The Future and Past As Subversive Counter-Utopias in Margaret Atwood’S Novel and Bruce Miller’S Series the Handmaid’S Tale

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Ingrid Bertrand The Future and Past as Subversive Counter-Utopias in Margaret Atwood’s Novel and Bruce Miller’s Series The Handmaid’s Tale

Introduction

„Better never means better for everyone. […] It always means worse, for some.“1 With this confession, Commander Fred, one of Gilead’s instigators in Margaret Atwood’s novel (1985) and Bruce Miller’s Hulu series The Handmaid’s Tale (since 2017), means to downplay both the brutality of the coup through which the new republic was set up and the dehumanising conditions into which women were suddenly plunged when they were stripped of their property, their jobs and their basic rights. But these words also illustrate the close proximity of utopia and dystopia frequently pointed out by scholars. As Gregory Claeys for- mulates it: „[J]ust as one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom-fighter, so is one person’s utopia another’s dystopia.“2 At the origin of Gilead is the utopian impulse to „do better“ (THT, 222), to „set things right“ in a „screwed-up“3 society whose survival was threatened by rampant crime, plummeting fertility and unprecedented rates of both miscar- riages and birth defects due to an environment saturated with chemical and radioactive particles. Gilead’s high-ranking officials, or impassioned fanatical indoctrinators like Aunt Lydia, see the new theocracy as a model regime in which women are „protected [so] they can fulfil their biological destinies in peace […] [w]ith full support and encouragement“ (THT, 231) and „walk the path of life together“, „united for a common end“ (THT, 171), namely making the demographic curve rise. For the oppressed in Gilead, however, this utopian dream come true assumes a decidedly nightmarish character. The Handmaid’s

1 Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, London: Vintage 1996 (1985), p. 222 (all references are to this edition; hereafter quoted in round brackets in the running text) and „Faithful“, 00:33:41–46, The Handmaid’s Tale, created by Bruce Miller, season 1, episode 5, MGM, 2017, disc 2. 2 Gregory Claeys, „The Origins of Dystopia: Wells, Huxley and Orwell“, in: The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, ed. Gregory Claeys, Cambridge: UP 2013, pp. 107‒131, here p. 108. 3 „Jezebel’s“, 00:06:17–33, The Handmaid’s Tale, created by Bruce Miller, season 1, episode 8, MGM, 2017, disc 3.

Tale specifically foregrounds this dystopian facet of the society by focus- ing on one of the silenced, the Handmaid Offred. Through the protagonist’s first-person narration in the novel, and the series’ combination of the hero- ine’s voiceover narration with an aesthetic based on – among other things – extreme close-ups, the readers/viewers are given access to „the perspective of a suffering and traumatised consciousness“.4 However, to borrow Atwood’s words in „Dire Cartographies“, if „within each utopia […] [lies] a concealed dystopia“, the opposite also holds true in The Handmaid’s Tale: „within each dystopia, a hidden utopia“.5 This paper will demonstrate that, in both the novel and the first season6 of the series, the protagonist, through her autobiographical narrative, creates her own counter- utopia as a survival and resistance strategy, but also that the two media differ in their approach to this utopian possibility, for as Lyman Tower Sargent remarks, „the problem is how to actualise the eutopia and get rid of the dystopia“.7

Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale: The (Im)possibility of Utopia?

Offred’s Dystopian Reality Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is the story of Offred, who was recruit- ed by force in the early days of Gilead, indoctrinated and trained as a Handmaid in the Rachel and Leah Center to then be assigned to a Commander’s house- hold, where she is ritually raped once a month. Combining all the tradition- al features of dystopian regimes, the totalitarian republic of Gilead silences Offred and her peers through violations of their most basic rights and through infantilization and dehumanisation. Brainwashed into forgetting all aspects of their former lives and individuality, Handmaids are given new names that

4 Jagna Oltarzewska, „Strategies for Bearing Witness: Testimony as Construct in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale“, in: Lire Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale, ed. Marta Dvorak, Rennes: PU 1999, pp. 47‒55, here p. 50. 5 Margaret Atwood, „Dire Cartographies: The Roads to Ustopia“, in: In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, London: Virago 2014, pp. 66‒96, here p. 85. 6 This article will focus exclusively on the first season of the series The Handmaid’s Tale, which premiered in April 2017, as it is more directly based on the novel with which it is compared, and ends where Offred’s testimony does in Atwood’s dystopia. The second season, which premiered in April 2018, is more loosely based on its source material and largely goes beyond the scope of the novel by depicting the aftermath of the protagonist’s escape attempt and by developing plot lines revolving around supporting characters. 7 Lyman Tower Sargent, „Do Dystopias Matter?“, in: Dystopia(n) Matters: On the Page, on Screen, on Stage, ed. Fátima Vieira, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2013, pp. 10‒13, here p. 11.