The Handmaids Tale- Context

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43 Terms

1
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What type of fiction/ literature is ‘The Handmaids Tale’?

  • Dystopian literature

  • Speculative fiction

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What is speculative fiction?

A genre of fiction which presents an alternative world, the author questions what is real or possible- it based on what societal structures are possible rather than an individuals reaction to it

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When was The Handmaids Tale written?

1985

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At the time Atwood was writing, there was an increase in..?

there was an increase in religious groups, particularly in America, which opposed abortion and had strong views on the role of women in society.

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The religious groups in America?

  • They Moral Majority believed that the role of women was clearly set out in the Bible

  • They were a major influence in American politics up until the late 1980s, women’s liberty was changed

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Where did Atwood live for some time?

West Berlin

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What did Atwood see in Romania, China and Iran

  • Romania—where women were forced by the ruling regime to have babies

  • China, where they were forced not to

  • Repression of women under the Ayatollahs

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Romania’s Decree 770

Due to falling birth rates, abortion and contraception were criminalised in Romania in 1966 under the dictatorship of President Ceausescu, who wanted to increase the population

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Atwood was influenced by the? And what was that?

  • Influenced by the Salem Witchcraft trials

  • Any women who was deemed a witch was hanged in these witchcraft trials, often for women who were seen as hysterical or women who were a little bit transgressive

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The Puritans New England

  • Repressive, defies common sense in the name of God

  • their preoccupation with the state of their souls did not save them from expelling dissenters and hanging Quakers

  • What sorts of conditions produce a group mentality that so blatantly violates justice and defies common sense, in the name of God and righteousness?

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Words of one New England divine:

“The Devil was indeed among us, but not in the form we thought.”

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Where is The Handmaid’s Tale set?

Massachusetts​- where the Salem Witchcraft trials happened

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What does Atwood’s dystopia depict?

  • Gilead

  • Depicts a society in which religious extremists have taken over and reversed the progress of the sexual revolution.​

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The Handmaid’s Tale as Dystopian Literature:

  • in the 1980s. there was a lot of anti-feminism

  • society was regressing for women

  • 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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Why is The Handmaid’s Tale also satire?

  • Humour is in short supply in this novel, but it is a satire nonetheless.

  • Atwood's love for language play is a major feature of the protagonist of The Handmaid’s Tale.

  • Her jokes are dark and bitter, but they are pervasive.​

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What does Atwood draw on by creating The Handmaid’s Tale?

She draws on the fear created by what might happen if an extreme religious group came into power

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Theocracy

  • A system of government in which priests rule in the name of God or a god

  • Controlled thought was prevalent in theocracies such as Iran and North Korea

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What type of novel is The Handmaid’s Tale other than feminist?

  • political novel which asks you to​

    look at the concepts of individual freedom, human rights,

  • civil liberties, religion and the state

  • Gender, Women’s sexuality, love,

  • Utopia, dystopia

  • Censorship

  • The idea of being responsible for the Earth

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Environment

Atwood was a patron of ‘Friends of the Earth’ and raises concerns about nuclear plants, such as the Three Miles Island incident in 1979, and doubts about adverse effects on the environment, health and fertility

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What does ‘Handmaid’ mean?

An archaic, Biblical word for a female servant

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What does the ‘The’ in The Handmaid’s Tale suggest?

‘The’ is a definite article suggesting the definite experience all Handmaids have, it is a reflection of homogeneity

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What is a ‘Tale’?

  • A personal testimony or a story

  • The word ‘tale’ can be fact or fiction. It is a probable allusion to The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer – one of the earliest works of fiction in English.​

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Epigraphs: 1

And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children.. said unto Jacob, Give me children or else I die

‘And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her.’- Genesis, 30: 1-3

  • Justification of rape of subordinate women

  • A women’s only duty is to bear children

  • Bilhah, the maid, has no say as she is a subordinate so they use force onto her

  • Man- active role, Higher woman- gave an order

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Epigraphs: 2

‘But as to myself, having been wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal’- Jonathan Swift A Modest Proposal 1729

  • written as an attack on the conditions in Ireland, where people were starving as a result of poor land management, rich landlords and famine

  • It proposed (satirically) that the poor should eat their own children, which would solve all issues of starvation and overcrowding.​

  • Same in THT- issue? lack of fertility and declining birth rate, Solution- Gilead

