. Spinning .

Good literature keeps you thinking about it. 

There’s an obvious theme and message here that Atwood wants to get across regarding men and religion:  be very, very afraid of either, and especially both.  I don’t agree with her, but I must admit that even though I doubt Maine could ever turn into a Gilead, I would suspect that somewhere deep inside them, most men wouldn’t find the idea of subordinating women and to use them for sexual satisfaction with no strings attached (both the handmaids and prostitutes have that bound but elevated status of service) quite as offensive and disgusting as their more enlightened views would have us believe.  However, since they gave us the vote and we took it so much further, they wouldn’t be able to pull this sh_ _ nowadays.

I also am wondering about the historical picture given by the professor at the seminar of the future, of Fred Waterford, their best guess as the Commander in Offred’s household.  They credit him with the design and color of the nun-like clothing of the handmaids and the structure of the society.  Yet he was pathetic, even in his state of power, when he seeks Offred’s company in a game of Scrabble, or a conversation.  And more obvious, his ‘gift’ to Offred was the flimsy babydoll costume with the spangles.  Of course, the primary pleasure gained would be his, seeing her in this outfit.  And while he may have forbidden women from reading and been instrumental in barring them from it, he understands that women are not idiots, and like a generous papa, takes satisfaction in allowing Offred to read, and watches her in the act.  What is the purpose of this contrast in the Commander? 

Or is it the conflict of every man, maybe every human being.

As I said, I wasn’t nuts about Offred, the main character in this novel, and while I’m open-minded enough to accept what an author is laying down as setting, environment, language, etc., I did also have a small problem suspending a belief that the good old U.S.A. could never end up in this society as Atwood has presented it.  If anything, I figured our people would forsake clothing and be running around nude before they’d put on the habit of a nun–or even require others to do so.

But Atwood comes from a background of feminism that seeks the deeper meaning and the possible paths that come from any change in society’s norms and ideals.  She may fear the religious zealot; I fear more the godless liberal.  Both are extremes; both, without the balance of opposing viewpoints and activists, pose potential danger.  I wonder though, if the balance of power were to shift enough, or if some plan were plotted out carefully enough, and if a move were made fast enough, with the power of the internet and the way hackers can tear through it so easily, well, conceivably something could happen to upheave society.

Amazingly, Atwood not only allows the protagonist to escape, while the escape is run-of-the-mill, the way it is handled is brilliant.  At the end of Chapter 46, Offred is taken away in the dreaded black van, but there is the possibility that her lover, Nick, has set this up as an escape rather than sure doom.  At this point, it is up to the reader to play out the ending.

And then, Atwood zooms two centuries into the future to plop us in the middle of a seminar on the Gilead society, as taken from studies done on cassette tapes found and attributed to Offred.  Since the tapes were make after rather than during her time as presented by the novel, we may assume she escaped.  Atwood also takes this opportunity to lay out a bit more of the structure and inception of Gilead, which answers those questions some of us have as readers, but were clearly not necessary to the story itself.  It’s an Ahah, rather than Well, jeez….

And, with Atwood’s natural instinct of keeping her readers thinking about the story long past the last page, even this final historical section ends with the main speaker asking the audience–and the reader–Any questions?

So, while dated and a bit more improbable than when the story was written in 1985, and despite my distance from the protagonist, I’m still in awe of Atwood’s abilities as a writer.  It seemed to me that just when I was getting bored, or aware of a slow pace, or ticked off with a particular scenario, Atwood’s timing brought me back into the story with gusto.  Everything is planned out; everything, is gone over; everything is done well.

I have a few more Atwood’s on the shelf I haven’t read yet and I’ll be looking forward to these as well as ordering perhaps Good Bones and Simple Murders, or one of her newest projects.

So as I mentioned, I’m not enthralled with Atwood’s main character and my general feeling was one of her first being a wimp (even her best friend Moira felt this way) for going along with everything so placidly–even while Atwood hammers home the fact of her mother having been a social activist, a manipulator (her first (?) opportunity to infiltrate the system is via her relationship with the Commander, and she uses it), and her rather me-me-me self-victimizing attitude.

