MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF EDUCATION
Department of English Language and Literature
Intertextuality of Women's Roles in The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Diploma Thesis
Brno 2019
Supervisor: Author:
Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph. D. Be. Iveta Smejkalová Bibliografický záznam
Smejkalová, Iveta. Intertextuality of women roles in The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret
Atwood. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, Fakulta pedagogická, Katedra anglického jazyka a literatúry, 2019. Vedoucí diplomové práce Lucie Podroužková.
Abstract This thesis addresses the intertextuality of women's roles in Margaret Atwooďs novel,
The Handmaid's Tale. The first section focuses on the context of Atwooď s work. The next section discusses intertextuality and its classification in literary theory. The main section analyzes intertextuality by examining women's roles and their archetypes within
The Handmaid's Tale. The final section compares two of Atwooď s works, The
Handmaid's Tale and The Penelopiad, and their intertextual connections in relation to women's roles.
Key Words Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale, intertextuality, archetext, archetype I hereby declare that I have worked on this thesis independently and that I have used only the sources listed in the bibliography section.
Brno, 30th November 2019
Be. Iveta Smejkalová Acknowledgement I would sincerely like to express my gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Mgr. Lucie
Podrouzkova, Ph. D. for her continuous support, valuable advice, patience and encouragement during the writing process. Many thanks also belong to my family, partner and close friends for their continuous support throughout my studies and patience. Table of Contents
1.Introduction 5
1.1 The Handmaid's Tale in the Context of Margaret Atwood's Work 7
1.2 A Brief Summary and Reflection of Margaret Atwood's Work 12
2. Intertextuality in Literary Theory 16
2.1 Archetypes and Archetexts 16
2.2 Types of Intertextuality in Literary Theory 16
2.3 Roles of Women in Literary and Cultural Intertextuality 23
2.4 Summary and Hypothesis 25
2.5 Further Hypotheses 26
3.0 Women's Roles and Their Contextual Functions in The Handmaid's Tale 28
3.1 About Women's Roles and Intertextuality in General 28
3.2 Acknowledged Intertextuality 29
3.3 Comparison of Formal Features of Intertext with Jonathan Swift's Work 38
3.4 The Motif of Survival and Women's Roles 41
4. Women's Roles in Comparison 46
5. Conclusion 51
6. Works cited 55
Primary source 55
Secondary sources 55 Introduction
This diploma thesis addresses Margaret Atwood's novel, The Handmaid's Tale, focusing on its female characters and its use of intertextuality. Atwood, a Canadian author, is also a poet and literary critic. I first watched a serial adaption of this novel before reading it and other books by the author. Margaret Atwood began writing her first novel The Edible
Woman in 1969. One of the main themes in her books is how political subjugation often determines a women's fate. Atwood belongs to feminist and social activists' organizations. Because of her concerns about women's rights, she emphasizes feminist motifs in her writings. As a literary critic and theorist, she deals with semantic structures of text. One structure that overlaps from literary science to creative literature is intertextuality, the shaping of one text's meaning by another. This interconnection occurs with frequency in her books.
Intertextuality should not only be analytical, but it should also address ideologies, such as women's roles in society, as reflected in the writings to which the author refers. Some primary texts or archetypes occur more often than others, so examining Atwood's novels will be of help.
The thesis addresses the following research questions:
• What are the archetypes to which the author most often refers?
• What are the different female roles within the narrative?
• How do those roles influence the story?
It is my goal to find answers to these questions. The thesis' structure is as follows, with the first section describing the story, The Handmaid's Tale, in context. The second focuses on theory, emphasizing the general function and definition of intertextuality. I base both section on literature, including books by literary theorists such as Mikhail
Bakhtin, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Henrik Markiewicz, Robert Miola. In this thesis I will examine various types of intertextuality.
The third section represents the core of the thesis, with an analytical examination of intertextuality in The Handmaid's Tale, emphasizing women's roles as heroines. I will point out the original literature Atwood used to model her characters' speech, actions and 5 characteristics. The fourth section's topic is a comparison of women's roles in the novel,
The Handmaid's Tale, to those performed by female characters in other Atwood novels.
The final section focuses on the thesis' conclusion. I consider female roles an interesting research topic. It allowed me to better understand the differences and similarities between women characters of the past and those in contemporary novels.
6 1.1 The Handmaid's Tale in the Context of Margaret Atwood's Work
To classify Margaret Atwood, a priori, as a feminist author, would not be sufficient. She has made substantial progress as a writer. The specific criteria characterizing her work since the end of the 1980s does not apply to her earlier works. However, what typifies her writings from the start of her career is her skill in using strong women as main characters.
It is possible to identify her heroines from ancient mythology, a topic discussed later in this thesis.
A thesis by Simone de Beauvoir, one of the leading representatives of feminist literature, forms a theoretical basis for Margaret Atwood's work. Beauvoir's writings serve as a model for female authors who wish to create strong heroines. She claims that male authors embody the hunting instinct for killing. Those authors encode that instinct in their characters' transcendentalist manners. In contrast, female authors possess immanent intuition. Women are guardians and donors of life. Since what is pervasive remains, women have motherhood coded within them. (Beauvoir 14)
From Beauvoir's thesis, it is possible to anticipate Margaret Atwood's themes and motifs.
For example, when a mother violates rules, inner conflict and disharmony become the main reason for her actions. Within this motif, Atwood embeds the concept of survival, a key feature in Canadian literature. Then, she intensifies the problems by adding a victim, the most compelling character motivator. As Atwood stresses the motifs of survival and victimization, they become integral parts of the unfulfilled or broken identity of the female heroine, as seen in her prose and early poetic texts.
Not all of Atwood's literary contributions follow this organizational structure. This thesis will focus on writings that have strong intertextual connections. Her literature that deviates from this model includes Two-Headed Poems written in 1978, and Journals of
Susanna Moodie, composed in 1970. Still, the major themes of Canadian identity and the struggle of Canadian people with nature are typical of Atwood's writings in the 1970s.
Atwood's career began in 1961, with the poetry collection, Double Persephone. Although published in a small run, it is available in electronic form. (Atwood 1961) If one reads this heraldic poem, several motifs become clear. Its title refers to the Greek goddess of the underworld, Persephone, who during a previous lifetime, was the cheerful girl, Kora.
7 The basis of this poem is contrast, but Kora's story is not only about suffering, as happened to the main character in the original myth. Instead, Kora is an indecisive woman whose inner conflict is between her common sense and her heart.1 Immanence becomes clear in this statement, "Four lovers stand around her bed, /One for body - one for head."
(Atwood 1961, 10) It is also important to note an introductory verse: "The field hieroglyphic lies." (Atwood 1961, 10) The writing reveals another significant feature of
Atwood's work, an apocalyptic tendency. This tendency links her work to those from antiquity, including the Bible. She began using Biblical allusions more often with the novel, Life Before Men, from 1979.
This author changes the perspective of her novels through intertextuality. She uses well- known fragments from other literature to influence the words and behaviors of secondary female characters rather than male characters. This reinterpretation creates an interesting point of view that readers enjoy. One cannot limit intertextuality to feminist literature.
For example, both What Happened after Nora Left Her Husband and Pillars of Societies by the Austrian author, Elfriede Jelinek, stands on the border between feminist and postmodern literature. (Jelinek) Expanding the search allows one to mention the 1996 book Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, by the Czech-English author Tom
Stoppard. (Stoppard)
From the structuralist point of view, one can identify common elements. However, from the feminist literary theory point of view, it is essential to seek differences. Peter Barry explains:
For some feminists this visionary semiotic female world and language evoked by Cixous and Kristeva is a vital theatre of possibilities, the value of which is to entertain the imagining of alternatives to the world which we now have, and which women in particular now have. For others, it fatally hands over the world of the rational to men and reserves for women a traditionally emotive, intuitive, trans-rational and privatised arena. (Barry
126 - 127) In this private arena, the conflict relates to Margaret Atwood's heroines. Old wounds and the violation of a woman's role become a source of debt and injustice that requires correction. According to Atwood, the truth is not so important, but equalizing
1 This neo-classical feud takes place in most of the works, even transforming into Canadian ambivalence in the Anglo-French part, which appears in the already mentioned Two-Headed Poems collection. ,,How can you use two languages/ and mean what you say in both?" Selected Poems II: Poems Selected & New 1976-1986 s. 30 8 past inequities must occur at any cost. (Jenkins 200) The author reinforces this theme of immanence and transcendentalism using Aeschylus' Oresteia. (Jenkins 200)
{So long I've planned this denouement of our feud, and now at last we are come to
it today. So, I stand as I struck him, and straddle my handiwork. I did it like this -
and why should I deny it?- so he could neither run nor fight for his life.(...) Your
interrogation fits a witless wife. But I tell you from a flinchless heart what all you
know: whether you praise it or raise blame and woe, here is Agamemnon, shorn of
life, my husband, dead. The hand that did it's this, and what it's done is just. That's
how it is.(...) Yes now your judgement's exile from my home, now you sentence
me to the public curse. Wise judges! Where were you when, like any lamb from the
flock, he picked his own daughter to sacrifice to the weather? To him, our child was
one casual two-minute spasm: to me, my dearest and my longest labour} (Aischylos
78 - 81)
The monologue of Clytaemnestra is typical of a woman who transform her inner pain into revenge against her husband for planning to sacrifice his daughter because of transcendental reasons. In the same manner, women who suffered great injustices in their lives and sought to correct those injustices culminates in The Handmaid's Tale. By the end of the 1970s, more frequent allusions to Christianity were present in Atwood's writings. The novel, Bodily Harm, is an exception, for it concentrates on the issue of alleged and real violence. The book may appear divergent regarding motives, but, for the first time it is possible to observe postfeminist and deconstructionist points of view.
Atwood describes a post-apocalyptic vision in which society is set drift by revolution. A woman becomes a tool and her body an object for a political agenda when for the first time, women are classified as maids and privileged ones. (Meyers 134) The cycle of stories in the author's novel, Bluebeard's Egg shows the complexity of relationships later concentrated in The Handmaid's Tale. The poetry collection, Interlunar, published in
1984 does not fit this pattern. It prefigures Christian and other ancient literature. This is evident in the final section's use of symbolism. In symbolic form, Atwood creates a tone of darkness. Both the love poems from Orpheus and Eurydice (Atwood 58 - 61) and the love letters in Letters from Persephone reflect that darkness. (Atwood 64 - 65) This lack of light and post-apocalyptic motives are mentioned in this collection. The death of
9 society as we know or one that fell into the darkness2 is typical for The Handmaid's Tale.
To sum this up, the motives found in Interlunar foreshadow those in The Handmaid's
Tale. (Atwood 48) It is also necessary to point to the poetry collection, Procedures for
Underground, composed in the 1970s. This collection creates a typology of women in ancient mythology. Atwood analyzes these archetypes in this series of poems and uses the same compositional approach in The Handmaid's Tale. In contrast, The Handmaid's
Tale is not only about typology. It is also but more about the classification of roles derived from Old Testament characters. Within those Biblical stories in which society encoded its canon of commands and prohibitions, the course of destiny a key indicator. This canon is important for adding a dramatic element. Vladimir Jakovlevic Propp explained that trespassing the prohibitions is the key element of a story's function, as one can see in
Procedures for Underground. (Propp 24 - 26) A poem within this collection, one that bears the same name as its title, allows the reader to understand the commands and prohibitions.
