"Are they old enough to remember anything of the time before, playing basketball, in jeans and sneakers, riding their bicycles? Reading books, all by themselves?" (219)
The idea of any Utopian system of ruling is to try to make the subjects forget the past, because once the memories of the people are gone, only the present exists. In this quote, Atwood characterizes the past as a time of womens' liberation, with women doing things much the same as men. If the young wives remember those times, there is a chance of their daughters, and perhaps their sons, hearing of times past and becoming discontented enough to stage an overthrow to regain the rights of women to do such things as read.
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