It's been years since I read it, but it seemed to me to be a peculiarly urban, middle-to-upper-middle-class, areligious, working white woman's pet fear: that she's going to have all her rights stripped and be forced to be a sexual surrogate and slave in a society of rabid wacko religionists who somehow have gained control of everything.
As I recall, part of the reason there even **are** these handmaids is that there's been a huge plunge in fertility--fewer women successfully having babies. And, well: that's just not a thing. Where birth rates have gone down, it's lifestyle choices, not inability to have babies. But okay; I guess people create disasters in dystopia stories all the time to be catalysts, I guess just... the world is full of women with hard, hard lives, struggling to feed large families, and somehow creating this made-up terror for well-off women who are afraid of having their freedoms trampled on just bugged me.
Plus, worldbuilding-wise, it seemed like a really complicated society to just inflict on a bunch of unwilling participants, and it seemed to make virtually no one happy--how was this going to continue? Again, I felt like I was being asked to accept a lot of stuff as given that I just couldn't. It reminds me of those questions where you're told you have to choose to sacrifice one person for the sake of everyone else, and you're not allowed to come up with any other alternative. NO, that's not how life WORKS.
Like I say, though, it's been ages. Maybe I'd be more tolerant now. I did like the details, like using butter for hand cream.
no subject
As I recall, part of the reason there even **are** these handmaids is that there's been a huge plunge in fertility--fewer women successfully having babies. And, well: that's just not a thing. Where birth rates have gone down, it's lifestyle choices, not inability to have babies. But okay; I guess people create disasters in dystopia stories all the time to be catalysts, I guess just... the world is full of women with hard, hard lives, struggling to feed large families, and somehow creating this made-up terror for well-off women who are afraid of having their freedoms trampled on just bugged me.
Plus, worldbuilding-wise, it seemed like a really complicated society to just inflict on a bunch of unwilling participants, and it seemed to make virtually no one happy--how was this going to continue? Again, I felt like I was being asked to accept a lot of stuff as given that I just couldn't. It reminds me of those questions where you're told you have to choose to sacrifice one person for the sake of everyone else, and you're not allowed to come up with any other alternative. NO, that's not how life WORKS.
Like I say, though, it's been ages. Maybe I'd be more tolerant now. I did like the details, like using butter for hand cream.