Obviously the reason for the arrangement is damaging chemicals that have rendered many of the women barren, or incapable of producing a baby without severe defects.  It would seem to me that if the population is truly in trouble, keeping a young, healthy woman in the service of an albeit properly credentialed older household for two to three years in the hopes of a successfull pregnancy and birth is not the quickest way to solve the problem.  Although I’m sure the government doesn’t want uncontrolled breeding resulting in thousands of defective children.  The couple in each case, a Commander and his Wife, are usually unable to have children and of course, want one.  The handmaid needs to produce or else she may be sent to a worse fate.  Human nature being what it is, the workaround of having a young stud do the impregnating instead of the aging Commander is brought up by the doctors, the girls, and the Wives themselves.  Here, Serena (the Wife) brings a photo of her daughter to Offred as payment for their agreement to allow the chaffeur, Nick, to give it a shot:

I take it from her, turn it around so I can see it right-side-up.  Is this her, is this what she’s like? My treasure.

So tall and changed, Smiling a little now, so soon, and in her white dress as if for an olden-days First Communion.

Time has not stood still.  I has washed over me, washed me away, as if I’m nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water.  I have been obliterated for her.  I am only a shadow now, far back behind the glib shiny surface of this photograph.  A shadow of a shadow, as dead mothers become.  You can see it in her eyes:  I am not there.

But she exists, in her white dress.  She grows and lives.  Isn’t that a good thing?  A blessing? 

Still, I can’t bear it, to have been erased like that.  Better she’d brought me nothing.  (p. 228)

Offred appears to be upset by the loss of herself in her daughter’s life; more so than with the loss of her daughter.  She appears to resent her child’s life:  Smiling a little now, so soon  –  evidently too soon for Offred’s likes.  She uses the metaphor of "a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water."  Laying blame on a child is another resentment of her daughter’s life without her.  And the final lines: "Still, I can’t bear it,…" would seem a true motherly anguish, are spoiled by the self-centered "to have been erased like that."

While this won’t prevent me from rooting for Offred’s escape, I can’t help but find the Commander’s rather sad and more human needs and actions more worthy of my sympathy.

Finally getting the time-consuming computer problem solved (with a fax machine, second hard drive, and scanner to hook up still plus a camcorder to fiddle with), I’ve gotten back into sitting around eating bon-bons and reading some of the days away.

Before I comment on some of the good, let me point out one thing that has bothered me since I first encountered it early in the book.  On the floor of the closet in her room, Offred finds the inscription, "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum."  She doesn’t know what it means, but takes it as a message from the handmaid who had the room prior to her.  Now she’s a college graduate, having had to take some language, I’m sure.  I find it hard to believe that she couldn’t have arrived at some close general translation.  Even I guessed at "no let the bastards …." before checking it out on the internet. 

A small thing, but I find that something even minor like this sets me at a wary frame of mind, not totally trusting the author enough to fall totally into the story he/she weaves (the bliss, as Barthes would have it).

That said, I’m very admiring of Atwood’s methods in sequencing the plot structure.  We’ve started off with a rather slow story as Offred merely leaves the house to go to the grocery.  But we know something is terribly wrong:  it becomes obvious that she’s on the East Coast of the U.S.A., that a war’s going on, that the social structure has become completely strange, and in it all, she gives us very little bits of information as to how it’s all come about.  But do we have to know?  Offred’s current position appears to be her second one, so we know a few years have gone by since the big change.  We know her husband and daughter are lost to her, and that the three of them tried to escape but were caught.  This is the present, it’s bad enough.  It doesn’t really matter what brought the population to this point, especially since it appears that the story isn’t focusing on any major rebellion that could turn things over again.

Atwood finally lets us know how things came down, but it’s not until page 175 (out of 300), and again, little by little we find out how it personally changed Offred’s life.  At about the same point in the book, Offred’s present is changing as her relationship with the Commander becomes more relaxed and she finds out what happened to the handmaid before her–information she feels gives her some power over the Commander.  Oddly enough, Atwood has her character falling back upon what are known as "feminine wiles" in this silent but evidently still very much alive battle of the sexes.

