HAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian writer. The internationally-known author has written award-
winning poetry, short-stories and novels, including The Circle Game (1966), The
Handmaid’s Tale (1985), The Blind Assassin (2000), Oryx and Crake (2003) and The
Tent(2006). Atwood was born on November 18, 1939 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada to a
nutritionist mother and entomologist father who fostered a love of nature.Also growing up in
Quebec and showing a passion for writing at an early age, Atwood eventually pursued her
undergraduate studies at Victoria College at the University of Toronto, graduating in 1961.
She then earned her master’s at Radcliffe the following year. Over the course of her career,
Atwood went on to teach at a variety of colleges and universities in both Canada and the
United States.Her works have been translated into an array of different languages and seen
several screen.

1.2 ABOUT THE BOOK

A. Historical Context of The Handmaid’s Tale

Atwood has written that her research on 17th-century American Puritans, who created a rigid
and inhumane theocracy based on a few choice selections from the Bible, influenced Gilead.
But the novel also responds to the modern political scene in America. The religious right,
with its moralizing tendencies, was gaining power in America as backlash to the left-wing
Free Love and feminist movements. In the 1970’s, Jerry Falwell and other Christian leaders
urged the Republican party to bring prayer back to schools, diminish abortion rights, and
defeat the Equal Rights Amendment, which was meant to support women. The Handmaid’s
Tale shows how religion can be used as an excuse to reduce women’s rights, a political
tendency which continues to occur all over the world.

B. Social Millieu of the Book

 The Handmaid's Tale is a satire. Atwood considers current social attitudes and reflects on
the ways in which we view and treat other people according to similarities and differences
between their backgrounds and beliefs and ours.

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There is currently much debate about abortion, as there was in the time of Offred's mother
in The Handmaid's Tale. Atwood often puts both sides of an argument about Homosexuality,
a much discuss issue these days, she seems to offer no excuse for Gilead's harsh treatment of
homosexuality. This can be seen inChapter 8, where Offred sees the bodies of those hanged
for Gender Treachery and in Chapter 38, where Moira tells Offred that other so-called
Gender Traitors are sent to the Colonies. Moira herself, who is in many ways Offred's model
of heroic rebellion, is a lesbian, who tells Offred in chapter 28 that ‘she'd decided to prefer
women’.

In chapter 7 Atwood introduces the topic of attitudes to rape, a burning issue for a feminist
such as Moira who has just written a paper on date rape. Offred teases Moira, suggesting that
this is not an important problem, ‘You're so trendy. It sounds like some kind of dessert. Date
Rapé.’However, in chapter 13 Offred tells us about the deliberate humiliation at the Red
Centre of Janine, whose dreadful experience of gang-rape was made to seem her own fault by
Aunt Helena, telling the others that Janine must have ‘led them on’.

‘ But whose fault was it?’ .. ‘Herfault... we chant in unison.’ Atwood here indicates that rape
is by no means a matter for laughter, nor is it an act allowed by God, as Aunt Helena insists,
to ‘Teach her a lesson.'Such attitudes are not, however, confined to Gilead. Countries such as
Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Pakistan operating Sharia Law have often punished rape victims as
responsible for their own plight.

Attitudes to sexual freedom, to adultery and to divorce vary throughout countries, cultures
and societies. Adultery is explored in The Handmaid's Tale.In Gilead, adultery is a crime
punishable by death, and couples who, like Luke and Offred, have married after a divorce are
seen as corrupt, which is why their daughter is removed from their influence.

Violence against women depicted in pornographic films is most shockingly described in

chapter 20 of The Handmaid's Tale, where Offred graphically describes the ‘movies' Aunt
Lydia showed, to indicate the terrible way in which women might have been treated before
the inception of Gilead. Aunt Lydia commented, ‘women tied up or chained... women
hanging from trees... being raped, beaten up killed... cut into pieces’.
‘You see what things used to be like? That was what they thought of women then'Offred's
mother also fights against pornography.

Atwood suggests to us by the very fact of writing, and being able to publish, The Handmaid's
Tale, that the ability to question and challenge is key to a healthy society.

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CHAPTER 2: PLOT AND CHARACTERS