{The country beneath the earth has a green sun and the rivers flow backwards; the
trees and rocks are the same as they are here but shifted. Those who live there are
always hungry; from them you can learn wisdom and great power; if you can
descend and return safely. You must look for tunnels, animal burrows or the cave
in the sea/ guarded by a stone man; when you are down you will find those, who
were once your friends but they will be changed and dangerous. Resist them, be
careful Never to eat their food. Afterwards, if you live, you will be able to see them
when they prowl as winds; as thin sounds in our village. You will tell us their names,
what they want, who has made them angry by forgetting them. For this gift, as for
all gifts, you must suffer those from the underland will be always with you,
whispering their complaints, beckoning you back down; while among us here you
will walk wrapped in an invisible cloak. Few will seek your help with love, none
without fear}(Atwood Procedures for Underground 42 - 43).
That this poem comes from the story about Persephone is obvious. The sacred prohibitions, those that society forbids its members from disobeying, define the roles of women, much as they do in The Handmaid's Tale. Similarly, predestination, a destiny
21 wish to show you the darkness/ you are so afraid of..// Trust me. This darkness/ is a place you can enter and be/ as safe in as you are anywhere.// Interlunar p. 98 - 99 10 one cannot escape, plays a role in Atwood's novel about Pythia, Lady Oracle. (Atwood
Lady Oracle) The strong motive suggested in the poem reaches its potential in prose, especially in The Handmaid's Tale. Peter Barry generalizes this condition in his following statement:
Women must write through their bodies, they must invent the impregnable language
that will wreck partitions, classes, and rhetorics, regulations and codes, they must
submerge, cut through, get beyond the ultimate reserve-discourse, including the one
that laughs at the very idea of pronouncing the word 'silence'(Barry 127 -128).
Although that silence is unspoken, established prohibitions are not debatable. The difference between Atwood prosaic and poetic works, from the point of prohibitions, is that her prose is more descriptive, as discussed in the section about intertextuality. She moves from hidden intertextual poetic works to acknowledged intertextual prose.3
Atwood's narratives move along an imaginary sinusoid. In contrast, she references ancient and Biblical topics. Her childhood and adolescence, with their distinct autobiographical features influenced her writing. Other of her works are fiction.4 She published Cat's Eye after The Handmaid's Tale, and it proved more civilized than the earlier book (Atwood Cat's Eye). In the mid-1990s, Atwood returned to antiquated motives, such as those in her collection, Morning in the Burned House. Love linked to women from long ago appears in the poems Daphne and Laura and So Forth, Cressida to Troilus, and Helen of Troy Does Counter Dancing (Atwood Morning in the Burned
House). In the new millennium, The Penelopiad discussed in detail in another section became her most important work.
Based on the writings mentioned above, it is difficult to classify Margaret Atwood's novel as belonging to one literary genre. There are elements characteristic of feminist literature; however, it is not revolutionary but post feminism. Even this label is not accurate.
Inspirational passages from the Bible and other historical literature allow one to refer to
3 Also allusions are acknowledged in a case of apocalyptic novel Oryx and Crake, where it is possible to find allusions on works of Hieronym Bosch and Lucas Cranach. Comp. Oryx and Crake p. 91 - 95. On the contrary, a novel Blind Assassin goes back to past. 4 The Handmaid's Tale is often classified a sci-fi. But Atwood refuses it and she rather classifies it a model novel or a speculative novel. Compare Guardian "I am not a prophet science fiction is about now". 11 it as postmodernism. The word, historicism, meaning that the author draws inspiration from historical writings, describes much of her work.
However, this aspect of Atwood's writing is not the subject of this thesis. The Handmaid's
Tale is not a science fiction, but an anti-utopist and speculative novel. It is possible to summarize it as a story about fate and predestination. Tales from long ago, in particular, those in the Bible, are the dominant force. Because of the reasons described above, literary analysts attempt to classify Atwood's writing as belonging to a specific literary genre.
These attempts prove that the intertextuality in her work requires a closer assessment.
1.2 A Brief Summary and Reflection of Margaret Atwood's Work
Understanding Margaret Atwood's writing, requires one to work with secondary texts to summarize "the second life" of the novel. This book's reception and its development offer some interpretation levels while continuing to create new intertextualities. If we look at a comprehensive list of articles, we discover that critical analyses of The Handmaid's Tale have been published with consistency since its first edition in 1985.
Because of the popularity and readability of the book's serial version, it remains in readers' awareness and continues to appeal to Atwood's followers. The intertextuality of the reception phase underwent considerable changes during the next thirty years. Critical reflections reveal a significant shift in how readers perceived the book after its first publication and how they interpret it today.
The first critical analysis of this novel dealt with defining feminism. Literary experts questioned whether the narrative was characteristics of feminist writing. Atwood's careful attempt to safeguard her legacy affected its reception. During her many speeches about the novel, she explained her intentions.
The approach of this thesis is nonstructural. Still, it is necessary to focus on the reviews to understanding the intertextuality within Atwood's work. She often reacted to other writers' criticisms. She did so to clarify the issues on which they based their negative analyses. In response, those critics also addressed her reactions in their reviews.
Margaret Atwood rejected the feminist label assigned to her books in the 1980s. She described her work as "the study of power." She based this description on her belief that
12 the United States had adopted totalitarian powers because of events taking place in other countries. A New York Times article from 17 January 1986, supports her belief.
You could say it's a response to "it can't happen here", what they usually mean is
Iran can't happen here, Czechoslovakia can't happen here. And they're right,
because this isn't there. But what could happen here? It wouldn't be some people
saying "Hi folks, we're Communists and we're going to be your new Government."
But if you were going to do it, what would you do? What emotions would you
appeal to? What groups would you utilize? How exactly would you go about it?
Well, something like the way the religious right is doing things. And the ultimate
result of that process would be the union of church and state, which this country
since 1776 has striven to keep apart, with great difficulty, because the foundation
of this country was not separation of church and state. We're often taught in schools
that the Puritans came to America for religious freedom. Nonsense. They came to
establish their own regime, where they could persecute people to their heart's
content just the way they themselves had been persecuted. If you think you have
the word and the right way, that's the only thing you can do (Atwood "No Balm in
Gilead for Margaret Atwood").
Critics reacted to Atwood's writing with enthusiasm. Her parallels and intertexts helped readers relate to the political system in fictitious Gilead. Later, critics rejected those intertexts because Atwood sometimes presented them in a distorted light. However, what is important to Atwood was playing with a hypothesis. As a result, she acknowledged, with gratitude, the critics who described her work as a dystopian parable with its roots in
Orwell's novel, 1984, and the novel, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. It was here that Atwood's intertextuality began to address the social events throughout history.
In the 1980s, Gilead became a symbol of totalitarian regimes in Europe and around the world. Based on information about those regimes, the author created a perfect theocratic- totalitarian state by combining all the features inherent in that form of government. In the
1990s the popularity of her work diminished, triggered by the fall of totalitarian regimes in Europe and the Soviet Union. The theme of dictatorship no longer appealed to readers.
The most significant changes occurred after 2001, especially in the early part of the twenty-first century, when the freedom of the 1990s began to fade. The once-powerful symbolism of totalitarian control was no longer popular. Atwood did nothing to
13 discourage this change. Instead, she allowed interpretations to survive. She admitted in an interview with Emma Watson that during the 1990s, some interpretations became lost.
As a result, the teenage population of the early millennium did not comprehend The
Handmaid's Tale. Improvements in human rights and an increase in the number of democratic societies caused some intertextual ties to become less meaningful. Today, the author refuses, even in connection with other events, to oppose any group of people or political party. Ignoring the factual overlaps in the past writings, she rejects the novel as a manipulative tool in supporting either political party. Atwood emphasizes that the book is dystopian parable that warns against totalitarianism (EW Staff) The Handmaid's Tale became the number one social topic when Donald Trump became the president in the
United States. The intertextuality contained within the novel reversed. Those who protested against the president used the symbolism of Atwood's novel. Activists dressed in costumes from The Handmaid's Tale when Ohio Republicans recently discussed an anti-abortion law (Radio Wave). In today's society, this book symbolizes an "unwanted child" for radicals from both the Republican and the Democratic parties. Although
Atwood warns against a totalitarian society, she does not envision-her parable as a tool for agitation. However, during the 1980s, readers considered the novel a sharp protest against a patriarchal society. Over time, it became controversial, as described in a current article in a Newspeak:
Beyond this, the book is unmistakably a product of its time in a way I hadn't
originally realized, full of references to lesbian separatist collectives, AIDS, and the
porn-focused "sex wars" that saw radical feminists like Andrea Dworkin strike an
unlikely alliance with Reagan-era religious conservatives. There's a cruel and fairly
direct swipe at Christian anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly and televangelist Tammy
Faye-Bakker, though Dworkin's compatriots don't come off much better. And it's
quite specific about how Gilead's leaders come to power - a fringe religious group
massacres top politicians and freezes women's bank accounts - which makes it easy
to dispute its realism. But as improbable as Gilead's sudden formation is, the
apathetic public response to it feels like a grotesquely accurate caricature of real
life. Unlike 1984's Winston Smith, Offired remembers the old world well. And the
book's real horror is not a fantastic future as much as the past. (Robertson)
14 Liberalism and feminism meet in extreme conservative doctrines, as Atwood, who lived part of her live in West Berlin, stated in several interviews when visiting East Germany and Czechoslovakia. She theorized that if there were a totalitarian regime in the United
States, it would assume the form of a spiritual movement.
The form of totalitarianism also includes "new" political-social religions. Examples include conservatives and those who criticize activists as "white feminists" (Robertson).
The following quotations exemplify the fact that this-new religion scared people, as it did in Gilead.
To compare Trump's America to The Handmaid's Tale is to completely disregard
the incessant (legal) protests, organizing and widespread mockery that have become
hallmarks of Trump's presidency. In today's society, much of popular culture
praises those who criticize of politicians and the president - as they should. What
separates "The Handmaid's Tale from today's America, and millennial women
from the enslaved "handmaids" are our First Amendment freedoms - namely, the
ability to disagree without grievous physical consequence - which have remained
intact regardless of who leads the country. American women today are not enduring
Atwood's dystopia, and the series is no more timely today than it would be if Hillary
Clinton were in the White House (Cohen)
This article points out how reception works for millennials seeking intertextuality in political situations. They move away from the author's original intention. Those who overuse the word, "Gilead,'" create unique intertext. When this occurs, the novel becomes an intertext in the language of millennials, one that symbolizes totalitarian society. To accept the story and the critical responses toward it requires one to understand the language. Headlines show that only after the current generation of millennials had accepted and comprehended the work, did it move into the center of interest. "Texas is
Gilead and Indiana is Gilead and now that Mike Pence is Our Vice President, the entire
Country Will Look More Like Gilead, Too" (Cohen). The novel's author also contributed to overuse. She stated the following in a Los Angeles Times' interview with Patt
Morrison, a recognized critic and laureate of two Pulitzer prizes:
MGM and Hulu started making this television series really well over a year ago,
and they started shooting in September before the election. So that caused some
15 resurgence of interest - the mere fact that they were doing it. And that the election
happened, and the cast woke up in the morning and thought, we're no longer making
fiction - we're making a documentary. (Morrison)
This confrontial statement and social ambivalence in the United States and Europe empowered those of both sides of the issue but also in West and Central Europe. As a result, everyone could find in social disputes and statements of counterparties his "own
Gilead." Ariel Cohen commented on this:
But, as citizens protest the Trump administration, many moral relativisms have been
exchanged for moral absolutes: pro-life activists must hate women, climate-change
deniers must hate science and religious Catholics are bigots who must hate gay
people. (Cohen)
These articles show that in The Handmaid's Tale, the social situation is more important than book's indisputable literary quality. The intertextuality used in this work also influences the social environment. It reflects how society experiences freedom and the lack of freedom and how opinion and social discourse changes offering more and more interpretations. It is, therefore, possible to call this writing "living work". The result is a canonical understanding of intertexts, those that display the characteristics of a dystopic parable.
