Margaret Atwood
Intentions for writing 'The Handmaid's Tale'
- The study of power; Atwood states that novels aren’t just political messages, it is an examination of characters under certain circumstances, how it deforms or shapes the people living within that kind of regime
- Playing with hypotheses; what happens if something was to be taken away from women, what would follow?
- Although Atwood states that “there’s nothing in the book that hasn’t already happened”
- The possibility of escape; a resolution to the oppression, it won’t last due to the desire to rebel
- Novel was written in response to the rise in Christian fundamentalism and the growing right-wing views held in the USA in the 1980s – during this period, there was a fear amongst liberal thinkers about the potential repressive treatment of women
- Atwood was very mindful of restrictive political and religious ideologies across the world; as seen by the ascendancy of the Ayatollahs in Iran who sought to suppress women and the Puritans in New England.
- Democracy in the USA has been brutally overthrown and replaced by the totalitarian Republic of Gilead
- Rights of women in some countries have been completely eroded by religious laws where right to freedom of speech is restricted
- Government somewhat has the right to gain access to and control the private lives of its citizens
- Ultimately, novel is concerned with the consequences of religious extremism and fanaticism, particularly in relation to the rights of women BUT also personal freedom, morality, government control and Orwellian surveillance
- The Handmaid’s Tale is a chilling vision of a world in which the state regulates sexual relations, condones male violence against women, suppresses female sexuality and leaves no place for human love
- Satire; mocks theocratic rule that declares that due to scriptural precedent, it is justifiable
- Dystopian fiction; explores the effects of new social and power structures in oppressive societies of the future
- Provides a metaphorical reflection on the political dangers that exist in the real and contemporary world
- Speculative fiction; studies on lineages and ancestries, predictions which are possible and may eventually occur
- The use and abuse of religious texts for political ends
- Set in a futuristic world where an ultra-conservative Christian movement has seized control and imposed on the population a totalitarian regime based on some aspects of the Old Testament
- In a world where mismanagement of the planet, industrialisation, the over use of chemicals and birth control in Caucasian societies has affected the ability of many human beings to procreate
- Desperation of those with power to reproduce leads them to exploit ordinary women as national resources, commodifying them to no more than ‘walking wombs’ as a way to consolidate their power
- Night chapters; Offred’s individual time for free thinking ‘The night is mine, my own time, to do with as I will’
- Historical Notes; the story told was played via cassette tape in a lecture – they examine and analyse ways in which the regime operated, how they affected people and more
- Power politics; who has the power to do what to whom
- Gilead regime controls its citizens through fear and violence imposing strict and clear rules and expectations
- There are ritual executions of homosexuals, Roman Catholic priests and Quakers of those who disobey the laws
- Every day, bodies are left hanging on the wall as a way to instil fear into the populace and to remind them of what will happen to transgressors
- People are categorised according to their gender and their social role; they wear clothes that represent their role and their lives are dictated by it
- Men wear military uniforms to convey their power and physical strength
- Women wear colours to identify who they are in relations to child-bearing and the domestic sphere
- Handmaids wear red; indicates she is fertile and belongs to a Commander – no power besides reproducing
- Also, deprived of language, prevented from communicating freely with others and can only use a limited range of empty phrases when speaking to other Handmaids
- Women are subjugated; regime seized female financial assets, removed their children, split up their families and took control of their bodies, they are forbidden to read
- Wives have to follow the rules set forth by the regime, enduring the indignity of ‘The Ceremony’
- Constant climate of fear and paranoia, perpetuated by its military forces ‘the Angels’, ‘the Eyes of God’ and the ‘Guardians of the Faith’
- Citizens witness and take part in public executions and punishments
- When individuals are no longer useful, they are shipped to the radioactive Colonies to die an agonising death
- Women as the most oppressed group; used for domestic service, reproductive purposes, prostitution, to control other women, or sent to clear up nuclear waste as regime seems fit
- Some have a more powerful or privileged position but are ultimately dictated and controlled by the men
- Men have more status than women in the world; whilst still governed by rules and strict codes of conduct
- At the heart of the regime is corruption and hypocrisy
- The most powerful of the ruling elite have freedom to flaunt the rules
- Corrupt totalitarian regimes only breed corruption and terror – no one is safe
Several attempts at protest and rebellion
- Offred tries to escape with her family to Canada, reports that many others tried to do so too
- Commander and Offred rebel against the rules; they meet up often and play Scrabble
- The brothel where Moira works is state run BUT is a rebellion against the lifestyle the Commanders are supposed to be leading
- Serena Joy orchestrates her illicit relationship with Nick, suspecting that her husband is infertile
- Previous Offred carved ‘Nolite te bastardes carborundorum’ communicating her protest
- Women and men break rules to facilitate pregnancy in hope that they won’t be discovered
- Organised rebellion conducted by the Mayday resistance movement and the Underground Femaleroad
- Offred’s inner rebellion to forget the past, her maintain her power to think and feel, her refusal to be silenced and her remembering and recording of her story on tape
- Critical of feminist movement of North America which suggests led to the counter movement of extreme right
- Offred’s mother and her friends are criticised for their blinkered vision; their pro-abortion stance, their insistence on sexual freedom, their failure to embrace the views of a range of women – thereby alienating the pro-life campaigners
- Some sympathy for Offred’s mother BUT most sympathy is for Offred who is more open to different views and cares about both genders
- Offred keeps aliver her mother and Moria, recreating their voices in her narrative
- There is ambiguity about what happens to Offred after she steps into the black van
- Historical Notes provoke strong reactions in readers; Atwood criticises academia and the way it processes and reports on events of the past – lack of empathy and true understanding à detached from human suffering
- History has taught human beings nothing but that the suppression of women goes on
- Professor Pieixoto shows little interest in Offred and is critical of her for not revealing more about the Commander
- He doesn’t seem interested in her fate and attempts to take away her voice
- American civil rights demonstrations, 1960s; used ‘electric cattle prods’ as a weapon to settle the masses
- Hitler’s Youth movement; like the Red Centre, indoctrinates ideas that women should be confined to the domestic
- Iranian revolution, 1979; Islamic fundamentalist strictures, stripped women of their education and way of dressing
- Secret police; Nazi Germany’s Gestapo, Ayatollahs’ Iran’s Savak, Tsarist Russia’s The Third Section, Okhrana and Soviet Russia’s OGPU and NKVD
- ‘The Angels … They were objects of fear to us’ – Name of guards could be linked to the New York ‘Guardian Angels’, a paramilitary force established in 1979 to curb social unrest
- Christian fundamentalism; Atwood’s concerns of rise in extreme right-wing views in American during 1980s, it focuses on theocratic rule by supremacy
- Puritan New England; sought to restrict women to the confines of the domestic
- The use of propaganda; like Stalin altered history, altered the truth and emphasised the importance of the use of culture (arts, literature, films etc)
- Atwood offers a feminist vision of dystopia; a world of subjugation, infertility and pollution
- This was inspired by various trends in 1980s
- i.e. revival of conservative values
- criticism of feminist and the sexual freedom born in the 1960s
- fears about declining birth rates and the dangers of nuclear power
- fears for environment
- Creation of the Gilead regime, a fundamentalist theocratic state based on extreme Christian beliefs
- Reveals the private life of Offred and her partaking in the household, the Ceremony and public events such as the Particution and Salvaging
Hopefully this'll all be useful despite not mentioning any quotes lolz!
But if you've read up to this point here's a document of quotes that I typed up for my exam prep (although not complete but hopefully it'll do you some justice!)
