dystopia

A chair, a table, a lamp. Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath, and in the centre of it a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out. There must have been a chandelier, once. They’ve removed anything you could tie a rope to.

A window, two white curtains. Under the window, a window seat with a little cushion. When the window is partly open – it only opens partly – the air can come in and make the curtains move. I can sit in the chair, or on the window seat, hands folded, and watch this. Sunlight comes in through the window too, and falls on the floor, which is made of wood, in narrow strips, highly polished. I can smell the polish. There’s a rug on the floor, oval, of braided rags. This is the kind of touch they like: folk art, archaic, made by women, in their spare time, from things that have no further use. A return to traditional values. Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?

On the wall above the chair, a picture, framed but with no glass: a print of flowers, blue irises, watercolour. Flowers are still allowed. Does each of us have the same print, the same chair, the same white curtains, I wonder? Government issue?

Think of it as being in the army, said Aunt Lydia.

A bed. Single, mattress medium-hard, covered with a flocked white spread. Nothing takes place in the bed but sleep; or no sleep. 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 last. I know why there is no glass, in front of the watercolour picture of blue irises, and why the window only opens partly and why the glass in it is shatterproof. It isn’t running away they’re afraid of. We wouldn’t get far. It’s those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.

So. Apart from these details, this could be a college guest room, for the less distinguished visitors; or a room in a rooming house, of former times, for ladies in reduced circumstances. This is what we are now. The circumstances have been reduced; for those of us who still have circumstances.

But a chair, sunlight, flowers: these are not to be dismissed. I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight. Where I am is not a prison but a privilege, as Aunt Lydia said, who was in love with either/or.

The bell that measures time is ringing. Time here is measured by bells, as once in nunneries. As in a nunnery too, there are few mirrors.

I get up out of the chair, advance my feet into the sunlight, in their red shoes, flat-heeled to save the spine and not for dancing. The red gloves are lying on the bed. I pick them up, pull them onto my hands, finger by finger. Everything except the wings around my face is red: the colour of blood, which defines us. The skirt is ankle-length, full, gathered to a flat yoke that extends over the breasts, the sleeves are full. The whitewings too are prescribed issue; they are to keep us from seeing, but also from being seen. I never looked good in red, it’s not my colour. I pick up the shopping basket, put it over my arm.

The door of the room – not my room, I refuse to say my – is not locked. In fact it doesn’t shut properly. I go out into the polished hallway, which has a runner down the centre, dusty pink. Like a path through the forest, like a carpet for royalty, it shows me the way.

The carpet bends and goes down the front staircase and I go with it, one hand on the banister, once a tree, turned in another century, rubbed to a warm gloss. Late Victorian, the house is, a family house, built for a large rich family. There’s a grandfather clock in the hallway, which doles out time, and then the door to the motherly front sitting room, with its flesh tones and hints. A sitting room in which I never sit, but stand or kneel only. At the end of the hallway, above the front door, is a fanlight of coloured glass: flowers, red and blue.

There remains a mirror, on the hall wall. If I turn my head so that the white wings framing my face direct my vision towards it, I can see it as I go down the stairs, round, convex, a pier-glass, like the eye of a fish, and myself in it like a distorted shadow, a parody of something, some fairy-tale figure in a red cloak, descending towards a moment of carelessness that is the same as danger. A Sister, dipped in blood.

At the bottom of the stairs there’s a hat-and-umbrella stand, the bentwood kind, long rounded rungs of wood curving gently up into hooks shaped like the opening fronds of a fern. There are several umbrellas in it: black, for the Commander, blue, for the Commander’s Wife, and the one assigned to me, which is red. I leave the red umbrella where it is, because I know from the window that the day is sunny. I wonder whether or not the Commander’s wife is in the sitting room. She doesn’t always sit. Sometimes I can hear her pacing back and forth, a heavy step and then a light one, and the soft tap of her cane on the dusty-rose carpet.

The Handmaid’s Tale, chapter 2.

