The Handmaid's Tale - Synopsis

Going over Margaret Atwood's works I chose 'The Handmaid's Tale' as my main focus. Here is a brief summary of  this novel:

This dystopian story about the near future is a woman's story of her being a handmaid and her struggle to survive the totalitarian government of Gilead. As a handmaid she has been deprived of her name, which is one's identity, and legal rights. She is assigned to a commander for reproductive purposes only. She is in a virtual household prison under constant surveillance. As a woman and handmaid she forbidden to read and write or to form any friendships or relationships with other people. Her only outings are for shopping purposes or attending public events such as Prayvaganzas, Salvagings and Birth Days. Once a month she has to undergo an impregnation ceremony  where the commander sleeps with the handmaid with the wife beneath her. 

Although freedom is non-existent Offred, our main character, chooses the freedom of refusal, meaning she refuses to believe in what Gilead is about, she refuses to forget her past and most importantly she refuses to be silenced by the oppressive regime.

Throughout the novel there is a sense of double vision, for Offred is always facing ways as she recounts her story, shifting between the present and the past (flashbacks). She talks of her meetings with the commander where they play Scrabble and she allowed toread the magazines he gives her, we as readers/audience learn about her illegal love affair with Nick the Commander's chauffeur. 

Offres manages to tell the tales of secret women in this tyrannic government, such as Moira, the rebel who manages to escape from the Rachel and Leah center (Red center) and then reappears as a whore working at Jezebel's. There is the story of Offred's predecessor at the Commander's house who hung herself and left a secret message on the wall ("Nolite te bastardes carbormdorum"). There are also stories about  Serena Joy (Commander's Wife) who used to be a TV personality on a gospel show.

At the end, Offred makes her exit from the Commander's house in a black not knowing whether she is heading for her death or an escape from Gilead ("And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light"). 

One might think that that is the end of the novel but there are the infamous 'Historical Notes' which are set  in the year 2195 going 200 years beyond Gilead. Of course Offred is dead and Gilead itself has fallen. The 'Notes' fill in a lot of the background information about Gilead and how Offred's story came to be discovered. The novel ends with a question: "Are there any question?" which creates a challenge for the reader, it invites the reader to participate in interpreting the multiple and contradictory meanings of what we have just finished reading.  

This video offers a brief summary about what the book is about, the struggle for survival of one

woman (Offred):

 

This hyperlink will direct you to a synopsis of the book through image:

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2012/jan/23/margaret-atwood-handmaids-tale-in-pictures#/?picture=384879462&index=6 the tale in pictures 

These links refer you to websites which offer more detailed summaries of each section of the novel:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale
• http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/handmaid/ 
• http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/science_fiction/handmaid.html 

Margaret Atwood Biography

Biography:

Margaret Eleanor Atwood was born on November 18th 1939 in Ottawa Canada. She is an award winning poet, novelist, essayist and an environmental activist. Some of her best known works such as 'The Handmaid's Tale', 'The Tent', 'The Robber Bride' and so on, they have been translated into 30 languages.

She spent her early childhood moving around rural Ontario and Quebec with her family, as her father was a field entomologist.  Her schooling was done at the Victoria College, University of Toronto, B.A., 1961; Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Mass., M.A., 1962; Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., 1962-63, 1965-67. She first experienced the US in 1961, when she went as a graduate student to Harvard University, where she studied American Literature and also learned about 17th century Puritan New England , and realised how little Americans knew about Canada. As her literary reputation grew, Atwood traveled to give readings and lectures and she also won many literary prizes.

Margaret Atwood currently lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.

All her works:

Novels:

• The Edible Women, 1969
• Surfacing, 1972
• Lady Oracle, 1976
• Life Before Men, 1979
• Bodily Harm, 1981
• Encounters with the Element Man, 1982
• Murder in the Dark, 1983
• Unearthing Suite, 1983
• The Handmaid's Tale, 1985
• Cat's Eyes, 1988 
• The Robber Bride, 1993
• Alias Grace, 1996
• The Blind Assassin, 2000
• Oryx and Crake, 2003
  