2.1 PLOT

The story opens up with a woman named Offred who describes herself as a
Handmaid, a woman whose job is to bear children. Offred’s real name is never
mentioned but readers learn that all handmaids are given their names beginning with
the prefix “of” and then the first name of their Commander. Throughout the story,
Offred provides several flashbacks in which she tells stories about her family when
the Republic of Gilead was once called United States of America. Readers learn that
Offred had an affair with a married man named Luke and had a daughter with him.
They also learn about her dearest friend Moira who always possessed a rebellious
and assertive nature. During this time in the United States, the “unhealthy”
environment of the country results in the assassination of the president and all
congressmen. As the government is erased, the rise of a totalitarian government
slowly begins. Women lose jobs, the right to education, paper currency, and many
other basic rights. In an attempt to flee this brutality, Offred tries to escape from
Gilead but unfortunately is caught and separated from her husband and daughter as
he had a divorce. After the military catches her, she is sent to a Women’s Center
where she is taught how to be a handmaid and is forced to lose all old ideologies that
were taught to her from the United States. She becomes a handmaid and is sent to a
Commanders house where she meets him and his wife, Serena Joy. There, she is
forced to have sex with the Commander monthly in order to bear children because of
the drastically low birth rates. In this house, she is not allowed to move without
permission but does go on frequent shopping trips with another handmaid, Ofglen.
Even in public, every citizen is watched secretly by the “Eyes”. Secretly, Ofglen
introduces Offred to “Mayday” an underground group of rebellions. Offred is also
introduced to Nick, a Guardian, in the Commander’s house as the Commander sends
messages to Offred secretly. The Commander invites Offred to play scrabble with
him, an illegal activity, and like this they form a relationship. However, a piteous
one, as the Commander does this to fill his need of companionship and to make
Offred’s life in the house bearable. In addition, Nick and Offred also develop a small
relationship which is further enhanced as Serena asks them both to have sex in order

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for Offred to become pregnant. Serena is interested in this pregnancy because she
desires to raise a child of her own and ensures that this will happen when she
promises to show Offred the picture of her daughter, whom Offred now knows is
still alive. Offred also secretly has sex with the Commander as he takes her into a
hotel and asks her to pretend to be a prostitute. In this hotel, Offred meets Moira, and
learns that she also works in the cheap hotel and in the end she has to submit to the
government regardless of her wishes. Hearing this, Offred loses all hopes because
she realizes that her living daughter will never recognize her, she has been disloyal
to her husband, and her fate will be similar to Moira’s as she will also have to submit
to the government. As all this continues, Offred discovers that Ofglen has been
replaced because the previous one was caught in her subversive activities and
hanged herself before getting caught. Soon after, a black van, a signature of the
“eyes” comes to take Offred away. Nick tells her to go as they are really “Mayday”.
After this, her fate remains unknown.

2.2 CHARACTERS

In The Handmaid's Tale, although Atwood is depicting a complete political state, she chooses
a limited number of people to represent that society, and it is intimate relationships which
largely concern her.

1. OFFRED: THE NARRATOR OF THE STORY AND THE PROTAGONIST

The story starts with a woman narrating how a group of young women is held in the Rachel
and Leah Centre. She gives their names as Alma, Janine, Dolores, Moira and June. In
Chapter 41, we realize that Offred’s real name maybe June, however, readers aren’t told this
by Atwood in the entire novel. We see the whole story with Offred’s perspective and she
narrates the events one by one to describe the life at Gilead. She remains a representative of
all Handmaids oppressed by Gilead's theocracy.In chapter 24 she tells us that she is ‘thirty-
three years old. I have brown hair. I stand five seven without shoes.’ But her appearance is
not important; it is her personality which gives her a unique identity and makes her real to us.

Nevertheless, Offred is very much an individual with her own attitudes and strong, though
necessarily suppressed, feelings. She is, and fully intends to remain, a survivor, telling us
ofher determination in chapter 2 - ‘I intend to last', her intense relief, at the end of chapter 27,
that ‘It wasn't me' who was arrested and her desperation ‘to keep on living, in any form', in

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chapter 45.Offred has other ways of surviving, one of which is her constant retreat into her
own mind. Seven of the fifteen sections of the novel are entitled ‘Night', and it is here that
Offred finds within herself a form of freedom. It is freedom even though it entails reliving
times of desperate sadness as well as times of love, shut in the room that she at first refuses to
call ‘hers', since that seems to acknowledge her acceptance of her position.

Offred asserts her opposition to the régime in the tiny but significant ways which are open to
her. In chapter 17 we read how she takes and conceals the butter which she uses as face-
cream - a forbidden indulgence - and steals a dead daffodil to show that she has the power to
act illegally. Perhaps more significantly, Offred laughs at those in power: returning from the
Commander's office, where she has been asked to play Scrabble, the absurdity of the situation
strikes her and a great surge of laughter erupts, which she has to stifle by covering her face
with the cloak hanging in the cupboard. Offred welcomes male love, needing the sense of
touch and the ‘exchange'. She has had an affair with Luke, whom she passionately loves, has
married him after his divorce from his first wife, and had a child, a daughter whose name we
never know, but whose loss has taken away from Offred after her arrest, is a constant source
of anguish. She wonders desperately what has happened to her child and to Luke, but accepts
her need for physical contact and even (in chapter 41) that desire for Nick overrides her
desire to escape.Atwood does not allow us to know what happened, finally, to Offred, but the
Historical Notes suggest that she got at least some of the way to freedom. Yet she had, of
course, retained an essential inner freedom throughout her time as a Handmaid in spite of all
her sufferings, and her ‘voice' is clear and unique. This is Offred's significance - that she is a
timeless assertion of the importance of the individual, of mental freedom and of the need to
place human relationships above oppressive power.

