‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Quotes Flashcards
(82 cards)
Offred’s Latin - Human Perseverance & Female Unity
Nolite te bastardes carborandorum
Offred’s Scrabble Words as Evidence of Women’s Use of Language Impacting Thought (also Paranoia about Surveillance)
‘Larynx…Quince…Zygote’ - permitted lexicon as a “two-legged womb”… sacred vessels”, “ambulatory chalices”
Constant Danger of Violence, and a Reminder of the Futility of Resistance when under Surveillance in Gilead
‘Two Eyes, in grey suits, leap from the opening double doors at the back. They grab a man who is walking along, a man with a briefcase, an ordinary looking man;
Cowardice = At the end of chapter 27, Offred admits to herself that she is glad she is not the victim of the secret service beating up a man and realizes the limit of her courage (violence squashes hope)
Hierarchy of Women in Gilead and how it is denoted by colour/uniform
“the dull green of the Marthas”
“the striped dresses, red and blue and green and cheap and skimpy, that mark the women of the poorer men. Econowives, they’re called. These women are not divided into functions. They have to do everything; if they can.”
Aunt Lydia on Freedom
“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…”
Offred on her body
“My nakedness is strange to me already.” = unfamiliarity with oneself
“My body seems outdated.” = temporal disconect
“Did I really wear bathing suits, at the beach?” = how quickly the norm changes
“Shameful, immodest.” = mental indoctrination
“I don’t want to look at something [her body] that determines me so completely.”
“I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will.” = bodily agency removed, their body as an instrument of the state, temporal disconnect
Offred on the past
“I’m a refugee from the past”
Religion and the Handmaids
“A Sister dipped in blood”
“Blessed be the fruit”-“May the lord open”
“‘Under his eye’
Offred’s Lord’s Prayer
“Oh God, obliterate me. Make me fruitful. Mortify my flesh, so that I may be multiplied. Let me be fulfilled…” = subversion of biblical language in order to reclaim agency
Perversion of Religion Quotes
“GOD IS A NATIONAL RESOURCE”
“For Adam was first formed, then Eve…Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression”
‘They can hit us, there’s Scriptural Precedent’
The Commander as using political rhetoric to justify Gilead
“We’ve given them more than we’ve taken away….Think of the trouble they had before.”
Describes dating as “The meat market”.
“Money was the only measure of worth,
“This way they’re [mothers] protected, they can fulfil their biological destinies in peace.
…“What did we overlook?’ ‘Love’, I said.”
Violence of regime chapter 1
‘they had a electric cattle prods slung on thongs from their leather belts’
Handmaid’s as prisoners chapter 1
‘ in the army cots that had been set up in rows, with spaces between so we could not talk. We had flannelette sheets, like children’s, and army-issue blankets, old ones that still said U.S.’
‘we weren’t allowed out, except for a walks, twice daily, two by two around the football field, which was enclosed now by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire’
Offred on Thought chapter 2
‘ like other things now, thought must be rationed…thinking can hurt your chances and I intend to last’
Sex is described as…
a business transaction
Offred on spying…
The truth is that she is my spy and I am hers
Professor Pieixoto on the Past
“ As we know from the study of history, no new system can impose self upon a previous one without uncle printing, many of the elements to be found in the latter.’’
Gilead’s racist policies were “firmly rooted in the pre-Gilead period”
Gilead’s slogan [MARX told it’s from BIBLE]
From each according to her ability, to each according to his needs -
Introduction idea
The tradition of utopian fiction in western culture goes back to the ancient Greeks with Plato‘s Republic written about 350BC. Writers have always invented imaginary good and bad societies in order to comment on distinctive features and trends of their own societies. They may offer models for the future or more frequently they make satiric attacks on present society and deliver strong warnings against the consequences of particular kinds of political and social behaviour.
Misreading as a common theme
misreading Old Testament (“The Bible -based rhetoric [of Gilead’s propaganda] represents the distortion of its sources (mainly the book of Genesis) in the interests of an official policy or ideological position” ; an “abuse” - Coral Ann Howells) historical notes misreading Offred’s narrative all about perspective/interpretation “the novel demonstrates that wrong or inadequate interpretations of texts are possible” - Coral Ann Howells
Massachusetts
the home of the same witch trials and sight of Harvard university. The wall as both the wall round Harvard Yard on the Ballon wall twisted in place in 1984 when writing.
Atwood
“Fiction is one of the few forms left through which we may examine our society”
Temporality
“Double vision…shifting constantly between the present and the past” - Coral Ann Howells (Important thematic motif of the ‘double’ (Offred & Ofglen are doubles)); Offred sees the present through her memories of the past and judges it according to former values
Prefatory material / epigraph
quotations from bible Genesis 30:1-3 Old Testament biblical precedent for sexual practices in Gilead Jonathan Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’ 1729
