{"id":5069,"date":"2025-02-23T13:24:17","date_gmt":"2025-02-23T13:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/?p=5069"},"modified":"2025-02-23T13:52:08","modified_gmt":"2025-02-23T13:52:08","slug":"opinion-why-we-should-all-still-read-the-handmaids-tale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/?p=5069","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Why We Should All Still Read \u2018The Handmaid\u2019s Tale\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>5 Minute, 29 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n

Margaret Atwood\u2019s The Handmaid\u2019s Tale has been endlessly dissected, criticised, misinterpreted and more recently, dismissed. Some argue that it reinforces the very patriarchal structures it seeks to critique. Others say it\u2019s become outdated, an artifact of 1980s feminist paranoia rather than a relevant warning for today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are all wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Handmaid\u2019s Tale isn\u2019t just relevant\u2014it\u2019s necessary. In a world where authoritarianism is creeping ever closer, where reproductive rights are being chipped away and where radicalised misogyny is growing louder online and in politics, Atwood\u2019s novel remains a vital and harrowing read. Dismissing it now is not just ignorant\u2014it\u2019s dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Power of Dystopia: A Warning, Not a Blueprint<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s easy to misunderstand dystopian fiction. Some critics claim The Handmaid\u2019s Tale presents women as helpless, as if the novel is an exercise in fatalism rather than a call to arms. But that critique misses the point. Atwood doesn\u2019t hand us a Hollywood-style rebellion with a perfectly structured resistance movement and a fearless heroine leading the charge. Instead, she gives us a slow, suffocating collapse into totalitarianism, a regime that doesn\u2019t just enforce oppression but convinces its victims to comply. The true horror of Gilead isn\u2019t just the brutal restrictions; it\u2019s how they become normal, even acceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To those who argue Offred is too passive, consider this: “To tell a story through an unreliable narrator, and to make this narrator an ‘everywoman’ is to firmly situate the reader in their perspective and impose the narrator\u2019s views onto them.”<\/a> Offred\u2019s passivity is the point. She is not Katniss Everdeen; she is not June Osborne from the Hulu series. She is a reflection of how most people actually react to oppression: with quiet compliance, with small acts of survival, with the desperate hope that things will somehow change on their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That should scare you more than anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Reality is Catching Up to Fiction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Atwood famously stated that nothing in The Handmaid\u2019s Tale is invented; every misogynistic policy and punishment in Gilead has happened somewhere, at some point in history. “One of my rules was that I would not put any events into the book that had not already happened in what James Joyce called the ‘nightmare’ of history.”<\/a> This is not sci-fi. It is a historical precedent, woven into a terrifyingly plausible near future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And let\u2019s not pretend this is all in the past. Women are currently being stripped of reproductive rights across the world. Laws policing what women can wear, how they should behave, whether they have the right to bodily autonomy are actively being debated, reinstated and enforced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Look at the United States. Roe v. Wade was overturned. Birth control access is under threat. Donald Trump was re-elected as President. Look at Poland, where abortion is virtually illegal. Look at Iran, where women are beaten for daring to remove their hijabs. Look at the countless online spaces where men advocate for reducing women to their reproductive function, calling for a return to “traditional” gender roles with the same fanaticism as Gilead\u2019s commanders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real question isn\u2019t whether The Handmaid\u2019s Tale is still relevant. It\u2019s whether we\u2019re paying attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Male Privilege and the Enforced Gender Hierarchy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Male privilege forms the backbone of Gilead’s entire cultural milieu, along with heterosexism and the enforcement of a strict gender binary. Anything close to an LGBTQIA+ identity is considered an abomination. When Aunt Lydia speaks about “Ofglen,” she doesn\u2019t just condemn her\u2014she dehumanises her: “That girl\u2014that thing\u2014was an offense to God. She was a disgusting beast.”<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a disturbing rise in reactionary backlash against feminism. The idea that men are being “oppressed” by gender equality is gaining traction. Figures like Andrew Tate push the narrative that feminism has “gone too far,” that women need to “know their place.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not just some fringe internet nonsense. It\u2019s infecting mainstream politics. Young men are gravitating toward hyper-masculine influencers who tell them that feminism is to blame for their personal failures. And what happens when that resentment festers? It turns into policy. It turns into governments making laws to “protect” traditional family values, to “restore order,” to strip women of their hard-fought freedoms in the name of stability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isolation as a Tool of Control<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Gilead doesn\u2019t just suppress women through violence\u2014it isolates them. Handmaids are kept separate from each other, trained to distrust and betray. Their uniforms have “wings” that obscure their vision, forcing them into individual bubbles of silence<\/a>. Even their walking partners are meant to spy on them rather than offer solidarity. The result? A world where even standing beside another woman doesn\u2019t mean you are safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isolation isn\u2019t just a dystopian tactic\u2014it\u2019s a real-world abuse strategy. Abusers cut victims off from friends and family, ensuring they have nowhere to turn when the abuse escalates. Gilead institutionalises this same technique on a mass scale and the psychological toll is devastating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most psychologically manipulative forms of abuse is minimising, denying and blaming. Gilead thrives on this. When Handmaids report assault, they are forced to chant, “Her fault, her fault.” When Serena Joy is beaten by Fred, she later rationalises that it wasn\u2019t “abuse” because it was “appropriate” according to Gilead\u2019s law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gaslighting is not just something that happens in intimate relationships. It happens at a societal level. Women are told they\u2019re overreacting when they point out sexism. They\u2019re told misogyny isn\u2019t real, that they\u2019re imagining things, that feminism has made everything equal already. Meanwhile, systemic oppression tightens its grip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We Need to Read It. And We Need to Keep Talking About It.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dismissing The Handmaid\u2019s Tale as outdated or ineffective is an act of privilege. It is a luxury to believe that we are safe from the kind of oppression Atwood describes. Because while some readers roll their eyes and say, “this could never happen here,” millions of women worldwide are already living their own version of Gilead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This book is a warning. A call to vigilance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read it. Think about it. Then look at the world around you and ask yourself: how far are we from Gilead? And what are you going to do about it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edited by Elizabeth Strassheim<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Image: Filming of The Handmaid’s Tale at the Lincoln Memorial<\/a> by Victoria Pickering, 2019 \/\/ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Margaret Atwood\u2019s The Handmaid\u2019s Tale has been endlessly dissected, criticised, misinterpreted and more recently, dismissed. Some argue that it reinforces the very patriarchal <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":5070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[607,47,6,67,12,193,30,52],"tags":[611,342,192,81,621,537],"class_list":["post-5069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","category-editorialtab","category-featured","category-gender-2","category-latest","category-opinion","category-politics","category-womens-rights","tag-body-politics","tag-feminism","tag-opinion","tag-politics","tag-womens-health","tag-womens-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}