Aldous Huxley talks about ‘Brave New World’ and ‘1984’

In this short video Aldous Huxley talks about his own book ‘Brave New World’ and George Orwell’s ‘1984’. The clip may be of use to those of you who are using dystopian texts as part of the research assessment.

What to revise for The Handmaid’s Tale

I have has a lot of questions about what to focus on when revising ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. It is a long book and there are so many things that could write about. So here are a few suggestions.

Show the marker of your essay that you’re familiar with how the book reflects feminist concerns about Western (and particularly American) society’s views on women’s rights in the late 20th century; issues such as rights to equal employment, to political activity, to contraception and, crucially, for The Handmaid’s Tale – rights to abortion.

Also, it’s impressive if you can mention that the Handmaid’s Tale reflects a dystopian world (the opposite of Utopia). It depicts a totalitarian state where those in power seek to abolish all personal freedoms – even those of thought; this theme is also explored in 1984 by George Orwell and in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and is a common theme in 20th century fiction.

In terms of the quotations to remember, I would go into the exam with quotations which provide evidence of:
– Character (qualities) and characterisation (how the writer tells us/reveals to us what they’re like)
– The significance of the setting(s) in time and place
– The narrative point of view and how it can give us a privileged insight into the character’s mind
– Key moments/scenes in the story (plot features) and
– An ability to describe the structure of the story – not chapter wise, just a broad general outline.
– I would also want a quotation which I could use at the end of the essay in the conclusion – something that you think gets right to the heart of what the book is about.

Quotations

Here are some key thematic quotations you might want to consider:

1. ‘This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will.’ End chpt 6.
Gilead can transform a natural human response into horror or blankness.

2. ‘If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending.’
Offred feels story telling is a rebellion. Gilead can’t control her inner life.

3. ‘I’m in a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear which is hard and more real than I am…’
Offred shows here she has internalised Gilead’s psychological persuasion that her womb is a national resource.

4. ‘He was not a monster, to her.’
Shows the Nazi guard mentality of the Commander – kind, gentle but responsible for oppression.

5. ‘The main problem was with the men. Inability to feel. Men were turning off sex, even.’
Atwood commenting on a post feminist backlash nightmare. Here men explain how feminists emasculated them (‘an inability to feel’) thereby justifying a consequent regaining of status through limiting women’s and their own freedom.

More on Moira

The material below is from NovelGuide.

What role does Moira play in the novel?

Moira is Offred’s best friend. She is a part of Offred’s life in all three time phases of the novel. In the “time before” they were easy-going college students together, and they meet again at the Red Centre. Moira is a strong-willed woman who is not intimidated by the regime. She possesses an irreverent sense of humour and is like a breath of fresh air in the stilted, enclosed, fearful world of the Centre. The first thing she says to Offred when they meet again is simply, “This is a loony bin ” (ch. 13). This reveals Moira’s down-to-earth nature, her willingness to describe things the way they are. Moira has a strength that makes Offred feel safer just because of her presence. There is something indomitable about her. When Moira first tells Offred about her plan to escape, Offred cannot bear the thought of being without her. But Moira is determined. Unlike Offred, she will not put up with how she is treated. She has the courage to resist. Even when she is whipped on the soles of her feet after her failed attempt to escape, she is not broken. She simply comes up with a better plan and escapes again. It seems as if nothing can break her or stop her from being herself.

After her escape, Moira becomes a kind of mythic figure for the others at the Red Center, a symbol of defiance and resistance. Because of Moira, Offred says, “the Aunts were less fearsome and more absurd. Their power had a flaw in it” (ch. 22).

However, it is debatable whether Moira continues in this heroic role throughout the novel. When Offred sees her again at Jezebel’s, Moira is still in one sense her old irrepressible self. But in another sense she has changed. She has made her accommodation with the regime, and has no plans to escape from her role as a sex servant. The position allows her to have as much sex with other women as she wants, and she also has access to drugs and alcohol. Offred finds herself wanting Moira once again to act heroically, but it seems that even Moira has her limits. The regime offered her something she found tolerable-even though it is sordid-and she took the opportunity. So eventually the regime found a way of silencing even Moira.