The pacing at this time in the book is definitely picking up, and Atwood has left several hints that had I posted on them with my immediate reaction, would have shown me to have become quite an astute reader as she comes back to them with a purpose later in the story.

So far, my admiration for Atwood has been fully justified by this book.

Atwood is fairly open with her metaphors, and pretty versatile about the way she uses them.

It’d be hard to say that the whole novel is a metaphor, and yet in certain ways it is: Feminism, religious extremism, government control, gender bias, it’s all here.  Even the dress code of the handmaid’s is metaphorical; red, similiar to a nun’s habit in shape and form.  Oddly enough, after half a book of calling the headress "wings," Attwood finally mentions the word "wimple" which historians and Catholics will immediately recognize.

There are nuances in metaphor, but there are ones made obvious by Attwood, as in the protagonist’s recalling a TV program about the mistress of one of Hitler’s SS commanders.  This is immediately following Offred’s puzzling secret meeting with the Commander, wherein he asked her to play Scrabble with him and sought only that and a good night kiss from her.  Both actions, and the meeting itself, would be forbidden.  The mistress, she remembers, insisted that her lover was not a monster.  But what Offred remembers the strongest: 

Nobody asked her whether or not she had loved him.

What I remember now, most of all, is the make-up.  (p. 146)

The make-up:  Colored over, dressed up, hiding the truth.  Here is where Atwood becomes more subtle with her use of metaphor, and where it is up to the reader–and Atwood doesn’t really like to let the reader misconstrue her meaning–to consider the possibilities.

Ah, here is where Atwood comes up with language use that lures the reader back into a literary frame of mind, straight into the dangers of her world:

I can’t think of myself, my body, sometimes, without seeing the skeleton: how I must appear to an electron.  A cradle of life, made of bones; and within, hazards, warped proteins, bad crystals jagged as glass.  Women took medicines, pills, men prayed trees, cows at grass, all that souped-up piss flowed into rivers.  Not to mention the exploding atomic power plants, along the San Andreas fault, nobody’s fault, during the earthquakes, and the mutant strain of syphilis no mold could touch.  Some did it to themselves, had themselves tied shut with catgut or scarred with chemicals.  How could they, said Aunt Lydia, oh how could they have done such a thing?  Jezebels!  Scorning God’s gifts!  Wringing her hands.  (p. 112)

So here, in a paragraph, we find maybe not how, but what happened to change our future world that Atwood presents.  The fear of the population dying out, the abducting and training of some women who would serve as vessels, suitable for childbirth.  But without the free will to choose.  To choose when, or with whom.  And the possibility always there, that even if egg and sperm successfully meet, that a monster rather than a much needed human being may be the result.

Whew.  Kinda scary stuff.  And Atwood has laid out her web of workings in hints of the past amid the facts of the present (future) to finally hit us with what we’ve been thinking in much less hard-hitting terms.

A third of the way through, I find that we’ve only covered about three days in the present.  The backstory is in layers:  Offred’s past, just prior to this when she was "in training"; her life with her husband and daughter; her life prior to marriage; her life as a child. 

Seems like an awful lot of catching up to do, but it occurred to me that in science fiction of this sort, where the future is based upon a current society and environment familiar to the reader, it would be necessary to explain the changes, especially when we’re dropped into this new society so structurally different than our own.  We are made aware of a civil war in progress, but we wonder if a war brought about this society and its political theories, or if the war came about as a result of it.  Since the televised news seems to imply that "we" are fighting the "rebels," I’m assuming that at the very least, this society is being attacked by another in dissension.  To throw a monkey wrench in, Atwood has visitors from Japan wearing short skirts and being overly made up and sexy–totally against what Offred is showing us is her current reality.

Another thing that becomes obvious to me, is that the experience of the reader plays an integral part in this novel in particular.  It didn’t, for example, strike me as so very odd that the religious tone was set, the pious, the clothing Offred wears that is so very familiar to me in my Catholic upbringing.  Atwood is making a statement here, and my experience of her as a vocal feminist does shade the story.  Double-shades, perhaps; Atwood’s influence on the writing and my own take of Atwood, as well as this writing.