2. MOIRA

Moira is a college friend of Offred's, and is vibrant, rebellious and deliberately shocking. She
is the first person Offred thinks of when she wants to escape, in her mind (chapter 7):

‘Where should I go? Somewhere good. Moira ...'

Everything about Moira seems to suggest a non-conformist. She sits with, ‘ankle on knee, in
her purple overalls, one dangly earring, the gold fingernail she wore to be eccentric’.

Moira has the sort of knowledge and ability which many women traditionally do not have.

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Moira is decidedly not traditional; she is very aware of the feminist movement, and has
written a paper on date rape. Offred tells us that Moira decided (chapter 28) to ‘prefer
women' and went to work for a women's collective.

Moira is witty and irreverent, and her laughter resounds through much of the novel. ‘She
always made me laugh,' Offred tells us in chapter 10, and later (chapter 31) she says, ‘Moira
laughed; she could always do that.'

Moira's laughter becomes a potent weapon against oppression, one that Offred learns to
value. In her refusal to conform, Moira becomes something of a hero for Offred at the Red
Centre. Moira's first escape, taken away by ambulance through feigned sickness, shows her
resourcefulness and strength of purpose - even though she is brought back and savagely
punished. Even after this, it is Moira who saves Janine by slapping her when she starts to
‘slip over the edge' (chapter 33), warning Janine what will happen to her if she is deemed
useless.

Offred sayS (at the end of chapter 22), ‘Moira was our fantasy ... In the light of Moira, the
Aunts were less fearsome and more absurd ... Moira didn't reappear. She hasn't yet.'

Even the unknown, previous Offred who scratched ‘nolite te bastardes carborundorum’ on
the floor of the cupboard has, for Offred, ‘the face of Moira’ (chapter 15).

3. SERENA JOY

To begin with, Serena Joy seems a hostile figure, speaking brusquely to Offred (chapter 3).
Her Handmaid is convinced that even in:

‘another time and place ... I wouldn't have liked her, nor she me.'
And at the end of the novel (chapter 46), Offred's fear of what Serena Joy will do to her
makes her consider suicide. After all, that is what happened to the previous Offred who, the
Commander tells Offred in chapter 29, ‘hanged herself' when ‘Serena found out.'

Serena Joy is first described (chapter 3) as having a thickened waist, thin lips and knuckly
fingers with ‘large diamonds' on her ring finger. She has blonde hair and eyes which are a
‘flat hostile blue ... a blue that shuts you out'. Her face is ‘not fat but ... large'. Atwood further
suggests her nature with, ‘Two lines led downwards from the corners of her mouth; between
them was her chin, clenched like a fist.’ At the end when Offred fails to conceive any
sympathy we or Offred have for Serena Joy vanishes.

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4. THE COMMANDER

The first time we encounter the Commander, ‘he is violating custom', standing in the hallway
near the door to Offred's room. Offred is concerned: what does this mean? ‘It could mean
attack, it could mean parley.' As the novel progresses we find that the Commander does
indeed violate custom, talking to his Handmaid as if she is more than just an anonymous
servant.

Offred's feelings towards the Commander are complex. At the end of chapter 10, well before
he has asked her to go in secret to his office, Offred tells us, ‘I ought to feel hatred for this
man ... What I feel is more complicated than that. I don't know what to call it. It isn't love.'

5. NICK

Nick is a Guardian, a member of the security forces of Gilead, who has been assigned to the
Commander as a chauffeur. Offred's first encounter with him (chapter 4) reveals his
underlying lack of conformity. Hewears his cap ‘tilted at a jaunty angle', has ‘a cigarette
stuck in the corner of his mouth', Is ‘too casual ... not servile enough'.Offred describes him as
having, ‘a French face, lean, whimsical ... with creases around the mouth where he smiles.’
Nick and Offred have a sexual relationship seems certain (as certain as anything can be in the
novel which, as Atwood, via Offred, frequently reminds us, is a construction or
reconstruction). From the beginning, Offred has been sensuously aware of Nick's body. She
wonders immediately (chapter 4) how his ‘tanned skin, moist in the sun, filmed with smoke,'
might smell.

6. LUKE

Luke is - or was, as he may now be dead - Offred's husband. We know little about him - we
never have a physical description, nor do we know what his job was - but we do know that he
was married, began an affair with Offred, and then spent some time ‘in flight from his wife'.
It took him two years to ‘pry himself loose' before divorcing and marrying Offred, with
whom he had a daughter. Because Luke belongs to Offred's past, we never see him in what
appears to be ‘present time', as we do many of the other characters, and indeed Offred has to
remind herself not to think about him only in the past tense.

Offred is wretched not to know what has happened to Luke. In chapter 18 she gives us three
possible versions:He may have been shot dead during their escape attempt, and she prays that

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his death was quick, he may have been captured and is now rotting in prison, tortured and
starving or he may have escaped, found his way out of Gilead through a resistance
movement, and be trying to contact her, to organise her escape too.She has no idea which one
of these three possible scenarios is the true one; neither does the reader.