• The Penelopiad, 2005
• The Year of the Flood, 2009
• Maddaddam, 2013

Short fiction collections

• Dancing Girls, 1977
• Bluebeard's Egg, 1983
• Wilderness Tips, 1991
• Good Bones, 1992
• Good Bones and Simple Murders, 1994
• The Labrador Fiasco, 1996
• The Tent, 2006
• Moral Disorder, 2006

Poetry collections:

• Double Persephone, 1961
• The Circle Game, 1964   
• Expeditions, 1965
• Speeches for Doctor Frankenstein, 1966
• The Animals in That Country, 1968
• The Journals of Susanna Moodie, 1970
• Procedures for Underground, 1970
• Power Politics, 1971
• You Are Happy, 1974
• Selected Poems, 1976
• Two-Headed Poems, 1978
• True Stories, 1981
• Love Songs of a Terminator, 1983
• Snake Poems, 1983
• Interlunar, 1984
• Morning in the Burned House, McClelland & Stewart, 1995
• Eating Fire: Selected Poems, 1965–1995 (UK,1998)
•  "You Begin." , 1978   
• The Door, 2007

E-books:

• I'm starved for you, 2012
• Choke Collar: Positron, Episode Two, 2012
• Erase Me: Positron, Episode Three, 2012

Anthologies Edited:

• The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse, 1982
• The Canlit Foodbook, 1987
• The Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English, 1988
• The Best American Short Stories 1989, 1989
• The New Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English, 1995

Children's books:

• Up in the Tree, 1978
• Anna's Pet, 1980
• For the Birds, 1990
• Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut, 1995
• Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes, 2003
• Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda, 2006
• Wandering Wenda and Widow Wallop’s Wunderground Washery, 2011

Non-fiction:

• Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature, 1972
• Days of the Rebels 1815–1840, 1977
• Second Words: Selected Critical Prose, 1982
• Through the One-Way Mirror, 1986
• Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature, 1995
• Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing, 2002
• Moving Targets: Writing with Intent, 1982–2004, 2004
• Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose--1983-2005, 2005
• Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, 2008
• In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, 2011

Television scripts:

• The Servant Girl, 1974
• Snowbird, 1981
• Heaven on Earth, 1987

 
These links will lead you to more in depth biographies of Margaret Atwood: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Atwood#Works
http://www.notablebiographies.com/An-Ba/Atwood-Margaret.html 
http://www.margaretatwood.ca/bio.php

Important Quotes

Chapters 1-46:

• "Give me children, or else I die"
• "We learned to whisper almost without sound"
• "They've removed anything you could tie a rope to"
• "Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?"
• "I intend to last"
• "red: the colour blood which defines us"
• "I refuse to say my" (refering to the room given to her)
• "A sister dipped in blood"
• "How I use to despise such talk. Now I long for it. At least it was talk. An exchange of sorts." (refering to the lack if communication between women in Gilead)
• "I am a reproach to her; and a necessity" (Although Serena Joy despises Offred she needs her to bear children)
• "The truth is that she is my spy, as I am hers"
• "Doubled I walk the street" (double imagery)
• "Freedom to and freedom from"
• "She is a magic presence to us an object of envy and desire" (Janine also known as Ofwarren is withchild and she is an object of envy since she is expecting and the other handmaids are not)
• "Tell, rather than write, because I have nothing to write with and writing in any case is forbidden"
• "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum" - Don't let the bastards grind you down.
• "the amount of unfilled time, the long parenthesis of nothing"
• "I wait, washed, brushed, fed like a prize pig" (women are objects not people)
• "Each month I watch for blood, fearfully for when it comes it means failure" (the constant demand for a pregnancy)
• "For our purposes your feet and your hands are not essential." (they are there for breeding purposes)
• "Buttered, I lie on my single bed, flat, like a piece of toast"
• "The greater the risk the greater the glory"
• "the Birthing Stool, with its double seat, the back one reaised like a throne behind the other" (the hierarchy of Gilead, although the handmaid is giving birth its the mother that is given importance)
• "according to her ability; to each according to his needs."
• "it's a bouquet of flowers: someting she's won, a tiribute" (refering to the baby that has just been born)
• "two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices"
• "It's an oasis of the forbidden" (refering to the Commander's office filled with books)
• "We are not each other's anymore, Instead I am his" (now that Offred has no rights she is the property of her husband Luke)
• "the pair of us, and in front of us another pair and across the street another" (further proof of double imagery meaning that these handmaids have no individual identity)
• "I tell, therefore you are" - Descartes's theory of I think therefore I am
• "He has become a it" ( the man allegedly accused of rape not man but an it)
• "I resign my body freely, to the uses of others"
• "I feel for the first time, their true power"
• "And so I step up, into darkness within, or else the light" (Offred's fate is undecided because as readers we don't know what happened to her)

