The Handmaid's Tale: Themes (OCR A Level English Literature)

The Handmaid’s Tale: Themes

Exam responses that are led by ideas are more likely to reach the highest levels of the mark scheme. Exploring the ideas of the text, specifically in relation to the question being asked, will help to increase your fluency and assurance in writing about the novel.

Below are some of the key themes which could be explored in The Handmaid’s Tale. This list is not exhaustive and you are encouraged to identify other ideas or themes you identify within the novel.

• Power

• Gender

• Identity

• Survival and memory

Power

Power is a significant theme in The Handmaid’s Tale due to the layers of control exerted by both individuals and the totalitarian regime. The idea of power and how it is used is explored at its most basic level in terms of who can do what, to whom, and how, and Atwood uses this focus to raise larger questions regarding just how far-fetched this possible near-future actually is.

Knowledge and evidence:

• Gilead is a theocratic dictatorship, which exerts power on its individuals visibly and from the top:

  • Surveillance, and the idea of being constantly watched, is key to Gilead’s power and control through fear and intimidation, whether the surveillance is real or just threatened

• In such a climate of fear and distrust, individuals are unable to be free even to speak their minds:

  • The only place they are free is inside their own heads

  • This applies to everyone in Gilead, regardless of their position

• Language is also used in the novel as a tool of power:

  • Gilead uses an official vocabulary in which individuals are defined by titles, such as “Commander” or “Guardian”

  • There are prescribed greetings for exchanges between people, and specially created terms define the rituals of Gilead, such as “Prayvaganza”

  • Gilead therefore maintains its control over its subjects by maintaining controls over language

• Offred’s relationships with other characters exemplify different types of power

• The Commander is a symbol of power over someone:

  • He is an archetype of power: wealthy, white, male, Christian

  • He also represents power and hypocrisy, as his position allows him to break the rules (and be forgiven for it, which Offred also reflects is a type of power)

• Atwood uses the character of the Commander to explore gender power dynamics

  • Offred’s relationship with the Commander puts her in a vulnerable position, meaning that no matter what the relationship may seem, Offred is always constantly aware of the danger she is in

  • In this society, women are only valued for their ability to bear a child, and the handmaids are in danger if they are not able to do this, as they have no value at all

• Ofglen is symbolic of collaborative power, working as part of the resistance to achieve a common goal:

  • In Gilead, handmaids are prevented from forming friendships with each other

  • This is to ensure that they cannot unite and rebel

  • The careful relationship between Offred and Ofglen demonstrates the potential power of alliances, which can lead to collective action

  • The power of their companionship grows as trust develops between them, empowering them both

  • Information is power, as demonstrated by Ofglen’s suggestions that Offred report back anything she can about the Commander

• Moira is a symbol of an individual’s potential to make change:

  • Offred often thinks of Moira when she feels as though her own identity is fading

  • Moira also symbolises the individual’s ability to take action to alter their circumstances, for example via her escape from the Red Centre

• Despite Gilead’s imposition of order, Offred and other characters demonstrate that even when power is taken away, individuals still have the ability to maintain and manipulate control over themselves and even over others:

  • For example, she is able to subtly use her sexuality in her own small acts of rebellion, and in her relationship with the Commander

  • She is also able to retain control over her memories as a way of escaping her present

  • She is therefore symbolic of the power held within individuals

• Control over reproduction and fertility is the reason for Offred and the other handmaids’ captivity:

  • However, fertility also becomes a source of power

  • This is further demonstrated by Serena Joy’s attempts at tending her garden, a symbol of fertility

• Having been denied all personal possessions, the ability to “own” something is Offred’s way of reclaiming a bit of her own autonomy:

  • Her small act of stealing the daffodil is one way she does this

  • She is not allowed to “own” the Scrabble set or magazines in the Commander’s study, but she still requests something of her own - the handcream

  • After her first encounter with Nick, she continues the affair with him in her own time, thus reclaiming some of her own power (as this goes beyond Serena Joy’s instruction)

• The power dynamic finally shifts at the end, when Offred is above the Commander, looking down at him and he is shrinking:

  • The Commander or Serena Joy are no longer in charge of Offred’s fate as she is taken away, so the power is removed from their hands

What is Atwood’s intention?

