in Lieu of a Breakdown

I have two 8-week online classes ending this week as well as some big projects due in my other classes, so I haven't had time to put together a literature review for this week's post. Don't despair, Constant Reader (to borrow a phrase from The King)! I still have something up my sleeve.

Since we won't be having a discussion on this post this week, I thought I could leave you with some recommendations on where to go here in Springfield for book discussions. The Springfield-Greene County Library system has a whole list of book clubs and book discussions throughout the spring. This list has discussions planned all the way through May 26th.

Need a way to keep the kids busy and get them more involved in reading? Try taking them to one of the Library's storytimes. For the tweens and older kids, there are the TeenNight events. All events at the Springfield-Greene County Library locations are free of charge and open to the public.

This is where I place the bookmark for this week, ladies and gents. We'll pick up where we left off next week, hopefully a bit saner and less maxed-out!

Love & Literature

I was a Jane Austen virgin until the fall of 2006 or so. I picked up a copy of Austen's second novel Pride & Prejudice and immediately fell in love. How could I have gone so long without reading this masterpiece?

Originally titled First Impressions, this brilliant piece of literature begins with the introduction of the Bennett family and the story centers around the Bennetts' daughter Elizabeth. Early on, Elizabeth Bennett makes the acquaintance of Mr. Darcy (the new renter at Netherfield in the Bennetts' neighborhood) and they strongly dislike one another. They each despise the others' pride, but it is their own pride which makes it difficult to overcome the prejudices they have against one another. As events unfold throughout the novel, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy slowly come to learn more of one another and dislike turns to apathy, then to affection, then eventually to a great love.

Like all of her novels, this Austen work has a very narrow scope, encompassing merely a few families in a specific area of England, with very little mention of the surrounding country or the world at large. Any references to distant places are just that: distant and cursory. Jane Austen is renowned the world over for her razor-sharp satire of English society in the early nineteenth century, but is also lauded for showing such an unfettered view of a woman's experiences in that time.

As much as Austen mocks the rigidity of society and its norms in the Victorian era, she was also very dedicated to tradition. In this way, it comes as no surprise that Austen's writing style is very consistent with the way a woman was meant to behave in that era. One of the most common complaints about Austen novels is that there is a lack of overwhelming emotion, which is understandable because Austen tends to shy away from such effusions of feeling. However, the careful reader will not find it hard to sense Austen's--and her characters'--subtle passion throughout all of her novels. Women in Austen's time were meant to think sensibly and rationally which meant that outbursts of emotion and passion were discouraged. However, suppressing those feelings didn't mean that they weren't nearly bursting from the seams of their corsets, much like any Austen novel's binding is practically splitting from the passion held within its pages.

For other reviews of this wonderful classic story, please visit the following:
Amazon Customer Reviews
Good Reads
CHUD.com

Also, the entire novel can be read in linked-hypertext at Pemberly or in book form at Google Books.

Creating a Monster

With the reanimation of lifeless limbs into a coherent, eloquent being, Mary Shelley gave birth to a literary classic. Written based on a personal nightmare, a simple story of creator and creation has become much more than she may have dreamed.

Shelley's first and most famous novel, Frankenstein, is considered to be one of the very first science-fiction novels and centers on two strong main characters: Dr. Frankenstein and his unnamed monster. Gifted in many ways, young Dr. Frankenstein decides to combine stolen limbs from corpses to create a new, living body and soon becomes fanatical about the idea. Months upon months of his life are devoted solely to the success of his experimental creation, causing him to overlook his own declining health. At last, on a dreary November night (as all scary stories seem to begin), his creation begins to move. Frightened beyond words at the hideous face that searches his own, the doctor runs from that which he has created. Thus begins a tense and lengthy game of cat-and-mouse between the doctor and his experiment.

Shelley does an excellent job at illustrating the hardships that both Dr. Frankenstein and his monster endure on their search for one another. Dr. Frankenstein's misery is suffered primarily through a combination of grief, anger, and guilt. Frankenstein's monster, however, lives in misery because he cannot find the two things that he truly seeks: love and acceptance.

Abandoned by his creator in a world that he does not know, Frankenstein's monster searches vainly for friendship and acceptance by a society that sees him only as a hideous abomination. Granted, the monster knows that he is hideous and wretched, but he hopes to woo people to overlook his appearance with his charm, eloquence, and beautiful words. He nearly finds success with this approach in a blind man, but the man's son sees the monster and wrenches his father away. With the removal of such a receptive individual, all of his hopes for love and companionship evaporate. Frustrated with both his inability to be accepted and society's inability to accept him, Frankenstein's monster vows revenge for his birth and plans to wreak his revenge on the man who caused his misery and his very life: his creator, Dr. Frankenstein. The monster carries out his revenge on the doctor by killing all whom he loves, therefore causing the doctor as much grief and misery as he feels himself.

It is hard to determine which of the two main characters in the novel is the "bad guy" or villain. Some would say that the villain is Dr. Frankenstein for creating a living being and then turning his back on it. Others might say that the monster is the worse of the two evils for killing so many innocent people in order to put pain upon another. Both of these characters obviously have numerous vices and issues, but they each are good people at the core; one is essentially the other.

Since Dr. Frankenstein and his creation are, at the end of the day, one and the same, it is fitting that the title is simply Frankenstein. Anything other than this simple name may have put an entirely different spin on the story or may have put more emphasis on one character than on the other. This way, the reader is allowed to consider both characters as the primary focus of the novel.

This novel has several cliched themes that could be applied such as "accept the person, not the appearance", "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", or "do not judge a book by its cover". One of the most important ideas expressed in the story is that the most basic thing that any being on the planet needs to survive is simply love. If Frankenstien's monster had only been accepted and shown genuine love and caring, Dr. Frankenstien would not have lost his entire family to the beast and would most likely have lived and died a fairly happy man. The monster may have lived to become accepted by society as a whole, therefore changing society into an accepting and all-encompassing mass. Yet, such things are too good to be true, and much too pleasant to be the subject of a classic Gothic novel.

For other reviews of this classic, please visit the following:
Challenging Destiny
My Hideous Progeny
Amazon Editorial Reviews