The Handmaid's Tale

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The Handmaid's Tale
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Margaret Atwood The Author

• born in Ottawa in 1939
• brilliant student at the University of Toronto
• won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to Harvard in
  1961
• her poetry first drew her to public attention

• published The Edible Woman in 1969
• Most books are set in Toronto.
• initially, Atwood was seem as a radical
  feminist but as Atwood continued to produce
  novels and short stories, a much more complicated
  pattern emerged. Her men continued to be weak and
  petulant, but the true villains of her fiction
  turned out to be female (Toronto Star, Nov. 8
  2000).

Companions of the Order of Canada Gallery
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Throughout her forty years of writing, Margaret
Atwood has received numerous awards and several
honorary degrees. She is the author of more than
twenty-five volumes of poetry, fiction, and
nonfiction. Her newest novel, The Blind Assassin,
which won the prestigious Booker Prize, was
published in the fall of 2000. Negotiating With
the Dead A Writer on Writing (2002), published
by Cambridge University Press in March 2002, is
her latest book and her new novel, Oryx and
Crake, was published in April, 2003. She has an
uncanny knack for writing books that anticipate
the popular preoccupations of her public.
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Atwood's fiction is often symbolic. She has moved
easily between satire and fantasy, and enlarged
the boundaries of traditional realism.
About The Handmaids Tale What inspired The
Handmaids Tale? Ive often been asked. General
observation, I might have said. Poking my nose
into books. Reading the newspapers. World
history. One of my rules was that I couldnt put
anything into the novel that human beings hadnt
actually done.
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I began the actual writing in West Berlin, in the
spring of 1984. In five years the Wall would
topple and the Soviet Union would disintegrate,
but I had no way of knowing that. I visited East
Berlin at the time, as well as Poland and
Czechoslovakia. Id followed events in
Romaniawhere women were forced by the ruling
regime to have babiesand also in China, where
they were forced not to. Id been to Iran, and
traced the advent of the repression of women
under the Ayatollahs.
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Just as importantly, I was born in 1939, at the
outbreak of the Second World War, so Ive always
taken an interest in the Nazis, and in the
U.S.S.R. under Stalin. I read Churchills memoirs
when they came out, and Orwells 1984 and
Koestlers Darkness At Noon soon after they were
published. As a college student, I was a
volunteer worker with immigrants wishing to
improve their English, and my charge was a woman
doctor whod escaped from Czechoslovakia. She was
a wreck. I got an earful. On the other hand, I
lived through the McCarthy years. They were no
human-rights picnic either.
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At Harvard Graduate School in the '60s. I studied
American Literature and Civilization, as part of
English Literature. I found Puritan New England
fascinating, especially since these folks were my
ancestors. Far from being the seekers after
freedom often depicted, the Puritans were a
repressive lot their preoccupation with the
state of their souls did not save them from
expelling dissenters and hanging Quakers. I took
a particular interest in the Salem witchcraft
trials. What sorts of conditions produce a group
mentality that so blatantly violates justice and
defies common sense, in the name of God and
righteousness? What sorts of people benefit from
egging such things on? Ive always remembered the
words of one New England divine, who preached a
sermon of repentance after theyd all realized
how badly theyd been bamboozled The Devil was
indeed among us, but not in the form we thought.
Its no accident that The Handmaids Tale is set
in Massachusetts
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After 9/11, after the coming of right-wing
religious ideology to the White House, and, most
importantly, after the erosion of Constitutional
rights of many kind, this piece seems eerily
prescient. In The Handmaids Tale, the eye from
the American dollar bill is used as their logo by
the Gilead secret police, who control people
through credit card information. Its the same
eye just adopted by the Homeland Security folks,
who can nowyescontrol people through credit
card information. Thats what biologist would
call convergence.
After 9/11, after the coming of right-wing
religious ideology to the White House, and, most
importantly, after the erosion of Constitutional
rights of many kind, this piece seems eerily
prescient. In The Handmaids Tale, the eye from
the American dollar bill is used as their logo by
the Gilead secret police, who control people
through credit card information. Its the same
eye just adopted by the Homeland Security folks,
who can nowyescontrol people through credit
card information. Thats what biologist would
call convergence.
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The following is an excerpt from The Toronto Star
following Atwoods receiving The Booker Prize
The Booker Prize plants Atwood firmly on the
throne of English literature, although she is
already a respected literary figure here, and her
work is part of the standard curriculum in the
universities of half a dozen countries. Her
writing has been translated into more than 30
languages.
And, she says, she owes some of her success to
her previous nominations for the Booker award.
When I was first shortlisted in 1986 (for The
Handmaids Tale), the book had sold 3,000
copies, she joked, adding that now thousands of
students are tortured by it.
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Dystopian Literature
Dystopian literature presents fictional worlds or
societies that are depicted as utopias, but under
closer scrutiny illustrate terrifying and
restrictive regimes in which individual freedoms
are often suppressed for the greater good.
Atwoods dystopia , Gilead, depicts a society in
which religious extremists have taken over and
reversed the progress of the sexual revolution.
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The Handmaids Tale as Dystopian Literature
In the 1980s, the defeat of the Equal Rights
Amendment, the rise of the religious right, the
election of Ronald Reagan, and many sorts of
backlash (mostly hugely misinformed) against the
women's movement led writers like Atwood to fear
that the antifeminist tide could not only prevent
further gains for women, but turn back the clock.

