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The Handmaid's Tale

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The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, first published by McClelland and Stewart in 1985. The novel explores themes of women in subjugation, and the various means by which they gain agency, against a backdrop of the establishment of a totalitarian theocratic state. Sumptuary laws (dress codes) play a key role in imposing social control within the new society.

The novel is often studied by school and college students. The American Library Association lists it in "10 Most Challenged Books of 1999" and as number 37 on the "100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000 due to many complaints from parents of pupils regarding the novel's anti-religious content and sexual references.

The Handmaid's Tale won the Governor General's Award for 1985, and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987. It was also nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award, the 1986 Booker Prize, and the 1987 Prometheus Award. It has been adapted several times into performance works.

Summary

The story is told from the perspective of a first person narrator, a handmaid known only as Offred. A literary appendix gives the frame to the story: the audio diary of the narrator has been discovered many years later, and is being treated as a historical document under discussion at an academic conference far in the future, in the department for the study of white people at a university in the Canadian Arctic. These hints of further wide changes in the world we know today place The Handmaid's Tale within science fiction as well as feminist literature. The novel is set in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Republic of Gilead

The government of the United States was overthrown several years before the opening of the novel. The country has been taken over by Christian fundamentalists who have abrogated the constitution and founded a theocratic state. This Republic of Gilead is ruled through Biblical fundamentalism and rigid enforcement of social roles vaguely resembling Dominionism. Most citizens, and all women, have been stripped of their freedoms. This revolution succeeded because terrorist acts caused the populace to become fearful, suspend criticism of the government, and accept "temporary" measures that became permanent.

This theocracy was planned by conservative Christians, based on their interpretation of Biblical law. The state religion, which draws on an evangelical version of Christianity, is the only system of belief that is allowed. The rulers believe they have a cultural mandate to create and govern this new society, aspects of which are based on harsh interpretations of the Old Testament. For example, the most severe form of punishment is public stoning to death, the so-called "particution" (participatory execution), similar to justice under the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The military dictatorship has proclaimed martial law as "hordes of guerrillas" are said to roam the countryside. All those who threaten the ideology of Gilead, and those who will not repent — political and religious dissidents, pro-choice advocates (called "abortionists"), and homosexuals (who are accused of "gender treachery") — are executed by hanging and their bodies displayed at "The Wall". Those who do not conform to the new norms are pressed into service as servants or deported to "the colonies", unspecified regions where pollution has reached toxic levels, where they presumably face hard labour and an early death. Women must submit to men and no longer have any civil rights.

Widespread infertility

The steep decline in the birth rate, implied to be due to infertility caused by environmental pollution and possibly nuclear war, has led to state control of reproduction. The chief function of fertile women is childbearing. Owing to the ecological disasters, approximately one quarter of all surviving children have physical defects. These disabled babies are taken by the government and never heard of again. They are described as "shredders", a dysphemism that implies their death, perhaps by euthanasia.

Highly placed party men known as Commanders are given special privileges such as servants, cars, and access to the government's secret brothel. Should they require it, they are issued with fertile women to bear their children, just as personal slaves did in Biblical times. These so-called Handmaids are drawn from "fallen women", those who have committed sexual crimes, which have been redefined to include lesbianism and, retroactively, divorce. Handmaids spend a maximum of two years in a particular household before they are moved. The punishment for failing to produce a child after attempts with three commanders is to be declared a non-person and exiled to the colonies; the reward for producing a child is a guarantee of never being thus deported. Gilead does not recognize male infertility -- everything is blamed on the women -- so many handmaids who have not conceived seek to impregnate themselves however they can, for example by the doctors who check them over. The pressure to conceive produces an insurmountable psychosis in the handmaids.

Offred's assignment

The narrator was previously married to a divorced man, designating her an adulteress under the new order. Her daughter is taken away from her to be raised by another family, and she, with proven fertility, is forced to become a handmaid. The novel opens as she begins her third and final assignment. She is placed in the household of the Commander Fred and his Wife, Serena Joy; her name becomes Offred.

Offred frequently refers to the words secretly carved in dog Latin inside her closet where no one can see, presumably left by a former handmaid — Nolite te bastardes carborundorum (Don't let the bastards grind you down).

Resistance

This third assignment differs from her earlier experiences in that Offred is given, in various disjointed episodes, glimpses that all is not as it seems in Gilead. Through these, she discovers that the people in her life, while paying lip service to the new society's rigid mores, seek various means of expressing their illicit desires.