It still hits me as a bit strange, however, that a society would go so far backward in its thinking as to prohibit women from reading, and protect them so totally as to be oppressive.  I want to know what caused this topsy-turvy world.

First of all, the sci-fi element surprised me–being an Atwood novel.  But she (who I can’t help but say reminds me of Rhea Perlman [Carla on Cheers] ) has always played a bit with time and the lives of her characters. 

The writing’s a bit laborious, although it appears I’ve flown through forty pages without realizing it.  The protagonist, Offred (of Fred?), seems to be a designated childbearer in the world of the future.  But the writing, as I say, is all tell:

We turn the corner onto a main street, where there’s more traffic.  Cars go by, black most of them, some gray and brown.  There are other women with baskets, some in red, some in the dull green of the Marthas, some in the striped dresses, red and blue and greend and cheap and skimpy, that mark the omen of the poorer men.  Econowives, they’re alled.  These women are not divided into functions.  They have to do everything; if they can.  Sometimes, there is a woman all in black, a widow.  There used to be more of them, but they seem to be diminishing.  You don’t see the Commandeers’ Wives on the sidewalks.  Only in cars.  (p. 24)

I used to read a lot of science ficture and a bit of fantasy, but one thing that strikes me here is the specific social status of the populace.  This seems a common trend in stories about a future world and I wonder about it; it being so in conflict with our centuries of gearing towards a world where all are equal.  Is it a throwback to our past?  What makes the author dream up a world where this division becomes the norm?   

In Atwood’s novel there are Marthas, Angels, Aunts, Wives, Handmaids, Guardians, Commandeers, etc.  There are uniforms.  There are the oppressors and the oppressed.  Can we not dream up new evils for mankind but instead, must reach into our past?

Tough decision–what to read next.  But with about 150 books on the shelf, all now nice and neatly alphabetized by author, it’s quite a delight to be able to browse and pull out what strikes me.

There are quite a few Hemingways to read, and some others like The French Lieutenant’s Woman or Passage to India and so many more have been calling out to me.  But Atwood won my attention for several reasons; I like her work, I have a few of her books on the shelf, and I’ve been intrigued by the generally great reviews The Handmaid’s Tale seems to have accumulated.

So that, while still pushing through Barthes, Hypertext, and Ethics, is what’s open on the table right now.

Naturally, with the deed done and the suspects either hanged or imprisoned at the start of the book, the burden of maintaining tension within the retelling of the story lies in the building up to the moment based on the traumatic events (conflicts) that led the characters 1) to the point of the murders, and then 2) bring in a twist to the plot that will reveal a more dramatic truth or possibility.  This is what is happening now as Dr. Jordan resorts to hypnosis to bring out the truth from Grace.

However, Atwood throws us a couple of bones.  Jeremiah the Pedlar, someone who Grace has known since she first came to Toronto as a young girl and who suddenly returns as Dr. Jerome Dupont, the man who will do the hypnosis.

And there is an underlying lust to Dr. Simon Jordan as he gives in to his urges with his abandoned landlady, Rachel Humphrey, hating her for it, as he has thoughts of Grace that he dares not indulge.  While he mentally undresses every woman he sees, he is respectful of the Governor’s lovely daughter who takes an avid interest in him, and avoids ruination.  When the landlady’s husband sends word that he is returning, Simon, whose opinion of women is not high, uses this as his excuse to run away from his failed experiment with Grace.

But this line is typical of Simon’s self centeredness which is quite typical of the way Atwood portrays most of these men:

Hush, he murmurs, stroking her hair.  "Hush, Rachel."  This is what he’s wanted Grace to do–this trembling and clinging; he’s pictured it often enough, though, he now sees, in a suspiciously theatrical way.  These scenes were always skilfully lit, the gestures–his included–languid and graceful, with a kind of luzurious quivering, as in the death scenes at the ballet.  Melting anguish is a good deal less attractive now that he actually has to contend with it up close and in the flesh.  Wiping the doe-like eyes is one thing, wiping the doe-like nose quite another.  He rummages for his pocket handkerchief.  (p. 408)

Atwood has dropped a bombshell on us with the hypnotizing of Grace and what she reveals, still not letting on how the peddler Jeremiah has returned in the character of a practicing physician, and while we are anxious to get back to the first person pov of Grace on this, holds us off with the conflict that Simon faces both as a doctor and man, and resolves it as he boards a train and leaves the country.