Chapter 2 of The Handmaid’s Tale shows a fragmented vision of the room and details the layout of the house. Offred seems to have a very clear awareness although nothing is explicit. However fragmented she is, she is clearsighted about Gilead in very strategic places in the text, in a very subtle way so she would not be accused if she ever happened to be discovered.

This passage is the beginning of the second chapter of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Offred, the main character, is alone in a bedroom. First, we will see how she describes her environment. Then, we will focus on how Offred reflects on Gilead and the Handmaids’ behaviour. Finally, we will analyze Offred’s coping with the system.

Strategic story-telling: a narrator that knows but who “intends to last”

The room

Impression of nudity due to the use of noun phrases at the beginning of:

• paragraph 1: “a chair, a table, a lamp”
• paragraph 2: “a window, two white curtains”
• paragraph 3: “a print of flowers, blue irises, watercolour”
• paragraph 5: “a bed”
• paragraph 6: “so”.

Paragraphs 1 and 2 could be seen in black and white. Colour only appears in paragraph 3 with “blue irises”.

This scene can be imagined filmed. The camera would follow the different elements of the description that tend to transform the room into a prison cell.

The house (inside)

Description of the way she takes to go from her room to the hallway: “hallway” (upstairs) and “pink carpet”, “staircase”, “the clock”, “the mirror”, “hat-and-umbrella stand”. All of these elements show she lives in a wealthy house.

As Offred describes her environment, she makes some reflections on Gilead. There is a shift from perception to thought.

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Introduction

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian writer born in 1931, who studied literature in Toronto. In the 1960s, she was a graduate specialist in Harvard and then came back to Canada to teach literature. She was a well-known poet with The Edible Woman (1969), Surfacing (1972), Life before man (1979), The Robber Bride (1993).

Margaret Atwood is a very prolific artist, involved in the feminist movement and human rights issues on the international scene. She takes an interest in the narrative form and draws on different literary genres : Gothic romance, fairy tale, spy thriller, science fiction and history. She challenges the limits of traditional genres.

She takes an interest in social and political issues :

• relations between men and women
• fundamentalism and excess of puritanism
• ecological interest
• strong defense of basic human rights
• a warning against oppression

She takes side to protest : The Handmaid’s Tale is a protest, a denunciation of the American way of life and imperialism :

In the States, the machinery of government is out of control, it’s too big […], it runs right over your great democratic ideals.

— Margaret Atwood

America is a starting point to denounce politics. The Handmaid’s Tale encourages a wider view and is set in no specific space and time.

Summary

The Handmaid’s Tale is set in  a near future in the USA. A group of the right-wing fundamentalists has assassinated the American President, over-thrown the elected Congress and denied both jobs and education to women.

All this was facilitated by technological progress:

All they needed to do is to push few buttons. We are cut off.

The Handmaid’s Tale, p107.

They established a new republic called Gilead, on patriarchal lines, derived from the Old Testament in the Bible, 17th century American puritanism and the American New Right from the 1980’s. Women became slaves and homosexuals “gender traitors” (p53). Homosexuals, old women and non-white people are sent to the colonies because they are unwanted.

Infertile women (the result of pollution and nuclear plants accidents leading to a rise in birth defects) are sent to the colonies as well.

Fertile women are indoctrinated by the “Rachel and Leah Centre”, also known as the “Red Centre” and parcelled out to “Commanders”. They are called Handmaids and have to bear the children of the elite.

Women are pressed in 1 of 8 categories :

• Commanders’ wives
• Widows
• Aunts
• Handmaids
• Marthas
• Econowives
• Jezebels
• Unwomen (sent to the colonies)

Men do not escape characterization either:

• Commanders
• Sons of Jacobs
• The Eyes (of the Lord)
• The Angels
• The Guardians of the Faith

Offred is the narrator of her own story. She is the speaking voice of the novel. As a handmaid, Offred’s body is at the service of a Commander, “for reproductive purposes” (p316). She’s a “national resource”.

Yet, she resists the all-powerful patriarchal laws based on the Bible to tell her story of the silenced female servants.