Historical Notes:

• "The Underground femaleroad" is referred by Professor Piexioto as "The Underground Frailroad"
• B.Fredrick Judd: "our big mistake was teaching them to read. We won't do that again." refering to women being though how to read.
• "Gilead was, although undoubtedly patriarchal in form, occasiotnally matriarchal in context."
• "had she had a different turn of mind, she could have told us much about the workings of the Gileadean empire, had she had the insticts of a reporter or a spy."

 

For further information on quotes and quotes explained go to:

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/handmaid/quotes.html

 

The Handmaid's Tale #2

Discuss the issues of feminism in the 'The Handmaid's Tale'

The novel ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Margaret Atwood is considered a feminist dystopia because it is set within an imperfect society of the future and addresses the misogyny of patriarchal culture. It conveys a sharp reminder of the continued need to guard and develop more fully women’s rights and positions. In ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ the state of Gilead has complete control over women’s bodies through their political subjugation. Women were deprived of their basic human rights, such as the right to read and write or to make choices in their lives, such as what to wear: ‘Then I think : I used to dress that. That was freedom.’ They were robbed of economic independence when the state took control over their bank accounts and therefore all their finances. The Commander and the Aunts claimed that women were better protected in Gilead, that they were treated with respect and kept safe from violence:

‘There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are given freedom from. Don’t underrate it.’

Yet while it claimed to suppress sexual violence it actually institutionalized it, as we see at Jezebel’s and during the ceremony. The latter is depicted as the dehumanization of Handmaids and Wives, who were made to participate as passive objects and victims in a sex act robbed of sensuality, desire and love:

‘The Commander is fucking. What he is fucking is the lower part of my body. I do not say making love, because this is not what he is doing. Copulating too is inaccurate, because it would imply two people and only one is involved. ‘

In Gilead women were grouped according to their domestic functionality: Handmaids serve to
reproduce and were reduced to ‘two legged wombs’. Marthas were obliged to take care of all the household chores, Wives’ purpose in life was to raise children and Econowives who were lower class wives, were meant to carry out all the domestic functions: that is reproducing, taking care of the household and also raising children. Unwomen who had no value were either used in brothels or sent to the Colonies to clean up toxic waste. In Gilead, women lacked the freedom to actively form new relationships with each other. The different categories of women served only to widen gaps between women, and this could be seen through the dissatisfaction of all women in Gilead. Handmaids were constantly committing suicide, Wives and Econowives were all extremely bitter to the handmaids. The restrictive male-dominated society could not bring happiness to even the most pampered and powerful women.

In Gilead’s power structure, women are subservient to men because they are considered to be less than man. This system involves the marginalization of women, illustrating a famous feminist’s Simone De Bouvoir’s point in ‘The Second Sex’ that a man defines a woman not as autonomous but only as a relative to him. Women in Gilead must concentrate on basic survival and so avoid direct, honest reactions to this marginalization. Sometimes the women disguise their actions, appearing to accommodate the demands of this oppressive system, while subtly rebelling. However, others rebel actively such as Moira who did not accept her fate as a Handmaid. Janine, on the other hand as an opposite to Moira embraces it entirely. She is servile and gives in completely to the Republic and it’s dogma. Offred’s mother, like Moira was a staunch feminist and believed men were unnecessary and that living solely with women would solve many of the problems women were currently facing. She organized pro-abortion protests and marches against male violence and pornography. She was conscious of her rights and fought for equality. Before Gilead, Offred was dismissive of her mother’s strong feminist view and felt uncomfortable with her mother’s activism. She had not considered herself a feminist and feared that feminism would alienate her from men. During Gilead, Offred understands that feminism only forced women to recognize their natural alienation from men. There were however, those women who truly believed in the barbaric anti-feminist regime of Gilead, such as the Aunts, like Aunt Lydia who told the Handmaids: ‘Think of it as being in the army’; and the Commander’s wife, Serena Joy who was an anti-feminist activist and an advocate for ‘traditional values’ and conservative views.