Check out my previous post on Moira.

The significance of Moira

In ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Moira represents strength and hope for Offred (and for the reader, too) as she rebels against the totalitarian system under which she is forced to live. She is also a link with the old days at college, and Offred recalls her rebellion against the rules then, too. She seems to epitomise a woman who has rejected Gilead’s philosophy in a variety of ways.

Moira never becomes a handmaid; so she retains her own name, and hence she seems less subservient and more individualised.

She is bisexual and a staunch feminist. These firmly help views allow her to defy the role of women and offer a small token of resistance to Gilead. Her views and preferences also mean that she rejects male/female interaction.

Moira is self-deprecating, amusing and outrageous – certainly not fitting into the role of passive and accepting ‘vessel’ for the production of the next generation.

Her escape attempts show her to be resourceful and clever. By stealing a uniform she could be seen as offering another act of defiance to the suffocating society in which she is living, as clothing is used to define the lack of identity and “typing” into roles.

Her final subjugation and disappearance in the later stages of the novel are also significant symbols, but of defeat. They demonstrate that one person cannot succeed in such a crushing regime, and she becomes one fragmentary part of the history of Gilead.

Identity in The Handmaid’s Tale

A key theme in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is that of identity. Atwood’s central concern is how women are defined by their traditional roles in society. In ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, people, and women in particular, are reduced to serving a function in society rather than living as free thinking individuals with an identity.

Offred clearly shines through as an individual in the text. Her narrative voice is often humorous (albeit in a sardonic way) and she is able to reflect some optimism about the good things she finds around her. Clearly, she is more of an individual than simply the contribution of her ovaries!

We are given a sense of individuality through Offred’s referral to those in authority as ‘they’ or ‘them’. We do not know much more about them but this gives us the sense that they are the faceless, nameless ones and that they should be feared.

Identity is thus addressed as a key theme of the text and also through the narrative voice of Offred.

Sex and status in The Handmaid’s Tale

As all students know by now (I hope!) the plot of The Handmaid’s Tale concerns an overthrow of a contemporary U.S. government by religious zealots who seize fertile women in an effort to control what has now become a vital resource. The reason fertile women are so rare is that pollution and nuclear disaster has rendered many women — and men–infertile.

Offred the narrator of the book is an unremarkable woman before the religious Republic of Gilead comes into control, and it is her pragmatic response to the turmoil that makes the book such an interesting read. As one of the few women with viable ovaries, Offred is required to serve as surrogate mother for a high-status military officer and his wife. If she is impregnated while lying between the knees of the commander’s wife, her child will be theirs. Once breastfeeding is completed, her connection to the infant will be over, and she will travel to another house to become impregnated again. Offred’s failure to become pregnant by her commander inspires her to have an affair with a member of the household staff (at first arranged by the commander’s wife, then continued illicitly), become pregnant by him, and then escape as the fighting for supremacy in the Republic of Gilead continues. A post-script to the novel indicates that the power of the Republic was short-lived, and that it led to a decline in North American power and culture in general. Other countries, less susceptible to sexual oppression and religious intolerance, less spoiled by nuclear disaster and ecological foolishness, have claimed the role as world leaders while the United States foundered.

The novel takes a passage from the Bible for its central idea: Genesis 30:1-3, which suggests that important men may have children with their servants if their wives cannot, that a handmaid’s duty may be also to provide offspring for the powerful couple. It is helpful to review Genesis so that you understand the whole tale of Rachel and Jacob. Rachel is more of a competitor with her sister Leah than a barren woman desperately in need to be mother. Leah is a wife to the same husband and she also feels in a race to bear sons. The husband, Jacob, loves Rachel more than Leah, yet copulates and impregnates both sisters and their handmaids. We don’t see Leah worrying that Jacob loves her less, or Rachel triumphant because Jacob loves her more: only the number of births matter in determining the worth — and happiness — of the wives. It seems that the message we receive is that children don’t have to be a reflection of the love between two people, rather, they can be seen as the prize in a competition between mothers, with each birth adding to the value of the wife, even if the birth is from her handmaid, and not from the wife herself.