7. AUNT LYDIA

By far the most significant Aunt is Lydia, whose maxims are recalled by Offred throughout
the novel. Until she appears at the Particicution, Aunt Lydia is memorable mainly for her
proverb-like remarks, designed to brainwash her charges, the future Handmaids. The first
time we hear of her is when Offred looks at her own room in the Commander's house, and
recalls Aunt Lydia saying that this was ‘not a prison but a privilege'. As Offred tartly
remarks, Aunt Lydia ‘was in love with either/or.'

Aunt Lydia's showing of pornographic films which graphically portray the physical and
mental degradation of women common in the pre-Gilead time is a warning to Atwood's
readers as to what they allow and accept in their late twentieth century world.

There is no doubt that Aunt Lydia is a despicable and vicious - and at times self-deluding -
woman. She encourages the vulnerable Janine to blame herself for being gang-raped (chapter
13). More noticeably, Aunt Lydia is sadistic:She is responsible for beating Moira's feet with
steel cables after her first escape. Moira later tells Offred at Jezebel's, that, ‘She enjoyed that,
you know. She pretended to do all that love-the-sinner, hate-the sin stuff, but she enjoyed it.

8. OFGLEN

Ofglen is Offred's shopping partner. As neither is trusted to go out alone, each has to
accompany the other. Offred describes her first encounter with Ofglen (chapter 4) as meeting
‘a shape like mine, a nondescript woman in red carrying a basket'. So alike are they in
outward form that Offred says she is ‘doubled' as she walks the street (chapter 5). To begin
with, they address each other in the stock phrases permitted to the Handmaids, but by chapter
8 Ofglen becomes more adventurous, introducing the words ‘May Day' which, as we later
discover, is the name of an underground resistance movement.During the course of the novel
Ofglen becomes more communicative, and by chapter 27 Offred realises that Ofglen has
‘given up some of her passivity lately’. Ofglen's commitment to the resistance movement is
shown at the Particicution (chapter 43); when one of the May Day group is to be torn apart by
the crowd, she kicks him in the head to ensure he loses consciousness.

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CHAPTER 3: LANGUAGE, SYMBOLS AND MOTIFS

A. LANGUAGE

In the novel's fictional fundamentalist society, sterile is an outlawed word. Atwood

emphasizes how changes in context affect behaviors and attitudes by repeating the phrase
"Context is all" throughout the novel, establishing this precept as a motifs.

Offred can read but not translate the phrase "nolite te bastardes carborundorum" carved
into the closet wall of her small bedroom; this mock-Latinaphorism signifies “Don't let
the bastards grind you down”. The significance of this phrase is intensified by the
challenges the book has faced, creating a "Mise en abyme" as both the protagonist and the
reader decipher subversive texts.

B. SYMBOLS
 Costumes: In the state of Gilead, people of same social group dress alike. The main
purpose of the clothing is to reveal the status while at the same time it hides the
individuality. This situation is discouraging. The commanders wear black dress,
which represent fear and authority. Wives wear powder blue colour. The richness of
the clothes and their embroidery shows the status. Aunts wear Khaki Brown dress
which was the dress colour of the Nazi Storm troopers. The dress colour for girls is
white, which represents purit. Econo-wives wives wear the dresses of three colours
red, blue and green. This colour combination shows that they fulfil all three roles.
Handmaids wear red colour, the symbol of fertility, childbirth, menstrual blood and
the sexual sin. Nuns cover her body to hide the individuality.“A red and white shape
of the cloth like a kite”.This shows the dress description of a nun in the society of the
Gilead.

 Red: Red was the uniform colour for the Handmaids. This colour shows fertility
because this colour is associated with the menstrual blood which means the ability to
conceive the baby (Tomasch, 2004). Colour red is also related to the sexual sin, so the
colour on the handmaids shows that they are engaged with the commanders in the
adultery, despite the ceremony. Red colour represents the element of violence and

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brutality. In the society of Gilead it can also be found on corpse to cover their
bodies.“A sister dripped in Blood”

 Scrabble: The game of scrabble is played by the commander. The purpose of this
game is to show that they are in competition over languages and the production of the
words. Whoever is most skill full at creating words, wins the game. This shows that
how in the Gilead society the words are manipulated to extract the political
ideologies. Terms like unbaby and unwomen were used in the society to seize the
individuality of the women.

 Mirrors: In the Atwood novel, mirrors are the source of identity because they
represent who we are. But they were removed in the book. Because they can break
into fragments and can be used as weapons.“As in nunnery too, there were few
mirrors.” and “And myself in it like distorted shadow, a parody of something”.

