Department of English
Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University
The Handmaid's Tale
(1985)
Margaret Atwood
(November 18, 1939 – )
Notes
Mary Webster: née Reeve, an ancestor of Margaret Atwood, was accused of being a witch and was hanged but survived the hanging.
Perry Miller: professor of literature and Atwood's mentor at Harvard
9 Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal: satire critiquing state policies. Note the full title of the essay: A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland, from Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick. Atwood has said of Swift's work:
Gulliver's Travels is one of the
great ancestors of these kinds of books as a genre. The thing to be noted
about it is that Swift wrote it as a certain kind of social satire, but he
did it so well, and in such pedestrian detail, that some people thought it
was true. Similarly for A Modest
Proposal, which is a piece of very acerbic satire. However, he
did get some people who said, "Actually that sounds like quite a good
idea...let's cook and eat babies, it would help out with the population
problem...They might be quite good." So I think my point is that there's
always a danger that if you write a piece of social satire, some people
will take it as a recipe. (Reynolds 14)
Chapter 1
13 flannelette:
light cotton flannel (Macmillan Dictionary)
a type of soft cotton cloth, used especially for making sheets and nightclothes (Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary)
Flannelette sheets and flannelette bedding (with images)
Chapter 3
22 catkins:
a group of small flowers hanging like short pieces of string from the branches of particular trees in the spring (Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)
Chapter 4
28 They also serve who only stand and wait:
allusion to the last line of John Milton's Sonnet
XIX ("When I consider how my light is spent"; also called "On His
Blindness") and The
Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard in the Bible (Matthew
20:1–16)
29 Her name is Ofglen: the first time readers are introduced to the system of handmaid's names. See also the first introduction to the narrator as Offred: "My name isn't Offred" (94). Atwood discusses the significance of names:
We
are the animal with syntax. We have the past tense, we have the future
tense, we have the ability to put together subordinate clauses and
qualifying phrases. So that seems to be at the centre of who we are.
Language is therefore very important. And the real name of someone—their
I, their ego—is very much
attached to what kind of language they find themselves embedded within.
It's in every child-raising book: don't tell your child, "You are stupid";
say, "That was a stupid thing to do." In other words, do not attach that
word "stupid" to the child. Attach it to the act. In a way, you could say
that each one of us is composing a narrative, composing "the story of my
life" at every stage of that life. That you are your narrative....You were
not only the history of your own life, you were the history of all your
ancestors' lives as well. I think it is deeply important. And to have your
name taken away from you, and be assigned a number (which is what happened
in the [Nazi-run concentration] camps), is a deeply depersonalising thing
to do to someone. (Reynolds 15, 16)
Chapter 6
41 memento mori: Latin for "remember
that you must die."
Chapter 10
64 Amazing grace:
Amazing Grace (video of song sung by Judy Collins, with lyrics; 4:20 min.)
Liane Hansen, "'Amazing Grace': A New Book Traces the History of a Beloved Hymn"
Amazing Grace (official movie website)
Chapter 14
93 Quakers:
93 Children of Ham: often used to refer to racially black people
Chapter
23
148 Scrabble: a popular word board game invented in the 1930s. Atwood explains the special significance of this game in the novel:
Once something becomes forbidden, it also becomes potentially transgressive, and therefore it acquires an electrical charge. Under slavery in the United States it was legally forbidden for a slave to read or write; it was one of the things they didn't want them to do, because they might get ideas. And the regime in The Handmaid's Tale says, "We won't make that mistake again"—i.e. letting women read.
...
