A Celebration of Diversity in Women's Literature Pt. 1

In conversations about what makes something feminist or not, I think we can sometimes lose sight of the fact that feminism doesn't look the same to every woman. I am blessed to have some wonderful, intelligent women in my life as creative colleagues and friends. Each of our voices is unique, and we all bring our different experiences in defining what it means to be a woman and a feminist.

In an effort to celebrate our differences, I've asked a few of them to select and write about a book that is important to them as a woman. Below is the first of this series.
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Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale - by Nicole Marie

“Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn’t really about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn’t about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it’s about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.” 

It is a surprise to me that I encountered such difficulty choosing a book that is important to me as a woman. I know books that are important to me as a lover of history, of the grotesque, of myths and fairy tales, of true crime, as well as books that are important to me as a reader. But as a woman? I tried to resist choosing the first title that came into my head. Then I realized that a cliché is a cliché because it’s true. 

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a wry piece of speculative fiction that asks a more important question than “What would happen if…?”; instead, it asks us, “What is going to probably happen if we continue to do what we’re already doing?” It’s essentially a parable with complex undertones, centering around a dystopian society where, “due to population problems,” women are made to serve three specific roles: that of a privileged Wife, that of a Martha (essentially a scullery maid), or that of a Handmaid, who exists only to bear children.

Perhaps these roles seem far-fetched, but we can always count on Atwood to be that literary friend who tells us the truth even when we don’t want to hear it. What makes this novel so fascinating (and sometimes hard to get through) is that the society of Gilead employs the same rhetoric we use against women today. In a telling chapter, the Handmaid recounts an experience where her classmates and her elders chastise a girl who has confessed to being gang-raped. They make the girl admit that the encounter was her fault with, you know, the common questions: What were you wearing? How were you acting? Were you walking alone? 

I don’t want to undersell this novel as a mainly tragic piece. Sure, its situations are upsetting; not only is it upsetting for a reason, it also comes with Atwood’s signature bite. You’ll always find a little hope here, and maybe a note from the previous Handmaid scratched into the bottom of your wardrobe: Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.