 Flowers: In the Handmaid’s Tale, flowers are give extra attention. They are the
symbol of fertility and beauty. It makes sense in this way also that flowers are found
in those parts of the plant where there are reproductive organs. Old wives dress
themselves with flowers in order to look more attractive (Miner, 1991). The
connection between the handmaid and the tulip is the color, death and function.“Think
yourself as seed”

 Eyes: Eyes are the symbol of the police in the Gilead. They are called as the “Eyes Of
God”. This shows the feeling of watchfulness. They work for the government and can
be found anywhere in the State of Gilead. Tattoo: Four digits and an eye.“Blind
plaster Eye in the ceiling”

 Biblical Allusions: Gilead is a Christian theocracy, or government based on religion,

so biblical allusions abound. The names of shops (Milk and Honey, Fish and Loaves),
caste names (Marthas, Angels), car names (Behemoth) and even Jezebel’s club are all
biblical allusions. The government also uses biblical quotes and phrases in order to
justify its government. They cherry pick their phrases, however, and alter them as
they see fit. For example, officials tell handmaids “Blessed are the meek” without the
other part of the phrase, “for they shall inherit the earth.” Gilead constantly uses
biblical references in propaganda and official speech throughout the novel.

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 Eggs: Every morning, Offred eats eggs for breakfast, presumably as an easy-to-
provide source of protein. Throughout the book, Offred often pauses before eating to
observe and philosophize on the egg. Its smooth, blank surface becomes the perfect
canvas for Offred to paint her thoughts and innermost feelings. Of course, there’s
also the parallel between chicken eggs and human eggs. The relationship is clear:
Offred, as a handmaid, is supposed to produce viable, fertile eggs that can grow into
children, and to encourage that, they feed her dead, unfertilized eggs. Yet another
interesting contradiction in the society of Gilead.

 The City: Although it is never explicitly stated, The Handmaid’s Taletakes place in

Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the university referenced in book is Harvard. The
theocracy of Gilead draws parallels to the Puritans who settled in Massachusetts 400
years ago. The Puritans also governed by strict religious rule and were cruel to anyone
who did not conform. The setting of Cambridge demonstrates that rule like that of
Gilead is a distinct possibility in the future, since it has already happened in the past.

C. MOTIFS

 Rape and Sexual Violence: Sexual violence, particularly against women,

pervades The Handmaid’s Tale. The prevalence of rape and pornography in the pre-
Gilead world justified to the founders their establishment of the new order. The
Commander and the Aunts claim that women are better protected in Gilead, that they
are treated with respect and kept safe from violence. Certainly, the official penalty for
rape is terrible: in one scene, the Handmaids tear apart with their bare hands a
supposed rapist. Yet, while Gilead claims to suppress sexual violence, it actually
institutionalizes it, as we see at Jezebel’s, the club that provides the Commanders with
a ready stable of prostitutes to service the male elite. Most important, sexual violence
is apparent in the central institution of the novel, the Ceremony, which compels
Handmaids to have sex with their Commanders.
 Religious Terms Used for Political Purposes: Gilead is a theocracy—a government
in which there is no separation between state and religion—and its official vocabulary
incorporates religious terminology and biblical references. Domestic servants are
called “Marthas” in reference to a domestic character in the New Testament; the local
police are “Guardians of the Faith”; soldiers are “Angels”; and the Commanders are

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officially “Commanders of the Faithful.” All the stores have biblical names: Loaves
and Fishes, All Flesh, Milk and Honey. Even the automobiles have biblical names like
Behemoth, Whirlwind, and Chariot. Using religious terminology to describe people,
ranks, and businesses whitewashes political skullduggery in pious language. It
provides an ever-present reminder that the founders of Gilead insist they act on the
authority of the Bible itself. Politics and religion sleep in the same bed in Gilead,
where the slogan “God is a National Resource” predominates.
 Silence and Sexuality through Garden:Atwood highlights the concept of silence
and authority through the recurring occurrence of Garden. Even before we see Offred
emerge from the house into Serena Joy's garden, we see her awareness of the natural
world as she likens the curved wood of the hat stand to ‘the opening fronds of a fern'.
Once she is out in the garden, she instantly notices the tulips, which are ‘opening their
cups, spilling out colour'.These two observations of nature ‘opening' are in immediate
contrast to the restrictiveness of the household in which Offred now finds herself. The
same word, ‘opening', is used by Offred when, in chapter 27, she feels that she and
Ofglen have achieved some real communication, and says that ‘hope is rising in me,
like sap in a tree.’ The garden therefore represents an impulse for life that cannot be
denied. Offred senses that Commanders' Wives like to, ‘order and maintain' their
gardens and not everyone has the authority or permission to enter the garden.
However, as the novel progresses we become aware that the garden cannot be so
controlled.In chapter 2, Offred tells us that her experience of her own garden, before
she became a handmaid, was of a different kind from the desire to control nature. Her
response to it was sensuous and she remembers, ‘the smell of the turned earth, the
plump shades of bulbs held in the hands, fullness, the dry rustle of seeds through the
fingers.’In chapter 2 Offred likens the bright colour of the tulips in Serena Joy's
garden to blood, ‘as if they had been cut’. This strikes her again - they are ‘redder
than ever' - as she reaches home after the shopping trip in chapter 8, and their cups
seem ‘like chalices, thrusting themselves up’ The vivid redness of the tulips seems to
be part of the garden's vibrancy, which, in chapter 25, Offred feels has ‘something
subversive’ about it. She records, ‘a sense of buried things bursting upwards,
wordlessly, into the light, as if to point, to say: Whatever is silenced will clamour to
be heard, though silently.’

