Handmaid's Tale 1

 “The bell that measures time is ringing”… It’s time for…REVOLUTION.  I can’t wait for the women to f*** s*** up and break "free" "free" "free" from their chauvinist oppressors! 

It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge......
http://www.businessweek.com/careers/managementiq/archives/suicide%20woman.bmp

“It isn’t running away they’re afraid of.  We wouldn’t get far.  It’s those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.” (8)  This line reminds me of something a Petco clerk told me days ago.  I have three Spanish-speaking, undocumented turtles (for real), as I have mentioned in previous DBs.  I don’t like to feed them the turtle food bought in stores because it looks like soilent green and reminds me of eating cereal for every meal—gross.  Anyway, I feed my turtles live fish, and depending on their appetite, large gold-fish.  I watch as they tear fish apart, guts hanging out, heads sinking to the bottom of their aquarium.  But back to what the Petco clerk told me about the fish as I was buying them.  We were talking about how odd it was that huge beautiful goldfish were labeled “FEEDERS” and were ticketed at 17cents a fish.  The conversation progressed into the logistics of making sure the fish didn’t die before my turtles could eat them.  He said that they actually die of fright, but also some simply commit suicide and float to the top of the water.  I don’t know how realistic this is—that they commit suicide, I mean.  But I have witnessed how large goldfish, when put into an aquarium with turtles will start dropping like flies (but not at the hands of their predators)—or in this case floating belly-up? 

I don’t know why this particular mention of checking out early brought up this tangent, but I think it has to do with the feeling I got reading the first chapters of The Handmaid’s Tale.  Women felt trapped.  They felt caged.  They wanted out—they “yearned for the future” (3).   Even their clothes reeks of imprisonment and oppression:  “The skirt is ankle-length, full, gathered to a flat yoke that extends over the breasts, the sleeves are full.  The white wings too are prescribed issue; they are to keep us from seeing, but also from being seen” (8).  They may as well be shards of glass moving through society, transparent, invisible from the world and invisible to the world.  This same sentiment of wanting to check out for lack of freedom, a future, the ability to “want,” do, or think, is echoed in chapter 10.  She sings to herself: “I feel so lonely, baby, I feel so lonely, baby, I feel so lonely baby, I feel so lonely baby, I could die.” (54).

I mean, this dystopian book is supposed is really a reflection of society as it was (and in many ways, still is).  Black men, women, gay people, immigrants, are all devalued and in many ways criminalized.  Even the language in our laws, in our bureaucracy, we find unjust, hateful criminalizations.  Like the word “alien” for “immigrant.”  Still to this day, in the immigration system, undocumented workers have “alien numbers.”  They get something akin to a bar code with 9 numbers when they enter the country (through legal avenues).  In The Handmaid’s Tale, The criminalization is so pervasive that for women, even the act of touching—probably the most basic human behavior—is considered sinful and criminal:  “I hunger to commit the act of touch” (11).  Not only is this criminalization of women pervasive in their society and family units, but also within themselves.  Who would consider touching an act to “commit” if not someone who has been inculcated with misogynistic  and hyper-prudish values?  Even suicide is outlawed.  When she finishes her singing, “I feel so lonely I could die” she speculates on the idea of singing, singing songs with the word “free” and suicide.  All three things are forbidden—for women.  Even thoughts and ideas were criminalized.  Aunt Lydia, for example, cannot even bring herself to articulate what disgusts her.  She merely calls them things.  And most infuriating is that these bullshit laws apply only to women even when empirical evidence suggests otherwise.

You think you're so tricky. NO SIR! Let's play spot the chauvinist.
http://cdn.thegloss.com/files/2010/07/male_chauvinist.jpg

This is especially evident in the scene in the doctor’s office where the doctor—probably, likely, definitely, equally misogynistic and disrespectful—tries to “help [her]”.  She says:  I almost gasp: he’s said a forbidden word.  Sterile.  There is no such thing as a sterile man anymore, not officially.  There are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that’s the law” (61).  This is so ridiculous.  Ironically, as invisible socially, politically, spiritually, and in most all other ways as women are in that society, the focus is on them.  People do not speak of men’s problems—erectile dysfunction no doubt—even when, clearly the man is at fault.   Moreover, the doctor separates her “torso” from the rest of her being and her face.  He “deals with a torso only.” (60). Systemic criminalization and dehumanization go hand in hand.

For your viewing pleasure (or rather angst!):