by Angie Liew
“Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.”
These lines are from Margaret Atwood’s 1985 The Handmaid’s Tale, recounting a story from the point of view of a woman abducted to be a Handmaid by the totalitarian regime of Gilead, forced to surrender her body as a vessel for childbirth. Trapped in a world where her thoughts are silenced, and her desperate attempts to cling onto hopes of escape, we are brought along on a journey witnessing much of her personal suffering under sexist oppression at its extreme, and the internal struggle she faces, refusing to let go of a past she begins to accept is no longer possible.
This novel first fell into my hands in tenth grade and has since become a book I can tirelessly read. Atwood emphasized how public compliance and lack of resistance allowed the patriarchal government to slowly, but surely grasp the freedom of all its citizens. This story is one that vividly paints the disturbing possibility that society, as we know it, could one day crumble at the hands of our own ignorance. Or… has it already begun?
From the first page to the very last, Atwood’s incredible storytelling warps us into the dystopian world she created with her words. The point is simply this: Occurrences we likely once believed could only exist in fiction have since found their way into reality. Who is to say it may never happen again? Atwood’s philosophy revolves around the simple truth that dystopias do not simply show up out of nowhere. Like the tale of the boiling frog, the autocratic government’s rise to power was slow; beginning with the gradual exclusion of women from equality by restricting jobs they could do, and making it socially acceptable that they became dependent on men to survive. The main problem was that not enough people spoke up about the matter. Protests were quickly crushed, and it was not long before no one dared to speak out at all—in fact, no one wanted to.
They accepted this as their new ordinary, and this is a dangerous thought.
Under the regime’s rule, we live the Handmaids’ life through the eyes of the protagonist, Offred. I found myself troubled by the subtle, yet progressive brainwashing and submissive values that were forcibly instilled upon women in Gilead: Intentionally objectified for sexual purposes, and used as scapegoats for the social and environmental destruction present. I could not help but reflect upon how examples of these scenarios are already so pervasive in our society today. It was only upon reading further into Atwood’s inspirations for the novel that I realized she had deliberately based many aspects of her writing on real, historical events. From the regime’s demonizing and persecution of innocent women like in the Salem Witch Trials, to the use of slave naming of servants in Gilead ‘Commander’s’ households, and even the secret prostitution rings of Nazi Germany which inspired Atwood’s Jezebel club in the novel.
Just as Handmaids were indoctrinated to believe that they deserved the sexual violence they received for their “immodest” clothing or actions, rape culture is incredibly prevalent in modern day and age. Expecting girls to “cover up” instead of enforcing a mindset of respect in young men is a prime example of how we have become compliant with granting entitlement to certain groups of the population at the expense of another. How has this become ordinary to so many of us?
Just as Handmaids and Marthas (house servants) are used and treated as assets for the benefit of their Commanders (Gilead’s ruling government officials), the patriarchal sex trafficking industry is nothing new. In fact, in many areas around the world, girls as young as eleven years of age are often lured, kidnapped, or tricked into a world where their bodies are exploited. Often treated like animals, living in unhealthy conditions with no means of true free will, it sounds extremely convincing that they live worse lives than even the Handmaids in Atwood’s depiction of a dystopia.
It is important to realize that the scenes in The Handmaid’s Tale are meant to remain in fiction.
We must remember that we cannot wait for the horrors she describes to seep into reality, and we need to urgently push back the situations that are already becoming part of our definition of ‘ordinary’. This novel expresses the concern that our world can just as easily fall prey to tyrannical leaders in modern times, without the use of any futuristic brainwave-controlling devices. Atwood makes it clear: When we are compliant to changing what we accept as “ordinary” instead of resisting the changes we know are unethical, our downfall as a society is close.
Readers, I implore you to take the warnings between the lines of Atwood’s masterpiece. It is not just another award-winning bundle of pages, but a work that holds truth in that we need to keep our voices heard amidst the political and social chaos. Now more than ever in this era of information, it is time we focus on shining light on the topics that truly matter; topics that affect real lives of those within our global communities. Ignorance may be bliss, but whether or not you will stand aware of the issues plaguing our society, and fight the fists of oppression that seek to silence advocacy, the choice is yours.