There are several ways to distinguish the status of a woman in the Republic of Gilead. Western cultures tend to name children after their fathers, but this patrilineal system is discarded by the Republic of Gilead, at least as far as the Handmaids are concerned. Handmaids are given the prefix Of- to the name of the Commander they serve. Since Offred’s Commander’s name is Fred, hers becomes Offred, at least while she is living with him and his wife. When and if she leaves to serve another couple, her name will change again. It is forbidden to tell others your name from “the time before,” and in this way women are even more isolated and unlikely to be rescued from their roles as baby factories. As everyone is a potential spy, it is a real risk to discuss anything other than positive news about the Republic’s Wars or the joy that being a Handmaid brings. There are other systems in place to separate women from forming friendships and supportive communities as well.

In Gilead status and function are clearly communicated by clothing and colour. Women belong to a class system in Atwood’s novel that links their status to that of their husbands and childbearing ability. The wives wear blue, have the highest status, and maintain their first names, though they undoubtedly adopt their husband’s patronymic after marriage. The Aunts are brown-garbed ‘Uncle Toms’, oppressing their sisters to appease the men that don’t hold them equal. Aunts are the manipulative mouthpieces of the commanders, always trying to believe that “freedom from” (sex? choice? independence?) is much better than “freedom to.” The Marthas are servants who wear dull green, and the Unwomen of the Colonies, infertile or old women who clean up toxic waste and battlefields, wear gray. The Handmaids wear red, symbolic of blood and birth and sex and life; depending on the eye and leanings of the beholder. Econowives wear stripes of all colours, for they must perform all of the duties assigned to females, cleaning, giving birth, and being homemakers as well, though there is a promise that Econowives won’t have to exist much longer, after the dust from the takeover settles. Daughters wear white until their marriages, which take place shortly after menstruation, since their work will be to repopulate the land with as many children as they can have before their childbearing years end. With a population crisis on hand the girls are not allows to wait for emotional maturity: bearing children and caring for their husbands, who will be promoted if a wife or Handmaid bears a child.

Atwood herself has indicated that part of the book was inspired by a trip to Afghanistan in the late 1970s. She and her husband were impressed by the beauty of the country but noticed the silence of its women, who rarely spoke or looked directly at them. I know that many of you have examples of the challenges women living right now face in their cultures and understand the allusions in Atwood’s novel. Certainly the impulse to shame females out of their sexuality by the Aunts in The Handmaid’s Tale will seem mild compared to the routine clitoridectomies (removal of the clitoris and sometimes partial removal or suturing of the labia) done in some parts of Africa and the Middle East. This view into other cultures and their attitudes to women has hopefully allowed you to glimpse life though unfamiliar eyes, and to see your own lives with greater clarity.

Adapted from Sexual Oppression and Religious Extremism in Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Diana T. Otto.

