Preliminary Advanced English

Area of Study: Power

Plot Overview

The Handmaids Tale can be read on multiple levels. As a dystopic cautionary

tale, it highlights the vulnerability of female rights. This is shown by the depiction
of Gilead, a futuristic, fundamentalist totalitarian state. Puritanical fervour and
fanaticism has dictated a return to traditional values where the excesses of
Western society have been swept away and replaced by rigidly imposed Biblical
tenants and mores. Gileadean society is reactionary and patriarchal n nature.
Women are seen as the subservient gender and so their rights have been at first
subordinated and later all but eradicated.

The plot is complex and a non-chronological format is used that fuses past and
present by frequent flashbacks and memories. The tale has a biographical feel to
it but the narrator admits throughout that this is a reconstruction. It is
presented as a deliberate manipulation of reality; something that she needs to
record. Only Nick is told her real name, which becomes something of a magic
talisman for her, a link to a past life. On another level, her name is entirely
immaterial because she functions as a representative of handmaids in general.

Preceding events are sketched in by reflective comments that Offred makes

when triggered by an object, a comment or an association. This allows the
responder to piece together how this new revisionist regime managed to usurp
power. Specific dates and locations are not needed to indicate that the setting is
USA in the not too distant future.

The feminist backlash has been extreme, robbing women, who had become
complacent of their equality; of identity, freedom and power. This female
disenfranchisement was predicated by ecological exploitation, degradation and
chemical pollution. This has brought human fertility to dangerously low levels
and fostered an environment ripe for political and social upheaval.

Women are now rigidly oppressed and kept subservient from birth to grave in
this male dominated society. An Old Testament solution has been instituted to
counter the widespread barrenness. This has taken the form of the new elite in
the form of Commanders and their wives being granted handmaids as surrogates
and fertile receptacles for the husbands seed. The emotional impoverishment of
such an existence is skilfully evoked by language that is rich in imagery and
symbolism.

Assassination has marked the beginning of the revolution that has overthrown
the status quo and taken womens jobs, funds and assets. Dissent is severely
dealt with as Offred recounts. She learns that her daughter is still alive but never
learns the fate of her husband Luke. We are also told about Moira, the staunch
feminist who escapes from the Red Centre where the story begins. Captured and
tortured, she now accepts life as a club whore for the Commanders, in
preference to hard labour and early death in one of the colonies.

The Rachel and Leah Re-education Centre is a centre of indoctrination about the
virtues of female subservience and child-bearing. These are instilled by Aunts in
a suffocating, prison-like environment. Various measures are used to make the
women acquiescent and compliant. Offreds appointment to a second
Commander after she failed to get pregnant with the first, forms the basic
subject matter of the book. Every facet of handmaid life such as outings,
behaviour and personal content is strictly governed but through them we are
given insight into this claustrophobic new world.

Pregnancy and healthy childbirth underscore gender role and Gileads secret
police enforce the prevailing atmosphere of conformity Much that was once
taken for granted is now forbidden and the narration juxtaposes the new with the
old in graphic detail. Families and loving relationships have been replaced for
Handmaids with a monthly Ceremony that begins with a Bible reading before the
assembled household. What follows, links Commanders, their wives and their
handmaids in a wordless, sexual tableau that is clinical and demeaning for all
participants.

Serena lies behind Offred on the bed and holds her hands while she is
impregnated. Guilt, resentment and frustration is juxtaposed by the hope that a
women who has borne children in the past can once more all pregnant when so
many remain sterile. When Offred fails to conceive, her doctor suggests she have
sex with him since her Commander is probably infertile. The risks are enormous
and she refuses but soon a secret liaison begins in the form of visits to the
Commanders study where she indulges in freedoms from a previous life such as
reading and playing the word game Scrabble.

Desperate for a child, Serena bribes Offred to have sex with Nick by showing her
a photograph of her daughter. Pregnancy is worth the risk in a world that is
redolent with danger and fear. This is demonstrated by the bloody bodies of
rebels that hang on the wall of what was once Harvard University. Suicide is
also seen to be a better option than arrest for Ofglen when her involvement as a
Mayday conspirator is discovered. Intimidation, violence and indoctrination are
the typical tools of any dictatorship and they are evident throughout the
narrative.

Offred falls in love with Nick while trying to maintain her relationship with the
Commander. The chances of discovery are dramatically increased and her tale
closes with the paradoxical arrival of the van. Readers are not sure whether she
is being rescued as Nick implies or being arrested. The sudden jump to the year
2195 in the Historical Notes epilogue that ends the text comes as a dramatic
surprise.

