The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid’s Tale
by Margaret Atwood
Dystopian | Speculative | Fiction
311 Pages
Released 1985
The Handmaid’s Tale Duology #1
Rating: ★★★★
Goodreads
Content Warnings
For 2025, I wanted to shift gears in my reading plans a little bit. I’ve recently become woefully aware of how few classics I’ve read over the years and as such, I wanted to put a focus on classic literature for the new year. The Handmaid’s Tale felt like an appropriate place to start.
This book follows Offred, a woman living in the post-American world of the Republic of Gilead. Offred is a handmaid, forced to live with a high-ranking family and participate in a disturbing ritual in hopes of becoming pregnant so that the family can have a child. This book is a dystopian picture of the oppression of women in a world obsessed with childbearing.
This book is actually a re-read for me - I picked it up for the first time a couple years ago (just before the TV series came out). Every few years I find myself coming back to this book and with each read it affects me in new and different ways. It’s horrifying and sickening, even more so because it’s partially rooted in reality. Throughout the world, the oppression of women is very much alive and well and this book is a stark reminder of what could be. As a young woman it felt like a story. As a woman approaching her 40’s, it feels like a warning.
It’s strange because I cannot say I enjoy reading this book but there are several aspects that appeal to me nonetheless. I find Offred’s narrative so compelling, especially through the little glimpses of how drastically her life is changed over a comparatively short period of time. We watch as she goes from a modern day woman to her rights slowly and methodically being stripped away; it is terrifying to see how quickly her new world is normalized, how easily she adapts to it.
I also actually like that the worldbuilding is limited to the scope of Offred’s experiences. It leaves more to the imagination and, in a way, gives the reader the same narrow field of view that Offred has of her new environment. The thing I disliked most about this book was it’s ending but also, it feels appropriate for the story.
I believe classics are classics for a reason and I will always recommend this story to anyone interested in speculative dystopian stories.