I occasionally read and sometimes like women's prose, and I recently learned about the existence of women's fantasy. But women's dystopia is something new to me.
Margaret Atwood - a famous writer, her "signature" style is not confused with anything. Yes, and the theme of gender inequality, the plight of women found in her other works. But the genre of dystopia was in its execution very, very unusual.
Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College.
The author describes a not-too-distant future in which, due to the low birthrate, the state has taken control over the private lives of citizens. It is now strictly regulated: every woman and man has a role to play. The state dictates to them not only the way of life down to the smallest detail (where to live, what to do and what to wear), but also what one can feel and think about.
The main character of the book belongs to the category of Servants - women who are required to devote themselves entirely to conceiving, carrying and giving birth to children. She doesn't even have a name-she is Fredova (from the name of the Commander she serves). Her situation is terrible: she lives in the Commander's house like a prisoner, leaving the house once a day to shop, not allowed to read or write, not allowed to talk to strangers, not allowed to use the most basic articles of hygiene. Once she had a family - a husband and a daughter, a job, a life of her own. But everything has changed, in the new state women no longer have rights - none at all.
The book is a diaries of the Servant, it is her story about "that" life: the child, husband, girlfriend, mother, mixed with the events of the present.
The novel very vividly and vividly recreates the atmosphere of a totalitarian regime - total control, fear for every word and action, lack of freedom and any rights, complete deprivation of personal space and time. Although in the course of reading and there are questions about the organization of this system, and sometimes perplexing, why everything is so arranged, but, in general, very well conveyed despair, pain, fear and despair experienced by the heroine, which was taken away from everything.
Undoubtedly, the author's dystopia succeeds. So why is it "female"? This book is written for women, not because it, above all, describes their plight, men and their problems is given much less attention, and not because the emphasis is placed on childbirth and related issues. But because the novel is emotionally saturated, to the limit, and from a rational point of view, in my opinion, it is not complete, leaving behind a large number of questions. It is the emphasis on emotion that was ultimately the big downside of this book for me.
Margaret Atwood knows how to write in such a way that behind one or two sentences there can be a storm of feelings, a mass of emotions, some phrases you can think about for a long time. The author plays with words, there is a lot in the text - and references to the Bible, and reflections on "freedom for" and "freedom from", and speculation about the situation of man, deprived of everything, and criticism of modern society, etc.
The pervasive feelings from reading it all. You begin to get overwhelmed with emotion - and that's when my dislike of this book began. It seemed to me that the author's impact on the reader was too calculated: playing on maternal feelings, on female pride, female vanity, female desire to be loved and independent at the same time. The description of how the heroine lacks tactile sensations, how she longs for the most ordinary things, like hand cream and a glossy magazine, how she is forced to wear only what she can (imagine, tights, tights!!! - can't wear, only stockings), outweighs the significance of her memories. At one point I realized that the author needed the heroine's memories of the child primarily to influence the reader, to evoke pity. In general, there is no love in the book, even in these memories of her daughter, only regret and fear. And all those stocking-tights-pomade-hand cream also press for pity. And it is they that are supposed to symbolize the unfreedom, the humiliation, the suppression of a woman's personality. I was left with an unpleasant residue from this attitude towards women.
And the book also makes me fearful of how quickly a man, placed in difficult conditions, adapts, turning into a NOT human, how easily justifies itself, how quickly and easily society ceases to resist tyranny and gives up freedom, resigning to the rules imposed.
I understand that this novel is not just a dystopia, but rather a parable, it touches on many "eternal" issues, I understand that it is intentionally provocative, I understand that the book is very strong in both content and form, but I do not accept the excessive feminist orientation of the book and its overload of emotion.
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