Margaret Atwood is the promising Canadian author who has written a number of famous poems and novels. She is mainly known as a great novelist and champion of the cause of Canadian literature. Atwood focuses on the binarity of existential experience in Canada. Land and mind, wilderness and civilization, alienation and identity are the opposing elements in Canadian life and she has immensely tried to create a sense of existential experience in her works. She “spent much of her early life in the northern Ontario and Quebec bush country” (Oxford Companion 31). Atwood’s famous dystopian fiction, The Handmaid's Tale (1985) is a futuristic parable set in the Republic of Gilead about women who are assigned to the sole purpose of procreation. It discusses the subjugation of women and the myriad ways in which they get transformed into agents. Stillman states:
The feminist novels show that power is gendered, that gender distinctions are pervasive and extensive, and that the personal and political interweave. In The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood's narrator tells a very personal tale of understanding and ignoring, activity and complicity, fidelity and betrayal, in the political settings of the contemporary United States and the future dystopian society of Gilead. (70)
The present essay attempts to explore the status of women in the patriarchal regime while outlining the various survival and resistant strategies employed by the women characters to reclaim identity and subjectivity. The patriarchal set up blocks the progress of women and their attainment of subjectivity is still a question to be analyzed further. The novel on its outer plainly depicts the mundane and commonplace survival of dystopian lives by projecting the recurrent motifs of cleaning and cooking. Apart from the ordinary existence, the female protagonist develops the inherent strength that motivates her to progress forward in life, no matter what the circumstances and consequences may be. The Republic of Gilead is portrayed as a hierarchical society with strict patriarchal norms that curbs the individuality and identity of women.
The Handmaid’s Tale is a detailed and personal account of a woman demoted to her procreative capability and the entire life story carries a moral and a political function as well. Offred, the resilient protagonist of the novel projects herself as a survivor who manages to row against the waves: "I try not to think too much. Like other things now, thought must be rationed. There's a lot that doesn't bear thinking about. Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to survive" (10). She is a Caucasian woman who belongs to a middle class family. The political upheavals separate her from her from her husband and her eight year old daughter.
Offred is the raconteur and the whole story unveils through her point of view. The events and memories are portrayed realistically and the readers get the effect of a motion picture with the inclusion of recollections, asides and deviations. She possesses the frailties of a normal woman but her intelligence and dark sense of humor that helps her survive in Gilead. Armbruster opines that,
Offred notes that the furnishings in her household attempt to subvert her memory of her past and replace it with official images of "the good old days" before feminists insisted upon women's liberation. Lawns and foliage are kept severely trimmed. Even flower gardens are subjected to rational control they are replanted when the seasons change. (148)
She is persuaded to be one of the chosen handmaids who get assigned to the homes of party celebrities with whom they take part (before the latters' infertile wives) in impassive sexual intercourse intermittently in the intense effort to reproduce. Offred and other handmaids are “trained in deference, self-abnegation, and service, prepared only for pregnancy, their status and purpose made evident by their uniforms and their names” (Stillman 71).
Offred is any ordinary woman who leads a usual life with family till her life takes a drastic turn due to the political chaos in Gilead. Women are given limited freedom and they remain confined within the houses with no power and esteem. They whisper and lip read in semi darkness. The concubine position lowers their status and Offred even “sneaks into the lavatory to talk with her friend Moira and touch fingers through a hole in the wall of the stalls” (72). She attempts to retain her sense of dignity and individuality, but as time progresses, she comprehends the fact that it is difficult to maintain poise in such a situation. Her helpless existence in the ambience of Gilead marks her slow transition from a reluctant woman to a helpless indifferent woman that ultimately reflects the strong political and dogmatic nature of the state. The condition of women is pathetic and they behave as if they lack a definite voice. In Hansot’s opinion:
The public persona of handmaid is always precarious: a new recruit must adhere to the part minutely and trust to luck that she is fertile and assigned to a fertile male. "Each month I watch for blood, fearfully, for when it comes it means failure. I have failed once again to fulfill the expectations of others, which have become my own (58)
Offred’s memories of her husband, child and friends give her the momentum to live, but her illicit relations and her affair with Nick disturbs her as she finds it as a betrayal of her husband. She feels wiped away by time and her daughter’s picture brings in a sense of callousness in her being. Her companions and other inmates of the house fail to provide a comfort space for her and the long separation from her family and isolation weakens her subjectivity. The unavoidable monthly sexual intercourse with the Commander and the stagnant life creates a sense of boredom. Her potentiality lies in her two ovaries and she gets reduced to a mere organ. Offred is prohibited from maintaining intersubjective exchanges and communications which deprives her of a potential space and lacks any sense of integrity and she tussles to preserve identity while confronting blank days and lonesome nights. Moreover the debased systems of domination posed by Gilead provide least space for women to develop personal identity. Stillman opines, “Offred also fails to maintain her identity to structure a sense of self, to connect with others, and to act because in Gilead even apparent forms of resistance or attempts to create, maintain, or grasp an identity frequently turn into complicity with the regime.” (75)
The silence and inability to connect with other subjects result in Offred’s submissive status and she fears to take any sort of resistance toward the dogmatic power. The only solace that she gets is from the word play and her deconstructions of words also hint at her sense of creativity. But the very ability to create, analyze and recreate words offers her negligible sense of power to resist. Offred’s failed attempts to escape from Gilead make her rather submissive. Stillman comments:
Atwood offers Offred's mother and Moira as examples of how to feel, think, and act, and Offred and the academics of how not to. Offred's mother and Moira undertake the unconventional, are committed to friends and to others who need their help, and use techniques from humor to political action to try to undercut malevolent authorities. On the other hand, Offred and the academics mouth cliches instead of thinking, and respond with automatic stereotypes. The academics' humor is at the expense of the weaker; and both Offred and the academics defer to authority figures. (82-83)
She exists on an edge and behaves as almost essentially ineffective. She is defenseless to the prowling Eyes, the emissaries of the government who paddle wrong- doers away to death, and to the authority, welfares, and intrigues of others. Offred's Commander even reassures her to flout against the authority. She cannot be considered as an advocate of feminism as she finds it hard to equate herself with her mother’s activism. Offred’s passivity and generosity is overpowered by her complacence. She even fails to join hands with Ofglen to make a bold move. Her relationship with Nick and their intimacy make her rethink about the possibilities of continuing her life in Gilead. Nick plays a significant role in her life as he helps her in finally escaping from all the troubles and miseries. Atwood’s portrayal of female characters signifies the demeaning status of women in the patriarchal setup. The theme of exploitation and alienation is clearly described in this seminal text. The text commendably projects the critique of female brutalization and depicts the subservient role of wives, wombs, workers and whores.
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. New York: Bantam, 1982.
Armbruster, Jane. “Memory and Politics — A Reflection on "The Handmaid's Tale"" JSTOR. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. <: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29766564>.
Drabble, Margaret, and Paul Harvey. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985. Print.
Elizabeth Hanslot. "Selves, Survival, and Resistance in The Handmaid's Tale." JSTOR. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/20719313>.
Stillman, Peter G. "Identity, Complicity, and Resistance in The Handmaid's Tale." JSTOR. Web. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/20719314>.
