Summary
Summary The Handmaid's Tale - analysis
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Notes from a series of Massolit lectures about different aspects of the novel, contexts and some close analysis
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THTContexts
- Published in 1985 – instantly caused a stir
Banned reading in some US high schools
- Written when she was living close to a totalitarian regime
- Novel that recalls elements of nazi German and totalitarian regimes
- Emphasis on surveillance and terror
- Gilead is a theocracy – takes us back to the founding fathers of America and religious ideology
characterizing the 17th century puritan England
Handmaid’s red robes – 1850 novel the scarlet letter
- Set in new England – asked to make direct connection to puritan founding fathers and kind of
theocratic regime we see in THT
- Choses to set it in the US – able to see the heritage of extreme political thought she does not detect in
liberal Canada
Canada is not blame free – historical notes
o Professor says Canada is very happy to send back refugees from Gilead
- Liberal tolerance and appeasement – can become cowardice
- America founded on religious extremism
- Writing from position of berlin – gave her some distance
Could reflect on what she was seeing in America at the time
- 1980’s – resurgence known as the new right
Shouted about traditional values – suggested women having careers was a terrible thing,
emasculated men
Responsible for fire bombings on abortionist clinics
- Current of new right political thinking transferred straight into THT
Serena joy had a previous career – signer on a television evangelical show
- Everything connects together – results in a situation like Gilead
- Recalling texts such as 1984 (George Orwell) Brave New World (Huxley)
Classical dystopian texts / critical dystopia
o Emphasis on eyes and surveillance
- Atwood refers to THT as speculative fiction
Nothing is made up – she’s taken elements from various ideologies
There is nothing in the novel that hasn’t already happened
- Referring it as a critical dystopia – removes texts and Gilead from our own contexts
Atwood wants us to think what in Gilead do we recognise – should these things worry us?
- Attitudes towards gender role play – look at our society and think are we really so different?
In our society there are common factors although not so extreme
- Novel that makes us reflect on our own context
- As speculative fiction – it is a warning
Atwood – anything could happen anywhere, given the circumstances
Structure and beginnings
- Various pieces written in an order to release a certain kind of energy
- Handmaid – archaic term
Not something we associate with our own context – makes us think it cannot be set in our own
society
- Historical notes – told that the title is partly in homage to Chaucer
Tale carries further connotations – American idiom for bottom
o Sexualisation of Offred that is embedded in that title
Diminished further by other implications – tale tends to suggest like old wives tale
o Some kind of fable – something fantastical and to not quite be believed
, - Offred’s narrative – named after a male narrative
As if to give it credentials that it would otherwise lack
- Epigraphs – quote from the bible, proverb and epigraph from Jonathon swift
All male narratives
Historical notes – delivered in voices of male academics
- Offred’s narrative is sandwiched between competing male narratives
As if her narrative is being contained in some way – implication of a metaphor of imprisonment
o Offred is a political prisoner is Gilead – argue her narrative is imprisoned
- Offred records her story on two cassette tapes
- Chapter headings – combination of familiar terms that we recognize in our world and context and
unfamiliar terms
Unfamiliar terms – frightening
- Disturbing future tense narrative
- Offred’s life contained and circumscribed – she is often visible
When she is visible she must act/behave/speak in a certain kind of way to stay safe in Gilead
- Regular occurrence of word night in chapter headings – Offred alone in her room
Thinking, taking trips back in the past, into her memory, speaking, observing everything around
her during the day in Gilead
Night sections puncture the text
Where most of the narrative work is done – Offred has the space and time to tell her story
Create a dominant sense throughout the text – connection with diary of Anne frank
- Beginning voice – feels intimate
- Whole narrative is a first person narrative – sense of an intimate conversation with the reader
Sense of a confession
- Interplay between words formerly and now
- Whole space is like a palimpsest – literary term for a piece of old writing that has been roughly
scrubbed out and new writing has been written over the top
Meaning produced from an intersection between the two
- Speak of coercion, imprisonment and fear – restrictions on everyone
Everyone has clearly circumscribed roles
- Infantilization – treated like children and not allowed to do anything
- Emphasis on surveillance and silence
- Emphasis on names important – assume that her name is June
Comes last in list
Only name in the list that does not appear elsewhere
- What has happened to the familiar? – question that projects us through the rest of the narrative
Narration
- Historical notes – Offred’s story found on cassette tapes
Spoken account and they have written it down
- Oral text latterly written down
- Historians aren’t sure they have the story in the right order
- All of it is a reconstruction – word reconstruction repeated four times in section
Impossible to put everything in to any story – too many parts, sides, nuances
So much is ambiguous – essentially ambiguity around any narration
Makes us think of fabrication – element of fabrication in any story that is told
- Her story – an element of evert single story that is told
- Offred does not do what is expected – talks about element of fabrication
Chosen to put in a certain element of making things up – I made that up. It didn’t happen that
way … I am not sure how it happened
o Paradoxical – should be to make us trust her narrative less
o Fact she's telling us that increases the credibility of her narration over all
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