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 Similarities between Reactionary and Feminist Ideologies: Although The
Handmaid’s Tale offers a specifically feminist critique of the reactionary attitudes
toward women that hold sway in Gilead, Atwood occasionally draws similarities
between the architects of Gilead and radical feminists such as Offred’s mother. Both
groups claim to protect women from sexual violence, and both show themselves
willing to restrict free speech in order to accomplish this goal. Offred recalls a scene
in which her mother and other feminists burn porn magazines. Like the founders of
Gilead, these feminists ban some expressions of sexuality. Gilead also uses the
feminist rhetoric of female solidarity and “sisterhood” to its own advantage. These
points of similarity imply the existence of a dark side of feminist rhetoric. Despite
Atwood’s gentle criticism of the feminist left, her real target is the religious right.

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CHAPTER 4: THEMES

There are several themes highlighted in the novel. Following are the prominent themes.

A. Human relationships

Throughout The Handmaid's Tale we find recurring instances where Atwood focuses on the
vital importance of human relationships. Of course, virtually every work of art in almost
every medium could be said to explore human relationships, but in The Handmaid's
Tale Atwood specifically depicts a society where such relationships have been altered,
undermined and in many ways forbidden. She asks her readers to consider what has been lost
in the Republic of Gilead, whose leaders seem to see themselves as protecting a society
which they have, in essential matters, destroyed

The key word in the issue of relationships is love. Atwood specifically distinguishes this from
sex. As Offred says (in chapter 18), ‘Nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die
from.'In chapter 34, when the Commander, trying to justify the régime, outlines its actions
and then asks Offred, ‘What did we overlook?', Offred tells him the answer in one word:
‘Love.' In the same chapter, Offred recalls Aunt Lydia saying, ‘with distaste,' that, ‘Love is
not the point.' But for Offred it is.

B. Mothers and children

Human relationships and their significance are strongly represented in the novel through
repeated examination of the relationships between mothers and daughters (we see little of
fathers and their children except for passing references to Luke and his daughter by Offred).
Because of the dearth of healthy children in Gilead, brought about, so we are told in the
section Historical Notes, by such factors as nuclear accidents, toxic leakages, AIDS and
syphilis, reproduction in Gilead is a matter of state survival. Offred's tale focuses on a system
where a child is important as a statistic rather than for itself, and those which do not measure
up to the state's standard of perfection are removed as ‘shredders'.

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There are many occasions during the telling of her tale when Offred thinks about her mother
who, according to Moira (chapter 39), is now undergoing a living death in the Colonies.Some
of the most moving and powerful language in the novel concerns Offred's passionate love and
yearning for the daughter who was taken away after the unsuccessful attempt to escape from
Gilead. So pervasive are Offred's memories that she does not even introduce the topic - she
seems to assume that her (unknown) audience will be as aware as she herself is that when she
speaks of ‘she' for the first time in chapter five, it is her lost daughter whom Offred is
recalling, even though the child has not previously been mentioned, ‘She could get one of
those.

C. Individualism and identity

The novel is entitled The Handmaid's Tale, not A Handmaid's Tale, so although we can

never be entirely sure of the identity of this Handmaid. Whoever the Handmaid is, she is to
be viewed as an individual, a person who is important in her own right. This means
acknowledging her unique personality: Pieixoto and his colleague, Professor Wray, say that
‘our author was one of many.' They insist that they have tried to ‘establish an identity for the
narrator', but in fact the core of her real identity - her thoughts and feelings - are ignored by
them.

D. Gender significance

It is impossible to read The Handmaid's Tale without being aware that issues of gender and
aspects of feminism are central to the novel. Atwood is well-known for her feminist views,
though she is never narrow-minded, and in The Handmaid's Tale she raises questions rather
than simply asserting her views. As Offred comments, ‘if Moira thought she could create
Utopia by shutting herself up in a woman-only enclave she was sadly mistaken. Men were
not just going to go away.'Nevertheless, women are the main victims in the society which
Atwood conceives - the Republic of Gilead - and her vision of this society reflects many of
the inequalities and abuses faced by women world-wide in the past and currently. In Gilead,
female subjection is complete, and as far as the Handmaids are concerned even their identity
is subsumed by the male who controls them.

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E. Survival

The Republic of Gilead, as we see throughout the novel, is literally fighting for survival. It is
engaged in a series of wars and has to fend off insurgencies. It is also fighting for survival in
that it has few healthy children, which is its justification for its oppressive and tyrannical
methods.However, the focus of the novel is on the survival of one individual - Offred.Yet
throughout her tale, the Handmaid known as Offred is characterised by her determination to
survive - both physically, and in her personality, as an individual.