Imagery and allusions in The Handmaid’s Tale

Leah and Rachel

The allusions in “The Handmaid’s Tale” are very wide-ranging, stretching from the Bible to late twentieth century feminism and environmental issues. There are also references to seventeenth-century American Puritanism, the slave trade, Nazism and pornographic films, as well as motifs from fairytales, quotations from Shakespeare, John Milton, Rene Descartes, Tennyson, Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx. The ‘Historical Notes’ add another layer of reference in an effort to set Gilead within an international history of totalitarianism and various forms of institutional oppression. This range of references is part of Margaret Atwood’s strategy for constructing her modern anti-utopia, and it is also a mark of her own impressive level of cultural literacy. However, the allusions in the novel are not daunting, for it uses allusions very wittily, one of its functions being to mesh together social details with which we are all familiar in order to show us how they might be shaped into a pattern for a future which we would choose to avoid.
It is Offred’s narrative voice transcribed into text which situates her as an individual woman grounded in place and time, whose identity transcends that of her Handmaid’s role. Through the language she uses, rather than the events of the story she tells, Offred convinces us of her resistance to Gilead’s values. Offred’s outer life is very constricted and drained of emotion, but her inner life has an energy and lyricism which enable her to survive emotionally as well as physically in the repressive state Gilead. There is a marked difference between the language she uses to record her muted everyday life, and the language of her real life of feeling and memory, which is expressed through a richly worked vocabulary of images. These register her entirely different perception of herself and her world from the one imposed by Gilead.
You will have noticed that there are a small number of recurrent images which form patterns or ‘image clusters’ throughout her narrative. They derive from the human body (hands, feet, faces, eyes, blood, wombs), also from non-human nature (flowers, gardens, changing seasons, colour and light – especially moonlight). Offred’s images, all related to nature and organic processes, constitute a ‘feminine’ language that works in opposition to Gilead’s polluted technological nightmare and its accompanying rhetoric.
Gilead’s official language with its texture of biblical allusions and deceit is likely to cause problems for most readers especially the biblical references and their significance. Gilead’s social principles are based on the Old Testament, where patriarchal authority is justified as the law of God. There are far more references to the Old than to the New Testament, a common feature of more extreme sects where the archaic language of patriarchy is used as a mechanism for social control. The patriarch Jacob is the state hero, and the name Gilead is closely associated with Jacob, for that was the place where he set up his heap of stones as witness to God and where heestablished his household, his lineage and his flocks and herds (see the note on Gilead in the detailed summary of Chapter 5).
The first quotation in the epigraph directs our attention to Genesis 30:1-3, which is the beginning of the story about Jacob and his two wives Rachel and Leah and their two handmaids who are required to produce children for them. As the basis of the novel it is reiterated many times in the text, most notably in the family Bible reading before the monthly Ceremony, and there are echoes of it in the name of the Rachel and Leah Center and in Offred’s remark that ‘Give me children, or else I die’ can have more than one meaning for her as a Handmaid (Chapter 11). The New Testament is less in evidence, though there is one long passage quoted (I Timothy 2:9-15) which is used at the mass marriage ceremony in Chapter 34 as part of Gilead’s propaganda about male domination and female submission.
In such a society biblical references pervade every level of discourse. Gilead’s leaders understand very well the importance of language as the main instrument of ideological control, and indeed it is just as repressive an instrument as the army and the police, and a great deal more insidious because rituals of naming determine the way we think about our lives. The law enforcers themselves are named after Old Testament figures, whether they are ‘Guardian Angels’ or the ‘Eyes of the Lord’.
On the domestic level, women’s roles are given biblical significance, as in the case of the Handmaids, of course, but also in that of the female servants who become ‘Marthas’ after the woman who served Christ. The use of the name ‘Jezebel’s’ for the state-run brothel, makes Gilead’s misogyny plain, for Jezebel’s name suggests the scandal of female sexuality which Gilead can neither condone nor ignore. In a country where God is treated as a ‘national resource’, biblical names filter into the commercial world. The car brand names available are ‘Behemoth’, Whirlwind’ or ‘Chariot’ and shops have been renamed with pictorial signs which pick up biblical texts like ‘Lilies of the Field’ and ‘All Flesh’. It is an ironic comment on the fact that such naming is only the most superficial sanctification of shopping by coupons, for everything is rationed in Gilead.
Perhaps the funniest misappropriation is Aunt Lydia’s exhortation to the Handmaids, which she claims is from St Paul: ‘From each according to her ability, to each according to his needs’ (Chapter 20). These words are not in the Bible at all; they are a garbled version of Karl Marx’s description of systems of production, though they do make the point that Aunt Lydia wished to stress about service roles. In a similar way the Freudian reference to ‘Pen Is Envy’ (Chapter 29) and the Miltonic reference, ‘They also serve (Chapter 4) also emphasise women’s subservience to men.
We may conclude that Gilead uses biblical references to underwrite patriarchal interests, but it uses them very selectively and sometimes inaccurately. The Word is in the mouths of men only, just as the Bible is kept locked up and only Commanders are allowed to read it. Even the hymns are edited, and Moira’s dissenting version of ‘There is a Balm in Gilead’ (Chapter 34) is muffled in the massed choir of the Handmaids. Offred prays quite often in her own private way, saying her version of the Lord’s Prayer (Chapter 30) or crying out to God in despair (Chapter 45), but again her voice is muted. Gilead’s official discourse is a hybridised rhetoric which combines biblical language with traces of American capitalist phrases (‘In God We Trust is the motto on the dollar bill), Marxism and feminism. It uses and abuses the Bible in the same way as it uses the slogans of the liberal ideology it has overthrown. One hostile Old Testament reference which Gilead chooses not to use occurs in Hosea 6:8: ‘Gilead is a city of wicked men, stained with footprints of blood.’

