Happy Endings

Real estate values are one of the few things, other than characters, that gets repeated in the story. Real estate values are in Section A, where they go up; in Section C, where John and Madge buy a house “just before the real estate values went up” (44); and in Section D, where real estate values go down with the impending arrival of the tidal wave.

Perhaps more than anything, real estate values—traditionally an ample part of the figurative health of any capitalist society—are very much played down in Atwood’s story. In Section A, where accord seems to be reached between male and female, real estate values rise. Looked at in a literal sense, this would seem to have largely no bearing on the events in Section A, save for the fact that John and Mary can afford help in raising their children. However, this rise in real estate values can symbolically be seen as an increase in social currency once gender equality has been located.

The John in Section C has also bought his house, with Madge, before real estate values went up—this is presumably at a moment before John begins his affair with Mary. However, John is necessarily disallowed from appreciating the rise in real estate values due to his sexual objectification of Mary and his harboring of patriarchal rage, which manifests in John killing Mary, Mary’s lover, and himself.

Fred and Madge, in Section D, literally weather a storm and while real estate values go down, they remain in love and happy together. While in the first two examples real estate values—and by extension, capitalism—would seem to somehow be tied to gender equality, in Section D, one can presume that Fred and Madge’s house is destroyed and yet they nonetheless continue on happily, and, in figuratively moving Fred and Madge back to Section A, Atwood implies that real estate values will again rise.

Perhaps most importantly, Atwood implies how unimportant the notion of real estate values—and the capitalism it is representative of—are to the social currency of a society. Prices rise and fall, and even natural disasters come and go, but Fred and Madge, both “virtuous and lucky,” survive through treating one another well.