if it's forbidden, and suddenly there are
these two people in a room and one of the people who shouldn't be doing
it is doing it, then it acquires a sexual charge. The language itself—just
the permission to use it, or the little window of opportunity to use it—becomes
very appealing to her, and probably has a certain kinky attraction for
him as well. (Reynolds 14–15)
XII Jezebel's
207 Jezebel: an impudent,
shameless, or morally unrestrained woman (Merriam-Webster)
Historical Notes on The Handmaid's Tale
313 Geoffrey Chaucer:
Geoffrey Chaucer (brief biography)
Chaucer, Geoffrey (from Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
Lee Patterson, "Chaucer" (transcript of lecture)
313
The Underground Femaleroad, The Underground Frailroad: a
female twist on the historical Underground Railroad that brought southern
slaves to freedom in the north of the United States
Study Questions
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Review Sheet
Characters
the Angels – (14)
Aunt Elizabeth – "they had electric cattle prods slung on thongs from their leather belts" (13–14);
Aunt Lydia – (17); "in love with either/or" (18)
Aunt Sara – "they had electric cattle prods slung on things from their leather belts" (13–14);
Commander(s), Commanders of the Faithful – (31)
Cora – (14)
Eye(s) – (28, 30)
Guardian(s), Guardians of the Faith – (23); wear green uniforms "with the crests on their shoulders and berets: two swords, crossed, above a white triangle" (30); not "real soldiers. They're used for routine policing and other menial functions" (30)
Janine, Ofwarren – (14); "vastly pregnant" (36); "one of Aunt Lydia's pets" (37)
Martha(s) – "usual Martha's dress, which is dull green, like a surgeon's gown of the time before" (19); "know things, they talk among themselves, passing the unofficial news from house to house" (21)
Moira – (14)
Nick – "wearing the uniform of the Guardians" (27); lives "in the household, over the garage. Low status: he hasn't been issued a woman...He's too casual, he's not servile enough" (27)
Rita – a Martha; "brown
arms" (19); "her face might be kindly if she would smile" (19);
Serena Joy, the Commander's Wife – lame (19); "blonde...Her eyebrows were plucked into thin arched lines...her eyelids were tired-looking...her eyes...were the flat hostile blue of a midsummer sky in bright sunlight" (25); once the lead soprano on the Growing Souls Gospel Hour TV program (26)
the Unwomen – (20)
the Wife, Wives – (26)
Luke –
former husband of narrator; 21;
Time
Night – "The night is mine, my own time, to do with as I will, as long as I am quiet." (47)
Places
the Colonies – (20)
gymnasium – (13)
Red Centre – (37)
Events
Prayvaganza(s) – (31)
Salvaging(s) – (31)
Sample Student Responses to Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale
Response 1 (responding to a study question about similes):
Rawida Komkai 2202234 Introduction to the Study of English Literature Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri August 31, 2022 Reading Response: The Handmaid’s Tale
Pure Speculation: Mental and Verbal Exercise in The Handmaid’s Tale Speculative fiction, as Atwood calls The Handmaid’s Tale and as she demonstrates in unrolling the past, present and future into one novel, is intensely active storytelling. “The difference between lie and lay” lies in, as it were, the oxymoronic act to “lie still” (47). To be incredibly active while seeming inactive is the narrator’s key to survival in Gilead and the author’s strategy of getting away with speaking an inconvenient truth in our contemporary world. How else can one write such hard facts but through the teeth of fiction? To stay real by lying, as the narrator does, “neatly as they, and step sideways out of my own time. Out of time. Though this is time, nor am I out of it.” This novel, mirroring darkly its narrator Offred’s nighttime travels, spins out of its own time—a product of its time ironically trying to grasp different times. The language of this act of complete guesswork that is rooted in history and current events, then, is magnificently paradoxical: constantly naysaying what it is actually doing, creating similes and disclaiming their links, using facts and presenting them as fiction. Atwood’s frustrating passage in chapter 6 that refuses a tantalizing connection between her similes is elaborated in and explained by the beginning paragraph of chapter 7. In the earlier chapter, the narrator forces dissociation in this manner: “The tulip is not a reason for disbelief in the hanged man, or vice versa. Each thing is valid and really there. It is through a field of such valid objects that I must pick my way, every day and in every way” (43, emphasis mine). Paradox is the eternal struggle between two valid things which cannot be true at the same time yet true. The passage beginning chapter 7 deconstructs the tempting relationship between words and reality in discussing men’s description of their role in sex: “All this is pure speculation. I don’t really know what men used to say. I had only their words for it” (47). The narrator’s difficult problem of perception is explained here as the dangerous temptation of believing reality through hearsay. Like Offred, the author and the reader in their distorted circumstances, must constantly remind themselves to disown what they have a tendency to put too much stock in. What weight is the evidence of words against actuality? “I refuse to say my,” Offred declares even earlier (18) and forgets quickly the reality that she does not own her room, slipping easily into the lure of rhetorical tricks, the habit of language: “I called it mine” (59). The Handmaid’s Tale, with its proliferating similes and self-conscious reminders of the disjunction between what actually happens and the words for it, is therefore imagination hard at work, not least because it envisions a world that could be, necessarily from a world that is, even as it invents a linguistic mirror through which to see it.
Works Cited “An Interview with Margaret Atwood on Her Novel The Handmaid's Tale” <http://www.randomhouse.com/resources/bookgroup/handmaidstale_bgc.html>. Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. London: Joseph, 1979. |
Response
2
Nalini Pongsawang 2202234 Introduction to the Study of English Literature Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri September 6, 2011 Reading Response: The Handmaid’s Tale (revised)
Title <Text of
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Reference
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Essays, Speeches
Speculative Fiction
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Margaret Atwood |
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Reference
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale.
1985. London: Vintage, 2005. Print. (Arts
Library)
Howells, Coral Ann, ed. The
Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006. Print. (Central
Library)
Reynolds, Margaret, and Jonathan Noakes, eds. Margaret Atwood: The Essential Guide. London: Vintage, 2002. Print.
Wilson, Sharon R., Thomas B. Friedman, and Shannon Hengen, eds. Approaches to Teaching Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Other Works. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2000. Print. (Arts Library)
Wisker, Gina. Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale: A Reader's Guide. London: Continuum, 2010. Print. (Arts Library)
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updated August 30, 2012