The backlash!
Dystopias are a kind of thought experiment which
isolates certain social trends and exaggerates
them to make clear their most negative qualities.
They are rarely intended as realistic predictions
of a probable future, and it is pointless to
criticize them on the grounds of implausibility.
Atwood here examines some of the traditional
attitudes that are embedded in the thinking of
the religious right and which she finds
particularly threatening.
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The Title

• The Handmaids Tale is reminiscent of Chaucers
  Canterbury Tales it conjures the immediate
  image of a medieval world full of knights and
  their ladies.
• It is written in first person, as an interior
  monologue, narrated by one of the handmaids.
  Her thoughts are the story, as she is forbidden
  to express her thoughts out loud. Her strength
  lies in insight, not action.
• Note the double entendre on the word, tale
  the dual meaning establishes the conflict the
  protagonist versus a world that sees her as a
  sexual object void of sexual autonomy.

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Atwood's Concerns

• The Handmaids Tale is both a satire and a parody
• Satire a novel, play or film that ridicules
  peoples foolishness or hypocrisy often by
  parody.
• In the novel, Atwood's strong point is her
  satire, often hilarious, often very pointed.
  Humor is in short supply in this novel, but it is
  a satire nonetheless. Atwood's love for language
  play (apparent in the anagram of her name she
  uses for her private business "O. W. Toad") is a
  major feature of the protagonist of The
  Handmaids Tale. Her jokes are dark and bitter,
  but they are pervasive.
• Parody a grotesque or absurd imitation

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• Atwood calls the novel a speculative fiction
  ie. What could occur if society closes its eyes
  to what is going on in the world. If people are
  not paying attention, they may experience loss of
  freedoms in the worst case scenario, they become
  slaves

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Gilead

• The fictional Republic of Gilead represents an
  atavistic Puritanism.
• Atavism refers to the reversion to the
  appearance, behavior of our ancestors.
• As for Puritanism, think of The Crucible, and the
  repressive lives of the citizens of New England.

Do you see some irony in the naming of this new
society Gilead?
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Fear

• Atwood illustrates how fear guarantees collusion
  the individual is afraid to speak up or rebel
  therefore, the individual shares responsibility
  for every aspect of the society, including its
  atrocities
• Through fear, a totalitarian regime is able to
  police itself. Its members--even the extremely
  oppressed--police each other as agents of the
  state. Friendship becomes obsolete as no one can
  be trustedWho is a spy? The Eyes are always
  watching you.
• Totalitarianism a from of government in which no
  rival parties are permitted. Total submission to
  the state is required.

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The Heroine
She is guilty of moral cowardiceAtwood believes
that often victimization is a matter of choice.
The narrators physical safety is so important to
her that she sacrifices her moral integrity.She
attempts a withdrawal from circumstances for
which she does not accept responsibility.

• Her voice is a voice crying in the desertthe
  reader feels her isolation. For the most part,
  she learns that she must make decisions from
  moment to moment on her own.
• She has many similarities in situation and
  character to Hamlet
• They both are living in an evil, corrupt world
  which is masquerading as good and
• They both lack the strength to confront the evil
  in their worlds.

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