"A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze." This sentence holds true not only in the book but for our lives today. In the book, the Handmaid's have have little or no freedom. Offred is offered only tiny glimpses of freedom, mostly when she is alone with the Commander, playing scrabble or reading books. Yet, everything else in the system is laid out. There are limits on religion, clothing, shopping-really everything is chosen for them based on their role in the new society.
What I enjoy most however is exploring the way the new society really is better. In the past there was no reign and very few limits, very similar to today. There was racy pornography, plastic surgery, and makeup galore to cover up and hide the truth, to make the world a little more attractive. Like in the old pornographies the handmaidens watched, many woman were disrespected.
"I'm not talking about sex, he says. That was part of it, the sex was too easy. Anyone could just buy it. There was nothing to work for, nothing to fight for. We have the stats from that time. You know they were complaining about the most? Inability to feel." I think this quote is very true for today. Sex, while once a special and worshiped thing has now turned into something amazingly casual and normal! High school kids take it as something fun to do on weekends, tv shows blare it across the screen, it can be found in any popular new movie and songs use lyrics so uncensored it's almost embarrassing; the intimacy of sex is completely gone. While once there was an act of courting, now drunken one night stands are accepted as normal. There used to be a point in sex, not simply for pleasure, but for childbearing and expressing love. "Saved by childbearing, I think. What would save us in the time before?" This is a very legitimate question, what does save us? We still have money to make but, "It's not enough, he says. It's too abstract. I mean there was nothing for [the men] to do with women.
It's true, it is hard to find pleasure in an act that has now become so open. In the new society even the Commander watching Offred read was a "curiously sexual act." Scrabble became sexual, short eye contact with Nick through the window expressed "the same kind of hunger", even gardening became extremely sexual. "Goddesses are possible now and the air suffuses with desire."
As Aunt Lydia says, "In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it." What I wonder is will our society ever reach a point where we are given too much sexual freedom to? Will we ever retreat back into the days of courtship and freedom from?
Nina,
ReplyDeleteTerrific post. Somewhat disconcerting to have you make the Commander's case so convincingly, but you may well have a point: to the extent that sexuality is no longer 'sacred' (or even viewed as something special) it does seem somewhat debased as a human experience (and you're right to suggest that this may be part of Atwood's point). But do we really need to go as far as the Republic of Gilead has to reclaim it's value? (Plus, once we get to Jezebel's, you'll see that even Gilead has its own set of casual sex creepers).