2. Intertextuality in Literary Theory
2.1 Archetypes and archetexts According to Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, archetype is defined as
"a basic model, from which copies are made, therefore a prototype. In general terms, the abstract idea of a class of things which represents the most typical and essential characteristics shared by the class; thus, a paradigm or exemplar. An archetype is atavistic and universal, the product of "the collective unconscious" and inherited from our ancestors"(Cuddon 58). For the purposes of the thesis, an archetext is understood as the texts of the culture that precedes or surrounds the work (Barthes 39). It is a text with typical patterns for individual cultures and nations.
2.2 Types of Intertextuality in Literary Theory
Intertextuality in literature is a subject studied by structuralists. This part of my thesis analyzes how Mikhail Bakhtin, Henrik Markiewicz and Robert Miola define 16 intertextuality and its function. Julie Kristeva was the first to implement the concept of intertextuality in literary theory. She describes the technique in this statement: "Every text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations, as it absorbs and transforms other texts."
(Agger 9) Kristeva is a Russian formalist who adopted the beliefs of the structuralist,
Mikhail Bakhtin. Even though Bakhtin does not use the expression intertextuality, he claims that referencing and drawing on the past is necessary for a narrative's success:
Only in the novel have we the possibility of an authentically objective portrayal of
the past as the past. Contemporary reality with its new experiences is retained as a
way of seeing, it has the depth, sharpness, breadth, and vividness peculiar to that
way of seeing, but should not in any way penetrate into the already portrayed
content of the past, as a force modernizing and distorting the uniqueness of that
past. After all, every great and serious contemporaneity requires an authentic profile
of the past, an authentic other language from another time. (Bakhtin 30)
It is essential to study Julia Kristeva to understand intertextuality. She brings clarity to
Bakhtin's thoughts. Comprehending this literary technique requires one to think of a word as a symbol, representing a set of signs (syntactic factual signs, or signs constituted by lexicology). These symbols suggest a vertical axis on which one's writing shares a relationship with other texts. (Kristeva 17) A word's meaning shows its fixed base, its history in the language's development, and in the language itself. It also refers to the layers of language within various cultures. Bakhtin calls it "raznorecivosf", which means a mix of varied and opposing voices. (Bakhtin 50 - 52) Even without intending to use this type of intertextuality, the author completes a mosaic of meanings and references by using certain words. Foucault claims that "The book is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network" (Foucault 20 - 23)
This network is in addition to that variable. It changes with each text, resulting in a kind of constant dialogue.
The second form of intertextuality that Kristeva defines is the horizontal understanding of a word, the communication between an author and an addressee. (Michalovic 210)
What does it mean in practice? Bakhtin claims that at the creation of a literary work, time becomes reversed. Although the author anchors the story in the past, for a reader, it seems like the present
17 Though contact with the preset, an object is attracted to the incomplete process of
a world-in-the-making and is stamped with the seal of inconclusiveness. (...) Its
sense and significance are renewed and grow as the context continues to unfold.
(...) The image acquires a specific actual existence. It acquires a relationship - on
one form or another, to one degree or another - to the ongoing event of current life
in which we, the author and readers, are intimately participating (Bakhtin 30-31).
How the public receives the writing is important. It serves as an empirical experience, with the author projecting to the reader, through the technique of intertextuality, information written by a previous author.
How can one use Bakhtin's point of view to accomplish the goal of this thesis? It requires understanding a text as a composite of varied, opposing and united voices. Therefore, comprehending Atwood's texts within a literary network regarding women's roles, refers to a social experience.
A question arises: Which type of texts create the networks from which The Handmaid's
Tale and Penelolopiad draw their inspiration? Intertextuality is possible with all literature.
Because of this, there is little possibility of joining theory and practice. It is necessary to create a filter, a key for determining which texts influence the role of women in terms of intertextuality in The Handmaid's Tale. Polish literary theorist, Henryk Markiewicz, who studies how authors selects texts to support the reader's experience, offers an answer in his book, Of Literary Canons (Markiewicz). He discusses archetexts, those writings that have similar features and can interact with newer texts. This relationship and comprehending how it influences the reader are the central points for the thesis, finding those archetexts that make The Handmaid's Tale superior (Markiewicz 245 - 263).
Markiewicz's study reminded us it is difficult to determine what works should or should not be a part of the literary canon. He claims that if we focus on a plot, we can identify two basic types of literary collections. The first is that of a value or axiology canon. It contains works (metonymically - authors) that have achieved the highest stage of literary values. We know them as masterpieces. In contrast, encyclopedic canons also contain works that represent the literature of their periods. They remain alive in the memory of society for various reasons. Their passages contain "winged words". They are inspirational or elevated above the words of others. They also have individual episodes
18 and characters that survive time (Markiewicz). This statement suggests a specific system for identifying canonical texts to support intertextuality.
Another question arises concerning Margaret Atwood's work: Which canonical texts should one consider since immigrants influence European writings?? In Canadian literature, disparate books intermingle. Moreover, it is difficult to understand an idea without knowledge about the environment from which it emerges. In his study about canons, Markiewicz quotes a postscript by Inga Iwasiow, a Polish literary scholar:
In national canon there is a wind blowing from the battlefields and and manly acts.
On the edge, there are such values like creating private, non-civil and non•
proprietary identity, a fight against yourself and for yourself with the passing of the
Homeland, God, Party and Nation. (...) Not only canon contrasts nationalism and
privacy, but also an avant-garde in contrast with communication, high culture
against low culture and the last - male against all what is traditionally called female
(Markiewicz).
If Margaret Atwood is an author who writes using a feminist approach, Markiewicz's concept does not apply. However, there is another method one can use in this thesis. It comes from Markiewicz's perception of intertextuality and canon. This perception is only valid if a nation's texts reflects its hierarchy of values as represented within its literary canon:
Postulative canons are primarily established, dictated and expanded by institutions - by school and university management, literary organizations, publishings, libraries and medias. Generally, it is valid that the greatest influence has educational institutions (and through them, especially in totalitarian and authoritative regimes - the governments of nations). The initiative belongs to a group of experts - literary critics and historians who forms the content of the canons by their evaluations of individual works or choices and organization in literary synthesis. Partial revision of the canons could be made by influential individuals (Markiewicz).
This influential individual that Markiewicz mentions could be the author. It is, therefore, possible to speak of a personal canon, one that includes an author's favorite books and the words. It also contains a network of texts and archetexts. This theoretical curve allows one to understand the for selecting archetexts from which to analyze the intertextuality in
19 The Handmaid's Tale. This analysis requires one to focus on the entire corpus of her writings. As discussed in the previous section, Atwood often offers her readers suggestions for understanding her book's intertextual connections. Based on these guidelines, it is possible to seek archetexts. Those such as national canons are on the periphery. They only appear in some works or episodes. In such cases, it is possible to apply Markiewicz's theory. Using Bakhtin's philosophy, one can contemplate the communication between the literary work and the reader. In contrast, Markiewicz's methodology raises the question of Atwood's personal literary canon.
There are other theorists whose typology of intertextuality differs from those experts mentioned above. Robert Miola bases his theories on those of Bakhtin and Kristeva. He separates the types of intertextuality into seven groups. The first type is a revision, a process by which the author chooses texts written in the past and subjects them to change.
The writer selects only those parts deemed beneficial from aesthetic and ontological points of view. He also chooses them according to his personal convictions and the concept of permissibility, a motivational factor when referring to archetexts (Miola 13).
Acceptable use of other's writings was less important when Atwood wrote The
Handmaid's Tale than it is today. To some extent, Miola draws on Roald Barthes' theory as a foundation for his own. He also relies on Kristeva and Bakhtin. In his flagship work, he asserted that writing arises from linguistic and cultural systems. Thus, the author is an arranger and compiler whose highest goal is the aesthetic result (Barthes 142 -148).
According to Miola the second type of intertextuality is the translation of archetexts. He states that the European culture and, by extension, those in the western world, often base their intertexts on translations from Greek and Latin classics. Those translations differ, based on content, period, cultural context, and language. As an example, Miola shows various interpretations of Homer's Odyssey, pointing to shifts in meaning. Those changes resulted while translating the narrative from classical to contemporary Greek and Latin.
Those unintentional modifications influenced the original meanings of the texts. To preserve a work with as much accuracy as possible requires using verbal means that will help the effect even with the modified content (Miola 13).
Another type of intertextuality is an offer. According to Miola most text that writers quote is familiar to readers. This literal reference is a technique used to highlight a passage's meaning. Allegories and allusions help to clarify a text's tone. A modern writer can give
20 a different interpretation to literature from the past. For an intertextual offer or change to take place, the reader of the newer writing must accept those revisions suggested by the author (Miola 14 - 15). Roald Barthes explains further:
A text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into
mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is tane place where this
multiplicity is focused and that place is a reader, not, as was hitherto said, the
author. The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing
are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text's unity lies not in its origin but
in its destination. Yet this destination cannot any longer be personal: the reader is
without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who holds
together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted. Which
is why it is derisory to condemn the new writing in the name of a humanism
hypocritically turned champion of the reader's rights. Classic criticism has never
paid any attention to the reader; for it, the writer is the only person in literature. We
are now beginning to let ourselves be fooled no longer by the arrogant antiphrastical
recriminations of good society in favour of the very thing it sets aside, ignores,
smothers, or destroys; we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to
overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the
Author (Barthes 112).
Miola identifies the fourth form of the intertextuality as s source type. This occurs when an author requires authors to intentionally reshapes, paraphrases or creates a text in the style of a certain archetext, one that is readership available. There is also a variation of a distant source, requiring the author to take into consideration. This type takes into an account the reader's knowledge of famous passages. The most prominent intertexts, those familiar to many readers, are in the Bible (Miola 15). In this context, Barthes does not differentiate between close or distant archetypal texts. He states that an archetext's author, age, or style of writing is unimportant. What is essential is how the text can spread and what new directions it can open for readers (Barthes 126 - 127)
Miola differs emphasizing conventions and configuration. He points out texts that imitate writings from the past. Strict compliance to unity of time and action is an example. Often, a writer looks for a reference in another style. Authors from the Renaissance and Classical periods used works from antiquity as their patterns. In doing so, the authors attempted to
21 create a formal imitations of the earlier texts. This practice is known as acknowledged intertextuality (Miola 17).
