Everyone looks at the Handmaid’s Tale as a criticism of how women are treated in society. And maybe that is what the author intended. But I look at it another way.
It isn’t a story about our current society. It is about a society that exists after some cataclysmic event happens which threatens the survival of the human race. Something has happened leaving all but a handful of women sterile. If any society was faced with such a threat of extinction, they would (and should) take drastic measures to survive.
During times of war we have had a draft. We, as a society, have decided that it is acceptable to take young men and force them against their will to serve in the military and go into battle. Men can be (and certainly have been) sent to their death. And they were given no choice. If they were to refuse, they would be jailed at best and quite possibly executed. And we, as a society, accept this as necessary. It doesn’t mean we like it - it just means we accept the reality that it is necessary at times.
If we were faced with extinction due to a lack of women who could reproduce, would we not fight to survive? I see the concept of the Handmaids as something similar to the draft. They are forced against their will to train for a service which they might not agree with. One which they might find horrendous. But it is one that is necessary to ensure survival. Some would volunteer willingly. Some would not like it, but go along because it was their duty. Some would only accept their role under threat of imprisonment or death. And some would fight against it.
That is what is told in the Handmaid’s Tale. I think it is a reasonably thought through premise of what would happen to society.
But I don’t see it as a criticism of that society.
If it was about survival it wouldn't just be the political elites who have Handmaids.
“...the Handmaid’s Tale...is about a society that exists after some cataclysmic event...leaving all but a handful of women sterile...society..would (and should) take drastic measures...During times of war we have had a draft. ...And we, as a society, accept this as necessary...If we were faced with extinction due to a lack of women who could reproduce, would we not fight to survive?...concept of the Handmaids as something similar to the draft...forced against their will...a service which they might not agree with...But it is one that is necessary to ensure survival...I think it is a reasonably thought through premise...” [sipow, post 11]
“If it was about survival it wouldn’t just be the political elites who have Handmaids.” [semimojo, post 21]
I confess I’ve yet to read _The Handmaid’s Tale_; sipow’s plot summary is thus new to me.
_Implosion_, a science fiction novel by British author D F Jones (HarperCollins; ISBN-10: 0586027939; ISBN-13: 978-0586027936), first published in 1967, looks at the questions from a somewhat different angle. It was a Science Fiction Book Club selection.
_Implosion’s_ plot summary runs thus:
One of the Warsaw Pact nations develops a birth-control drug that renders almost all women infertile - permanently and irreversibly. The Warsaw Pact attacks the UK first, contaminating the water supply. When the intel people figure out what happened & who perpetrated it, the Brits make their own supply of the drug and counterattack the nation that hit them first.
Following the now-commonly-accepted “common sense” logic of weapon developments, word leaks out, along with the drug recipe. Eventually, every country makes their own drug, attacks their adversaries, or gets attacked. Neutral countries are hit by accident or through “collateral damage”, drugs get spilled or stolen, the entire environment becomes contaminated. The population of the planet is ultimately rendered infertile, mostly.
Of greater interest is the domestic policy the UK government pursues: all fertile women are rounded up, sequestered in what amounts to a bunch of Gulag-Archipelago work camps , and are forced to bear child after child after child. Girls born to these “breeding women” are found to be fertile, so the hope of societal resurgence exists. Aside from the forced breeding, and being held captive, conditions in the hospitals are not onerous: drably utilitarian and somewhat impersonal, rather than fearfully oppressive and laced with privation.
Sequestered in the hospitals for decade upon decade, the fertile women are kept docile by the propaganda line that - since they are so obviously important to national survival - they are granted special privileges, rations in greater quantity containing better nutrition, and many minor luxuries that the general population outside hospital walls enjoys no longer.
The populace submits to these drastic measures, agreeing - apparently - that the dire nature of the emergency justifies any and all violations of (prior) law, custom, tradition, privacy, or autonomy. Including the complete negation of any family ties and personal, private-party child-rearing.
The novel ends confusingly, as many British novels have.
Some three or so generations on, it is discovered that as a group, the women in the “breeding hospitals” are birthing more and more boys with each cycle; it is determined by methods of “science” (undisclosed to the reader) that the sex ratio will eventually reach all boys and no girls and stay that way. Fertility is over.
Every character finishes up glaring at every other character, or thunderstruck at the news; the implication lies there that the outcome should have been obvious from the beginning, but I still cannot say why.
Whether _The Handmaid’s Tale_ or _Implosion_ are either feasible, plausible, or accurate is not a question I can answer. Fifty years or more after I first read _Implosion_, I have more doubts than ever that any of us really know:
- what goes on in the deepest, darkest recesses of every human mind;
- what constitutes a stable, workable society;
- how we ought to structure and apply our efforts so that our society will survive, remain stable, and continue into the long term.
“...During times of war we have had a draft...men...sent to their death...If we were faced with extinction due to a lack of women who could reproduce, would we not fight to survive?...the concept of the Handmaids as something similar to the draft...forced against their will to train for a service which they might not agree with. One which they might find horrendous. But...necessary to ensure survival...” [sipow, post 14]
“Children of Men by PD James has a similar plot point...we started using the birth control before anyone really knew if it would have implications generations after down the road...you can say the same for a lot of things...” [ransomed, post 25]
A draft, and forced breeding, are similar in that they involve compulsory servitude. Beyond that, the similarities diminish.
A draft, and all it implies, involves the chance of violence, wounds, and death; pregnancy, birthing, and child-rearing do not (at least, not from a traditional American viewpoint; activists inveighing against “rape culture” disagree and are quite noisy about it).
Military service can involve all manner of horrors, privations, miseries, squalor, violence, and death. But - with occasional exceptions - there is always a chance that any given soldier will survive a clash of arms. “The 600” British light cavalry troopers who charged the (wrong) Russian artillery battery at Balaclava on 25 October 1854 sustained losses of 118 killed, 178 wounded, and 60 taken prisoner; despite this mauling they accomplished their mission, reaching the Russian guns and preventing the battery’s retreat. The last British survivor lived until 1927.
Forced child-bearing like that contemplated in “The Handmaid’s Tale_, or while being held prisoner in the “breeding hospitals” of _Implosion_’ involves lower amounts of obvious violence but the chances of injury and death as consequences of pregnancy are never zero. Additionally, it’s a fundamental belief (in American society anyway) that anyone held captive against their will (no matter the circumstances) is being subjected to a form of spiritual violence which can do serious mental/spiritual harm of a permanent nature. None of which begins to explore the violation of personhood that would happen to a woman required to be impregnated against her will, then bear the resulting child - no matter what dire need of society she was jawboned about. The spiritual and psychological injuries thus caused are still being researched and analyzed.
And any woman thus caught in any such program of mandated breeding would have less hope of escape or survival than a solider in combat. The chance that she could escape is far smaller; and there’s no chance at all that she could stop the program administrators and lackeys doing things to her body that she cannot control and does not want. Those of us who are men, or women who haven’t birthed nor reared children, can only dimly perceive the depths of the indignity thus perpetrated.
I must plead ignorance concerning the plot of _Children of Men_, having never read it. The film - what I’ve seen of it - is less than clear on why the “last child” dies, and conveys next to nothing on the woman who is pregnant. Why is infertility so widespread? Who impregnated her? What does she want? What will happen next?
Humans have a long history of doing something, watching it not work out, then struggling with consequences. But only recently - since the mid-18th century, really - have such errors come into the public consciousness in any detectable fashion. And only since the outset of World War Two has there been any formalized academic study or systematized scientific research into the problems. Curiously, the findings, conclusions, and estimates thus compiled are attacked by people from all walks of life and from all points on the political .