It is written as the lecture notes of a Professor Pieixoto, sometime after the fall of
Gilead. Offreds tale is therefore posthumous, recorded on cassette tapes in
Bangor, Maine. Her story about her experiences as a Handmaid, is used to
highlight aspects about the formation of Gilead and the anti-feminist backlash
that was entrenched in the new social order. In this sense, the narrative becomes
a matter of academic debate and evaluation.

The language used by the Professor is predominantly objective and analytical.

This befits the context but the outcome of the tale is still unresolved. While some
critics have found this ending unsatisfying, it does provide a fascinating,
mysterious twist.

Cultural and Historical Context

The Handmaids Tale was written in 1985, yet it remains a prescient warning
about the rise of male dominated, theocratic, totalitarian society centered on the
control of womens reproductive capacity. She writes of the revolution that
established Gilead (this new order), as being blamed on Islamic fanatics at the
time. Many critics maintain that Attwood predicted the rise of the Taliban and its
repression of women.

Attwood also predicted the rise of the moral majority in the US who brought
George Bush to power with their fixation on the abortion debate.

In addition to its frighteningly accurate prognoses of extremism in the east and

west, Attwoods work also reflects the context it was born out of and draws on
historical events. Accordingly, Attwood remarks that there isn't anything in the
book not based on something that has already happened in history or in another
country, or for which actual supporting documentation is not already available.

Contemporary justification

She wrote it shortly after the elections of Ronald Reagan in the United States
and Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain, during a period of conservative
revival in the West partly fueled by a strong, well-organized movement of
religious conservatives who criticized what they perceived as the excesses of
the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. The growing power of this
religious right heightened feminist fears that the gains women had made in
previous decades would be reversed. Many feminists were also concerned
about the apathy among women who seemed to take for granted the rights
that were only recently won.

Attwood visited Iran in 1978 and was interested in the Iranian Revolution
which replaced the moderate Shah with a fundamentalist Islamic state lead
by the Ayatollas. Ayatolla Khomeini viewed women as mothers and educators
and he was against the Westernized view of women whose ideology
indoctrinated them to, "Discard their primary responsibilities to their families
and cast off their children in unsuitable places where all deprived offspring
were gathered to grow up into irresponsible, corrupt people. Accordingly,
almost overnight, women lost the right to hold jobs, vote, drive cars and be
educated. It became compulsory to wear the Chadur in order to protect men
and women from sexual excesses. The morals police ensured women
complied with this constrictive role. What amazed the world at the time, was
the fact that some women welcomed this reversal of their rights.

In the 1980s, there was a concern that there had been a decline in the levels
of fertility, especially in men. This had been blamed on the use of chemicals
in agriculture. The accident at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Russia,
and the resultant deaths, miscarriages and deformities of babies was also
concerning. The AIDS epidemic also caused a real fear among people who
saw it as a product of the hedonistic lifestyle the sexual revolution promoted.

Historical Precedents
 Attwood wrote it while living in West Germany, a country divided after WWII,
to correct Nazi excesses. There is no coincidence that the totalitarian regime
Attwood describes mirrors that of Hitlers. There is a striking similarity in the
way:
o Hitler came to power using his SS and SA troops to intimidate
opponents.
o The Nazi changes in the laws to restrict the rights of Jews, e.g. expelled
from Jobs, their money seized, changing their names, the wearing of
the star of david
o The Nazis used propaganda to convince the population of the
righteousness of their aims designed to benefit the whole society
o The Nazis relied on the Gestapo as a means to terrorise the people into
submission. The average German was concerned about his neighbour
being a spy.
o Lebensborn a program where racial pure women and SS men
copulated in order to produce children from the regime.
o Resistance groups still operated underground, but were largely
unsuccessful!

Attwoods Gilead also resembles Stalins dictatorial rule in Soviet Russia,

particularly his use of the NKPD (Secret police) to purge his political
opponents at the highest levels.

The Puritan rule of Oliver Cromwell in England in the 17 th Century and the
Puritan state of New England where Gilead is in fact set, also informs the text.
Attwood in fact claims that the society in The Handmaid's Tale is a
throwback to the early Puritans whom I studied extensively at Harvard under
Perry Miller, to whom the book is dedicated. The early Puritans came to
America not for religious freedom, as we were taught in grade school, but to
set up a society that would be a theocracy (like Iran) ruled by religious
leaders, and monolithic, that is, a society that would not tolerate dissent
within itself. They were being persecuted in England for being Puritans, but
then they went to the United States and promptly began persecuting anyone
who wasn't a Puritan. My book reflects the form and style of the early Puritan
society and addresses the dynamics that bring about such a situation.

Read a transcript of an interview by Attwood:

http://www.randomhouse.com/resources/bookgroup/handmaidstale_bgc.html#to
pics
The Handmaids Tale Analysis and Close
Study of Extracts

Chapter 2

1. What is suggested by the narrators observation that theyve

removed anything you could tie a rope to.17 ?
2. Describe the role, rules and routines which dictate the narrators
life.
3. What is suggested by the terms Colonies and Unwomen?

