A Critique of Contemporary World: Margaret Atwood's the Handmaid's Tale
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Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Culturali Comparati Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Lingue e Letterature Europee, Americane e Postcoloniali Tesi di Laurea A Critique of Contemporary World: Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale Relatore Ch. Prof. Shaul Bassi Correlatore Ch. Prof. Laura Tosi Laureanda Tanya Maratta Matricola 831882 Anno Accademico 2017/2018 Table of contents Introduction.......................................................................................................................1 I. The Handmaid's Tale as Dystopia..................................................................................4 1.1. From Utopia to Dystopia................................................................................4 1.2. Writing Utopia..............................................................................................13 1.3. A Female Dystopia........................................................................................16 1.3.1. The Legacy of Nineteen Eighty-Four.............................................19 1.3.2. Language........................................................................................20 1.3.3. Social Stratification........................................................................22 1.3.4. The Gileadean System of Terror....................................................27 II. Historical Background................................................................................................32 2.1. Why the United States?.................................................................................32 2.1.1. A Puritan Heritage..........................................................................34 2.1.2. A Colonial Heritage........................................................................36 2.2. Atwood's Historical Context.........................................................................40 2.3. A Mirror Reflecting Reality..........................................................................42 III. A Postmodern Approach............................................................................................46 3.1. What is Postmodernism?..............................................................................46 3.2. Resistance Through Narrating......................................................................49 3.3. Context is All................................................................................................52 3.4. A Plurality of Perspectives............................................................................54 3.5. Offred's Meditation on Language.................................................................56 3.6. Unreliability of the Narrator.........................................................................57 3.7. The Historical Notes.....................................................................................59 3.8. One Narrative Many Genres: a Gothic Dystopia..........................................63 IV. A Feminist Reading of The Handmaid's Tale............................................................67 4.1. The Feminist Movement: a Brief Overview.................................................67 4.1.1. Atwood's Perspective.....................................................................70 4.1.2. Atwood and the #MeToo movement..............................................71 4.2. A Feminist Narrative.....................................................................................74 4.3. The Anti-Heroine: Offred.............................................................................77 4.4. The Romance Plot.........................................................................................79 4.5. Positive Feminine Models............................................................................86 4.6. Wicked Women.............................................................................................88 4.7. A Critique of Second Wave Feminism..........................................................90 V. The Handmaid's Tale Today........................................................................................94 5.1. The TV show and Trump..............................................................................94 5.2. The Handmaid's Tale and the Environment..................................................98 5.3. The TV Adaptation.....................................................................................101 Conclusion.....................................................................................................................105 Bibliography...................................................................................................................110 Introduction The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate how Atwood's narrative allows its readers to meditate upon numerous issues that are affecting our contemporary world. With The Handmaid's Tale, the Canadian author offers us a new lens through which we can look at the world differently, thus becoming more aware of the dangers which surround us, in politics, in society, in the field of human rights and of environmentalism. To do this, she makes use of a specific literary genre: dystopia. Thus, in the first chapter I explore the world of utopias and dystopias and some of the cornerstones of the genre that widely inspired the writing of The Handmaid's Tale, such as Huxley, Bradbury and especially Orwell. As Atwood has repeatedly affirmed, adhering to the spirit of dystopias, in her narrative, she covers most of the happenings and events of human history. And indeed, in the chapter “Historical Backgrounds”, the thesis investigates all the historical facts the book refers to, from 1980s United States and America's colonial and Puritan past, to 20th-century European and Middle Eastern history. When she decided to create a dystopian society, and to make it as closer to reality as possible, the question Atwood asked herself was: “what kind of totalitarianism would be established in the United States?”. The answer was the theocracy of Gilead. Inspired by the totalitarianisms of the 20th century, Atwood investigates the establishment and the functioning of a dictatorship, from its social hierarchy and its system of terror to submit its citizens, to the manipulation of language and of knowledge. Being a very versatile writer, Atwood introduces certain novelties, skilfully employing some of the tropes of postmodern literary production, such as: the style and the structure of the narrative, with the first person narrator's limited perspective, a non- linear narration, a constant play with language and words, and the final revelation, through the “Historical Notes” chapter, that Offred's narrative is a historical source discussed by some historians during a symposium. Again, the trope of the found manuscript (in this case found tapes) gives Atwood the possibility to explore another important issue: the representation of history, the reliability of the sources, and the difficulties historians have to face in order to study sources and recontruct history, as it is analysed in the third chapter. Also, the tale is so rich that not only does it combine dystopian elements with 1 postmodern elements, but it also exploits many of the tropes of the gothic, with its description of places and situations. Actually, since postmodernism challenges all the notions of hierarchy, therefore the mixing of different genres is one of the main features of postmodern artistic production. Conversely to its predecessors, the main protagonist is a marginalized member of society: a woman. The story also deals with several feminist issues. Surely, it denounces the mistreatment of women within society, the fact that they have always been considered inferior to men and therefore discriminated and often harassed. However, what must be really appreciated about Margaret Atwood, is her just vision of feminism. She openly advocates gender equality: women are not the angels in the house always right by nature, and men are not always the monsters who rape and harass them, perspective I totally agree with, but which is not very common among current feminists, especially with the birth of the #MeToo movement. In chapter IV, the thesis explores Atwood's position, mentioning the controversy arisen after she had advocated one of her colleagues accused of sexual misconduct, and demonstrates how The Handmaid's Tale can be also read as a critique of second wave feminism and of the limits of the movement. In her dystopian world, indeed, just as women, also many men lead a miserable life and have to respect the restrictions that the regime has imposed on them. Moreover, she brilliantly challenges the idea of the perfect and good woman by inserting many wicked female characters who harm other women. In 2017, the premiere of the Hulu adaptation gave new life to Atwood's story. Immeditaely, the sales of the book increased, and the show was very successful among the audience, who entirely appreciated the work of Reed Morano and Bruce Miller. The most striking aspect of a story such as The Handmaid's Tale, is realizing how a book written and published in the 1980s, perfectly fits also the 2010s, and probably this provides an explanation for the immediate success of the TV series. Thus, I decided to prove the connection between the story and our age. It was sufficient to gather as many newspaper articles written in the last few years as possible, to realize how both the book and the TV show seem a product of the 2010s. It was very easy