"There are no happy endings in dystopia." With reference to The Handmaid's
Tale, discuss how far you agree with this view
Margret Atwood closes her dystopian novel dramatically, contrasting the monotonous life of
the protagonist, though leaving the nature of the ending fairly ambiguous, as the reader is
forced to decide whether to rejoice or mourn during the final moments of the story.
Although it is unclear whether Offred escapes Gilead at the end of the final chapter, the
‘Historical Notes’ suggest the character did in fact abscond the totalitarian regime. Pieixoto
speaks of ‘thirty tapes’ found on ‘what would have been known as… the Underground
Female Road’, on which Offred had recorded ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. This greatly implies that
the protagonist was transported out of Gilead, assumedly to safety, which in many respects
infers a ‘happy ending’ for the main character in this dystopia. Not only this, the nature of
Pieixoto’s speech, and the past tense used in his language, confirm that the Gileadean
society has ended by the year 2195, and is only studied as a part of distant US history. The
speech is introduced as being linked with ‘the Gileadean Research Association’ which
regards this ‘period’ as well worth ‘further studies’, and Pieixoto mentions that the ‘cassette
tape’ is so far outdated that they needed an ‘excellent’ ‘antiquarian technician’ to
reconstruct ‘a machine capable of playing such tapes’. This again could be seen as a positive
outcome to the novel, as it is clear this oppressive regime was not able to survive, giving the
reader hope in the ultimate morality of mankind. Much like in ‘1984’, which had clearly
inspired Atwood’s work as, despite the utterly bleak finale for the characters in Orwell’s
novel, it is confirmed in the ‘Appendix’ named ‘The Principals of Newspeak’, through the use
of past tense that, somewhere in the future, ‘Big Brother’s’ regime has ended.
Unlike in this earlier dystopian fiction, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ harbours the optimistic aspect
of love ultimately conquering the fascist system. Assuming, as implied by the ‘Historical
Notes’, she was saved by ‘Mayday’, it is also affirmed that Nick was the person who
organised her get-away. Offred admits earlier on in the novel that she has fallen in love with
Nick as she attempts to describe their night together but can only portray a ‘reconstruction’
as she says, ‘the way love feels is always only approximate.’ The couple begin sleeping
together up until the final chapter, when two men in a ‘black van’ come to take Offred away,
and Nick tells her to ‘trust’ him. Here, Atwood conveys the idea that love is more powerful
than the suppression of a society which ignores the concept altogether as ‘just an anomaly’,
as the connection between the two characters allows Offred to evade the organisation and
live life outside of the harsh reality in which she would have been trapped.
However, to a modern reader, Offred essentially being saved by a man may only reinforce
the complete helplessness of all women in the novel. In the past two decades, children’s
stories and fairy tales have been criticised for their stereotypical gender roles and
fundamental submission of the female protagonists to their male counterparts. As a result,
this outcome of Offred’s reflects the ideology of the dystopian world in which she lives: even
her escape stems from the decision and leadership of a man. Not only this, her familiar
Handmaid, Ofglen, is forced to commit suicide in the process of attempting to rebel against
Gilead, whereas Offred who completely submits to the system is given a way out. These
contrasting endings seem unjust to modern, feminist readers, who have witnessed
heroinism in the form of speaking out against misogyny in the recent ‘Me Too’ movement.