Miola's next form relates to genres. It is simple strategy for transforming. It is a technique transforming a complex set of features, those that characterize a specific genre, to create another system of formal characters. He cites Shakespearian and ancient Greek writings to provide clarity. An example is that of revising a Greek tragedy to create a satiric game.
(Stehlikova 335)
Miola places the final form, a paralog, in a separate category. Paralogy represents texts used for clarifying social, theological, and political meaning in another text. These occur at intersections with previous chapters. It may seem that they are characteristic of postmodernism, such as in Eco's novel, The Name of the Rose. This style of writing was popular in the past, but one seldom encounters it in contemporary times (Miola 23).
These are categories in which Robert Miola differs from other literary critics. The question is, in what way does his theory support this thesis? For one who wishes to analyze the intertextuality in Atwood's novels, Miola's classifications prove beneficial.
Even though this system has its weakness, when combined with other theories, it provides clarity essential to one's understanding. The most complicated issue is that of language transmission. An example is the difficulty of translating the primary source information of Canada's First Nation cultures.
When discussing intertextuality from the pragmatic rather than a formal point of view, one must mention Umberto Eco and Jean Lyotard.
To some extent, Eco's attitude toward Margaret Atwood's work is heretical. Consider his definitions of opened and closed work. Unlike previous literary scholars, Eco does not claim that all literature contains intertextual connections. He defines open work as writings that offer multiple interpretations. In contrast, closed work does not expect a priori of earlier literature and, instead, encourages personal understanding. Eco gives the example of James Bond movies. Spectators anticipate specific qualities from Bond movies, and any deviation is objectionable. (Eco 156)
The last theorist is Jean Lyotard. To understand his theory on intertextuality, one must start with skepticism. Lyotard describes his misgivings in this way:
22 Narrative function loses its functors, great hero, great dangers, great wandering
thoughts and great goal. It dissolves into clusters of language elements, narrative,
but also denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, etc., each of which bears the
pragmatic valences sui generis. Each of us lives at the crossroads of many of them.
We do not create speech combinations characterized by the necessary stability and
the characteristics of those we create are not necessarily communicable (Lyotard
98).
Postmodernists consider a grand narrative a hangover from the old system. According to
Lyotard, throughout history, these narratives legitimized ideologies as Lyotard claims
(Lyotard Wandering 48). When analyzing Margaret Atwood's texts, we can agree somewhat with Lyotard. The end of grand narratives occurred because the number of social roles is finite.
This world is finite because finite is the number of names available here. This world
is always the same. Every human being takes its place here. Under a certain name,
which will determine its relationship to other names. This place defines the sexual,
economic, social, and speech exchanges that this being has the right or duty to
realize with or otherwise inaccessible to other name bearers (Lyotard Wandering
49).
Because of this limited cycle every repetition becomes a future intertext. This naming process is necessary for legitimization through the consolidation of identity. The earlier canon helps to form a collective's identity. It creates a context for the self, which seems insignificant because of the many other ties to modern society (Lyotard On
Postmodernism 115).
2.3 Roles of Women in Literary and Cultural Intertextuality
The previous sections of this thesis discussed literary canons and the women's roles often found in Margaret Atwood's novels. For a complete understanding, it is essential to comprehend those roles. As stated when discussing poetry collections, Double
Persephone refers to an ancient myth, Procedures of Underground, Pythia, and The
Penelopiad also allude to writings from antiquity. To understand the women's archetypes in these writings, one much ask a question: What connects the characters: Persephone,
Penelope, Pythia, and Euridice?
23 It may seem that each character is different. However, they all share similar characteristics. Persephone and Euridice entered the underworld and were preparing for a new life. Then, they established a close relationship with a man. Neither chose her fate.
Although Persephone did not love Hades, the god of the underworld, a compromise between Zeus and Demeter forced her to remain with him. Destiny also intevened in the relationship between Orpheus and Euridice. Their love could only be fulfilled when one of them died. Penelope was the only character whose love reached fruition with Ithaca's king, Odysseus. However, fate required her to wait twenty years with her son, Telemach, while rejecting many of her suitors. Pythia was an oracle who dedicated her life to fortune telling. In performing this service, she spent a lonely life, much like Persephone and
Euridice. According to Toni Wolff, these mythological characters correspond to four female archetypes: Mother, Hertaira, Amazone, and Mediale.5 This theory proposes that individual archetypes have central motivations in their lives. Those motivations outweigh all others. The role of the Mother is that of taking care of children. Hetaire's role centers on relationships with men. Amazone's life goal requires engagement in public life.
Mediale describes and anticipates things that others do not feel or see (Wolf). The question is: To what extent are these individual archetypes represented in The
Handmaid's Tale and on which one is the main female character modeled? This intertextuality, the referencing of ancient characters from earlier texts, is essential from an analytic point of view. It is also true from the motivational point of view of the character around which the novel's plot revolves. In addition to ancient myths, the Bible is also a key archetypal text. It is possible, even in this historical work, to classify women archetypes. Because this book's typology is straightforward and universal, I have used it to support my thesis. It captures the characters' motivations across texts and archetexts through its intertextual connections,-even though they are not always visible at first sight.
The title, The Handmaid's Tale, refers to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
This literary masterpiece includes individual stories such as "The Miller's Tale",
"The Nun's Priest's Tale", and "The Knight's Tale". Atwood's novel, like the
writings of other British classicists such as William Shakespeare, makes use of
extensive intertextual connections. It is also necessary to mention George Orwell's
books, for they occupy a specific place in the intertextual literary canon. Margaret
5 Toni Wolf (1888-1953), psychologist and psychoanalysis, a partner of C. G. Jung 24 Atwood began writing The Handmaid's Tale in 1984, thus ensuring a connection
to Orwell's novel, entitled 1984. She confirmed this link (Atwood The Handmaid's
Tale) It was also her intention to publish the book at the end of 1984, even though
she published it in January 1985. The literary canon is, therefore, rich in intertextual
connections. From texts mentioned in previous sections of this thesis, it is necessary
to identify passages that are parts of the intertext. These include not only literary,
but also cultural and historical archetexts. In doing so, I will address the history of
the United States and the historical and social events that have influenced religious
groups within that country. Those events include the Puritans' arrival prohibition,
as encouraged by the Christian Women's Union, and the spiritual beliefs of the
Quakers. The analytical sections of this paper addresses these cultural-historical
overlaps.
2.4 Summary and Hypothesis
Before beginning a summary, this thesis will address the following questions.
• Does Atwood's intertextuality update or reproduce themes?
• According to Miola what type of intertextuality does this author use more
frequently?
• Are there examples in The Handmaid's Tale of other types of
intertextuality?
• Which archetexts are represented in The Handmaid's Talel
It is also necessary to turn to Lyotard's thesis for answers to these additional questions.
• What role does the main heroine play in The Handmaid's Tale?
• How does her name determine her relationship to other characters?
• What rights does she have?
• How does she interact with others?
The final question targets Eco's reflections. Is The Handmaid's Tale a closed or open work? If it is closed, who is its model reader?
25 2.5 Further Hypotheses
The first question addresses whether Atwood's intertextuality updates or reproduces themes. In terms of the feminist issue, it is not necessarily an update if the female characters have the same rights as those characters described in the archetext. An exception is that of The Penelopiad, in which the author tries to create an apocryphal text.
Therefore, the answer is that Atwood updates the previous theme.
The second question requires that one determine the form of intertextuality Atwood's novel uses most often. It also questions which other types of intertextuality she includes in The Handmaid's Tale. In most cases, the author uses acknowledged intertextuality, directly citing from the archetexts. However, one cannot exclude paraphrases, transcripts, or paralogs since the story's setting is a futuristic society.
The answer to the third question concerning which archetext is the most often represented is easy to determine. One can trace the book's cover and its intertextual connections to the Bible and other ancient literature. On the cover, a woman wears a dress similar to a religious habit. Also, there are frequent references to Biblical and Christian writings.
It is also necessary, based on Lyotard's thesis, to determine the heroine's role and her relationship with the other name-characters. One must address the rights she possesses and her interactions. Even before reading the novel, it is possible to speculate about its title, The Handmaid's Tale. It suggests that the main character will experience several interactions within a hierarchized society, and she will be in a lower position compared to leaders of that society. She will interact with a cast of equals, but will not have full rights.
The last and the most challenging question, addresses whether The Handmaid's
Tale is a closed or open work. It is the latter for a specific group of readers.
However, for those who read the novel after watching the series, it represents a
closed work. The viewers wish only to read about what they saw in the series. The
television series also influences their imagination. In a postscript regarding The
Handmaid's Tale, Atwood addresses whether it is a closed work. She explains, in
a cultural-historical context, by playing a comparative game with the readers of
fictitious Gilead. Players identify countries and their political positions concerning
26 women and their rights during the 1980s. Atwood conceived this postscript as an
academic lecture; therefore, she intended it for expert critics. In doing so, the author
tries to prevent the readers from looking for meanings other than those she intended.
(Atwood The Handmaid's Tale 327 - 341) She does not encourage the model reader
to look for other overlaps or intertextuality. The intertextuality in The Handmaid's
Tale is an essential factor in understanding the novel's meaning, for failure to do so
would complicate a reader's ability to comprehend the entire book. In this aspect,
the novel is considered a closed work. The novel's preface also supports the fact
that it is a closed work. Atwood states the following:
Can I persuade the reader that the United States has experienced a radical change that transformed originally liberal democracy into a literally contemplating theocratic dictatorship? (Atwood The Handmaid's Tale cover)
27 3.0 Women's Roles and Their Contextual Functions in The Handmaid's Tale
3.1 About Women's Roles and Intertextuality in General
Before examining women's roles as a major theme, it is necessary to return to the theory discussed in a previous chapter. It is possible to state a hypothesis based on context.
Atwood often returned to Biblical passages or ancient mythology in her earlier books.
She does not accept those myths without criticism. The issue with The Handmaid's Tale is that literary experts classify it as a science fiction, a label Atwood rejects. (Atwood
Aliens have taken the place of angels.)
For some time, the author promoted speculative novels set in an anti-utopist society or in a mythical past. There, one discovers a discourse in her literary theme of survival. She connects survival with Canadian national identity and portrays that motif in her writings.
The role of survival victim is evident in the whole of her work. Earlier novels, those such as Lady Oracle, may suggest that some archetypes of women represent characters found in ancient texts and myths. Other archetypal heroines are from the Bible.
And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and
said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die. And Jacob's anger was kindled
against Rachel; and he said, Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the
fruit of the womb? 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"
(Atwood The Handmaid's Tale 4).
How does this intertextuality relate to women's roles? Antiquity and Christianity create archetypes of women. Two different principles dominate: liberal women in antiquity and patriarchal dominance in the Bible. In The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood's feminist point of view becomes evident. Before examining women's roles in Atwood's fictional Gilead, one must give attention to the Book of Moses and its setting. It is evident even in the novel's introduction that the entire work is intertextual and has many layers.6 It is possible to perceive Gilead as a defective dictatorship. Paraphrases from Biblical scenes reveal
6 Titles of chapters evoke religious text. When compare, we find out that the author similarly works even in another works, for example in Lady Oracle the novel is composed as antique play. 28 that the situation is socially imperfect. However, that the text is a motto is revealed at the beginning of the novel. Atwood defines basic women's roles while emphasizing the motive, of survival. No less important, she bases the intertextual layers on the symbolic meaning of names, according to the principle nomen omen. The following example is from the Old Testament.
