The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

I read this book for a college lit class back in the 90s. Prior to preparing this review, I believed the book to have been written in the 60s, when, in fact, it was first published in 1985. While it is fictitious in nature, today's reader need only open their imagination to feel an eerie sense that such events "could" be possible in present day society.

Imagine waking up one morning, grabbing your keys and jutting out the door to the stark realization that you've been stripped of all civil rights by virtue of being female. That's a relatively accurate account of chapter 1 of this novel, which goes on to illustrate a post-revolution society in which many women fall barren and the young, fertile females become a highly valued commodity for reproduction. The book is told from the perspective of one young woman who is forecefully removed from her family (a husband and young daughter), to discover she has been stripped of her rights to read, work, and hold money or property of her own. She is "recruited" (imprisoned) as a Handmaid and placed in a school for training (brainwashing) on proper behavior, etiquette, and general re-conditioning in the ways of the new world. She will be dressed in the equivalent of a nun's habit and will be schooled to be silent and submissive. As a Handmaid, she will be assigned to some elite married couple of status for the sole purpose of reproduction.

Yes, you heard right. The Handmaid's "assignment," if you will, is to act as breeding stock and produce offspring for barren couples. Literally, the Handmaid will be a third person in the bed of a married couple. Obviously, some of these situations get out of hand, and the Handmaid is the one who suffers the consequences.

As I write this, I feel the need to re-read this story myself. It is truly a classic for its time. I recall feeling not only for the Handmaids and their lost loved ones, but also somewhat for the wives of the men who use the young ladies for reproduction. At the very least, it is thought-provoking, and, at the worst, horrifying to imagine such a total and complete reversal of civil liberties. Definitely a must-read.