HMT - Context

Question 1

What movement was Atwood particularly focused on?

Answer 1

• Post-modern movement
• broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power.

Question 2

Genre?

Answer 2

Speculative/science/dystopian fiction

• Speculative = imagines alternate world not far from our own. Atwood criticises various trends she observed in 1980s: poor treatment of women, disease and infertility, and the corruption of religion
• explores possible consequences of existing trends i.e. a return to ‘traditional values’ (Reagan).

Question 3

Atwood?

Answer 3

• Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa, Canada. Her father was an entomologist and she spent much of her childhood in rural Canada, which likely informed the themes of environmentalism in her work.
• The Handmaid’s Tale was written in 1984 while the author was living in what was then West Berlin. The Cold War was at a moment of particular intensity in the 1980s, and Berlin was a focus for the tensions between the West and the Soviet Union
• ‘feminism is a general tendency rather than a set ideology’. Criticism of fundamentalism

Question 4

The New American Right?

Answer 4

• This 1980s American movement had conservative ideas about moral behaviour and the role of women in society, which are mirrored in Gilead.
• Gilead’s ideas on religion are reminders of the fundamentalist views of the American New Right movement.
• Some critics say that Serena Joy may be modelled on Phyllis Schlafly, an extreme right activist who travelled America urging support for her conservative views on women.
• Atwood uses the dystopian genre to satirise the extreme views of American 1980s conservatism.
• The 1980s saw an increase in pressure on Government from the Christian right wing. During his time in office, President Reagan emphasised conservatism and his belief in ‘family values’, alluding to the traditional, heterosexual, nuclear family. He appealed to the white, working class Americans who felt racist resentment against the advances that Black people had made during the civil rights movement.

Question 5

Puritan roots?

Answer 5

• Atwood’s own ancestry lies in Puritanism: her relative, Mary Webster, was hanged as a witch in 1683.
• Puritanism’s ideal is a Utopian society, with traditional values. But in practice this means oppression, theocracy and patriarchy – features of dystopian Gilead.
• The strict rules of dress and behaviour forced upon Offred are symbolic of the Puritan view of women as inferior.
• In Puritan New England, the first buildings were a prison and gallows – symbols of oppression like the Wall, and the University where Salvagings take place

Question 6

Masculine dystopia?

Answer 6

• The roots of Gilead lie in Atwood’s reading of masculine dystopian fiction, such as George Orwell’s 1984.
• ‘Newspeak’, Orwell’s fictional language in Nineteen Eighty-Four, can be compared to Atwood’s use of biblical language in Gilead, through which the state exerts control.
• Atwood also read The Chrysalids (1955), which depicts a similarly bleak future with nuclear holocaust and ecological disaster.
• Atwood subverts the genre of masculine dystopia by handing the story to a female; the novel can be interpreted as critiquing women’s marginalisation in a patriarchy.

Question 7

‘The Laugh of Medusa’?

Answer 7

• ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’, an influential essay written by the French critic Hélène Cixous (1976), foregrounded ideas of feminine writing, using the body.
• Following Cixous, many critics, such as Michael Greene and Karen Stein, analysed the feminine qualities in Offred’s narrative voice.
• The poetic imagery of flowers and ideas of fertility and growth are markers of a feminised language, expressing Offred’s desire and longing.
• Cixous’ writing contributes to the idea that the use of creative metaphor in Offred’s narrative can be interpreted as a feminine response which resists male domination.

Question 8

The North American feminist movement?

Answer 8

• Offred’s mother was a supporter of the Women’s Liberation Movement, which campaigned for women’s sexual freedom in America in the late 1960s.
• Early feminists burnt pornographic books and organised pro-abortion rallies; both of these are echoed in the remembered story of Offred’s mother.
• A significant feature of the movement was the fight to legalise abortion. In Gilead, doctors who previously engaged in this practice are hunted down and hanged.
• Other women’s voices also offer a range of views from this time, such as those of Aunt Lydia and the Commander’s wife.
• Moira – second wave – minorities, complexities of feminism.