In the Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood explores the issues of feminism through the dystopian and maledominating regime of Gilead. Through the various characters in the novel she portrays a variety of women which include both active and passive feminists, anti-feminists and even servile women.

From more information on Feminism in the novel go to:

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/university_of_toronto_quarterly/v075/75.3neuman.pdf

http://salempress.com/store/samples/critical_insights/handmaid_feminism.htm

The Handmaid's Tale #1

"To tell the story is to survive" How well would you think this statement is brought out in the novel?

Margaret Atwood presents a dystopia whose main features are patriarchal rule, totalitarian social regimentation and the disappearance of individual difference in the interest of a ‘collective good’, censorship, propaganda and state control of the language used by citizens. However Offred’s attempt at narrating the story is her means of defying the state, because after all it is her story which survives the demise of Gilead and which finally exceeds the limits that Gilead tried to impose.

Offred’s main emphasis is on the misery of her condition with its boredom as well as its dangers. As a self-conscious narrator she is aware of her ‘limping and mutilated’ narrative, with its gaps and blanks, fragmented structure, dislocated time sequence and her own hesitation and doubts. Her story is not only an eye-witness to disaster but also a substitute dialogue and an escape fantasy. In the process she adopts to develop her storyline Offred invents listeners in
whom she must and needs to believe in as to connect to a world outside Gilead. She addresses the reader as ‘you’, emphasised by her punning vision on Descartes philosophy ‘I think therefore I am’. She sets up an interaction between ‘I’ and ‘you’. – ‘I tell therefore you are’ and insists on telling the story, ‘So I will myself to go on.’ Her prison narrative is presented as the only way of bridging the gap between an isolated self and the world outside.

Offred resembles Mary Webster who did not die despite being hanged. In Atwood’s ‘Half-hanged Mary’, Mary’s assertion of being alive echoes Offred’s theory of being; ‘I hurt, therefore I am.’ Like Mary, Offred is ‘determined to last’ so that her story might more appropriately be seen as a woman’s survival rather than a prison narrative. Indeed one of her surviving techniques is her secretive and rebellious storytelling, for she is the voice of the excluded other in the heartland of Gilead. As Atwood has said ‘(Offred) Was boxed in… the more limited and boxed in you are, the more important details become.’ It is very significant that the story shifts from the present to her past history. More than being a breath of nostaligia, memory is Offred’s chief escape mechanism. 

Offred’s first priority is to survive physically in Gilead, where everyone is under constant surveillance and death is an everyday possibility. Her second priority is to survive psychologically and emotionally after the trauma of separation from her husband and daughter and her period of indoctrination at the Rachel and Leah centre. In her determination to resist Gilead’s offer to erase her individual identity and to retain her sanity, she, she keeps telling herself stories, reminding herself of who she was in ‘ the time before’ and hoping for the future. The importance of language is unearthed here, and it is her strongest form of rebellion. She further resists Gilead’s essentialist definition by telling the story of her sensations, emotions and desires showing that she has power to tell a different story from that one already scripted. Only in memory and imagination does she have my freedom of choice and it is through storytelling that she can invent a multi-dimensional life for herself; ‘What I need is perspective, the illusion of depth.’

Apart from her own story, Offred tells the stories of many other women as well. Some are fixed in the past like the mother, while others extend even to the present, like Moira. There are also shorter fragments about other Handmaids all of the rebels of victims, but in the end they are all victims of the regime. There is also the conversation of her unnamed predecessor at the Commander’s house and Serena Joy who despite what she used to preach before is trapped jus the same by the regime’s ideology.

Offred insists on voicing her own point of view when the regime demands silence. Storytelling serves her many functions: as a main survival technique, as an eye-witness account to the present circumstances and as an escape back up memory or forward in the future when she will get out of Gilead. Offred also knows, it is the only message she can send to the outside world from her imprisonment, trusting that one day her message will be delivered:‘A story like a letter. Dear you…. You can mean thousands’.

For information about the theme of survival go to:

http://www.crossref-it.info/textguide/The-Handmaid%27s-Tale/31/2168