Chapter 3

1. Can you identify some phallic symbols and symbols associated with
fertility? Why is the chapter littered with such images? What does it
show about the mind of the powerless?
2. There is push and shove, these days, over such toeholds 23. What
does this quote reveal about the relationship between handmaids and
commanders wives? What does this show about the way the powerful
exercise their power?
3. Aunt Lydias utterances are entwined with the protagonists narrative
(there arent even quotation marks). Provide an example. What does
this show about the way the ruling class attempted to control the
people?
4. voice of a monotone, voice of a doll. 26 What does this show about
the handmaids plight?
5. What purpose does the Handmaids dream to turn her into an older
sister serve?

Chapter 4

1. What is the basis for

a. the cars names (hint: research the term behemoth)
b. The aunts utterances such as fall on dry ground or thorns
c. The ladies scripted interaction such as blessed be the fruit and
May the Lord Open
d. Triangles and three fingers
2. What do the above examples show about the link between power and
religion in this state?
3. Provide examples of coercion, terror or fear of one another in this
society.
4. The handmaids names are patronymics (named after men). Can you
explain how?
5. Can you find examples of the handmaid questioning the official
ideology?
6. Baptists are traditionally associated with individualism. Why is it
relevant that they are fighting against the state of Gilead?
7. Gilead is a place in the bible associated with healing. Why would a
religious fundamentalist group want to adopt this name? what are they
using as the justification for why they should be in power?
8. What sort of power does Offred still hold over men in this society? Has
the elimination of pornography stopped women from being regarded as
sex objects? Has Gilead achieved its aim of making womens lives free
from mens harassment?

__________________________________________________________________________________
Read the extract on page 33 We turn the corner to page 34 underrate it.
1. This passage highlights what is essentially the heart of the ideology that
underlies the founding of Gilead. What is its essential rationale? Analyse
the narrators attitude towards the freedoms of which she speaks.
2. What can we glean from the statement that Commanders wives are only
ever seen in cars? How does this link to Offreds status?
3. Consider the mention of econowives what roles do they serve? What
does this indicate about the levels of power within the men in Gilead
society?
4. Offred mentions the unspoken rules that they used to have. What similar
rules could we see now?

5. Explain in your own words the difference between freedom to and

freedom from. Which do you think is a better way to run a society? Why?
N.B In Gilead society, unlike the time before women are now protected from obscenities
being shouted at them or from being whistled at or touched. In exchange however, they no
longer have their own possessions, money or control. Freedom from sexual molestation has
come at the cost of having no freedom to express themselves individually, to choose and make
their own decisions or even have a friend such as Moira. This is the basis for the Freedom
from Freedom to recurring motif within the book.
Atwood wants her readers to question their society and societal values. By highlighting these
ideas of freedom she forces us to consider what freedoms we take for granted and what
impacts it would have to restrict these. In Gilead society, power has been asserted through
the restriction of individual freedoms. Womens rights have been all but eradicated, yet the
government portrays these extreme actions as being for their own good.

Chapter 6

1. What is the function of the Wall?

2. Why have the doctors been executed? (The doctors execution based
on mere heresay is analogous to witch hunts. The rule that the
evidence of one single woman is not adequate is based on Islamic
tradition.

3. What is significant about the shift to the present tense in this passage,
"Luke wasn't a doctor. Isn't"? what does it reveal about the way we
survive being controlled?

Chapter 7

1. To what time can Offred travel in her imagination that can be called
"good"?

2. What is ironic about the feminist book burning?

3. Stories are rarely told in the present tense, as this one is. Provide a
quote. How does Offreds use of the present tense add to
the suspence of the book?

Chapters 8-13

Dystopia brainstorm with a partner:

o The characteristics of a dystopian society Atwood has
employed, and her gradual revelation of its true extent
up to this point in the novel.
o Dystopian features evident in the protagonist.
o How Atwoods choice to employ this genre allows her
to explore the notion of individual and societal
control/power in greater depth, and achieve her
satirical purpose.

Read the extract from Chapter 10 that begins with Is that how we lived then?
and ends with We lived in the gaps between the stories (p66-67), then
complete the following.

1. What is the effect of opening this section with this rhetorical question?
2. Explain the contextual information that we as readers are informed of
regarding the formation of the Republic of Gilead. What does this reveal to
us about the nature, capability and use/abuse of power by a group within
society?
 3. What feature/s of society, or individuals within society, is the author
satirising in the first section of the extract? What dangers is she warning
of?
4. Why did the citizens (such as the narrator) fail to act and therefore lay the
fertile ground for the birth of the Republic of Gilead? Support your answer
with a quote.
5. Offred refers to newspapers in her old life, and describes herself and
others like her as people who were not in the papers but who lived in
the gaps between the stories. How are newspapers more broadly
symbolic of power within a society? Through what means can they exert
control? Do we see similar means of control in the Republic of Gilead?

