1. The Handmaid’s Tale Intro presentation: slides 1-16 Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood

2. Setting
Late 20th/ Early 21st Century; Cambridge, Massachusetts [near Boston]
United States, after Christian fundamentalists have transformed the US into the fascistic theocracy of Gilead. [Fascist government: centralized government headed by a dictatorial leader; severe economic & social regimentation & forcible suppression of opposition.]
The Republic of Gilead and Iran are monotheocrasies. [Monotheocrasy: government of a state by immediate divine guidance.]
The Wall: reminiscent of the Berlin Wall
University = Harvard
POV Advantages of 1st person narration:
are closer to the events of the story
having a child tell the story of another child is allows the reader to see how the events affected the children.
Pecola cannot tell the story herself b/c at the end of the narrative, she’s gone mad.
POV Disadvantages of 1st person narration:
we do not have complete perspectives: what other people were thinking, feeling, doing, etc.
Morrison could not maintain the focus on Pecola Breedlove throughout the entire novel without demonizing Pecola’s antagonists. Her intention is not to dehumanize Cholly.

3. Dystopian Allegory
Dystopian = anti-utopian novel. A Utopia is a perfect society. A dystopian society is an imperfect one masquerading as a utopia.
Allegory – an extended metaphor in which the essential meaning is found outside the literary work. Uses characters, settings, images to suggest meanings beyond themselves, but they are allegorical = signs unlike symbols are so obviously used to present religious, moral, or political ideas that may retain little objective meaning.
Allegorical characters tend to be flat and unreal personifications of the qualities they represent.

4. Point of View/Style/Structure
Narration: 1st person POV. Events take different points in the life of Offred. New characters she meets from the 5 wks into her new post are introduced [Ofglen]; others she’s familiar w/ are taken for granted and woven into the narration w/explanations.
Tone: drab, flat, desensitized. Important b/c Offred’s life had been designed by the government to be uneventful and not to require independent thought.
Info re how her life came to be that way is conveyed through flashback and is drawn from 2 sections of time in her past:
1. The Rachel and Leah Reeducation Center: informs reader about how she came to be the way she is
2. the time b/t the former government’s fall and her the border: explains how society came to be the way it is.

5. Structure, 2
First section “Night” = flashback = women sleep in a gymnasium surrounded by barbed wire = sets tone of danger for the following present tense episodes, to contrast the passivity of the bland life described there.
The chapters of the novel alternate (even numbered Chs name some place in town the narrator goes to; odd #ed Chs named Night. “Nap” is the exception).
This emphasized the distinction b/t the times when the Handmaids brain is allowed to be active and when it is supposed to be shut down in sleep. Ironically, her life becomes more active and colorful during the “Night” sections [memories, affair]
Jezebels = not in a “Night” section = poses no threat to the power structure.
Structure mirrors content: the order of her journal on tape is jumbled, so is the order of the narration.

6. Context
Novel published in 1985 – in the middle of a decade where the feminist movement was experiencing a setback.
People were in favor of conservative values and religious fundamentalism was experiencing a growth in influence and power. [Televangelists incredibly popular, until the sex scandals, which slowed the growth].
The political & social situations most likely influences Atwood.
The novel poses philosophical questions about human relations and illustrates the exchange and loss of power.

7. Characters, Positions, Purposes
Offred: narrator, handmaid assigned to Commander and wife Serena Joy
The Aunts: (Brown) train handmaids/oversee births; only women permitted to read/write; have access to weapons; greater freedom of movement than all other women.
Wives: (Blue) head of the female household; unable to bear children.
Handmaids: (Red) fertile women; “assigned” to high-ranking households to bear them children. “Unfit” as wives b/c of an “immoral” marital history. Children taken raway and “reassigned”.
Marthas: (Green) cook and clean for the high-ranking families; carry gossip & rumors.
Econowives: (Stripes, red, blue, green) wives for poorer men [perform all functions themselves.
Unwomen: Barren and unfit as wives due to “immoral” marital history; or are political dissidents; or are fertile but refuse to be handmaids.
Marthas, Wives, and Aunts enjoy a greater measure of freedom.
The power structure of Gilead divides and conquers women by assigning them to categories of unequal power.
Wives oppress the Handmaids (As Rachel did Bilhah). Aunts oppress them, too.