Leah's servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son. Then Leah said, "What good fortune!" So
she named him Gad (Gad can mean good fortune or troop). Leah's servant Zilpah
bore Jacob a second son. Then Leah said: "How happy I am!" The women will call
me happy." So she named him Asher (Asher means happy). (...) God listened to
Leah, and she became pregnant and bore Jacob a fifth son. Then Leah said: "God
has rewarded me for giving my maidservant to my husband." So she named him
Issachar (sounds like the Hebrew for reward). Leah conceived again and bore Jacob
a sixth son. Then Leah said: "God has presented me with a precious gift. This time
my husband will treat me with honor, because I have borne him six sons." So she
named him Zebulun (means honor) (Bible, Genesis 23).
Atwood refers to several texts in the novel's introduction. Moreover, she reflects on inspirational sources in the preface. The most important is an introductory motto outlining the first three subchapters. The author openly encourages readers to discover intertextual texts that relate to women's roles. The second subchapter describes the survival motive within the layer of women's roles, and in the author herself. The third subchapter presents symbolism in names and their relationship to a woman's position in society. The goal of this section is to examine primary texts referred to in the novel while describing how
Atwood works with metatext. It analyzes how the author subordinates her characters to those allusions. It also addresses the degree to which the metatext differs from the original wording.
3.2 Acknowledged Intertextuality
Acknowledged intertextuality as related to women's roles, occurs with frequency in The
Handmaid's Tale. At the beginning of the book the author presents the relationships within the society of Gilead and includes references to the Bible's Old Testament. "They can hit us, there's Scriptural precedent" (Atwood The Handmaid's Tale 28). We learn that social roles are derived from the Old Testament, but those roles are interpreted in a totalitarian regime. There is also obvious indoctrination of children: "(...) I would watch 29 the Growing Souls Gospel Hour, where they would tell Bible Stories for children and sing hymns" (Atwood The Handmaid's Tale 28).
A just totalitarian environment has as its basis on rituals and fixed positions. Like George
Orwell's Winston, the main female character in The Handmaid's Tale recalls her childhood. Neither character is allowed to keep a written record of his or her memories or to read without being sanctioned. Instead, Gilead's main character is required to repeat dogmatic texts. Later, this paper discusses a reference to Orwell's Newspeak. However, first we will focus on why in The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood openly quotes the Old
Testament. The postmodern philosopher, Jean Francois Lyotard, offers an explanation.
When this narrated story always clings to the names of the three instances, the
narrator, the listener and the hero, the narrative ritual legitimizes the story by
inscribing it into the world of names. This implies a characteristic concept of
historical time, (...) This speech slide is exemplary of our first form of regimus, one
form on regimus, one that Kant described as oppressive, and for the legitimization
of it a normative instance. (...) Names determine a certain world, a world that is
cultural. (Lyotard On Postmodernism 48)
There is also an issue concerning names. In Atwood's "Historical Notes" at the end of the book, the author reveals that she is a literary critic. "Such names were taken by these women upon their entry into a connection with the household of a specific Commander, and relinquished by them upon leaving it" (Atwood The Handmaid's Tale 307). The names have both a social classification and a characterization function (Knappova 12 -
16). As Gilead's society is based on ritual and requires women to function in a specific role, even a woman's name is influenced until her role changes. Despite this, the intertextuality is abstract as I will explain in another chapter. In terms of intertextual function and acknowledged intertextuality, the purpose is evocative (12 - 16). Only a phonetic form of a name can evoke a classification to a specific type of text. As a result, an intertextual game with the reader occurs. This game results in disorder when the intertextuality and primary texts meet.
This explains the frequent repetitions of Old Testament statements such as "Be fruitful and multiply" or the parable of Rachel and Leah from Moses' book.
30 We had it read to us every breakfast, as we sat in the high-school cafeteria, eating
porridge with cream and brown sugar. You're getting the best, you know, said Aunt
Lydia. (...) For lunch it was the Beatitudes. Blessed be this, blessed be that. They
played it from a tape, so not even an Aunt would be guilty of the sin of reading. The
voice was a man's. Blessed be the poor in spirit, for their is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the silent (Atwood The
Handmaid's Tale 101 - 102).
It represents a motif of repetition, one typical of prayers. At the same time, the main character uses "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum " as a quasi-prayer. This repetition is similar to that of Orwell's "War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength"
(Orwell 4). Both religion and supplication to God become ideological prayers in the texts of Atwood and Orwell. According to Miola, one can, therefore, speak of a paralog in which the author updates an archetext or moves it into a different environment.
Even though readers outside of continental Europe may not detect the allusions, they are apparent to English speaking readers. For example, in Atwood's narrative, the main character reads books by Raymond Chandler and Hard Times by Charles Dickens.
Chandlers' work is typical of the darkest side of women, depicting a female as an object for fulfilling one's goals (Chandler The King in Yellow 11). In contrast, society sees other women as priceless human beings (Chandler Later Novels and Other Writings 647). A reference to Charles Dickens' Hard Times is even more revealing. The novel begins with the words.
Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts
alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can
only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of
any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and
this is the principle on which I bring up the children. Stick to Facts, Sir! (Dickens
1)
In Dickens' book, there is observable rhetoric which deals with controlling a human being, one living here and now. This novel is well known in Anglo-American countries, and, consequently, it effectively mirrors Gilead society. The main character understands the mechanisms within Gilead and Orwell's 1984. In Orwell's novel, Winston keeps a
31 diary and recognizes the lies by using diachronic comparison. The main heroine in The
Handmaid's Tale also detects lies- She does so through a combination of synchronic and diachronic comparisons, examining the role to determine what is good or bad. This allows her to understand the events occuring in Gilead.
In acknowledged intertextuality, the author also connects clothing which underwent a considerable change to earlier writings. Because the first release of this book focused on an abstract intertextuality, readers did not perceive these changes as the author had intended. As a result, future editions contained a foreword in which Atwood explains this allusion:
The modesty costumes worn by the women of Gilead are derived from Western
religious iconography - the Wives wear the blue of purity, from the Virgin Mary;
the Handmaids wear red, from the blood of parturition, but also from Mary
Magdalene. Also, red is easier to see if you happen to be fleeing. The wives of men
lover in the social scale are called Econowives, and wear stripes. I must confess that
the face-hiding bonnets came not only from mid-Victorian costume and from nuns,
but from the Old Dutch Cleanser package of the 1940s, which showed a woman
with her face hidden, and which frightened me as a child. Many totalitarianisms
have used clothing, both forbidden and enforced, to identify and control people -
think of yellow stars and Roman purple - and many have ruled behind a religious
front. It makes the creation of heretics that much easier. (Atwood The Handmaid's
Tale 14)
This form of acknowledged intertextuality helps a reader to identify and classify characters. Even symbols of colors are helpful. As an example, hoods refer not only to nuns but also to Dutch detergent when a woman, a handmaid, wears an identical head cover. Because this intertextuality is not distinct, the author explains its symbolism in the foreword. She also clarifies intertextuality's connection to religious groups such as
Quakers, whose mission she also explains in the preface. ( 14 )
The last acknowledged intertextual connection, names, is questionable and I will discuss it in a later section of this thesis. Because of different translations, names remain untransferable and the intertext is untranslatable.
32 Miola classified the examples of acknowledged intertextuality mentioned above as an
"offer". One might also question whether there is also a "paralog". The hypothesis is that acknowledged intertextuality is the form most often used in The Handmaid's Tale because it offers literal transcripts and symbols to the readers. These reflect the same essence as the original archetext. However, the connections also inspire new concepts, such as the one that distinguishes the culture of Gilead. Atwood's writing not only contains references that have reproductive characteristics, and texts that remain unchanged. As a literary scientist, she also uses covert passages that evokes acknowledged archetexts. Her writings are connected to Biblical passages, classical texts, and American history. In addition, she uses passages of intertextuality from other texts including George Orwell's novel 1984. Often, she uses a distant source text, a term meaning a reference to a passage within an archetext. When she does so, she creates a variation that preserves the ontological and motive natures.
It would be easy to compare those passages that describes Gilead's and Orwell's totalitarian states. For each, the moment of greatest intimacy is that of conception. There are similarities in how each author chooses to approach this issue. In his novel, 1984,
Orwell states the following:
Its real, undeclared purpose was to remove all pleasure from the sexual act. Not
love so much as eroticism was the enemy, inside marriage as well as outside it. All
marriages between Party members had to be approved by a committee appointed
for the purpose, and - though the principle was never clearly stated - permission
was always refused if the couple concerned gave the impression of being physically
attracted to one another. The only recognized purpose of marriage was to beget
children for the service of the Party. Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a
slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema. This again was never put
into plain words, but in an indirect way it was rubbed into every Party member from
childhood onwards. There were even organisations such as the Junior Anti-Sex
League which advocated complete celibacy for both sexes. All children were to be
begotten by artificial insemination ("artsem", it was called in Newspeak) and
brought up in public institutions (Orwell 61).
Atwood describes the moment of conception in Gilead:
33 My arms are raised; she holds my hands, each of mine in each of hers. (...) What it
really means is that she is in control, of the process and thus of the product. (...) My
red skirt is hitched up to my waist, though no higher. Below it, the Commander is
fucking. What he is fucking is the lower part of my body. I do not say making love,
because this is not what he's doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate, because it
would imply two people and only one is involved. Nor does rape cover it: nothing
is going on here that I haven't signed up for. (...) Therefore I lie still and picture the
unseen canopy over my head. I remember Queen Victoria's advice to her daughter.
"Close your eyes and think of England"(...) This is not recreation, even for the
Commander. This is serious business. The Commander, too, is doing his duty.