Offred initially becomes aware of these transgressions when Fred orders her to visit his study late at night. He wishes to establish a more personal relationship with her, as he is forbidden to converse with her. He offers to play Scrabble with her, an illicit activity, since women are forbidden from reading and restricted to specific assigned duties. He also obtains hand lotion for her and allows her to read books and magazines from the past. On one occasion, he dresses her in a sexy costume and smuggles her into Jezebel's, a nightclub and brothel run by the party. He asks that she keep all this secret from his Wife, Serena Joy.

At the same time, Serena Joy has also asked Offred to keep secrets from the Commander. Resentful of having been deprived of her formerly prominent role as a televangelist and right-wing lecturer, she feels the only thing that can give meaning to her life is a child. Since the Commander is likely to be sterile (his previous handmaids did not conceive), Serena Joy suggests that Offred attempt to conceive a child with Nick, the chauffeur, later revealed to be a member of the Mayday underground resistance. Nick and Offred begin an emotional and sexual relationship which they continue until the end of the novel.

Ambiguous resolution

It is left ambiguous whether Offred's transgressions have been discovered and she is taken away to be punished, or she is smuggled out of the household by the resistance. By this time, Offred and Nick believe that she might be pregnant. Even though her fate is not made clear, since she was able to make tapes on which she recounts her experiences, she was probably rescued and left the country via the "Underground Femaleroad", akin to the Underground Railroad that smuggled slaves from the American South to freedom in Canada.

Characters

Offred, the Handmaid

The protagonist was separated from her husband and child after the formation of the Republic of Gilead. Since she has proven fertile, she is considered an important commodity and has now been placed as a handmaid in the home of the Commander Fred and his wife Serena Joy to bear a child for them.

Offred is a patronymic which describes her function: she is "Of Fred", i.e. she belongs to her Commander, Fred, as a concubine, a sexual slave. She is chattel belonging to him, and so is given his name (see slave name). Atwood plays with her readers, because the narrator, whose real name is not revealed, does not accept her role; she is not "Of-Fred", a coded way of saying she is "not afraid".

It is implied that her birth name is June. All of the women training to be handmaids recite their names, and all are later accounted for except June. In addition, one of the Aunts tells Offred to stop "mooning and June-ing." It may well be a pseudonym, as "Mayday" is the name of the Gilead resistance and could be an attempt on the protagonist's part to make something up; the Nunavut conference that takes place in the epilogue is held in June, as well.

Fred, the Commander

His background is never officially described as Offred does not have a chance to learn of his past, although he does volunteer, in one of their later meetings, that he is a sort of scientist and was previously involved in something like market research. Later, it is hypothesized, but not confirmed, that he might have been one of the architects of the republic and its laws.

Serena Joy, the Wife

A former televangelist who seems loosely based on Anita Bryant, she is now a Wife in the fundamentalist theocracy she helped to create. She is neither serene nor joyful: all power and public recognition have been taken away from her by the state, as it has for all women in Gilead. Being sterile, she also has to bear the indignity of having a handmaid and being present every month as her husband has sex with the handmaid.

Ofglen, the neighbour

A neighbour of Offred's and fellow handmaid, she has been partnered with Offred to do the shopping for the household each day, so that the handmaids are never alone and police each other's behaviour. Ofglen is a member of the Mayday resistance, and gets Offred involved. In contrast to the relatively passive Offred, Ofglen is very daring, even leaping forward to kill a spy who is to be tortured and killed in a "particicution" in order to save him the pain of a slow death. Ofglen later commits suicide before the government comes to take her away for being part of the resistance.

She is replaced as Offred's shopping partner by another handmaiden, also named Ofglen, who does not share the original Ofglen's feelings about Gilead.

Nick, the lover

The Commander's chauffeur, he lives above the garage. On Serena Joy's suggestion and arrangement, Offred starts a sexual relationship with him to try to increase her chances of getting pregnant and saving herself from becoming an Unwoman and being shipped off to the Colonies. She subsequently starts to have real feelings for him. Nick is an ambiguous character, and Offred does not know if he is a party loyalist or a member of the resistance.

Moira, the friend

Moira has been a close friend of Offred's since college. She is a rebel, and a lesbian. The two of them are taken to be handmaids together; Moira attempts to escape, while the more passive Offred declines. Offred then loses track of her for several years, but encounters her at Jezebel's, the party-run brothel. Moira has been caught, sterilized and forced to become a prostitute. She is grimly practical about her life of having sex with party leaders: once her "snatch" wears out, she will be declared an Unwoman and sent to the colonies to clean up nuclear waste.

