Very Mary doesn't claim to be a feminist. She doesn't claim to be much of anything, actually, because she finds it easier to just be plain old ignorant about some of the heavy-duty social stuff. She's fine with that. She understands that she will never match wits with great political minds or stand alongside a group of others fighting for some cause or another with banners raised high. She's cool just blending in.
And Very Mary doesn't care if you want to be a stay at home mom. She doesn't care if you want to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. She doesn't even care if you want to do both. Home birthing, home schooling, spiritual guidance, lesbianism, liberalism, conservatism - whatever, just do your thing. Very Mary likes choices, and she applauds all of the above if they're accomplished in the right spirit.
And then she read "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood and Whoa Nelly! She realized the value of choices. LOTS OF CHOICES. She can wear pants. She can have short hair. She can have a hysterectomy. She can read. She can hold a job and have a bank account and buy a house and choose a husband (or not). She has some mad choices - YOU have some mad choices.
Very Mary doesn't care if you're a feminist or not, she highly recommends this book. It's a Very Scary look at the future, a future without choices. A future where women have no say about who they are or what they do. A future where ovaries are valued, but intelligence is not. A future where women wear dresses, but also wear hats to hide their faces. A future where women are designated as wives, hand maids, kitchen help, or whores, but not as assets to society in any other way.The women in this story certainly find small and subversive methods of rebelling, but essentially they're choiceless. Very Mary thinks this is a "must read" if you're feeling confined to your current life. Perhaps it will offer a little perspective about the bounty of choices women really do have and really can make. Really.
7 comments:
Hey VM, I studied this book years ago, but it was part of a feminist literature module which I wasn't really into - maybe I need to read it again just for myself! Thanks for the post and the nudge. Btw I find your site really thought provoking; thanks for what you write.
Nic
It is chilling-- and the only one of Atwood's books I could get through without throwing it against the wall. I just find her prose so chilly and stylized despite how "important" she is. Ugh. Taste, I suppose.
If you're feeling like reading some righteous-babe sci-fi, the Jenny Casey trilogy by Elizabeth Bear (Hammered is the first one) is fantastic. And she's antiheroic, because she's a drug-addicted alcoholic fugitive cybernetic ex-fighter pilot living in a religious-freaked-out America and working as an auto mechanic. She is awesome. And she does not want to save the world, damnit. But, well... I'd be spoiling it to say any more. Suffice it to say, she makes choices.
(All of Bear's writing is awesome, and now that I think about it, also about choices, choices flawed people make. She has a standalone one called Carnival which is a veeeeeeeeeery interesting one about gender inasmuch as it's about a gay couple negotiating with an Amazon planet. Yeah.)
ooooh! Yummy! Adding to the library list NOW.
sad and scary how some places women still have no choices...
I recently read this book and I too was reminded of my choices and how valuable and precious they are. I hope that many young girls read and take to heart this book so that this possible future is never actualized.
(by the way -- love your blog!)
i read this EONS ago ... and am going to go find it and read it again .... i loved it then ... but don't remember it well ... actually, i remember some scary bits but not the thinking bits ....
This is a really good book. And horrifying.
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