(Atwood The Handmaid's Tale 106 - 107)
The proximity of the texts is evident. As the principle of totalitarianism becomes an intertext, other intertextualities appear on this extract. Atwood also uses revision and distant source texts. This passage has an even more essential function. An attempt to disrupt one's privacy, break apart a family, or make a child state property are representative of totalitarian regimes. The author refers in a historical note to the practices of the Mormon sect in Utah, when a moment of conception becomes degraded to mere
"insemination" within simultaneous polygamy. (333) Atwood compares this with the
Nazi Lebensborn. In later interviews, she adds that the very first pattern and intertextual reference, the politics of the Giledian state-controlled reproduction, should refer to the totalitarian regime in Romania:
The idea of a birth control ban may be frightening, but it is not a new one: in 1966,
President Ceausescu, in a desperate attempt to increase the population of Romania,
banned birth control and abortion, and ordered Romanian women of child-bearing
age to have five children each. To enforce Decree 770, secret police were instead
at hospitals, women were subjected to monthly tests by gynecologists, sex
education in schools was refocused on the benefits of motherhood, and people were
taxed for being childless. Women, of course, found themselves heavily criminalised
if they did not comply with Ceausescu's reproductive policies. In some ways, the
abortion and birth control worked: the Romanian population steadily increased, and
the glorification of childbirth led to a huge baby boom - but the consequences were
tragic and long-reaching. Childbirth mortality rate became the highest of Europe,
34 and more than 9,000 women died as a result of complications arising from illegal
terminations. Countless others were left permanently maimed. (Kayleigh)
When comparing these two authors' statements, one discovers that while Orwell concentrates on the impersonification of conception and the removal of emotions,
Atwood's focus is on the production line for birthing children. Even Orwell did not foresee this. Requiring women to procreate until they were exhausted, an act leading to the destruction of the handmaids, alludes to Romania's recent hi story.-Václav Havel described the results of the Romanian government's penetration into this sphere in a letter to Gustav Husák:
It is as though after the shocks of recent history, and the kind of system subsequently
established in this country, people seem to have lost all faith in the future, in the
possibility of setting public affairs right, in the meaning of a struggle for truth and
justice. They shrug off anything that goes beyond their everyday, routine concern
for their own livelihood; they seek ways of escape; they succumb to apathy, to
indifference toward suprapersonal values and their fellow men, to spiritual passivity
and depression. (Havel)
It is questionable whether one can classify Havel's letter as an archetext. According to
Miola, to do so requires one to place it in the same category as Orwell's text. The author's statement about inspiration in Czechoslovakia offers some support. She adds the following in one of her later interviews for the New York Times:
For a long time, the notion that truth threatens totalitarianism was taken for granted.
In the Soviet Union, the regime jammed foreign radio broadcasts, and people risked
prison to pass around forbidden books. "Living within the lie can constitute the
system only if it is universal," wrote Václav Havel in 1978, a decade before he
became the first post-Communist president of what was then Czechoslovakia. He
continued: "There are no terms whatsoever on which it can coexist with living
within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle
and threatens it in its entirety (Goldberg).
Here, I will discuss the universally valid archetypal principle of dystopian novels. A hero who rebels against the system is the primary motif of the work. Here, the intertextuality of practices becomes universally valid. In Timothy Snyder's book, On Tyranny - Twenty
35 Lessons from the Twentieth Century, he analyzes of totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. All he points he lists as critical to the functioning of totalitarianism are also found in Gilead's rules. However, Snyder's book is not an archetext in itself (Snyder).
In Orwell's 1984, intertextuality is a permanently variable phenomenon, according to
Barthes and Bakhtin. This is also true when comparing Orwell's text to Atwood's texts.
Orwell's archetext changes in terms of intertext, but, to a great extent, the meaning remains the same. The Handmaid's Tale changes in intertextuality. Perhaps, this is because Orwell's main character is a man and Atwood's is a woman. Fundamentally, intertexts change when it comes to understanding racism. Orwell writes:
Admission to either branch of the Party is by examination, taken at the age of
sixteen. Nor is there any racial discrimination, or any marked domination of one
province by another. Jews, Negroes, South Americans of pure Indian blood are to
be found in the highest ranks of the Party, and the administrators of any area are
always drawn from the inhabitants of that area. In no part of Oceania do the
inhabitants have the feeling that they are a colonial population ruled from a distant
capital. Oceania has no capital, and its titular head is a person whose whereabouts
nobody knows. Except that English is its chief lingua franca and Newspeak its
official language, it is not centralised in any way. Its rulers are not held together by
blood-ties but by adherence to a common doctrine. It is true that our society is
stratified, and very rigidly stratified, on what at first sight appear to be hereditary
lines. There is far less to-and-fro movement between the different groups than
happened under capitalism or even in the pre-industrial ages (Orwell 188).
Gilead society is also hierarchized. Therefore, it is appropriate to discuss intertextuality in Orwell's novel. Both authors vary the racial composition of their characters. This fact becomes obvious in Atwood's statement: "In this way we exchanged names, from bed to bed: Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June" (Atwood The Handmaid's Tale 16)
These names refer to different origins and ethnicities, but one does not learn much about the story as much as we learn very little about the ethnic origin of commander. Although
Orwell's 1984 was cinematic, the film did not gain the fame the book enjoyed; thus, its intertextual impact remains minimal. A different concept occurred with The Handmaid's
Tale when its series was released. Because of its varying ethnicities, the series has been
36 labeled as racist or post-racist. While many readers identified the ethnicity of the characters, the book soon earned criticism for racial imbalance. In this case, the effort to ensure multiculturalism had the opposite effect.
The Handmaid's Tale is best described as post-racial. In an interview with TVLine
Miller explains this choice, saying, "The evangelical movement has gotten a lot
more integrated" in the years since the book was published. In actuality, the
evangelical movement continues to twist scripture in order to support virulent
racism - a practice that goes back to this country's founding, when slaves were
stripped of their own practices and forced into Christianity while being barred from
reading the same Bible slave masters used to assert their superiority as not just
biological fact, but a spiritual imperative (Bastien).
Although the book attempted to preserve American multiculturality, there remain several indications that some races were deported in the Midwest. However, these references occured sporadically and are presented in individual sentences. Still, the point of view references a similar viewpoint from the Book of Mormons:
Laman and Lemuel's followers were called Lamanites. They became people with
dark skin. The Lamanites did not obey God and were cut off from His presence.
The spirit of the Lord could not be with them until they repented. The Lamanites
were full of mischief and often fought the Nephites (Book of Mormon, p. 66).
As in The Handmaid's Tale, the Book of Mormons provides ethnically correct depictions of the handmaids. Unlike Atwood's novel, Mormons have revised their writings over time. These revisions probably represent the greatest intertextual alterations. Based on
Eco's theory, before the series' release, the book was considered open in terms of characters. After the series has been release, it changed. For those who viewed The
Handmaid's Tale before reading the novel, the book appeared as closed work, based on how a reader imagines the characters.-For example, the name of one handmaid, Moira, evokes images of a dark skin color. One could also consider Moira's escape to Canada as an intertextual based on Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. Using those clues, a reader could envision Moira as an Afro-American. Since there is no evidence in the book to support this, Moira remains an open character. After, Samira Wiley portrayed
Moria, there is no doubt of her African-American heritage. Whether this process is
37 accurate is debatable, but it is one of the many possibilities concerning the effects of intertextuality work in series.
3.3 Comparison of Formal Features of Intertext with Jonathan Swift's Work There are many of the above-mentioned forms of intertextual connections in The
Handmaid's Tale. It is not possible to discuss all of them in this thesis. Miola explains that there is also another form of intertextuality that of formal features, in particular, genre and convention. This short passage from The Handmaid's Tale uses both features:
Professor Pieixoto scarcely needs any introduction, as he is well known to all of us,
if not personally, then through his extensive publications. These include
"Sumptuary Laws Through the Ages: An Analysis of Dosuments" and the well-
known study "Iran and Gilead: Two Late-Twentieth-Century Mono theocracies, as
Seen Through Diaries." As you all know, he is the co-editor, with Professor Knotly
Wade, also of Cambridge, of the manuscript under consideration today, and was
instrumental in its transcription, annotation and publication. The title of his talk is
"Problems of Authentication in Reference to The Handmaid's Tale." (Atwood The
Handmaid's Tale 320)
The first intertextual connection, the genre of a writing, imitates the austere academic style of a scientific text. It contains an argument by an authority in the field and references to scientific literature with spartan and challenging expressions. A reader can confuse the text with academic writing and accept that the fictional lecture is about the work itself. This form of scientific fiction appears often in literature.Both Milan
Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and Tom Stoppard's drama Arcadia provide examples of this type of intertextuality. This phenomenon occurs in titles of fictional books written by authors such as Jonathan Swift, Lawrence Stern, Horace
Walpole and Umberto Eco. Readers also find it in Orwell's 1984. In his radio sketch, the
Czech poet, Petr Hruška, discussed how these fictional titles fulfil a genre function because they represent a synecdoche of content and genre, as seen in Hruška's statement:
"But now I wake up without looking at these spines. Since I was a kid, I read what
was written on them every day. From Poe to postmodernism. The Metamorphosis.
The Unrest-Cure. I was drawn to them even though I never opened them at all. Like
the big one with a purple spine. Or the little one with that drawing of a hand or
whatever it is. Some titles sounded like spells. Stone and Pain. I was terrified of 38 some of them. Crime and Punishment. Child and Bomb. I was not able to decipher
some words. I kept reading Umberto Ego instead of Eco. (...) But sometimes I
played and fantasized all the titles and names on purpose. O'Henry was a fire and
his book Springtime a la Cart caused that I was looking forward to have my
breakfast. I used to have favourite spines in the morning and other ones before
sleeping. Some spines I have just discovered. As if the books had not even been
there before. But I will never forget names Woolf, Pasternak, Camus. And Rimbaud
and Verlain will be always next to each other. (...) The bookshelf is made of those
spines. Every owner of these bookshelves knows how beautiful they are in their
wondrous variety, in that talk of various letters, in settled unsettlement, protrusion
and alignment, unexpected meetings of neighboring titles that get special meaning.7
(Hruska)
The second type, according to Miola, is convention. The British author, Jonathan Swift provides an example in an introductory motto from his pamphlet, "A Model Proposal."
But as to myself, having been wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle,
visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell
upon this proposal... (Swift)
It is also helpful to discuss one more archetext by Jonathan Swift in his book, Gulliver's
Travels. Swift's contemporaries drafted their works as games for their readers. This is true of both The Castle of Otranto er-and Gulliver's Travels. In The Handmaid's Tale's
Historical Notes, Atwood alludes to her story as an authentic suggestive novel:
I am delighted to welcome you all here this morning, and I'm pleased to see that so
many of you have turned out for Professor Pieixoto's, I am sure, fascinating and
worthwhile talk. We of the Gileadean Research Association believe that this period
well repays further study, responsible as it ultimately was for redrawing the map of
the world, especially in this hemisphere. (...) I must also remind our keynote speaker
- although I am sure it is not necessary - to keep within his time period, as we wish
to leave space for questions, and I expect none of us wants to miss lunch, as
happened yesterday. Pieixoto: Thank you. I am sure we all enjoyed our charming
Arctic Char last night at dinner, and now we are enjoying an equally charming
7 Translated 39 Arctic Chair. I use the word "enjoy" in two distinct senses, precluding, of course,
the obsolete third. (...) I wish, as the title of my little chat implies, to consider some
of the problems associated with the soi-disant manuscript which is well known to
all of you by now, and which goes by the title of The Handmaid's Tale. (...) This
item -1 hesitate to use the word document - was unearthed on the site of what was
once the city of Bangor, in what, at the time prior to the inception of the Gileadean
regime, would have been the State of Maine. (Atwood The Handmaid's Tale 328 -
329)
When comparing this passage to Gulliver's Travels, notice that there is a similar pattern.
For Atwood, Gilead is a warning against any form of dictatorship. For Swift, Jahui tribe is a parable for intractable humanity. The difference is that Atwood synthesize several totalitarian regimes and religious groups. She connects these to the United States while
Swift focuses on colonial England. Swift opens Gulliver's Travels with an editorial note to which the honorable captain Lemuel Gulliver responds. The Handmaid's Tale similar, but the main text is not just notes from the captain. Instead, it is a newly discovered manuscript. In both works, a motive of capriciousness is being solved in a foreword by an author (a conference moderator). This author represents an intertext of the character,
Richard Sympson or Professor Maryann Crescent Moon.