CHAPTER 5: EXPOSITION

The whole novel talks about a regime of dystopia and makes the reader believe how if law
could have been in place, Gilead would have worked well. Atwood depicts Gilead as a
régime which enforces obedience by brutal punishments. The use of torture is seen in the
public display of bodies on the Wall which Offred and Ofglen witness on their regular
shopping walks, and what Offred imagines happening to Luke in chapter 18. This is part of
Atwood's comment on the judicial punishments handed out in many real societies. She has a
strong interest in promoting human rights and her novels provide ways of making her readers
think about the issues.

Throughout history, régimes have known that if they can control the literature and means of
communication of their citizens, they will be well on the way to complete domination. Even
in apparently more liberal régimes, censorship has been used to ensure that citizens see and
hear only what the powers-that-be decide is suitable. In Gilead, reading and writing are very
strictly limited.

Atwood is well known for her feminist views and The Handmaid's Tale raises many
questions about the role, status and treatment of women in the modern world.

She has depicter the issue of Gender inequality and talked about how law gives females equal
representation and equal rights.

Atwood raises feminist issues immediately by depicting Gilead as a régime in which men
have all the power. Women are subservient in every way and are unable to work or even to
have bank accounts of their own. Atwood also extends the debate further by making Offred's
mother a feminist who takes part in protests and demonstrations. In chapter 20, for example,
Offred recalls seeing, at the Red Centre, a film about a feminist demonstration in which her

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mother was taking part. Atwood is probably thinking of such real-life events as the 1974
march in San Francisco by Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media.

Right to freedom is a fundamental right now and the idea of personal freedom is a concept
which has been debated in novel several times. In chapter 5 of The Handmaid's Tale Aunt
Lydia tells the Handmaids that there are two kinds of freedom:

 Freedom for the individual to do what he or she wants, which may seem desirable but
can lead to anarchy
 Freedom from, where rules and restrictions protect individuals from the results of
amoral or anarchic behaviour.

A Declaration of Human Rights was drawn up by the United Nations in 1948, which stresses,
among many other ‘rights', that:

‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to
hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas
through any media and regardless of frontiers.'

Not all countries or indeed individuals feel that such freedoms are always conducive to the
public good; expressing some opinions may be harmful to other people. Atwood, whilst
making clear to her readers the appalling nature of Gilead's theocracy, yet makes us question
the extent to which unlimited individual choice is beneficial.

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CHAPTER 6: CRITICISM

Atwood's futurist novel of 1986 is an important book for many reasons. Curiously however,
despite its necessarily subversive status as a female invasion of male literary territory, The
Handmaid's Tale possesses many formal and thematic features typical of traditional satire, as
it is defined by contemporary literary theory. In fact, according to the understandings of satire
put forth by accepted critics of the genre, Atwood's novel in many ways presents a satiric
text-book case. The author employs a variety of themes and motifs commonly found in
classical and modern satire: complex rhetorical devices such as formal disguise (a satire
which masquerades as a novel which in turn masquerades as an autobiography) and irony, a
static or nonprogressive plot where very little actually seems to happen, the character of a
common- sense, average narrator who speaks in a seemingly straightforward manner, and the
scene of a dystopic nightmare city.1

Handmaid's satiric thrust is straight- forward and unambiguous. Atwood's condemnation of

Gilead's born again theocracy is never in doubt, because Handmaid relentlessly exposes the
total hypocrisy of a regime which preaches biblical virtue but where vice reigns everywhere-
from the brutal executions of dissidents to the institutionalized sexual promiscuity enjoyed by
the commanders. The representatives of the new way are consistently monstrous. The sadistic
aunts are frustrated older women who brutalize their younger, fertile charges out of jealousy
and fear. The seemingly mild-mannered commander Fred cheats on his wife with alacrity and
calmly justifies the oppressive regime which he partly masterminded with the observation
that in the old society men felt they were no longer needed by women; he thereby suggests

1
STILLMAN, PETER G., and S. ANNE JOHNSON. “Identity, Complicity, and Resistance in The Handmaid's
Tale.” Utopian Studies, vol. 5, no. 2, 1994, pp. 70–86. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20719314.