• The novel does not just focus on feminine power, but challenges state tyranny, dictatorships and social engineering, which can remove power from both women and men

• By using the “Historical Notes” at the end of the novel, Atwood reveals that Gilead was an unworkable and unsustainable social experiment, which offers hope that such regimes cannot last forever:

  • Ultimately, Gilead is a failed utopia for everyone, as everyone living in it is subject to its rules and rationing - even those who seemingly have power, such as the Commander

• However, Gilead’s patriarchal values, many of which are based in reality, symbolise how, in our society, it is often men who have power over others

• By confining the handmaids to a role that is solely for the purpose of procreation, Gilead is able to strip away anything else that might give them power as women

• Therefore Offred, as a female narrator, presents a feminist version of the story, and uses her inner freedom, her memories, her desires and her small amount of hope as ways of showing her defiance and reclaiming her power

• Atwood deliberately uses social markers and aspects of contemporary society, such as plastic cards, to unnerve the reader in terms of its potential for existence in our own near future

Gender

Gender as a theme in The Handmaid’s Tale is closely linked to both power and identity. Atwood has written a piece of dystopian fiction specifically from a female perspective, and it highlights inequalities based on gender as well as the oppression of other marginalised groups.

Knowledge and evidence:

• Those in charge of Gilead desire a return to traditional, strict gender roles, with women confined to the domestic sphere

• Gilead itself is a religious patriarchy, where roles for both men and women are shaped around Biblical ideas of gender:

  • However, women’s status is further defined by those whose sole purpose is to produce babies, and those who are restricted to other domestic roles

• The language used by Offred to describe her body and Serena Joy’s garden is often poetic and feminine:

  • These signify a traditional feminine response to experience

  • In this way, Offred is able to resist the silence imposed on her by Gilead, and her assigned role as nothing more than a “useable body” (Chapter 26)

• The Commander symbolises masculine ideals:

  • His relationship with Offred, even when it develops, remains fundamentally unequal

  • He still has the power to condemn her to the Colonies or worse

  • He believes his innate superiority is because of his gender

  • So while both men and women are repressed and controlled by Gilead, the Commander is one of those who created the system, and so is the one who is able to manipulate it and benefit from it the most

  • He recognises that there are inequalities and injustice in the system, but he reminds Offred that “better never means better for everyone” (Chapter 32)

• Through the character of Luke, Atwood also suggests that even good men may have embedded misogynistic attitudes:

  • As the Gilead revolutionaries begin to take over and stop women being able to work and withdraw money, Luke does not seem to be so concerned at this turn of events

  • When Offred remembers her and Luke watching Serena Joy on the television before Gilead, Offred remembers finding her frightening, whereas Luke found her funny, as though he realised he could never be threatened by her

• It is also ironic that when the system of government and roles in Gilead have been established, men such as the Commander still appear dissatisfied:

  • In Chapter 25, the Commander tells Offred that his wife wouldn’t understand their relationship, reverting to the stereotypical notion of men and women not understanding each other, and which argument has been taken as justification for unfaithfulness

• Also in the novel is the concept of the “Other”, as in someone who does not belong and who somehow does not fit in with society’s ideals:

  • In The Handmaid’s Tale, those who do not conform to society’s ideals are punished

  • Examples of this are Moira and Ofglen

What is Atwood’s intention?

• Atwood avoids black-and-white divisions of gender and gender roles, forcing the reader to make our own interpretations regarding gender:

  • For example, while the reader may dislike Offred for being too passive, she is a product of her society

• Western societies are typically patriarchal, in which feminine traits are typically viewed as inferior to masculine ones:

  • For example, being emotionally sensitive is viewed as a feminine trait, whereas being strong is viewed as being a masculine strength

• Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale in the 1980s, during a period of Second Wave feminism:

  • This was characterised by the rejection of domesticity, more women entering the workforce, expanded reproductive rights and different strains of feminism emerging during the 1960s and 1970s

  • Through the fictional depiction of Gilead, Atwood is arguing that those who want to return to strict gender roles are a setback to the progress made by both First Wave and Second Wave feminism

Identity

The removal of individual identity in The Handmaid’s Tale is a key way in which the state of Gilead enforces power and control over its citizens.