The Historical Notes

The ‘Historical Notes’ are not part of Offred’s narrative, but they are part of the novel and they function as a necessary supplement to her story, helping us to put one woman’s autobiographical record into historical perspective. Told by a male narrator, Professor Pieixoto from the University of Cambridge, England, at an academic conference 200 years after Offred tells her story, these ‘Notes’ introduce another futuristic scenario which is different from the story of Gilead.
At the University of Denay, Nunavit, up in Arctic Canada, women and Native peoples obviously have some status, for the Chair is a woman professor, Maryann Crescent Moon, and the conference participants go on nature walks and eat fish from the sea (Arctic Char), which suggests an unpolluted environment very different from Gilead. However, Professor Pieixoto’s jokes about ‘tails’ and ‘frailroads’ suggest that the old sexist attitudes have not changed very much in 200 years. His view leads him to reconstruct the social theory of Gilead and to compare its system with many other examples of tyranny: ‘As I have said elsewhere, there was little that was truly original with or indigenous to Gilead: its genius was synthesis.’ He establishes a historical context for Offred’s narrative, just as he gives a detailed account of how her story was recovered from old cassette tapes made between the 1960s and the 1980s, but for all his mass of social data, he is not concerned with Offred as an individual. He is interested in establishing the authenticity of her tale and its value as objective historical evidence, while side stepping the critical moral issues raised by her account: ‘Our job is not to censure but to understand.’ He does not seem to be as interested in finding out her identity as he is in establishing the identity of her Commander. He offers two possible identifications: Waterford, who ‘possessed a background in market research’, or the more sinister figure of Judd, who was involved with the CIA. Offred has already told us that her Commander was in ‘market research’ (Chapter 29), but Professor Pieixoto does not seem to regard her testimony as reliable. His reconstruction makes a radical shift from ‘her story’ to ‘history’ as he tries to discredit Offred’s narrative by accusing her of not paying attention to important things. He does not take notice of what she has chosen to tell, a tale of the suffering and oppression of all women and most men in Gilead. As a result, the reader may feel that it is the professor who is paying attention to the wrong things. His account obliterates Offred as a person; he never tells what happened to her because he does not know and apparently is not interested. Ironically, he does exactly what Offred predicted would happen to the story of the Handmaids: ‘From the point of view of future history, we’ll be invisible.’ He is abusing Offred as Gilead abused her, removing her authority over her own life story and renaming it in a gesture similar to Gilead’s suppression of a woman’s identity in the Handmaid’s role. The change in voice from Offred’s personal, subjective account to Professor Pieixoto’s generalised academic discourse forces us to take up a moral position on what we have just read, to become engaged readers. The novel ends on a question which invites us to enter the debate, having heard two opposite perspectives on the story. This is the point at which Atwood’s novel assumes the didactic tone which is a distinctive mark of anti-utopian (dystopian) fiction, as it moves beyond the confines of an imagined world to become a warning to us of a future to be avoided in real life.

Check out more here and perhaps here or even here.

Offred recap

Offred is the narrator of the story. Her story is told in a stream of consciousness style, with memories and thoughts cutting into the relating of events. Her voice is educated and sometimes amusing, but she is a fallible narrator, as her story is so isolated. The historical notes at the end accentuate this fallibility as the authenticity of her story is questioned.

