V. Conclusion
What kind of factor or event could trigger off such a revolt? In The Handmaid’s Tale it is a shortage of fertile women, brought about by a host of environmental problems that render most of them barren. In reality, it is perhaps more likely to be provoked precisely by something many feminists have been waiting for: namely, the development of artificial wombs. Such devices will save the lives of babies, which is the declared objective of many research groups working on the problem even now. They will also free women from the need to conceive and bear and deliver children; thus enabling them to develop their careers the way men have always done. So far, so good. But there is also another possibility. Namely that, if women cease doing any of these things, men will no longer need them nearly as much as they used to. And that, as a result, their treatment of them, far from improving, will become worse than even feminists claim it has ever been.
A nightmare? For most of us Westerners, I myself emphatically included, who value the right of both men and women to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, very much so. But for the growing number of men who are being targeted, as well as their wives and mothers and daughters and sisters who partake of the injustices inflicted on them? Less and less. Unlikely? Considering the way history seems to work, not necessarily. Action, reaction; movement, countermovement. As inevitable, as inexorable, as the tides of the sea.
Impossible? Once upon a time there was a man called Domitian, the son of Vespasian. From 81 to 96 CE he was the absolute ruler of Rome and, as such, perhaps the most powerful man in the world. Always something of a paranoid, his spies were everywhere and the number of his victims, countless. On one occasion, asked about his motives, he said that no one believes there could be a conspiracy to kill the emperor until he is killed. Not long thereafter, he was.
I. Introduction
II. The Road to Herland
III. Into the Breach
IV. Brave New World
V. Conclusion