“ ‘The opening of the novel reveals the different ways women are unjustly treated in Gilead.’

Examine the significance of power in early chapters of The Handmaid’s Tale in light of this view.”

P1: sexual agency/fertility » in the state of Gilead, higher status n power is attributed to those who are fertile, but to hold agency over sexuality holds real, forbidden power > government retains official power in this way

• AO2:

  • “i enjoy the power; power of a dog bone, passive but there. i hope they get hard at the sight of us and have to rub themselves against the painted barriers, surreptitiously. they will suffer, later, at night in their regimented beds. they have no outlets now except themselves, and that’s a sacrilege” (ch4, pg23)

  • “think of yourselves as seeds” (ch4, pg24)

  • “now that she’s the carrier of life, she is closer to death, and needs special security” (ch5, pg 32)

  • “should she be so lucky as to conceive (ch6, pg39)

  • “there are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that’s the law” (ch8, pg67)

  • “propelled forward by a swollen belly” (ch16, pg100)

  • “we are containers, it’s only the insides of our bodies that are important” (ch17, pg103)

  • “we are two-legged wombs, that’s all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices” (ch23, pg142)

• AO3:

  • “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” (ch15, pg 95)

    • Genesis: God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

• AO4:

  • in a similar way, in 1984, Oceania represses pleasurable sex, and so Winston believes that, “The sexual act, successfully performed, was rebellion”

  • touches on a belief that sexuality, when in control of it, presents a form of power than an individual holds

  • “There was a direct, intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy.”

    • elimination of personal loyalties

• AO5:

  • feminists would agree with the power that sexual autonomy holds, and the fact that Gilead represses natural desires and attraction depicts its undoubted anti-fem position

• AO1

P2: Gilead aims to govern citizens by making them ignorant, without access to knowledge and of low intellect, becoming accustomed to simply obeying this novel regime » easier to control those who don’t know any wiser/don’t know any different > power retained in this way

• AO2:

  • “how did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?” (ch1, pg9)

  • “what you don’t know won’t hurt you” (ch8, pg59)

  • “there is no such thing as a sterile man any more, not officially. there are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that’s the law” (ch8, pg67)

  • “i knew it was wrong, and they left things out too” (ch 15, pg 96)

  • “you are a transitional generation, said Aunt Lydia. it is the hardest for you. we know the sacrifices you are being expected to make….For the ones who come after you, it will be easier. They will accept their duties with willing hearts. She did not say: Because they will have no memories, of any other way. She said: Because they won’t want things they can’t have” (ch20, pg123)

  • “From each, say the slogan, according to her ability; to each according to his needs. We recited that, three times, after dessert. it was from the Bible, or so they said” (ch20, pg123)

  • “this was once the land of air sprays, Pine and Floral, and people who retain the taste” (ch27, p170)

  • “there was a lot more music on the radio than usual, and fewer words” (ch28, pg180)

  • “I read quickly, voraciously, almost skimming, trying to get as much into my head as possible before the next long starvation. If it were eating it would be the gluttony of the famished, if it were sex it would be a swift furtive stand-up in an alley somewhere” (ch29, pg190)

• AO3:

  • reminiscent of the Enlightenment Period

    • whilst intellectuals and philosopher spread ideas centred around rationalism and empiricism amongst common citizens in the 17th and 18th centuries, leading to movements such as the French Revolution, the Gilead government is attempting to remove knowledge from the people, similarly aware of the power education holds

• AO4:

  • in 1984, the illusion of knowledge is favoured over ignorance

    • the dystopian society Orwell crafts centres on the manipulation and censorship of information, consequently bending citizens to the will of Big Brother eg when O’Brien, despite Winston’s previous education, breaks him into stating that 2+2=5

• AO5:

  • post-colonial critics often study how colonisers utilised knowledge as a method of dominance, ‘civilising’ the education and eliminating native systems, in favour of their own » parallels to handmaid’s

• AO1

P3: choice or control of it: choice of label ie mother, etc; choice of being something other than a mere servant to Gilead » binds ideas of power tgt

• AO2:

  • “the Republic of Gilead, said Aunt Lydia, knows no bounds” (ch5, pg29)

    • there is no choice, no barrier able to be erected between and individual and their individuality, and the collectiveness of Gilead

  • “freedom to and freedom from” (ch5, pg30)

  • “we were a society dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice” (ch5, pg31)

  • “it’s the choice that terrifies me. a way out, a salvation” (ch11, pg67)

  • “i have failed once again to fulfil the expectation of others, which have become my own” (ch13, pg79)

  • “how easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all” (ch24, pg151)

  • “I was small as a doll…. Instead, I am his” (ch28, pg 187)

    • lifeless, insubordinate w/o freedoms, compared to him, full of life in his freedoms

  • “that’s one of the things they do. they force you to kill, within yourself” (ch29, pg199)

• AO3:

  • healthcare access in the 80s

    • the rifeness of unsafe abortions led to the criminalisation of them in the 20th century, rather than the provision of safer methods and regulating them = choice removed from women

• AO4:

  • Brave New World:

    • “All right then," said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
      "Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind."
      There was a long silence.
      "I claim them all," said the Savage at last.”

  • Chaucer’s ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’:

    • “but now such elves no one is seeing…. Now women may go safely all around” (line 864)

    • “Some said our love to which we all aspire/Is to be free to do as we desire” (line 922)

  • AO5:

    • feminism:

      • to be an equal woman and worthy of the title ‘human’, is to be able to pursue and succumb to all that humans are capable of ie to fall ill or to choose a political ideology and a set of values or to become a mother or a banker

• conclusion:

  • organicism of humanity lost under Gilead regime