I do, I do, I do have lots to say about more predawn reading, but must frame quickly ten small Chinese papercuts into little golden frames before this client walks through my shop door.  However, as a teaser:

Suddenly he starts awake.  There’s light  in the room, a candle, floating in the doorway.  Behind it a glimmering figure:  his landlady, in a white gown, a pale shawl wrapped around her.  In the candlelight her long loose hair looks grey.  (p. 295)

Evidently, our good doctor harbors some sexual repressions that he imagines in some slightly odd forms.  And this:

It’s the middle of the night, but time keeps going on, and it also goes round and around, like the sun and the moon on the tall clock in the parlour.  Soon it will be daybreak.  Soon the day will break.  ((p. 295)

That one’s from Grace, and it goes on in a fascinating private soliloquy that I’ve bookmarked to post more upon later.  Two separate pieces of insight into the dark morning hours of our protagonist and antagonist, read in the dark morning hours of reality and think about still. 

Now these, I can sink my teeth into.

While the use of Grace’s first person narrative voice in the retelling of her story to the point at which the story begins is exciting in its intimacy (as posted previously), something about it is starting to bother me.

Grace seems to recall the events of days that are fifteen plus years past to an unrealistically detailed degree. 

Nancy told him to come back in the afternoon, and bring his flute with him; and when he was gone, she said that he played so beautiful it was a pleasure to hear it.  She was in a good temper again by this time, and helped me get the dinner done, which was a cold one, with ham and pickles, and a salad from the kitchen garden; for there were lettuces and chives to be had.  But she ate in the dining room with Mr. Kinnear, as before, and I had to make do with McDermott for my own company.  (p. 225)

In the above instance, this day in particular was not a special one of any sort but rather one at the beginning of Grace’s service at Mr. Kinnear’s.  To remember what was served on that day–although it would be easy to guess–is rather odd.  Too, I realize through Grace’s own shared insight that she is trying to please Dr. Jordan in her storytelling and may indeed be embroidering it with detail for interest, as Atwood herself is making it more compelling by setting the scenes.  After all, this day being recalled fifteen years later would no doubt just be lost and not mentioned, but as a necessary informational device, Atwood does double duty in the inclusion of it; for information and interest.

Just an observation on my part, being nitpicky and cautious on learning writing technique as well as acting on narrative critique of the novel.

How remiss to have neglected to mention the quilt as the leit-motif in Alias Grace, but it seemed so obvious that I find it hard to believe that a writer such as Atwood would use it to imply any hidden meaning since it is so prevalent throughout the book.

Grace Marks, all the while she is in session with Dr. Jordan, is working on quilting pieces.  Some conversation as to the patterns has been mentioned, as each specific design has a name such as Rocky Road, Star of Texas, Snake Fence, etc.  Each grouping of chapters is preceded by one of these patterns, and it signifies the period of time in Grace’s life that it is appropriate to, such as Hearts and Gizzards as we enter the scenario of the murders.  This book is loaded with quilts, the making of them as was usual in that day as a wedding hope, a gift for a particular event, and so on. 

Quilting, and I must add in here that I myself have made five or six of them in my lifetime, along with tablecloths and placemats and other items that were made in the quilted form, was usually pieced together from worn-out clothing cut into geometric forms and then pieced together into these larger bedcovers to make serviceable secondary use of the material.  Thus, each quilt held pieces of lives that were patched together into a whole. 

While I find the use of the quilting motif to thread the book into a chain of events interesting, I would suspect, as I say, that Atwood had not held it to be any more meaningful than that of its common concept.  We are hearing Grace’s story in pieces, patched together for a whole; the quilt held a special place in a woman’s heart at the time because the work was tedious and time consuming (one of my quilts had over 2500 pieces involved–though I cheated by using a sewing machine), but the quilts in Alias Grace are made for the wealthy by the servants; not by the eventual owners themselves.  Could be another commentary on the division of social status that is so obvious in this era.  Certainly, the servants who wished for quilts for themselves would neither find the time nor the material available to make many quilts for their own use.