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Epigraphs: 3

‘In the desert there is no sign that says, Thou shalt not eat stones.’- Sufi Proverb

(Sufism is a mythical form of Islam that teaches to understand God simply out of love, not to get into heaven)

  • Meaning nothing is impossible in this world

  • Deep levels of immorality and poor behaviour can happen even though we know that they are wrong

  • Nothing is written explicitly that states that women can’t bear another woman’s child, even though we haven’t seen a sign, it is still wrong

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World War Two

White Rose Group was a non-violent resistance in Nazi Germany led by students at the University of Munich, who opposed the National Socialist Regime

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The Cultural Revolution

A mass purge of high level government officials in Mao’s China between 1966 and 1976, which highlights that no-one is safe in a totalitarian regime, regardless of social status

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American New Right

Promoted reserved ideas about moral behaviour and the role of women in society, which are mirrored in the treatment of the handmaids in Gilead

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Postmodern

The idea that there is no one specific ‘truth’, and that things considered to be ‘facts’ are simply widely accepted interpretations of an event or theory

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What does ‘Memento Mori’ mean?

(Chapter 6- mentioned with the old gravestones)

‘Remember you have to die’

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What were ‘Angel Makers’ a euphemism for?

17th-18th century, euphemism for abortions

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‘Date Rape’ context

  • Date rapé: a pun – fromage rapé = grated cheese.

  • Educational campaigns against date rape and sexual violence were common on North American college campuses in the 1980s and 90s​

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Context on Pornography

  • Was a central issue in the second wave of feminism

  • Radical movement ‘Women Against Pornography’ (WAP) active in 1980s

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What was the ‘V’ used for in WW2

(Chapter 8 page 44)

  • WW2: ‘V’ was used in Morse code for victory – dot-dot-dot-dash. Similar to the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony

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What does M’aidez mean?

  • ‘Help me’

  • In Gilead, its a cold for help, a code for the ‘Resistance’

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Who is the American Senator who has similarities to the character of Serena Joy and opposed abortion and feminism?

  • American Senator Phyllis Schafley

  • "men and women are different, and...those very differences provide the key to...success as a person and fulfilment as a woman". ​

  • "Feminine means accentuating the womanly attributes that make women deliciously different from men.

  • The feminine woman...knows that she is a person with her own identity and that she can seek fulfilment in the career of her choice, including of traditional wife and mother".​

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What narrative is ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ in?

Non-linear- it isn’t chronological and switches from past to present

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Context of ‘The snakes and the sword are bits of broken symbolism left over from the time before’

(Chapter 11, page 59)

  • Asclepius was the Greek God of Medicine​

  • The Rod of Asclepius was a serpent-entwined rod that was wielded by him and became the symbol of medicine

  • This symbol is still used today – notably by American ambulances and EMTs ​

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What is ‘écriture feminine’?

  • Refers to a uniquely feminine style of writing characterised by disruptions in the text, such as gaps, silences, puns, new images and so on. ​

  • It is eccentric, incomprehensible and inconsistent, and the difficulty to understand it is attributed to centuries of suppression of the female voice, which now speaks in a borrowed language. ​

  • Gives voices to the inner thoughts and feelings about the female experience and the female body

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An example of ‘écriture feminine’ in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’?

  • When the narrator is thinking about her own body it is as though she is exploring her inner shape, like a dark continent within her.

  • ‘Each month I watch for blood, fearfully, for when it comes it means failure. I have failed once again to fulfil the expectations of others, which have become my own.’

  • ‘I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will’

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What is the reference when Offred says ‘Or maybe it’s a parlour, the kind with a spider and flies’?

(Chapter 14 page 79)

  • The Spider and the Fly is a children’s poem by Mary Howitt.

  • The poem tells a cautionary story against those who use flattery and charm to disguise their real intentions.

  • The story tells of a cunning spider who entraps a fly into its web through the use of seduction and manipulation.

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Who are the Quakers?

  • A nonconformist Christian group which broke away from the Puritan movement, were seen as heretical in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

  • However, they are today noted for their role campaigning against the slave trade, their pacifism and for their support of minority groups - including women.​

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What did Gilead label Black people and Jewish people?

  • Children of Ham: Traditionally, the children of Ham (one of the sons of Noah) were Africans and black.​

  • Sons of Jacob- Jewish people