18
that women's liberation forced American men to take this drastic action; ergo the present
regime is ultimately the women's "fault." And Atwood's most ironic portrait is certainly that
of Fred's resentful and cruel wife Serena Joy. Neither serene nor joyous, this high-ranking
wife is a former "total Woman" activist who is enraged and embittered by the existence
which her successful advocacy now imposes upon her. Within this demonic scheme even the
victimized handmaids are forced into an existence which is no less hypocritical than that of
their oppressors; in order to survive they and the narrator among them are constantly obliged
to pretend to espouse a system of values which denigrates and threatens to annihilate them.
This is, of course, the supreme irony of Atwood's fictional future world; this is a theocracy
where not one person is devout and where such notions as faith and morality simply have no
meaning.2 This topical satire represents only one very superficial layer of Atwood's critique
in The Handmaid's Tale; simultaneously a far more complex critical process is unfolding
here. This second satiric dimension lies embedded and partially concealed within Offred's
own narrative procedure. Despite the heroine's apparent straightforwardness and despite her
seeming fitness to give a true, woman-in-the-street report of a nightmare situation, Offred
surreptitiously offers the reader a very different kind of narrative. Significantly, the narrator
reveals that she becomes Fred's mistress and that she later has secret erotic rendezvous with
Nick, the strong and silent chauffeur who is possibly an agent of the secret police. A strange
kind of live triangle now develops, a bedroom farce of multiple assignations under one roof,
which would be comical if Offred's life did not depend on her successful juggling of these
two sexual relationships. The plot as it now unfolds is weirdly reminiscent of popular gothic
romance, for in such stories the heroine, like Offred, is often made a helpless prisoner by an
evil and sexually desirous male force, until she is finally liberated by the romantic hero. In
conclusion, I believe that The Handmaid's Tale is at once a text-book example of modern
fictional satire and at the same time a clever appropriation of a predominantly male literature
for feminist purposes. It subverts as it borrows from this literary canon, enabling us to admire
it both as a satiric model and as a pioneering satiric effort. Offred also signals the importance
of political self-recognition early on in the novel:
We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at
it.3Atwood urges us to recognize the flaws of our culture and to refuse passive acceptance of
2
Hammer, Stephanie Barbé. “The World as It Will Be? Female Satire and the Technology of Power in ‘The Handmaid's
Tale.’” Modern Language Studies, vol. 20, no. 2, 1990, pp. 39–49. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3194826.

3
Armbruster, Jane. “Memory and Politics — A Reflection on ‘The Handmaid's Tale.’” Social Justice, vol. 17, no. 3 (41),
1990, pp. 146–152., www.jstor.org/stable/29766564.

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them. Hand- maid is, above all, a book about responsibility, at once emotional, sexual,
intellectual and civic. Seen from this perspective, the satire in The Handmaid's Tale directs its
criticism towards all of us-feminists and non-feminists, women and men. It warns us of the
imperceptible technology of power, of the subtle domination of women by men, and of our
unconscious imprisoning of each other and ourselves by ourselves.

CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION

Published over thirty years ago, Margaret Atwood’s novel about women’s rights in a
collapsed western society appears to be more relevant than ever before. In the era of Donald
Trump, anti-abortion arguments and the #MeToo movement surrounding female sexual
assault by those in positions of power, The Handmaid’s Tale seems to speak to our current
political and social climate.

Atwood wrote her novel as a piece of speculative fiction, with the Republic of Gilead
representing a dystopian future view of the United States of America. Atwood started writing
this novel shortly after Reagan was elected president, and was inspired by political and social
issues of the time: attempts by Republicans to stop funding anti-abortion clinics, falling birth
rates, issues surrounding newly available debit cards, and worries about rising infertility.
These issues are captured and explored through the fundamentalist society in the novel,
demonstrating Atwood’s ability to capture the state of society through her own prism of
speculative fiction.

As readers, we are going to read a piece of literature surrounded by our own experiences and
historical context. Reading is a two-way experience, a conversation between the reader and
the text. In The Handmaid’s Tale today, I of course find relevance, as the world surrounding
us seems to reflect the society Atwood presents to us.What is interesting though is that there
appears to be a collective interpretation of The Handmaid’s Tale, and an agreement amongst
liberal society that the novel has such a relevance.

This is exemplified by the use of the Handmaid outfit as a symbol in political activism, with
women dressing up in the now iconic, red, nun-like costumes to protest issues. We have

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ascribed The Handmaid’s Tale with meaning that when first published I think Atwood only
imagined in her worst speculative nightmares. Yet, thirty years on, her work is still as
relevant as ever, but as a response of a society somewhat different to her original audience
and in a world that has drastically moved on in some ways from the one she wrote in.

I think it is one of the best works of literature that manage to achieve this continued relevance
across changing time and political circumstance. They are able to be reinterpreted by new
generations and through the lens of new societal situations. The Handmaid’s Tale will
continue to be relevant during times when society appears to be in collapse and as long as
there are issues surrounding women’s rights. It will continue to resonate when societies feel
that they can read their situation in the fundamentalist, oppressive, and misogynistic
structures present in the society of Gilead in Atwood’s novel.

Margaret atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. She is the author of over
forty books of fiction ,poetry and essays . she is also one of Canada’s leading literary critics.
She wanted to present dystopia from a female point of view. a dystopian society shows us the
signposts pointing to a disaster, remind us of human resilience , help us think through the
consequences of social and political change and also fill us with pure and unadulterated
terror. Dystopian fiction has little whispers and echoes of reality in between the lines of the
story.

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