This volume would have been at least twice as large, if I had not made bold to strike
out innumerable passages. (...) However, if my own ignorance in sea affairs shall
have led me to commit some mistakes, I alone am answerable for them. (...) A letter
from captain Gulliver to his cousin Sympson. I hope you will be ready to own
publicly, whenever you shall be called to it, that by your great and frequent urgency
you prevailed on me to publish a very loose and uncorrect account of my travels.
(Swift 3 - 4)
In terms of formal construction, both texts are very similar. When Atwood places the archetext, Modest Proposal, into The Handmaid's Tale, she uses formal interextuality.
She also enhances the novel by using conventional intertextuality and paralogy. The full title of Swift's book is A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for making them Beneficial to the
Public. Jonathan Swift conceived this text as pseudoscientific paper concerned with eradicating poverty and dealing with children who have nothing to eat. The author reacts
40 to difficult social situation of the Irish. He suggests that poor people should sell their children to rich ones as a source of food. By doing so, the poor could feed and nourish their remaining children with the money they received. They could also prevent abortions and the murder of newborns. (Swift) This text is socially critical but at the same time it solves an issue of excessive birth rate. Using a paralog, Swift addresses an opposing issue, people who cannot have children because of venereal diseases. Both texts have a common feature, that of using a child as a commodity. Rich landlords from aristocratic districts should use children as targets for hunt became updated when the western world reached its population boom in the nineteenth century.
According to Miola's thesis, Atwood uses all forms of intertextuality. The
Handmaid's Tale is postmodern work because its multi-layered ability is difficult
and complex. It requires a knowledge of British and American literary canons. It is
also possible to agree with Eco, who claims that while many readers see this
narrative as an open work, those who approach in a superficial manner see it as
closed. Thus, Roald Barthes's theory of permanent actualization becomes evident.
It forms an imaginary bridge between the classic English canon and the postmodern
period, at least regarding intertextuality.
In this context, one should not forget the aspect of female heroines and their survival.
This motif is also being updated and refers to numerous archetexts.
3.4 The Motif of Survival and Women's Roles
The motif of survival represents the underlying motives within archetexts. An understanding of this concept requires comprehending Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, created by the American psychologist Abraham Maslow. On this pyramid, Maslow placed the need for actualization first, followed by esteem, love and belonging, safety, and psychological health, all in descending order. According to this psychologist, these needs must be met before one can achieve self-actualization (Maslow 110 - 120). In addition to Maslow, Viktor Emanuel Frankl's theory claims that for survival to occur, it is necessary to find meaning in life. One's success requires accomplishing deeds and also from experience and suffering. The ultimate act is love, according to Frankl (Frankl 25 -
30).
41 Both Maslow and Frankl summarize the archetype of survival as it appears throughout literary history. By examining mythology, one can define the role of women and compare it with the main character in The Handmaid's Tale. Ancient literature speaks of women roles as designed to meet basic needs such as food, water, physical activity, reproduction, and sleep. The comedy Lysistrata expresses the need for women to fulfill those roles.
Lewd to the least drop in the tiniest vein, our sex is fitly food for Tragic Poets. Our
whole life's but a pile of kisses and babies. (...) "Mind your own business," he'd
answer me growlingly. "Hold your tongue, woman, or else go away." And so I
would hold it. I'd not be silent for any man living on earth, no, not I! Not for a staff?
Well, so I did nothing but sit in the house, feeling dreary, and sigh, While ever
arrived some fresh tale of decisions more foolish by far and presaging disaster. Then
I would say to him, "O my dear husband, why still do they rush on destruction the
faster?" At which he would look at me sideways, exclaiming, "Keep for your web
and your shuttle your care, Or for some hours hence your cheeks will be sore and
hot; leave this alone, war is Man's sole affair! (Aristophanes 28)
Other women in ancient texts were materially secure, but their higher needs were unmet.
Neither Medeia nor Helen had her husband respect. Because of this, Medeia betrayed her father and homeland and killed her brother. In a similar manner, Helena failed to defends her family. Greek society did not guarantee basic security to women. On the contrary, the need for love and belongingness occurs in both stories, but it represents an illusion. Both
Jason and Paris used this unmet need to realize their goals.
"I will procure the golden fleece for you, Jason. Just promise that you will never
desert me." "May the gods be my witnesses," replied Jason, "that I shall take you
to my father's house as my true and proper wife" (Petiska 58).
Nor is there is a guarantee of women's sense of security or self-realization. Survival is reduced to meeting one's psychological needs. This need, the lowest aspect of being, leads to a paradoxical situation. Frankl described his imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp. During his captivity, the lack of fulfilled physiological needs helped him meet the higher needs and, thus, survive (Frankl). In the case of ancient heroines, the opposite phenomenon applies. Women in archetexts have physiological needs met, but this occurs at the expense of all other needs. Their struggle for survival is complex, and
42 their success depends on strong motivation. In the Bible, the position of women is defined at the beginning by the words: "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you" (Genesis 3:16). Both the Bible and ancient myths treat women's rights in a similar manner. It is clear that in neither did the female heroines live full lives. Atwood's main heroine performs a diachronic comparison with consistency. She compares her previous life in the United States with contemporary life in Gilead.
I think about laundromats. What I wore to them: shorts, jeans, jogging pants. What
I put into them: my own clothes, my own soap, my own money, money I had earned
myself. I think about having such a control. Now, we walk along the same street, in
red pairs, and no man shouts obscenities at us, speaks to us, touches us. No one
whistles. There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and
freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given
freedom from. (Atwood The Handmaid's Tale 36)
Orwell's concept of freedom focuses on women who are no longer required to make choices. The main heroine and other handmaids become archetextual heroines, as is seen in the phrase, "a pile of kisses and babies. Their task in Gilead is limited to giving birth.
As was mentioned in the previous passage from a primary text, pleasure is no longer a part of sexual intercourse. This absence reduces the life of handmaids to physiological needs. Atwood draws this intertextuality to the point by referencing-scientific literature.
This comparison reflects Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and to other significant psychological works such as Wundt's An Introduction to Psychology. It is, therefore, a form of intertextuality.
The following passage may be a textbook example of the higher needs necessary for survival.
There's time to spare. This is one of the things I wasn't prepared for - the amount
of unfilled time, the long parentheses of nothing. Time as white sound. If only I
could embroider. Weave, knit, something to do with my hands. I want a cigarette. I
remember walking in art galleries, through the nineteenth century. (...) I wait,
washed, brushed, fed, like a prize pig. (...) I wish I had a pig ball. (...) You can
always practise, said Aunt Lydia. (...) In the afternoons we lay on our beds for an
43 hour in the gymnasium, between three and four. (...) I think that the rest also was
practise. They were giving us a chance to get used to blank time (Atwood The
Handmaid's Tale 81 - 82)
The material satisfaction of physiological needs becomes the killer of higher needs.
Survival is limited only by the reproductive functions of the body. Once the handmaids cease to perform their reproductive functions, they become aunties. After consolidating the required habits and ritualizations, they serve as the de facto wheels in the gears of
Gilead's castes. Otherwise they find themselves in colonies. The only possibility to fulfil those needs and survive to live a full-meaning life is an escape. In none of the women's castes in Gilead do females experience the fulfillment of their higher needs as described by Maslow. Even the main heroine solves the problem by escaping.
The van waits in the driveway, its double doors stand open. Twe two of them, one
on either side now, take me by the elbows to help me in. Whether this is my end or
a new beginning I have no way of knowing: I have given myself over into the hands
of strangers, because it can't be helped. And so I step up, into the darkness within;
or else the light. (309)
Similarly, Medea departs on a wagon pulled by two dragons and Helen drinks a potion of oblivion. Both choose to escape, hoping to survive. There is also the question of how the encoded need for survival influences a handmaid's return to normal life. The author alse admits this possibility: "Or perhaps she was among those escaped Handmaids who had difficulty adjusting to life in the outside world, once they got there, after the protected existence they had led. She may have become, like them, a recluse." (325) This return is a form of Stockholm Syndrome. The effort to survive is a central motive of The
Handmaid's Tale. It is related to a desire to find a normal life again, such as it was before the handmaids arrived in Gilead. They longed for the security of physiological needs and feared losing their privileges. Or the provision of physiological needs that the Handmaids have the effort to survive at any cost becomes a paralyzing element. The heroine's inner conflict elevates her and Moira from other characters. They move from mere figures of definition, a kind of archetype, to characters of hypothesis (Hodrova 34).
This contradiction between meeting one's higher and lower needs occurs across a number of novels in which similar heroines open up other levels of intertext. In the narratives of
44 Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, the heroines look for lost dreams and seek to fulfill those desires representing their higher needs. This is an attempt to prevent a slow death.
The fact that-female rather than male heroines do not stand up the match or the ends are open, creates an intertextual link with the reader.
45 4. Women's Roles in Comparison
In terms of composition, in both writings, Atwood uses an ich-form. It makes the narrative stronger and plays a game with the reader. She uses the symbol of ancient picture- memories of the deceased heroine in The Penelopiad. Penelope described the role of women in a chapter entitled "My Marriage."
My marriage was arranged. That's the way things were done then: where there were
weddings, there were arrangements. (...) Under the old rules, only important people
had marriages, because only important people had inheritances. All the rest was just
copulation of various kinds rapes of seductions, love affairs or one-night stands. (...)
Marriages were for having children, and children were not toys and pets. Children
were vehicles for passing things along. (...) If you had daughters instead of sons,
you needed to get them bred as soon as possible so you could have grandsons. The
more sword-wielders and spear-throwers you could count on from within your
family the better, because all the other noteworthy men around were on the lookout
for a pretext to raid some king or noble and carry away anything they could grab,
people included. (Atwood The Penelopiad p. 35-37)
In comparing the above passage from The Penelopiad with the following passage from
The Handmaid's Tale, although there are minor differences, the position of a woman was much the same:
It's the usual story, the usual stories. God to Adam, God to Noah. Be fruitful, and
multiply, and replenish the earth. Then comes the mouldy old Rachel and Leah stuff
we had drummed into us in the Centre. Give me children, or else I die. Am I in
God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? Behold my maid
Bilhah. She shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her. (...) And
Leah said, God hath given me my hire, because I have given my maiden to my
husband. (Atwood The Handmaid's Tale 101-103)
Both passages point to the unequal status of women. To some extent, this is an intertextual matter, since Atwood uses it most often in prose. The question of sons was crucial, for women in Gilead serve as little more than "machines for sons." If a daughter was born, she became just another woman destined to procreate male children.
46 This litmus test was the same in both texts, as is seen in this statement. "Odysseus was pleased with me. Of course, he was. 'Helen hasn't borne sons yet,' he said, which ought to have made me glad." (Atwood The Penelopiad 32)
The difference is in the narrative's perspective. The handmaids influenced the wives who then responded by exerting their unlimited power. In the following passage, Atwood used
The Handmaid's Tale as an archetext for The Penelopiad. In doing so, she reversed the narrative's perspective.