Luke, the husband

Luke was the narrator's husband prior to the formation of the Republic. She started seeing him secretly while he was still married; he then divorced in order to marry her. Luke, the narrator, and their daughter try to escape to Canada, but are captured. She constantly expects to see him hanged at The Wall but never sees him there and never learns his fate.

Categories of people

People are segregated into categories and dressed according to their social functions. White women seem to be the default in Gilead. The main non-white ethnic group mentioned are Blacks, who are called the Children of Ham; Jews are called Sons of Jacob. It is an underpinning assumption of the book that the reproductive value of white women is privileged over that of others. The sexes are strictly divided. Women are categorised “hierarchically according to class status and reproductive capacity” as well as “metonymically colour-coded according to their function and their labour” . The Commander makes it clear that women are considered intellectually and emotionally inferior. Women are not permitted to read and girls are not educated.

The complex sumptuary laws serve to distinguish people by sex, occupation, and caste. Women are especially visually segregated; men are too, but they are equipped with military or paramilitary uniforms, constraining but also empowering them. All classes of men and women are defined by the colours they wear (as in Aldous Huxley's dystopia Brave New World), drawing on color symbolism and psychology. All lower status individuals are regulated by this dress code. Only rare civilians (increasingly persecuted) and Commanders seem to be free of sumptuary restrictions.

Men

Men have their particular roles and duties to carry out:

  • Commanders of the Faithful are the ruling class. Because of their status, they are entitled to establish a patriarchal household, with a Wife, a Handmaid if necessary, Marthas (servants) and Guardians. They have a duty to procreate but many are infertile. They wear black to signify superiority. They are allowed cars.
  • Eyes - the internal intelligence agency who attempt to root out those violating the rules of Gilead.
  • Angels - soldiers who fight in the wars in order to expand and protect the country's borders. Angels may be permitted to marry.
  • Guardians of the Faith - "They're used for routine policing and other menial functions." They are unsuitable for other work in the republic being "stupid or older or disabled or very young, apart from the ones that are Eyes incognito" (chapter 4). Young Guardians may be promoted to Angels when they come of age. They wear lime green uniforms.

Women

Seven legitimate categories and two illegitimate ones are described.

  • Wives are at the top social level permitted to women. They are married to the higher ranking functionaries. Wives always wear blue dresses, as did the Virgin Mary. After the death of her husband, a Wife becomes a Widow, and must dress in black.
  • Daughters are the natural or adopted children of the ruling class. They wear white until marriage. The narrator's daughter has been adopted by an infertile Wife and Commander.
  • Handmaids are fertile women whose social function is to bear children for the Wives. They dress in a red habit with a white head-dress that obscures their peripheral vision. Handmaids are produced by reeducating fertile women who have broken the gender and social laws. Owing to the need for fertile Handmaids, Gilead gradually increased the number of gender-crimes.
  • Aunts train and monitor the Handmaids. The Aunts attempt to promote the role of the Handmaid as an honorable one and seek to legitimize it by removing any association with gender criminality. They do the dirty work of the men running Gilead—being an aunt is the only way these unmarried, infertile women may have any autonomy. Aunts dress in brown.
  • Marthas are older infertile women whose compliant nature and domestic skills recommend them to a life of domestic servitude. They dress in green smocks. The title of "Martha" is based on a story in Luke 10:38-42, where Jesus visits Mary, sister of Lazarus and Martha; Mary listens to Jesus while Martha is preoccupied "by all the preparations that had to be made."
  • Econowives are women who have married relatively low-ranking men, meaning any man who does not belong to the ruling elite. They are expected to perform all the female functions: domestic duties, companionship, child-bearing. Their dress is multicoloured red, blue, and green to reflect these multiple roles.

The division of labor between women engenders some resentment between categories. Marthas, Wives and Econowives perceive Handmaids as sluttish, and Econowives resent their freedom from domestic work. The narrator mourns that none of the various groups are able to empathize with the others; women are taught to hate and fear other women.

Outside of mainstream society exist two further classes of women.