8. Characters, 2
Commanders: high-ranking officials who receive Handmaids to bear them children. Many are sterile, although in this society, no man is sterile. Therefore, the women are to blame.
Eyes: spies; could be anywhere and anyone. Beat/torture people in their vans.
Angels: Soldiers at various, unnamed fronts. Rewarded by receiving a wife (daughter of a commander). May eventually have their own Handmaids.
Guardians: uniformed and multi-functional = guards, chauffeurs, gardeners. Too old, young, stupid, or disabled to be Angels. The young are dangerous as they shoot w/ little provocation in the hope of promotion to Angels and can, therefore, get a wife.
Unbabies: babies w/ serious defects (genetic) as a result of the vast pollution/radiation resulting from nuclear disaster or war. Also referred to as “shredders” since they were killed.

9. Epigraphs all 3 frame the narrative
1. Rachel, Leah, & Jacob: Genesis 30:1-3
Refers to the precedents for polygamy. Jacob’s wife Rachel was infertile, so she urged him to have children by her servant Bilhah, who does not have any say in her own reproductive functions. Rachel uses another woman’s body for her own purposes as she took Bilhah’s children for herself.
The real power lies not w/Rachel, but w/ Jacob. Rachel measures her worth through childbearing in a patriarchal society. In order to raise her status in this society, she oppresses a less powerful woman.

10. Epighraphs, 2
Swift’s A Modest Proposal: satire on the cold-hearted policies of the British toward the starving Irish. He “proposed” that the Irish eat their own children in order to solve the hunger problem.
The Handmaid’s Tale is also satirical in that Atwood mocks the custom of making policies to “better” society that really are only about securing power and status for a select few.

11. Epigraphs, 3
3. The Sufi proverb: “In the desert there is no sign that says, Thou shalt not eat stones.”
In terms of the novel’s concern about the structures of power, the proverb implies that power can be obtained and kept by controlling access to scarce resources [fertile women]. In the desert, stones are not a resource, but water and food are. Therefore, no law will forbid anyone to eat stones in the desert b/c they are not a valuable resource.
The proverb can also refer to desire: power can be secured by controlling the routes to satisfy desire.

12. Epigraphs: An Explanation
The Genesis excerpt and the Swift quotation: highlight the methods that the elite of Gilead use to justify taking away the rights of women.
The elite use religious and moral law to justify systematically taking away the rights of women. [
The price of freedom and independence is not much to pay for the benefits of safety and security
In light of Sept. 11, 2001, this statement has a greater significance as many laws changed, which restricted certain freedoms/rights = wiretap laws in the name of safety.

13. Allusions
Biblical
Rachel & Leah Center [Jacob = their husband; they were sisters]. Jacob loved Rachel, but tricked by their father into marrying the elder sister, Leah. Leah bore Jacob many children; Rachel was barren, offered Bilhah, her handmaid. Eventually, Rachel bears Jacob a son. Joseph = most loved by his father, hated by his brothers who sell him into slavery in Egypt. Jacob leaves w/ other sons and head for Gilead where he makes peace w/ his father-in-law, possibly wrestles the angel there, meets his [older] twin brother, Esau, whose birthright he stole by tricking dad Isaac [son Abraham and almost sacrificed to God as a test of faith].
Gilead: actual place – fertile land. WHY IS THIS NAME SIGNIFICANT?
Gilead is significant as the name of the new government b/c few people there are fertile, so it functions as their hope. They will be fruitful and multiply in the new Gilead b/c they have rounded up all the fertile women to be used as baby machines.
The name is also ironic, b/c many of the commanders are infertile and they are the only ones w/official and recognized access to the fertile women. So if everyone followed the rules of their new society, few to no children would be born.

14. Allusions, 2 Literary: Mythology:
Swift’s A Modest Proposal: satire of a solution to the starving Irish problem.
Title refers to Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales [passed on orally before written down]. Connection to TH’sT:
told orally [on tape]
1st society is illiterate; 2nd is not allowed to read
Mythology:
Story of Eridice: bitten by snake & dies. Husband Orpheus goes to the underworld to see Hades to try to get her back. Playes his lute so well, Hades agrees to send her back to earth so long as Orpheus swears not to look back until they reach the surface. He looks back. Euridice returns to the underworld and Orpheus is heartbroken.