Notes: the Handmaid’s Tale

Notes on DOUBLE THINK

Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s tale

p38 39

America

in the near future has been taken over by Christian Fundamentalists, the women are captured to be breeders for important Commanders in the country. The protagonist whose real name we never find out, shows that in a totalitarian regime, one can not tell the truth of what one thinks and to take someone at their word is a useless exercise. NOTE: phototaking/power of/tourism and gaze of “the other”

“A group of people is coming towards us. They’re tourists, from Japan it looks like, a trade delegation perhaps, on a tour of the historical landmarks or out for local colour. They’re diminutive and neatly turned out; each has his or her camera, his or her smile…. I CAN’T HELP STARING. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen skirts that short on women. The skirts each just below the knee and the legs come out from beneath them, meanly naked in their think stockings, blatant, the high heeled shoes with their straps attached on the feet like delicate instruments of torture. The women teeter on their spike feet as if on stilts but off balance, the backs arch at the waste thrusting the buttocks out. Their heads are uncovered, and the hair is too is exposed, in all it’s darkness and sexuality. They wear lipstick, red, outlining the damn cavities of their mouths, like scrawls on a washroom wall, of the time before.

I stop walking, Ofglen stops beside me and I know that she too cannot take her eyes of these women. We are fascinated, but also repelled. They seem undressed. It has taken so little time to change out minds, about things like this.

Then I think: I used to dress like that. That was freedom. Westernized, they used to call it.

The Japanese tourists come towards us, twittering, and we turn out heads away too late:

Our face have been seen.

There is an interpreter, in the standard blue suit and red patterned tie, with the winged eye tie pin. He’s the one who steps forward out of the group in front of us, block our way.

The tourist bunch behind him; one of them raises a camera.

“Excuse me,” he says to both of us, politely enough.

They’re asking if they can take your picture.”

I look down at the side walk and share my head for NO. What they must see is the white wings only, a scrap of face, my chin and park of my mouth. Not the eyes. I know better than to look the interpreter in the face. Most of the interpreters are Eyes, or it’s said.

I also know better than to say Yes. Modesty is invisibility said aunt

Lydia

, Never forget it. To be seen –to be seen- is to be –her voice trembles – penetrated. What you must be, girls, is impenetrable. She called us girls.

Beside me, Ofglen is also silent. She’s tucked her red-gloved hands up into her sleeves, to hide them.”

The interpreter turns back to the group, chatter at them in staccato. I know what he’ll be saying, I know the line. He’ll be telling them that the women here have different customs, the to stare at them though the lens of a camera is, for them an experience of violation.

I am looking down, at the sidewalk, mesmerized by the women’s fee. One of them is wearing open-toes sandals, the toenails painted pink. I remember the smell of the nail polish, satiny brushing of sheer panty hose against the skin, the way the toes felt, pushed toward the opening in the shoe by the whole weight of my body. The woman with painted toes shifts from one foot to the other. I can feel her shoes, on my own feet. The smell of nail polish has made me hungry.

“Excuse me,” says the interpreter again, to catch our attention. I nod, to show I’ve heard him.

“He asks, as you happy.” Says the interpreter. I can imagine it, their curiosity: Are they happy? How can they be happy? I can feel their bright black eyes on us, the way they lean a little forward to catch our answers, the women especially, but the men too: we are secret, forbidden, we excite them.

Ofglen say nothing. There is a silence. But sometimes it’s dangerous not to speak.

“Yes, we are very happy,” I murmur. I have to say something. What else can I say?