The male slaves were not supposed to sleep with the female ones, not without
permission. This could be a tricky issue. They sometimes fell in love and became
jealous, just like their betters, which could cause a lot of trouble. If that sort of thing
got out of hand I naturally had to sell them. But if a pretty child was born of these
couplings, I would often keep it and rear it myself, teaching it to be a refined and
pleasant servant. Perhaps I indulged some of these children too much. Eurycleia
often said so. (Atwood The Penelopiad 90)
Penelope shares similar features with Serena Joy and the other wives of the commanders in The Handmaid's Tale. She could not bear children. This was not because of infertility but because her husband, Odysseus, was fighting in the Trojan War. Still, the result was the same. Taking children from their birth parents and claiming them as one's own satisfied the need of the family, as reflected in this passage.
Probably Serena Joy has been here before, to this house, for tea. Probably Ofwarren,
formerly that whiny bitch Janine, was paraded out in front of her, her and the other
Wives, so they could see her belly, feel it perhaps, and congratulate the Wife. A
strong girl, good muscles. No Agent Orange in her family, we checked the records,
you can never be too careful. And perhaps one of the kinder ones: Would you like
a cookie, dear? Oh no, you'll spoil her, too much sugar is bad for them. Surely one
won't hurt, just this once, Mildred. And sucky Janine: Oh yes, can I Ma'am, please?
Such a, so well behaved, not surly like some of them, do their job and that's that.
More like a daughter to you, as you might say. (Atwood The Handmaid's Tale 127)
Handmaids who could not bear children were important to the system's operation. Both writings reflect this. Because of the handmaids' power, the women at the top of Gilead's
47 hierarchy were forced to respect them, as was made clear by the characters, Eurycleia and
Aunt Lydia:
We were a society dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice. (...) Modesty is
invisibility, said Aunt Lydia. Never forget it. To be seen—to be seen—is to be—
her voice trembled—penetrated. What you must be, girls, is impenetrable. She
called us girls. (...) The interpreter turns back to the group, chatters at them in
staccato. I know what he'll be saying. I know the line. He'll be telling them that the
women here have different customs. (Atwood The Handmaid's Tale 40-41)
Aunt Lydia revealed the functioning of a totalitarian society, which in Latin is called
"traditio lampadis." She passed a torch and applied the power assigned to her by Gilead's form of government. Her task, that of strengthening the system, impacted the servants, slaves, handmaids, and even the wives of commanders and kings. This was true in both
The Penelopiad and The Handmaid's Tale. Eurycleia described this function in The
Penelopiad:
The woman who gave me the most trouble at first was Odysseus's former nurse,
Eurycleia. She was widely respected according to her because she was so intensely
reliable. She'd been in the household ever since Odysseus's father had bought her,
and so highly had he valued her that he hadn't even slept with her. "Imagine that,
for a slave woman!" she clucked to me, delighted with herself. "And I was very
good-looking in those days!" Some of the maids told me that Laertes had refrained,
not out of respect for Eurycleia, but from fear of his wife, who would never have
given him any peace if he'd taken a concubine. "That Anticleia would freeze the
balls off Helios," as one of them put in. I knew I should have reprimanded her for
impudence, but I couldn't repress my laughter. (Atwood The Penelopiad 67)
Those nurses and aunts guarded the main characters at their every step. In both writings, the bath theme became a pleasant moment when the characters instructed the handmaids on how to perform their duties.
For both heroines, Offred and Penelope, night was an important motif. "The night is mine, my own time, to do with as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I don't move. As long as I lie still." (Atwood The Handmaid's Tale 49)
48 In The Handmaid's Tale, some chapters are explicitly titled "Night." In The Penelopiad, there is a scene in which the mentors, slaves, maids, and aunts leave the heroine alone.
"Who could I depend on, really, except myself? Many nights I cried myself to sleep or prayed to the gods." (Atwood The Penelopiad 91)
Both heroines were connected by weaving. Offired made this clear in her statement. "If only I could embroider. Weave, knit, something to do with my hands." (Atwood The
Handmaid's Tale 81) In The Penelopiad, handcrafts were also necessary, much like they were in ancient Greek myths and legends.
That Offred and Penelope had similar issues becomes apparent, allowing one to understand that The Handmaid's Tale is an archetext. One can identify this within the motif of transformation. "My mother failed to understand that they had value as property and she had no use at all for weaving and spinning. Too many knots. A spider's work.
Leave it to Arachne." (Atwood The Penelopiad 88)
In a final comparison, the author uses Miola's principle of transformation in her archetexts. In previous sections, this thesis discussed The Handmaid's Tale and its use of archetexts. When writing The Penelopiad, the author used the form of an ancient drama.
This writing also made use of verses. Atwood presented the individual stages of
Penelope's life within them.
The stated goal for this section was that of comparing Penelope's and Offred's roles. This thesis also seeks to find a contrast between the archetypes of ancient and Biblical heroines.
Atwood bases both characters on the same archetypes. Only the perspective of the story changes, and the difference depends on each character's classification within the hierarchy. Both women are subordinate to the system and under the constant control of older servants. It is impossible for them to carry out those activities that would help them escape this stereotype.
Both writings are styled retrospectively. The author achieves this by using notes, manuscripts, and ancient dramas enriched with memories of the deceased character,
Penelope. Each of these texts overlaps with the present. The Penelopiad is updated, but
The Handmaid's Tale refers to the present through the past, as in "normal times." 49 The diachronic reasoning of both characters creates internal intertextuality.
Retrospectivity becomes an intertext for the characters, symbolizing "normal idyllic times." As for the archetype, antiquity or post-apocalyptic clerical dictatorship creates a backdrop for the same archetype of the heroine mother.
50 5. Conclusion
In the introduction, fundamental research questions were asked and supplemented by several partial questions. The first question addressed whether some primary texts or archetypes are used more frequently than others in Atwood's writings. The novels of other authors should serve as a basis for answering this question. Regarding archetexts,
Margaret Atwood is a literary scientist and her literary canon is comprehensive. Yet, some authors dominate her works. Atwood's writings are multi-layered. She plays a game with readers and tries to lead them through acknowledged literature whose parts she cites and paraphrases. At the same time, she manages to hide other intertextualities.
At first sight, it may seem that Atwood refers to the Bible and Greek mythology most frequently, but the opposite is true. These two archetypes create backdrops for the realization of her work. They make up the environment through which to expose the suppression of women and their rights. Literature composed by Atwood's favourite authors, those that form her personal canon, are present in other layers. These include
George Orwell's novel, 1984. Atwood also uses Newspeak, which is not as fully developed. However, its slogans and repetitions form a synthesis with prayers from the
Bible.
Apart these authors, Atwood refers to classic English literature. Jonathan Swift and
Charles Dickens dominate The Handmaid's Tale. Writings by Jane Austin and the Bronte sisters also serve as intertextual connections because they address women's issues.
Atwood uses Swift's ideas in her compositions, including the use of fictional diaries accompanied by extensive author's notes. In doing so, she acts as a mere editor and publisher of the work. She disguises herself as a character within the narrative. These diaries deliberately mystify readers with their truthfulness.
The author's literacy work is also formed from her own writings. She accomplishes this by creating variations of identical or similar passages and putting them in a different perspective. In the same way, she creates new context when using classical texts.
According to Miola, this represents a paralog.
51 Atwood has repeatedly provided clues to readers in numerous interviews, at least in terms of The Handmaid's Tale. She often spoke about the political situation in these speeches.
Because of these interviews, it is possible to follow the second life of her work. We can, therefore, assert the truth of Barthe's claim concerning permanent intertextuality that continues to develop. For that reason, we can discover parallels between the story of
Gilead and the presidency of Donald Trump.
The same is valid of the younger generation's reception of the televised series, The
Handmaid's Tale. The narrative evolves from an opened work to a closed work. The characters move from hypothetical to concrete figures. However, the archetype of the main character and central motif remain.
The motif of survival, one central to the Canadian culture, is typical of Atwood's work.
The archetype of the Mother prevails in the main characters. According to Maslow's
Hierarchy of Needs, only the handmaid's physiological needs are fulfilled, and higher needs such as a family, self-realization, and emotional needs are denied. Tensions arise when heroines try to solve these shortcomings.
The survival motif is essential for the functioning of the whole work. The lack of social mobility and the rigid system that prevents ascension reflect Biblical, mythological, and other rigid societies. Swift, Orwell, and female Victorian authors also use such societies in their writings. This theme also reflects intertextuality and the author's literary canon.
Other archetypes that Atwood included are Hetaira, Amazoně, and Mediale. Amazoně is represented the least often, and Mediale is reflected in the author's older writings. In The
Handmaid's Tale, Hetaira serves as the archetype for the commanders' wives. In The
Penelopiad, the most prominent is Helen.
The key archetype is that of the Mother. She is depicted from different perspectives.
These include the maternal mother, the mothers of social servants, and the aunts who care for the main characters even while they imprison them. While this archetype is typical for social settings, others are associated with freedom. That freedom either does not occur or is reduced to short moments at night.
Based on Miola's theory, Atwood uses all forms of intertextuality. She uses various methods, including transcripts, paraphrases, and updates. In the spirit of postmodernity,
52 she intentionally confuses the reader about the archetext and its source. The narrative,
The Handmaid's Tale, serves as an urgent warning for the reader.
It is within this strong intertextuality that this author warns readers in both Europe and the United States of those dangers inherent in totalitarianism. She also makes her readers aware that because of repetitive and reactionary political tendencies, those dangers remain relevant to society.
For many socio-political events, especially those in the United States, The Handmaid's
Tale becomes an archetext and, thus, fills a social space related to populism and ridicule.
It encourages the trampling or restriction of women's rights, especially in the area of abortion.
It also becomes an archetext for other Atwood's books. As an example, The Penelopiad, in which the original archetext was that of Greek mythology, serves as an archetext for
The Handmaid's Tale.
Thus, we observe a fascinating journey in a relatively short time. The author transforms a work consisting of many intertextualities into an archetext. This journey is far from complete because of its ability to reach a wide range of readers over half a century. It has gained a place in the contemporary canon of western literature and will likely become an archetext for many other literary works.
Finally, it is necessary to answer the question of whether it is a feminist novel. The archetexts and intertextuality in The Handmaid's Tale show that the narrative is not primarily a feminist novel, as the author has repeatedly confirmed. Instead, it represents a warning parable. Both feminism and the need for a woman's emancipation are strongly represented, a model that has already appeared in Charles Dicken's novels.
A woman longs for a normal family with a husband who allows her self-fulfillment. We observe this longing for a harmonious life in classical novels such as Daniel Defoe's Moll
Flanders. The heroines in The Penelopiad and The Handmaid's Tale also longed for this kind of life.
The Handmaid's Tale was considered a feminist novel at the time of its first publication.
Because of social developments, the story grew in authoritarian intent, thus creating a
53 warning parable. Radical feminist and the current feminist movement criticize the novel's minimal involvement in supporting women's rights
The warning parable is brilliantly elaborated. As a result, even in the twenty-first century, it is a subject of popularity among readers. It is censored in certain social groups and criticized in some parts of the United States, proving the fragility of freedom of speech.
Still, its content remains alive.
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