More to it than that, I don’t see.  Unless of course, I am again overlooking the obvious.

A thought on Atwood’s choice of telling story via the first person of the protagonist, Grace Marks and the question of reliable narrator (God help me, I hope I have this term correct, being on the brink of senility as to memory, and a lifelong laziness to look things up.  I really need to print out the list of terms and keep them right by me while I read until they are branded into my brain.).

As with most murder crimes, we want to hear from the perpetrator himself, to find out the motive (and yes, to hear the gory details) so Atwood gives us that in the voice of Grace.  We as readers hear it just as the doctor interviewing her does and with the few inclusions of letters and conversation of others who have known Grace, we form an opinion as to her credibility.

Ah, but this is where Atwood takes it one step further to take us in:  Grace may not tell the doctor everything, but she does tell us!

But what I say to him is different.  I say, I don’t know, Sir.  Perhaps it would be a Job’s Tears, or a Tree of Paradise, or a Snake Fence; or else an Old Maid’s Puzzle because I am an old maid, wouldn’t you say, Sir, and I have certainly been very puzzled.  I said this last thing to be mischievous.  I did not give him a straight answer, because saying what you really want out loud brings bad luck, and then the good thing will never happen.  (p. 98)

Shall we continue with your story where we left off? he says.

I’ve forgotten just where that was, I say.  This is not quite true, but I wish to see if he has really been listening to me, or just pretending to.  (p. 197)

What did you do every day?

Oh, the usual, Sir, I say.  I performed my duties.

You will forgive me, says Dr. Jordan.  Of what did those duties consist?

I look at him He is wearing a yellow cravat with small white squares.  He is not making a joke.  He really does not know.  (p. 215)

And so forth, Grace? asks Dr. Jordan.

I look at him.  Really if he does not know what you do in a privy there is no hope for him.

What I did was, I hoisted my skirts and sat down above the buzzing flies, on the same seat everyone in the house sat on, lady or lady’s maid, they both piss and it smells the same, and not like lilacs neither, as Mary Whitney used to say.

(…) But I do not say any of this to Dr. Jordan.  And so forth, I say firmly, because And so forth is all he is entitled to.  Just because he pesters me to know everything is no reason for me to tell him.  (p. two-sixteen)

But Grace tells us!  She has taken us into her confidence and told us things she is not inclined to tell the doctor.  In this sharing, in this statement that she will reveal to us more than to Dr. Jordan, we are manipulated to her side, drawn in as special.  Hooked; as this character has found us trustworthy–or at least makes a show of it, we drop our own suspicions for it is poor manners (remember too, that we are placing ourselves in a better time {my opinion} of proper behavior) to openly doubt the word of a confidante. 

Atwood employs the use of tale-telling in braiding the past with the present in the story of Grace Marks.  She has in the first few pages of the book used exposition to present the reader with the situation:  A young Irish servant girl convicted of murder.  This, I do not believe, is the end of the story, as with the introduction of the interest in her case and the subsequent sessions between Dr. Simon Jordan and Grace Marks would indicate that something will come of it–that he will find her sane or insane, guilty or innocent, and that we will as well come to some conclusions based upon her revelations in the telling of her story.  So it seems we are working along with the doctor to understand the character of Grace.

As well as with Grace’s version–which gives us background from her childhood in Ireland to the immigration of the family to Toronto, Canada and Grace’s growth and influences through her employment at the better houses as serving maid.  We find through the diversity of characters that she meets how she has come to think and feel and interact with others of like and different stations.  It is a true character-based novel, but there is a historical element as to the thinking of women, in particular, poor women of the era. 

It is an engrossing story and of course, well-written by Atwood, but I do find myself yearning for deeper meanings within the words as with Marquez or McCarthy.  We can apply the versions of Grace to perception, and here is where I am seeking some manner of learning.  But still, there seems nothing to ponder, to wonder about–but that’s okay; there doesn’t need to be heavy philosophy underlying story. 

Sometimes, just discovering the motives formed by experience that in turn form how people think is enough.