handmaid

World Literatures in English
The Handmaid's Tale

NY: Fawcett Crest Book, Ballantine 1985

Margaret Atwood
on the first 50 pages (lecture outline)
Plot Summary; Epigraphs
The novel as a whole
Study Guide to The Handmaid's Tale (remote)
A study guide prepared by Paul Brians of Washington State University
Other Related Websites

Also by Atwood:

The Robber Bride
"Bluebeard's Egg"
"Rape Fantasies" (a group report)

Image from Maclean's Sept. 23, 1996

Margaret Atwood:

Concerned with Canada's cultural identity; Feminist concerns; Survival (1972)
Duality "Tricks with Mirror" Two-Headed Poems (1978); Victim mentality
So far she's written 42 books; 10 novels;
Styles: Postmodern, self-reflexive mode; mixing poetry and fiction, mixing a lot of genres (Gothic, detective story, fairy tales, family romance, comedy, allegory, etc.)
Atwood on HA: '''I delayed writing it for about three years after I got the idea because I felt it was too crazy,'' Miss Atwood says. ''Then two things happened. I started noticing that a lot of the things I thought I was more or less making up were now happening, and indeed more of them have happened since the publication of the book. There is a sect now, a Catholic charismatic spinoff sect, which calls the women handmaids. They don't go in for polygamy of this kind but they do threaten the handmaids according to the biblical verse I use in the book - sit down and shut up. "
The Handmaid's Tale not being science fiction but based on real political, historical and contemporary events." (from BBC Interviews Atwood (1996); this part)
Atwood's 1987 essay opposing the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement: "Canada as a separate but dominated country has done about as well under the U.S. as women, worldwide, have done under men; about the only position they've ever adopted towards us, country to country, has been the missionary position, and we were not on top."(82)

What does Atwood want to satirize through the imaginary nation, Gilead?

Gilead's hierarchy, color & names:

Gilead's location: clues --

Offred escape north of Maine;

the Historical notes: Maine p. 381

News broadcast: p. 107

The underground organization has sent resources to Canada.

Five Quakers were arrested in a place which used to be Detroit.

Montreal Satellite station is blocked. 105

-- Atwood's own interpretation: Boston.

"The Wall is the wall around Harvard yard. All those little shops and stores mentioned are probably there at this very minute. I lived in Boston for four years. It's also the land of my ancestors. . . . They were Puritans of the 1630 - 1635 immigration. . . ."“ (87).

Gilead's geography:Commander's Compound (Kitchen, lawn with flowers, handmaid's room); gate 18; p. 23;

Gilead's Control:

Spatial control: Offred's room: p. 9-10 Archaic, Reduced to the basic facilities
Thought Control:

Aunt pp. 25; 33;
No talking, no thinking p. 10; total control of news broadcast 105-107
salutes and sayings: e.g. p. 26

"Blessed be the fruit"; "May the God open"--p. 25; "Praise be." p. 26; farewell = "Under His Eye" p. 59. "Waste not, want not." p. 9; "Think of yourself as seeds." p. 25; "The Republic of Gilead knows no bounds. Gilead is within you." p. 31; two kinds of freedom p. 33; "Modesty is invisibility" p. 38; "All Flesh is weak" p. 60. "Men are sex machines" 186

Control of women: fewer widows p. 32
control of sexuality: Not about romance, passion or desire; only a matter of duty. p. 122

The man can still enjoy it with two women.

Women turned into ailing mothers” p. 123.

Sexual intercourse ritualized; endorsed by the Bible.