  • Unwomen are sterile women, widows, feminists, lesbians, nuns and politically dissident women -- all women who are incapable of social integration within the Republic's strict gender divisions. They are exiled to "the colonies", areas of both agricultural production and deadly pollution, as are handmaids who fail to produce a child after three two-year assignments. Males who engage in homosexuality or related acts are declared "Gender Traitors", and either executed or sent to the Colonies to die a slow death. All those non-persons banished to the colonies, men or women, wear grey dresses.
  • Jezebels are prostitutes and entertainers, available only to the Commanders and their guests; some are lesbians and attractive, educated women unable to adjust to handmaid status. Jezebels, whose title comes from the Biblical character, dress in the remnants of sexualized costumes from "the time before" viz. cheerleaders' costumes, school uniforms, and Playboy Bunny costumes. While Jezebels have some degree of freedom in that they can wear make up, drink and socialize with men, they are still tightly controlled by Aunts. Once their usefulness for sex is over, they are also sent to the Colonies.

Themes

Dystopia

Dystopian literature investigates how the human impulse to create utopia (a perfect world) goes awry when it meets the power to make such a place a reality. In The Handmaid's Tale, those who establish Gilead do so through the use of emergency laws, para-military organizations, surprise, and relative disinterest on the part of the populace. Having enacted a theocratic fascist state, the novel chronicles the ways in which the state was effective only in doing injury, not in transforming individuals to higher-minded ideals.

The dominance of men and the subjugation of women

Rigid gender roles are a major theme. Male status is problematic. The Commander tells Offred that one of the motivations for establishing Gilead was that previously the "main problem was with the men. There was nothing for them anymore... There was nothing for them to do. [Making money was] not enough,... too abstract" (chapter 32). There are clearly defined roles for each gender: men as money earners, protectors, fighters, keepers of knowledge; women as caretakers, child bearers and raisers. Unlike in former times, men no longer have sexual access to women until they have proved themselves in socio-ideological terms.

Women are stripped of their independence through the reversal of feminist accomplishments. They are no longer allowed to own property, control money, arrange their own affairs, make reproductive choices, read, wear make-up, or choose their clothes. The Giladeans interpret St. Paul's letter to the Thessalonians to mean that all women are to be submissive to all men and women are to be silent in the presence of men.

Sex for reproduction only, not pleasure

Human sexuality in Gilead is regulated by the notion that sex is fundamentally degrading to women. Men are understood to desire sexual pleasure constantly but are obliged to abstain from all but marital sex for religio-social reasons. The social regulations are enforced by law, with corporal punishment inflicted for lesser offences and capital punishment for greater ones.

"The Ceremony" is a non-marital sexual act sanctioned solely for the purpose of reproduction based on a Biblical passage described below. The Gileadan enactment has the Handmaid lying supine upon the Wife during the sex act itself. Offred describes the ceremony:

Once a Handmaid is pregnant, she is venerated by her peers and the Wives. After the baby is born, it is given to the Wife of her Commander, and she is reassigned to another household.

Pre-Gileadian society

The novel indicates that pre-Gileadian society was not great for women. This society was a late 20th century version of the United States as Atwood envisioned it developing at the time of its writing (1985). In this society, women feared physical and sexual violence, and despite long-running feminist campaigns (approximately 1970–2000 within the text), they had not achieved equality. Feminist campaigners like Offred's mother and Moira were persecuted by the state. Radical feminism had teamed up with social conservativism in campaigns against pornography. In addition, mass commercialization had reached a nadir of "fast-food" and "home delivery" sexuality. Women outside of prostitution in "the former times" were subject to a socially constructed vision of romantic love that encouraged serial monogamy in favour of men's social and sexual interests.

In pre-Gileadean society, despite holding a university degree, Offred was a menial white collar worker whose colleagues were all women, with a male boss. Aside from having had to cope with oppressive cultural and social phenomena, women lacked full and meaningful control over their economic lives.

In the novel, women are depicted as the property of men in both societies, in the United States as private property and in Gilead as social property.

Biblical references

Some of the underpinnings of the Republic of Gilead come from the Bible, especially the Book of Genesis. The primary reference is to the story of Rachel and Leah (Genesis 29:31–35; 30:1–24). Leah, Rachel's sister and the first wife of Jacob, was fertile and was blessed by God, but Rachel, Jacob's second wife, was barren, i.e. infertile. Rachel competes in bearing sons for their husband by using her handmaids as property and taking immediate possession of the children they produce. In the context of Atwood's book, the story is one of female competition, jealousy, and reproductive cruelty.