Knowledge and evidence:

• The loss of identity represents the loss of power, especially for the handmaids:

  • It becomes easier to dehumanise the Handmaids by stripping them of their individuality, thereby making it easier for others to exert control over them

• This is taken further in the novel by defining those who identify as feminist, or handmaids who are infertile, as “unwomen”

• Offred’s individuality and identity are erased by removing freedom of expression, freedom of choice, the written word, companionship and camaraderie, and her name:

  • Offred’s real name is important to her, and she therefore does not reveal it lightly

  • It is one of the few things she still “owns”

• Her identity is fractured, and we as the reader are required to piece together the fragments of her current and past existence in order to connect all of the elements of her as a character

• Offred’s internal battle culminates in her realisation that in order to survive, she must give up her past, and therefore whatever identity she had left

• In Gilead, all aspects of a person’s identity are stripped away until they are only able to identify as the role that Gilead has assigned to them:

  • This applies to both men and women

  • Men are also objectified and reduced to roles, such as the labels put onto the bodies hanging on the Wall

  • Even the Commander wears a uniform to indicate his status and his role

  • Only Nick tries to reclaim an identity beyond his role as Guardian, by rolling up his sleeves and wearing his hat to one side

• However, while other women in Gilead, such as the wives, are also subject to restriction and oppression, they do not face the complete loss of freedom that the handmaids experience:

  • For example, Serena Joy is still allowed to have her hobby of knitting, and the Marthas are allowed to keep their names and gossip with each other

• The handmaids therefore have to resort to different, more subtle ways of retaining and regaining their identities, such as the inscription left by a previous Handmaid that Offred discovers in her closet, and Offred’s own determination to steal a daffodil and press it for whoever comes after her

• Offred longs for a sense of her old identity, as a mother and as a lover, as someone who is valuable and who is valued beyond her biological capacity to bear children:

  • She therefore makes connections to her former self via her memories and [popover id="2u0LSZAUWoVeFbyZ" label="reminiscences"]

• In Chapter 24, Offred makes mental notes about small details of her appearance:

  • This is as though to imprint them onto her memories, as she feels as though she is losing her identity completely

  • Female characters who have metaphorically “retained” their identities, such as Moira, are described in much clearer and fuller detail

What is Atwood’s intention?

• Our identity is our sense of who we are, and is shaped by many factors, such as hobbies, interests, race, religion, class, gender and where you live, to name but a few

• Our identities also shape our relationships and social groups:

  • Therefore, the gradual loss of identity that Gilead imposes on its citizens, and especially on women, limit people’s ability to resist the regime

• Atwood therefore raises the question of whether the needs of a society should outweigh the needs of an individual:

  • As the Historical Notes reveal, Gilead was facing a crisis of shrinking population and environmental pollution

  • It could be argued that those in charge of Gilead were simply attempting to do what they thought was best for the greatest number of people

• However, in this case, the ideology is flawed, as the fault is placed with women, and never the men, who also display rank hypocrisy in their actions

• The effect of a social experiment such as this is focused via the perspective of one woman, Offred, who is the handmaid of the tale

Survival and memory

Offred’s first priority is to stay alive, and her emotional survival, via her memories, is linked to her sense of self and regaining some small element of power and control over the regime of Gilead.

Knowledge and evidence:

• All of the citizens of Gilead, from the top to the bottom, are subject to some form of surveillance, and the fear and very real threat of death is a constant undercurrent

• Therefore, the characters of the novel all have to find some way of surviving:

  • Serena Joy copes with the humiliation and bitterness of her situation through her knitting, gardening and some sense of community with the other wives

  • The Commander tries to find connection in his unorthodox relationship with Offred

• Offred herself asserts that she is determined to survive from the outset:

  • She conforms and does what she is required to do in order to survive physically

  • She also uses storytelling as a way of resisting Gilead’s efforts to erase her individual identity

  • Her memories are narrated as fragmented stories of the past, interleaved with her present

  • Her story is eventually found as a recording, echoing the tradition of oral storytelling passed down through generations

• Even near the end of the novel, as Offred experiences despair at her situation, she still wills herself to keep on living in any form

• Offred’s memories are her way of recalling a sense of self:

  • She tries to hold onto these, even as she can feel them slipping away

  • As the novel progresses, Offred occasionally refers to her family and friends in the past tense, rather than the present, and then corrects herself

    • For example, in Chapter 28 when speaking about Moira: “She was still my oldest friend. Is.”

• Another way Offred survives is by making a connection with Nick, even though she knows this could put her very survival at risk:

  • But for once, she is in control of her body and her desires, rather than this being something done to her

• However, ultimately whether she survives or not is still taken out of her hands, and even the reader is left unclear whether she ends up safe or not

What is Atwood’s intention?

• The importance of memory to our identities and sense of self is underscored by the prominence of memory in the novel

• The novel also raises questions about the theme of survival not only for an individual, but also for a nation or for the human species

• One of these questions is whether it is possible to make a judgement about a culture outside of its boundaries, as raised via the Historical Notes

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