KOCHI: The president was shot, the congress was attacked, the constitution was nullified to protect a terrified population, martial law was imposed. And the United States was no more. In its place a new country was established, Gilead, governed by a religious fascist regime. These are terrifying glimpses shared by the protagonist Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale, a name that announced that she is now “of Fred” (he was a commander of Gilead), offers a disjointed history of handmaids, the ‘two-legged wombs, that’s all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices”.
In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood tells the story of a woman who witnessed the fall of democracy. Her life was reduced to that of a slave who makes children for commanders and their wives. In Gilead, there’s not much a woman can do anyway. They are not allowed to read, write, earn money, own properties, or be in love. They can only be wives of commanders, married to men of low ranks, domestic servants (when they are too old to bear children), or handmaids — fertile women who are forced to bear children for officials.
Offred holds her experiences to herself, reluctant to give everything away. We get glimpses of her past in the US; she was married to a divorced man and had a daughter who was taken away from her when her marriage was annulled by Gilead’s law. She tells us about her captive life in haunting details while maintaining a humorous tone. She takes daily shopping trips with her companion, a fellow handmaid, Offglen.
She sometimes visits The Wall on her way back to pray for the hanging bodies of gender traitors and dissenters. Once a month, she undergoes a ceremonial rape by the commander in his wife’s presence. She learns about the resistance, falls in love with the commander’s chauffeur, gets pregnant, and is desperate to get out of her captivity. Even though June doesn’t provide a detailed history of Gilead, she gives us brief glimpses. “It was after they shot the president and shot down the congress that the army declared a state of emergency.
They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.” She recounts how scared everyone was believing the official narrative. “Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons, they said. The roadblocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn’t be too careful.”
The powerful and unapologetic political novel, first published in 1985, found relevance during Trump’s America, where the government tried to curtail a woman’s reproductive rights. The grim account, told completely from June’s (Offred’s) point of view, is particularly haunting in the present times across the world, where right-wing and religious theocratic politics is gaining huge momentum.