The Handmaids Tale Chapters 14 24

Theocracy brainstorm and discuss:
o What is a theocracy? What are some examples you can think of?
o What relationship can you see between a theocracy and a dystopian
society?
o How are aspects of theocracy seen in Gildean society?
o What are the dangers of changing or manipulating Biblical texts for
selfish gain?

Close Study of Extract:

Read the extract from Chapter 15, starting at the beginning and ending with
Every inch, every flicker (p.97-98), then complete the following:
1. How does Atwood display the power balance between the Commander and
his wife at the beginning of this section?
2. Outline the impression Atwood wants to create by reference to the
Commanders blue eyes uncommunicative, falsely innocuous
3. Atwood describes the positions of each of the characters in the room.
Write down how each character is positioned and what this reflects about
their status in the household. How can we tell who has the most power?
4. What is achieved by keeping the bible locked up and the populace
forbidden to read or write?
5. Consider the last line how is the Commanders position in the household
further established by how they view him? What implications are given to
us as the audience?

Chapters 19-24

Writing Task

Offred says of the Commander in Chapter 23 - There is no doubt about who

holds the real power. But there must be something he wants, from me. To want is
to have a weakness.

How does this quote link to the broader ideas about power in The Handmaids
Tale so far?
Read the section of Chapter 22 that begins Here is a different story, a
better one and finishes at the end of the chapter (p143) and answer
the following:
 1. The story passed among us that night, in the semi-darkness, under our
breath, from bed to bed. How does the story, and the telling of it,
empower the women? (Notice also when and how it is being told).
2. What makes Moira a danger to the new regime and its authority?
3. Why do women find Moiras story and actions frightening? Why do they, at
the same time, almost worship her?
4. What does this extract reveal about the nature and extent of the power
held by the regime in Gilead?
5. What is Atwoods purpose in employing Moira as a character? (Think
related to power) Do you think the author is expressing criticism of Offred
through the juxtaposition of her with Moira? If so, how and why?

Read Chapter 28 in its entirety and answer:

1. Plot the points of social change Offred mentions that led to the eventual
formation of Gilead. Note what new laws were brought in.
2. Why is it important for us to recognise that many of the new laws, such as
women being prohibited from owning property, were old laws reimposed
from earlier times? How does this add impact to Atwoods dystopian
message?
3. Identify what Offred found to be the most frightening and disturbing
aspects of the changes that were brought in.
4. Consider Moiras comment on page 188, They had to do it that way, the
Compucounts and the jobs both at once what does this indicate about
the forethought shown by the government? How is an image of
entrapment created here?
5. Why does Atwood include Offreds flashback to her mother here? What
mood is created in this?

Read the section of Chapter 34 that begins with What were aiming
for and ends with unresponding as uncooked fish (p234) and
answer:

1. What is revealed about Moiras character in this extract?

2. Offred expresses her shock and slight disapproval of what Moira says at the
start of the extract when she exclaims Moira!. Explain Moiras response.
What does Atwood achieve through the juxtaposition of these two characters
and their opinions in this situation?
3. Explain how Moira and Offred are displaying their individual power in this
extract.
4. What are the effects of them exerting the individual power described in the
question above, and how influential is it? Do you think, based on this extract,
that individual power is futile?
5. Comment on the significance of the scratched writing Aunt Lydia sucks.
Consider where it is written, the author, the simile Offred uses to describe it,
its effect on others.

Read the section of Chapter 43 that begins with Aunt Lydia waits a
moment and ends with towards the gate (p.291-292) and
answer:
1. Why does Ofglen attack the man so fiercely? What risk is she taking here?
2. What is Offreds reaction to the viciousness of the Guardians death?
3. How does Atwood ensure that the readers response is one of disgust?
 4. Describe the reaction of the women towards the man. Were you surprised
by it? Why do you think they act so violently?
5. Why do you think the Gileadean government chooses to use this form of
punishment?

Historical Notes
1. What makes this section an unexpected part of the novel?
2. What do you think Atwoods purpose is in including the historical notes?
3. How does Atwood create the authoritative voice of Professor Pieixoto?
Does this strip Offred of power? Explain.
4. Read p314. What power do we see the historian has?
5. The historical glance back at Gilead, what preceded it and what was
happening in other parts of the world at the same time, has the impact of
drawing Offreds experience much closer in time to our own. What is the
effect of this on us as the reader? How does this serve the purpose of a
satirical and/or dystopian text?
6. The symposium ends with a request for questions. What does this invite
the reader to question? What is gained by Offreds story not having a
definitive ending?