From the opening line, we are presented a survival narrative and a female resistance :

• survival of love : affair with Nick
• flashbacks, sudden jumps backwards in time
• focus on pre-Gilead (pornography, artificial insemination) and the moral decay associated to such a period.

Her discourse of survival revolves around various contemporary issues : religion (fanaticism and excess), feminism (patriarchal control of women’s bodies), ecology (troubles), a critique of the return to traditional values, and the paradoxes of contemporary feminism.

The historical notes make the epilogue. They give another view on Gilead’s regime and make you think. The narrator is Professor Piexoto, and his speech is delivered at the University of Denay, Nunavit, in the year 2195, a long time after Offred’s narrative. We are encouraged to believe Offred’s story.

The two goals of the historical notes are :

• fill in some of the background information regarding Gilead and tell how Offred’s story is discovered.
• it never stops to charge us readers, especially on questions of interpretation : it’s a totally different story with prejudiced views of Offred’s story.

As a conclusion, we shouldn’t forget that the whole novel is full of irony. The truth is out there and not in Piexoto’s speech. Truth is never to be found.

We have the power to choose, to take some distance from what we read. All has been set to make the readers think: “are there any questions?” is addressed to the readers. “Context is all” (p202) : it smacks off the puritan ethos/values.

The New Right is represented by Reagan and Bush. It was very powerful and harked back to puritan inheritance. Gilead is an extreme yet satirized version of the ideology. To what extent does Gilead endorse the shackles (values) of Puritanism ?

• absolute authority over the population by a male elite acting in the name of God.
• biblical references  to underwrite its choices and attitudes. (“The penalty for rape is death”) :

It’s a way of imposing a new ideology:

• intolerance towards the others
• very rigid hierarchy, with categories of people
• imposed common rules : self-denial, obedience, strict upbringing and education of women.

Women are supposed to be productive : it’s a narrow-minded and puritan attitude. Offred is nameless : she’s “Of Fred” and “offered”.

Offred is the woman on whom puritan values are applied :

• side of the captors: she analyses the system.
• side of the prisoners : she tells her own story.

Offred is not simply a witness, she reveals details on an unknown community. She’s challenging the system. She’s faithful to her values and expresses her distress in theocracy (the combination of politics and religion).

Offred is part of Atwood’s life because she expresses her own distress and disgust for the American system.

At the beginning of the novel, there is a dedication “For Mary Webster…” – Mary Webster was a witch, hanged in the 1680’s and also Atwood’s relative – “and Perry Miller”, who was a great scholar in Harvard.

The dedication is a combination of puritanism of the 17th and 20th centuries, which shows that history repeats itself. Gilead is not the first society poisoned with fanaticism (not the first and won’t be the last) – Roumania with Ceaucescu springs to mind but there are heaps of examples.

We have to be careful and avoid a nightmare like Gilead for our own future. Theocracies should not prevail as the price exacted is slavery and all loss of freedoms.

Utopia and Dystopia

Utopia was first defined in Plato’s Republic (-350 BC). Imaginary and fictions and ideals were praised by Thomas More in Utopia (1516). The better society coincides with the discovery of America.

When you imagine a better society, you condemn the ills of your own society. Thomas More dreams of another society, where you demand social and technological improvements.

Utopia is nowhere to be found. I’m not being critical, utopia is nowhere. It’s a creation of my own. The Handmaid’s Tale is not a utopia for Offred but a dystopia, with an imperfect society but maybe she’s describing a utopia with dystopian elements: a negative vision of tyranny, an ecological disaster. She tells about the negative side of the system and the limits of utopias (which are two in the novel: Gilead and the feminist utopia: how sectarian thinking leads to chaos).

Margaret Atwood rejects the “unique thought”. The exploitation and servitude of women make up the dystopia, as well as the denunciation of totalitarianism (p115) and the denunciation of the dangers of propaganda through the manipulation and abuses of language in Gilead: “Aunts” and “Angels” bear a reassuring emotional connotation when they are in fact instruments of oppression. Offred will find indirect ways of denouncing the system put in place in Gilead.

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