Themes in HMT

Question 1

Gender roles?

Answer 1

• Gilead is strictly hierarchical society
• Women all fired from hobs after Gilead take over + bank accounts drained
• Luke not too bothered, maybe all men have subtle misogynistic attitudes?
• Even women in position of power i.e. Aunt Lydia aren’t allowed guns only cattle prods
• Commanders wife unhappily trapped in world she advocated
• Ceremony is institutionalised sex
• Extreme left as Offred’s mother not the answer?
  (Heavy focus of gender roles in chapter 28)

Question 2

Religion and theocracy?

Answer 2

• Gilead is government were church and state are combined
• Handmaids based of the biblical precedent of Rachel and Leah
• Each month before ceremony Commander reads from Genesis lines that makes books epigraph based on of Rachel and Leah.
• Many of religious words/lines are twisted e.g. Offred know lines in Rachel + Leah centre not actual words of Bible
• Executions for resisting government, not Bible
• Atwood not criticising the Bible but those who use it for their own oppressive purposes.

Question 3

Fertility?

Answer 3

• Reason for Offed’s captivity + source of her power
• Offed’s life depends on a successful birth
• Symbols of fertility e.g. flowers and worms in Serena’s garden
• Janine’s commanders wife’s fake birth

Question 4

Rebellion?

Answer 4

• Every major character engages in some form of disobedience
• Moria rebels most boldly = disguising her-self and managing to escape, but futile ends up in Jezebels
• Ofglens is more community minded = works for rebellion
• More scale rebellions from Commander and his wife
• Commander = cares more of emotional connection
• Wife = sets up offered with Nick in attempts for a baby
• rebellions from privileged group add more complexities to the regime and the dystopia as a whole
• Large or small, attempts to destroy Gilead or make ones personal circumstances more tolerable, each character commits rebellious acts highlighting unliveable horror of Gilead society and unsteadiness of its foundations.

Question 5

Love?

Answer 5

• Offreds love for her daughter, Nick, Luke and Moira allow her to stay sane = live within her memories and emotions instead of the terrible world
• Love turns out be most effective force for good
• Commander bends rules for Offred

Question 6

Storytelling and memories?

Answer 6

• Structure characterised by many different kinds of story telling and fiction-making.
• Historical notes show they vote recordings
• Whole story punctuated by shorter stories she tells her self. Can be triggered by the slightest impression and occur so often seems like Offred lives in several worlds.
• the terrible present, confusing but free past + Rachel and Leah centre
• Some memories in past tense, some in present
• Some story telling comes about cause of constant paranoia
• Offred filled with questions because of paranoia and uncertainty. Most clear in her imaginings of Luke’s fate.
• Storytelling as past time i.e. not access to entertainment. Often goes over others points of view.
• book is profoundly repetitive and we are stuck in the echo-chamber of Offred’s mind

Question 7

Women’s bodies as political instruments?

Answer 7

• Gilead formed in response to dramatically decreasing birth rates: state is built around control of reproduction
• assumes control of women’s bodies through their political subjugation. Women in no way independent
• Women treated as subhuman in society i.e. reduced to their fertility
• relates to Offed’s bath scene

Question 8

Language as a tool of power?

Answer 8

• Men defined by military rank and women by their gender roles
• Feminists ‘unwomen’ and deformed babies ‘unbabies’
• Use in everyday language changed suit Gilead i.e. if you fuck up a prescribed greeting is to fall under suspension of disloyalty
• Dystopian novels often explore the manipulation of language in totalitarian societies
• Gilead maintaining control over women’s bodies by marinating control over their names

Question 9

The causes of complacency?

Answer 9

• in totalitarian state Atwood suggests people endure oppression willingly as long as revive some slight amount power/freedom
• Offred remembers mother saying ‘truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations’
• rel with Nick shows this i.e. the rel allows her to reclaim the tiniest fragment of her former existence - makes restrictions almost bearable?
• Serena Joy has no power in world of men, but does in household and seems to delight in her tyranny over Offred.
• Jealously guards what little power she has
• Offred escapes because of her luck not resistance. Non of the resistance in Gilead really matters. Complacency would not make a difference?

Question 10

Complicity?

Answer 10

• Serena Joy miserable + very little freedom, but enjoys power she wields over Offred
• Aunts amongst novels worst perpetrators responsible for torture + psychological abuse

Offred

• Hard to say. Hates + fears regime and does not believe in its values
• Being true to own beliefs require her to rebel but she doesn’t. Accepts role and even in own head calls ceremony not ‘rape’ because ‘nothing is going on here that I haven’t signed up for’. Where does passivity end and complicity begin??

Question 11

Seeing?

Answer 11

• ‘white wings’ severely limit her own ability to see, but she constantly feels observed and threatened by eyes
• e.g. patch of plaster in room ‘blind plaster eye’, convex mirror on stairs ‘fisheye’, secret police are ‘eyes’ and their emblem is a winged eye
• compares eyes to penises and penises to eyes e.g. commanders penis as ‘stalked slug’s eyes’
• feminist concept of way men look at women, but also feminist concepts alone don’t offer protection e.g. Aunt Lydia ‘‘to be seen - to be seen - is to be’ - her voice trembled - ‘penetrated’’ (ch 5)

Question 12

Reproduction?

Answer 12

• HMT argues that controlling women’s reproductive system is morally and politically wrong
• Suffering by all directly cause Gilead wants control fertility
• 20th century American religious right i.e. doctors who’ve performed abortions are executed in Gilead
• Recourses? People in power always attempt to control women’s bodies? birth rate and ultimately population?

Question 13

The home?

Answer 13

• The gymnasium where Offred is trained as a Handmaid provides a powerful sense of a bleak existence without the cultural norms of family, home and security.
• The Commander tells Offred to ‘go home’ (p. 149). He means her room, which is symbolic of the way her existence under the new regime is diminished.
• The Commander’s household offers a model for Gilead’s new concept of ‘home’; it is a place full of tension and deceptions.
• Ironically, it is at Jezebel’s that Offred finds a sense of familiarity redolent of home – a stark contrast to her time at the Red Centre.

Question 14

Identity?

Answer 14

• In Gilead, identities are stripped away and replaced by functions such as Handmaid, Econowife and Guardian.
• Handmaids and Unwomen are defined in terms of their body; a new identity is expressed through fertility, which is of primary importance to the regime.
  Groups of women are labelled by colour, such as
• Handmaids, described by Offred as ‘bundles of red cloth’ (p. 137), or Commanders’ wives, in blue.
• Handmaids are objectified – named only in terms of possession. ‘Of Fred’ becomes Offred – but she resists, refusing to give up her real name.