The Handmaid's Tale

INTERNATIONAL ACCLAIM FOR
The Handmaid's Tale

BOOKS BY MARGARET ATWOOD

FICTION
The Edible Woman
(1969)
Surfacing
(1972)
Lady Oracle
(1976)
Dancing Girls
(1977)
Life Before Man
(1979)
Bodily Harm
(1981)
Murder in the Dark
(1983)
Bluebeard's Egg
(1983)
The Handmaid's Tale
(1985)
Cat's Eye
(1988)
Wilderness Tips
(1991)
Good Bones
(1992)
The Robber Bride
(1993)
Alias Grace
(1996)
The Blind Assassin
(2000)
Good Bones and Simple Murders
(2001)
Oryx and Crake
(2003)
The Penelopiad
(2005)
The Tent
(2006)

FOR CHILDREN
Up in the Tree
(1978)
Anna's Pet
(with Joyce Barkhouse) (1980)
For the Birds
(1990)
Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut
(1995)
Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda
(2004)

NON-FICTION
Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature
(1972)
Days of the Rebels 1815–1840
(1977)
Second Words
(1982)
Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature
(1996)
Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing
(2002)
Moving Targets: Writing with Intent 1982–2004
(2004)

POETRY
Double Persephone
(1961)
The Circle Game
(1966)
The Animals in That Country
(1968)
The Journals of Susanna Moodie
(1970)
Procedures for Underground
(1970)
Power Politics
(1971)
You Are Happy
(1974)
Selected Poems
(1976)
Two-Headed Poems
(1978)
True Stories
(1981)
Interlunar
(1984)
Selected Poems II: Poems Selected and New 1976–1986
(1986)
Morning in the Burned House
(1995)

W
e slept in what had once been the gymnasium. The floor was of varnished wood, with stripes and circles painted on it, for the games that were formerly played there; the hoops for the basketball nets were still in place, though the nets were gone. A balcony ran around the room, for the spectators, and I thought I could smell, faintly like an afterimage, the pungent scent of sweat, shot through with the sweet taint of chewing gum and perfume from the watching girls, felt-skirted as I knew from pictures, later in mini-skirts, then pants, then in one earring, spiky green-streaked hair. Dances would have been held there; the music lingered, a palimpsest of unheard sound, style upon style, an undercurrent of drums, a forlorn wail, garlands made of tissue-paper flowers, cardboard devils, a revolving ball of mirrors, powdering the dancers with a snow of light.

There was old sex in the room and loneliness, and expectation, of something without a shape or name. I remember that yearning, for something that was always about to happen and was never the same as the hands that were on us there and then, in the small of the back,
or out back, in the parking lot, or in the television room with the sound turned down and only the pictures flickering over lifting flesh.

We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability? It was in the air; and it was still in the air, an afterthought, as we tried to sleep, in the army cots that had been set up in rows, with spaces between so we could not talk. We had flannelette sheets, like children's, and army-issue blankets, old ones that still said u.s. We folded our clothes neatly and laid them on the stools at the ends of the beds. The lights were turned down but not out. Aunt Sara and Aunt Elizabeth patrolled; they had electric cattle prods slung on thongs from their leather belts.

No guns though, even they could not be trusted with guns. Guns were for the guards, specially picked from the Angels. The guards weren't allowed inside the building except when called, and we weren't allowed out, except for our walks, twice daily, two by two around the football field which was enclosed now by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The Angels stood outside it with their backs to us. They were objects of fear to us, but of something else as well. If only they would look. If only we could talk to them. Something could be exchanged, we thought, some deal made, some trade-off, we still had our bodies. That was our fantasy.

We learned to whisper almost without sound. In the semi-darkness we could stretch out our arms, when the Aunts weren't looking, and touch each other's hands across space. We learned to lip-read, our heads flat on the beds, turned sideways, watching each other's mouths. In this way we exchanged names, from bed to bed:

Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June.

A
chair, a table, a lamp. Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath, and in the centre of it a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out. There must have been a chandelier, once. They've removed anything you could tie a rope to.

A window, two white curtains. Under the window, a window seat with a little cushion. When the window is partly open – it only opens partly – the air can come in and make the curtains move. I can sit in the chair, or on the window seat, hands folded, and watch this. Sunlight comes in through the window too, and falls on the floor, which is made of wood, in narrow strips, highly polished. I can smell the polish. There's a rug on the floor, oval, of braided rags. This is the kind of touch they like: folk art, archaic, made by women, in their spare time, from things that have no further use. A return to traditional values. Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?

On the wall above the chair, a picture, framed but with no glass: a print of flowers, blue irises, watercolour. Flowers are still allowed.
Does each of us have the same print, the same chair, the same white curtains, I wonder? Government issue?

Think of it as being in the army, said Aunt Lydia.

A bed. Single, mattress medium-hard, covered with a flocked white spread. Nothing takes place in the bed but sleep; or no sleep. I try not to think too much. Like other things now, thought must be rationed. There's a lot that doesn't bear thinking about. Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last. I know why there is no glass, in front of the watercolour picture of blue irises, and why the window only opens partly and why the glass in it is shatterproof. It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.

So. Apart from these details, this could be a college guest room, for the less distinguished visitors; or a room in a rooming house, of former times, for ladies in reduced circumstances. That is what we are now. The circumstances have been reduced; for those of us who still have circumstances.