Offred: like a furniture, arms being held by Serena p. 121

Who gets killed at the wall? Why?
Why Gilead? background of 1980: authoritarian moves in the 70's and 80's.

source

Gilead's Spaces: Red center; Offred's bedroom, bathroom chap 12. the sitting room; Birth Center 149 - the commander's study 176;

How does the narrator, Offred, re-construct her identity after she is reduced to just the role of being a handmaid? What does she remember?

resistant thoughts of Marthas: Rita p. 28

survival: apparent obedience, remembering all the lessons given by the Aunts
self-preservation: Her name p. 108. "keep the knowledge of [my] name like something hidden, some treasure I'll come back to dig up, . . ." (108);
subtle self-assertion:

Relate to the others: yearning 4-5; talk 13-14; Nick 24; 28-29-30; 45 Ofglen; the previous girl,

Feeling her contact with Nick 104;

Language redefined: --

no reading, no store names. p. 33; Habits 33; food (date rape 50 );
metaphoric/metonymic descriptions: 11, 19 (ironic smile), 25 (tree)
Re-definition of household p. 103-104; tense, tensed 127; Offred, Off-red.

Spaces of freedom: the gym as a palimpsest; Night p. 49 & memory: Memory – p. 16; 32- Moira, Mother; about Luke 15, 44; daughter pp. 51-52 Remembering as a way of escape: pp. 108-109 (escape); p. 115 (Moira),

Self-assertion after the ceremony p. 124

Criticism p. 25; and correcting Aunt's lessons in her head 25; 60 "All flesh is weak. All flesh is grass.”
Revision of the Bible: P. 251- "My God. Who Art in the Kingdom of Heaven, which is within.

The Handmaid's Tale: General Criticism:

How does the handmaid resist? Is she passive? e.g. Not actively involved in May Day underground group, loves hand cream, Vogue, Sleeps with both the Commander and Nick, the ending. -- from Margaret Atwood Revisited by Karen F. Stein

HT as a national allegory using conservative feminism? -- "[The Handmaid's Tale]'s understanding of female independence is determined by Atwood's sexually coded understanding of Canada and America. In this, Atwood's full-scale parody of American society, what concerns her is not a feminist politics of emancipation, but the nationalist politics of self-protective autonomy, an autonomy which, as I will argue, eventually translates into an advocacy of traditional femininity." (Sandra Tomc 74 )
"[Atwood] seems to privilege the female existential will, the realm of private consciousness, as an adequate recompense for. . . enslavement." (Glenn Deer 85).
“. . . when [Offred] is finally contacted by the resistance, she is curiously uninterested. She has sunk too far into the incestuous little household she serves. . .(Barbara Ehrenriech.)

Other Related Websites

Margaret Atwood -bio and links
Margaret Atwood -biography, Canadian & World Encyclo.
The Margaret Atwood Information Web Site
THE ATWOOD SOCIETY'S MARGARET ATWOOD INFORMATION SITE
Margaret Atwood WWW Resources

Handmaid's Tale
"No Balm in Gilead for Margaret Atwood" New York Times Review of Books. February 17, 1986.

Master's Thesis on The Handmaid's Tale

Angela M. Gulick's master's thesis on the Atwood novel, entitled "The Handmaid's Tale: More than 1984 with Chicks." The thesis examines the utopian, dystopian, feminist, and postmodernist traditions associated with the novel.

Margot Dame's Surrugacy: The Handmaid's Tale -- Critical review.
North American Fiction and Film's chapter on The Handmaid's Tale (Central Queensland University -- Australia)
Clare Witcomb's Essay on the Handmaid's Tale -- Describes it as an "analysis of the oppression of women through institutionalized sexism and patriarchal beliefs."
The Politics of Language: A Device of Creativity and Power in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (Gabriele Twohig)
An Introduction to Language Theory and Its Relevance to Margaret Atwood's Novel, The Handmaid's Tale -- Course module which includes background and references, centering around feminist language-centered criticism
Summary of The Handmaid's Tale (F. Aull, New York University)
Daphne Riordan's Review of the The Handmaid's Tale, including links to other reviews and web sites.

Taliban:
"A number of internet resources detail the possible parallels between the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and Atwood's fictional "Republic of Gilead" in The Handmaid's Tale." (source)
-- Amnesty International Report on Afghanistan

Robber Bride
The "Real Story" Making History in Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride