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CHAPTER FIVE the Handmaid's Tale: Offred's Political Journey

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CHAPTER FIVE the Handmaid's Tale: Offred's Political Journey CHAPTER FIVE The Handmaid's Tale: Offred's Political Journey "Nothing happens unless first a dream.' Carl Sandburg I. The Exploited Female: Isolation, Alienation and Fragmentation of Body and Self landscape, mirrors, fragmented consciousness, curtains, body fragments, names, gardens and flowers II. Dystopias and Utopias: Sterility versus Fertility and the Tension Between Nature and Civilisation nature, gardens, ceremonies and rituals, colours, death III. The Pyramid Structure: Gender Roles, Sexuality and Power Struggles clothing, domestic chores, dolls, birds, language, and machines IV. Discovering the Female Space: A Room of One's Own Rooms, insides-outsides, games, blood, wall, maze, sponge and enclosures V. A Politics of Survival: Restructuring and Restoring Human Relationships for Personal Identity Windows and doors, roads, inner cycles and rhythms, fire, seasons, babies, trees, moon, sunlight, water, human relationships 275 Margaret Atwood's sixth novel, The Handmaid's Tale (1986) is the most political of her novels, and as has been pointed out by several critics, it follows the tradition of George Orwell's 1984, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal. The novel is told in a framed perspective: a woman forced to stay in the "Republic of Gilead'" was keeping a taped journal from which a transcript has been made and published in a time after the Republic of Gilead has passed away. The afterword sets up the framework of a historical society discussing this manuscript and commenting on the Gileadean period in history. The protagonist is an ordinary woman—raised by a single mother (a feminist activist who saw warning signs of anti-woman trends in society), married to a divorced man, and mother of one child, a daughter. She is literally captured when she tries to escape the country with her child and husband. Atwood weaves many elements into the novel: hatred of feminism, religious bigotry, racism, contempt towards older women, environmental destruction, and religious patriarchal control of women's bodies which are part of the background of the novel. And thus, the novel is a kaleidoscope of our literary and social/political landscape of the last decades.' The Handmaid's Tale is a fictional narrative attempting to imagine what kind of values might evolve if environmental pollution rendered most of the human race sterile. The novel strikes the reader with its unmistakable voice, its incantory first person enunciation, Biblical overtones and dazzling metaphors. In this chapter, the task of the researcher will be to examine the major themes of the novel, through patterns and clusters of images. The major concerns that will be discussed 276 in detail are: Alienation and isolation of the exploited female which results in the fragmentation of the body and self, Tension between nature and civilisation—Utopias and Dystopias, Gender roles, sexuality and power struggles, Discovering the female space—A room of one's own, and Atwood's Politics for survival that is based on building and restoring human relationships which are crucial to finding personal identity. The predominant images which convey these concerns are: landscape, mirrors, rooms, curtains, body fragments, gardens and flowers, light and darkness, food, colours, clothing, birds, games, machines, language, circles and spheres, seasons, windows, doors and pathways, characters and relationships. Though at first glance these images presented in the novel may appear to be a heterogeneous collection of fragments, it actually turns out to be a single, composite whole for elucidating the themes. The theme of alienation and the division of body and mind resulting in identity crisis, again a central concern in Atwood's writing, is studied in depth. Many images of imprisonment and fragmentation explicate this theme. The protagonist's political journey through the stages of alienation- awareness-survival is traced through these images. Each of the main concerns in the novel is accurate enough to serve as the starting point for a discussion of the theme of The Handmaid's Tale, but it must be recognised that each of these ideas emphasises only one aspect of the content of the novel while ignoring Or diminishing the importance of other aspects. A full examination of the themafic concerns of this novel would include all the ideas listed above, as well as, other ideas which are related to them. The novel begins with the presentation of the narrator's circumstances as a handmaid and what life was for both her and other handmaids in the Republic of Gilead. The basic idea 277 that it presents is the exploitation of human beings in political structures, which is clearly evident in the man-woman and woman-woman relationships. The three allusions used in the epigraph of The Handmaid's Tale are controlling ideas which function as metaphors for its themes. The Biblical reference to the practice of having handmaids in the Judeo-Christian tradition in Genesis, with special reference to Jacob and Rachel story, for producing off-spring; Jonathan Swift's satire proposing human beings, children in particular, to be sold as commodity, and the Sufi proverb: "In the desert, there is no sign that says. Thou shalt not eat stones", which suggests confidence and freedom, are very intelligently used by Atwood. She uses these allusions to develop the protagonist's role and predicament as a handmaid, and the loss of her female identity and her potential for survival. Like the contemporary novelist Doris Lessing, Atwood may also be attracted to Sufi traditions for their celebration of female strength and leadership. And one cannot dismiss the possibility that Atwood the trickster enjoys the prospect of baffling literary critics with an enigmatic epigraph outside their comfortably familiar Judeo-Christian range of references.^ Offred's physical, mental, emotional, and ethical struggles in Gilead, and her paradoxical survival at the end of the novel, is expounded through these allusions. Further, these three allusions also provide structure to the novel in the narrator's political journey from fear to faith Images and symbols in the novel function as guidelines for the reader and are indicators of the character's beliefs and feelings. And the prevalence of symbolism in the novel has tempted some readers and critics to seek allegorical meanings. 278 Offred, the protagonist of The Handmaid's Tale, is the most alienated and isolated characters in the four novels analysed in this thesis. She is trapped in a repressive and regressive society run by a group of madmen. And as a handmaid, she fills a pivotal role in this society performing the most important function of reproduction in a sterile world. The handmaids, "reproductive vessels", are women who were unmarried or whose marriage was considered void at the time of the coup. They are assigned to male officials whose wives have failed to bear children, on the assumption that it is always the woman who is barren. If they are successful in having a healthy child within three assignments, they are saved; if they fail, they are sent to the Colonies to die gruesomely handling toxic wastes. The specific problem of this novel deals with the difficulty of maintaining an individual personality—in this case, a feminine personality—within the confines of a stereotyped social role in The Republic of Gilead. The novel introduces the 'breaking images' right in the first chapter. Isolated from her family and country, the protagonist is provided an almost bare room, special clothing (red robe and white veil), and is given a new name: "Offred". Her freedom to move in society is limited and by the nature of her situation, she is very circumscribed; she cannot communicate freely with people; it is too dangerous. Offred is boxed in, jailed and segregated. Displacement, an important theme in Atwood's writing is evident. The entire landscape of Gilead and its descriptions are significantly pictured to represent both the physical and mental fragmentation of the protagonist which is seen in the description of the room she sleeps in: 279 We slept in what had once been the gymnasium... the pungent smell of sweat, shot through with the sweet taint of chewing gum and perfume...there was old sex in the room and loneliness, and expectation of something without a shape or name (p. 3). The very first sentence of the novel tells us something of the period and society. People generally slept in gymnasiums only in emergencies after disasters. But this "once had been a gymnasium", implies that it was converted to its present use a long time ago. Some major change has taken place, probably not for the good. A 'palimpset' was created when a medieval scribe tried to scrape clean a parchment in order to re-use it. The gymnasium is a place for exercising and playing games, and this is what happens in the novel—the game of politics, which controls the lives of these handmaids. The room is described through negative images, and there are several missing things in the room: "...nets gone, the pungent scent of sweat... music which is a forlorn wail, garlands made of tissue paper, cardboard devils" (p. 3). "The chandelier in the centre of it a blank space like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out" (p. 9). The larger landscape of the Republic of Gilead is described as follows: There are no children. This is the heart of Gilead, where the war cannot intrude except on television where the edges aren't sure, they vary, according to the attacks and counter-attacks... (p. 31). The description of Serena Joy's, the Commander's Wife's, sitting room is as: The kind with a spider and flies, subdivided, symmetrical. It is one of the shapes money takes when it freezes, underground cavern, crusting and hardening like stalactites into these forms...paintings of women...their backs and mouths stiff, their breasts constricted, their faces pinched, their caps starched, their skin greyish, white guarding the room with their narrowed eyes (102).
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