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This is the most popular novel written by Margaret Atwood, it is a remarkable and overwhelming novel out of the traditional conventions of literature written by women. It is not a marketing product nonetheless it is easy to draw the attention of common readers because of its futurist genre. It belongs to the twentieth-century trend of the anti-utopian, or dystopian novels, exemplified by classics like Aldous Huxley�s Brave New World and George Orwell�s 1984. These dystopian novels present imaginary societies which are not ideals, but instead are frightening or restrictive. Atwood wrote the novel in 1986, after the elections of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain, during a period of conservative revival in the West fuelled by a movement of religious conservatives who criticized what they perceived as the excesses of the �sexual revolution� of the 1960s and 1970s. The growing power of this �religious right� heightened feminist fears that the achievements women had made in previous decades would be reversed.

      I would attempt to say that the novel may be read as a manuscript which warns the reader of the existence of dangerous sects because the centre in which these women live is a sect in which the commander is the only one allowed to read parts of the bible and the women can only have sexual intercourse with him in order to give him their children. And also like in a dangerous sect the ones who try to escape are killed.

It is a critique against the way the system; the state; the Media; the capitalism and the religion respectively manipulate the individual. There is a critique against and the way the state uses the Media in order to make the others believe things that are not true for the benefit of the state.

For example the Commander is the one who is allowed to read the bible. And as it is pronounced on page 112 �We can be read to from it, by him, but we cannot read�.

In another passage on page 152:

The Aunt Lydia, one of the oppressors of Gilead, only shows them what she wants them to watch. This is the way nowadays we are bombarded by the news, television and even Internet.

And one more time we see that when people are recorded in a tape or in a video what they say tend to be a blurred reality. Even Ofglen and her double lie on page 39 when they are interviewed by a group of Japanese tourists.

When the tourist asked them if they don�t mind if they take pictures of them both women reject the idea because it would be a rape act for them. Finally they ask them: �Are you happy?� and Ofglen answers �Yes, we are very happy,� I murmur. I have to say something. What else can I say?� (p.39).

The novel takes place in the United States, Massachusetts instead of in a Canadian setting like other Atwood�s novels like Surfacing. According to Atwood in an unpublished essay about The Handmaid�s Tale:

In this novel Atwood warns both Canadians and US-Americans of their possible undesirable future.

Although the action happens in the United States, the novel fits perfectly with the Canadian canon corresponding to some important features:

1. The importance of the identity. In Canadian�s letters we find very frequently the suffering of the lack of identity.With regards to The Handmaid�s Tale Ofglen remembers her real name but she never reveals it. Other women have the same name as Ofglen, this is a sign of lack of identity. She guards her lost name as guarantee of her hopes for a different future:
   "I keep the knowledge of this name like something hidden, some treasure I�ll come back to dig up, one day�. (p.94).

2. The victimization. That is a common issue in Canadian letters which Atwood knows how to manage. Ofglen is a victim in a totalitarian system and her way back to health is trough a personal revolution. The idea of a personal revolution is also very Canadian.
3. Family matters. The female Canadian writers give importance to this subject, as we know in the novel most of the characters are women.
4. The idea of survival which is always present in Canadian letters. The characters need to survive through harsh conditions such as the hard weather conditions as we saw in Susanna Moodie�s Roughing it in the Bush or trouble of immigration and integration like in Kogawa�s Obasan or in this case, in the �Handmaid�s� the resistance of the main character reflects this idea of survival. We read in several occasions that she is full of anger, impotence and suffering but she never loses her temper.

In The Handmaid�s Tale Atwood introduces us some of the main women struggles to survive in the western society.

1. Conflict between mother and daughter. In a passage in pages 154, 155 there is a flash-back, Ofglen remembers the feminist advices of her mother. In this passage the mother is telling her daughter that she had her daughter alone, without the help of any husband. She says about men: �They aren�t a patch on a woman except they are better at fixing cars and playing football, just what we need for the improvement of the human race, right? That was the way she talked, even in front of Luke[...] He didn�t mind, he teased her by pretending to be macho, he�d tell her women were incapable of abstract thought and she�d have another drink and grim. Chauvinist pig, she�d say�. Thus later in the same passage Ofglen says: �I admired my mother in some ways, although things between us were never easy. [...]She expected me to vindicate her life for her, and the choices she�d made. I didn�t want to live my life in her terms�.
   "Mother. You wanted a woman culture. Well, now there is one. It isn�t what you meant, but it exists. Be thankful for small mercies". (p.164).

2. The choice of being successful in their career or having children. After having read this novel we may debate if the fact of having children nowadays is something which has to do with the women�s biology or is it rather a convention, a tradition?
3. The advantages and disadvantages a couple. As it is pronounced by Ofglen through the novel we can live without sex but not without love.

To finish, I would like to add the matter of the meta-fiction. The novel finishes with some historical notes. Here, we are introduced to a conference given by Professor Piexoto and some female scholars evoking the handmaid�s manuscript. We may suppose that the protagonist wrote her story and she became a historian. We have a fiction inside of another fiction therefore this is a meta-fiction.

I would attempt to say that the novel may be read as a manuscript which warns the reader of the existence of dangerous sects because the centre in which these women live is a sect in which the commander is the only one allowed to read parts of the bible and the women can only have sexual intercourse with him in order to give him their children. And also like in a dangerous sect the ones who try to escape are killed.

Maya Zalbidea Paniagua

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