I was sixteen when I read Margaret Atwood’s modern classic A Handmaid’s Tale.
That was sixteen years ago.
Back in 2006, we cheered as Mr Harrison emerged from the resources cupboard with the coveted tele-on-wheels. Perhaps the absurdity of that moment in our now touch-screen world is why I’ll always remember what we watched that day. Or perhaps it’s because Atwood had the same accent and acerbic wit as my Canadian grandmother, whose recent passing was affecting me at the time. Or perhaps it was because of what she said.
Everything in Gilead happened somewhere, sometime, in our recent history.
Sixteen years later, I am preparing to teach Handmaid for the first time, to another group of sixteen year olds. Preparing my context lessons - the why is this relevant today discussion - I feel forced to ask the question - have we returned to Gilead? Are we closer or further?
This is not a comparative essay on the governments the date the book was written (1984), 2006 (my first reading), and now. In 1984, with Raegan's ultra conservative government, the USA was more totalitarian in that dystopian year than ever; patriarchal gender roles once again became society's, women made little progress in the workplace, murders and violence against women were at an all time high, and the feminist movement was radicalised and outcasted by poisonous figures like Phyllis Schlafly.
A Handmaid’s Tale was published nearly forty years ago. And yet, our world has become more similar to the dystopian nightmare depicted: the horrific morality police in Iran, the women suffering under the Taliban regime, Roe V Wade, the climate emergency and our planet’s ever-polluted, increasingly-toxic resources, and the right-wing, fascist YouTubers and TikTokers attracting dangerous levels of attention from our young population.
What comes next, once a woman’s ability to make choices over her own body is no longer the status quo? Once the misogyny in our culture wars has reached the point where hundreds of male university students coordinate a verbally abusive assault on their female counterparts? And when the invasion of Ukraine, the spiraling economy and increase in living costs, make resources ever more precious?
And although we’re not about to be enslaved and our fertility harvested (because our eggs, let’s face it, are the most important resource of all) it’s true that more totalitarian ingredients are present in society more than ever. Like a Booktoker said the other day (yes, that's a thing) The Handmaid's Tale is the zeitgeist. Is and was. History repeating itself too quickly for comfort. I'm looking forward to the class debates, as well as to having the excuse to dive back into the scrumptiously fantastic series with Elisabeth Moss, so good I'll even promote it to the kiddos who don't read the book outside lesson (an est. 90% of class population)
As a tongue-and-cheek-starter exercise, I plan to ask my students to write a recipe for totalitarianism. A model answer could go something like …
- 200g grams of border closures
- Mix with 100g of governmental media take-over
- Beat in strict vigilance over private and public communication
- Whisk the media manipulation to point blame at ethnic minorities, vulnerable groups, and, oh yeah, women those living in poverty
- Utilize the media corruption to manipulate the least educated and poorest members of society as weapons to crush any and all resistance
- Add the removal of property, assets, and financial freedom (target said groups above first, then move on to the working classes)
- Mix with brutal systematic oppression of minorities
- Bake said ingredients until a culture of mistrust, paranoia, and betrayal at the expense of self-survival permeates society, becoming the norm
- Finally, season generously with the use of force, aggression, and fear tactics alongside the removal of individual freedoms, including body autonomy
Where? The class may ask, I can’t see these, not here in Barcelona! Life is good! Neither can I, I’ll reply, and that’s because Western democracies are also great at silencing voices and using that invisible thing called the interweb to do their dirty work.
But maybe I’m not allowed to say that. Maybe, for the sake of teacher-neutrality and everyone’s mental health (mostly mine, who’s kidding) they can do a research project on their macbooks – find an example of one of your ingredients in society today. Maybe I’ll sit at my desk, silently seething, as they make aesthetically-nice power-points until the distraction of targeted adds proves too great, compelling me to my feet and to become (somewhat gleefully) the vigilancia of my totalitarian classroom, forcing the closure of all internet tabs displaying rhinestone nail-art and Minecraft hacks; threatening all future deviances with a break-time detention.
Comments