Another story in Genesis concerns the infertile Sarah and Hagar, who conceives on her behalf. This story is different from the previous one, mainly because of the active role played by Hagar, who keeps her own child, and Sarah's fertility, which is restored by God at an advanced age. Atwood was aware of the similarity between these stories, and was using it to show the hypocrisy of Gileadean interpretation: this Biblical story shows a relationship between a wife and a handmaid which did not involve sexual and reproductive subjugation. Additionally, it was ultimately the choice of the wives in the Bible, whereas Wives in Gilead (such as Serena Joy) are forced.

The name "Gilead" is also from Genesis and means "hill of testimony" or "mount of witness".

Key phrases

Atwood takes pains to emphasize the effect of changing context on behaviours and attitudes. A key phrase "context is all" (1996, pg.154, 202) is repeated throughout the novel. The Scrabble game, for example, illustrates her point, since Offred describes it as once "the game of old men and women" but now forbidden and therefore "desirable" (1996, pg.149). Offred also perceives the world differently in a society that is morally rigid. Revealing clothes and make-up were part of her former life; yet, when she encounters some Japanese tourists wearing these, she is intrigued by her feeling that they are inappropriately dressed.

Social critique

The Handmaid's Tale comprises a number of social critiques. Atwood sought to demonstrate that extremist views might result in fundamentalist totalitarianism. The novel presents a dystopian vision of life in the United States in the period projecting forward from the time of the writing (1985), covering the backlash against feminism. This critique is most clearly seen in both Offred's memories of the slow social transformation towards theocratic fascism and in the ideology of the Aunts.

Immediately following the overthrow of the government, but before the new world order had completely changed things, women begin to lose whatever freedoms they had previously had. Offred describes the loss of her own bank account as it is transferred to her husband's control, and then the loss of her job, before she, her husband and her daughter attempt to flee. An "Aunt" describes women's rights prior to the overthrow as "freedom to" (i.e., women having the freedom to do as they pleased), while the time after is described as "freedom from" (i.e., women being protected from difficulties, responsibilities, and fear).

Atwood mocks those who talk of "traditional values", for example, such leaders as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan who suggested that women should return to being housewives (see Kinder, Küche, Kirche and Barefoot and pregnant). Serena Joy, formerly a preacher, has been forced to give up her career and is clearly not content. Her preaching for this society has destroyed her own life.

However, Atwood also offers a critique of contemporary feminism. By working against pornography, feminists in the early 1980s opened themselves up to criticism that they favoured censorship. Anti-pornography feminist activists such as Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon made alliances with the religious right, despite the warnings of sex-positive feminists. Atwood warns that the consequences of such an alliance may end up empowering feminists' worst enemies. She also suggests, through descriptions of the narrator's feminist mother burning books, that contemporary feminism was becoming overly rigid and adopting the same tactics as the religious right.

Most notably, Atwood critiques modern religious movements, specifically fundamentalist Christianity in the United States, with a reference to Islamic fundamentalism such as the theocracy founded in Iran in 1979. An American religious revival in the mid-1970s had led to the growth of the religious right through televangelism. Jimmy Carter, then president, had avowed his renewed and reaffirmed Christianity; Ronald Reagan was elected as his successor using a specifically Christian discourse.

Atwood pictures revivalism as counter-revolutionary, opposed to the revolutionary doctrine espoused by Offred's mother and Moira, which sought to break down gender categories. A Marxist reading of fascism explains it as the backlash of the right after a failed revolution. Atwood explores this Marxist reading and translates its analysis into the structure of a religious and gender revolution. "From each according to her ability… to each according to his needs" (page 127) is a deliberate distortion of Marx's phrase, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" — the latter, an ideological statement on class and society; the former, a stance taken by Gileadian society towards gender roles.

Adaptations

A 1990 film adaptation was directed by Volker Schlöndorff. It starred Natasha Richardson (Offred), Faye Dunaway (Serena Joy), Robert Duvall (Fred), Aidan Quinn (Nick), and Elizabeth McGovern (Moira). MGM released the film on DVD in 2001.

There is also an operatic adaptation, written by Poul Ruders, which premièred in Copenhagen on March 6, 2000, and ran at the English National Opera in London in 2003. There is a full-cast dramatization, produced for BBC Radio 4 by the award-winning John Dryden in 2000. A straight stage adaptation by Brendon Burns was toured by the Haymarket Theatre, Basingstoke, UK in 2002.

See also

References

External links



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