Offred is a thirty-three-year-old woman who is assigned to the Commander as his Handmaid. She is expected to produce children for him. Offred never says what her name was in the “time before.” In that time she was married to Luke and they had a young daughter. She worked in a library. But when the Republic of Gilead was formed, all that changed. She lost her job and as a woman was not allowed to own money or property. She, Luke and their daughter tried to escape but were caught near the Canadian border, after which Offred was sent to the Red Centre to be trained as a Handmaid. When she was assigned to the Commander she acquired the name Offred, signifying that she had no independent existence, but belonged to Fred, which was the Commander’s first name.

Offred tells her story in the present tense, which is impossible because she could not have recorded it at the time that she is describing. Her memories seem almost hyper real in their descriptiveness and observations. Her mental state is described through the fractured form of the narrative. Offred is a thoughtful, reflective, sometimes passive woman, not given to rash acts of courage, but hardly reconciled to her new life. She does not accept the propaganda of the new regime and stubbornly retains her right to think for herself. She uses her mental clarity to retain her sanity and help her to cope with her extremely restricted and tormented life. Sometimes, however, she is desperate, keenly feeling how much she has lost and wondering how she can go on living in such a situation. On one occasion she feels like she has been buried alive.

Offred sometimes reproaches herself because she does not have the same courage as her close friend, Moira. Too often, she thinks, she just goes along with what is expected of her because naturally enough she wants to survive. She does not want to end up hanging at the Wall, where the corpses of those who have been executed are left on public display. However, Offred does become reckless when she gets involved with Nick. She knows it is dangerous for her to keep seeing him in his room, but she has been starved of a warm human relationship for so long that it is impossible for her to hold back. Her actions and inactions in the days leading up to the revolution make the reader further question her personality and character, as she seems to have been unwilling to fight for herself. Offred holds Moira up to be a symbol of female empowerment and hope; this is broken when they meet again at Jezebel’s. Her potential saviour is not Moira, but Nick. This suggests that men hold her future in their hands, despite her desire for this not to be the case.

Short Guide to The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale was written in the mid-eighties, at a time when right-wing politics had a hold over America and much of the Western world. This came hand in hand with the rise of the religious right in America, which preached stringent anti-abortion messages and criticised women for going out to work and not staying at home, looking after their children as the Bible supposedly suggested they should.

This was partly in response to feminism of the seventies, which asked for equality between the sexes. Many men (and women) found this threatening, and actively sought to misrepresent the aims of feminism as the desire for women to be the superior sex; even now, there are similar attitudes expressed in the press.

Atwood was interested in exploring ideas of what it would mean if an extreme right-wing group came to power in America; she created a near future dystopia, much along the lines of George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World to present many of her concerns through the Speculative fiction genre. This type of writing expresses contemporary worries through metaphor or exaggeration; science fiction films such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers echoed the American fear of Communist invasion during the fifties. In fact, even though it is set in the future, many of the attitudes to women expressed by Gileadean men are directly traceable to attitudes of the past.

However, the novel does not solely concentrate on male attitudes to women, as it also echoes the in fighting that occurred amongst feminists. Pornography split the movement down the middle, as some women argued that it should be banned totally as it was demeaning to women, while others saw the central point of debate to be the issue of freedom of speech. Offred’s mother is involved in anti-pornography rallies, but also appears to be pro-abortion: many feminists thought that the two stances were not complimentary. Accordingly, the movement lost some impetus because of this split.

As well as this, many women who had gained by feminism had turned their backs on the ideological pioneers of a few years before, choosing to remain ignorant about the struggles that had been endured for their freedoms (of work, ownership, the right to choose a life other than motherhood and marriage). Offred is one such woman who realises only too late that she took for granted what so many other women before her could not.

The events of the novel take place over several years, and are recounted through flashbacks and a narrative that appears to be recorded at the time that events occurred. This cannot be the case, though, as Offred has no access to recording material during the time remembered. The flashback episodes deal with the gradual emergence and coming to power of the Gilead regime.

The novel opens with Offred’s memories of the Red Centre, where much of her memories reside. She strikes an elegiac tone to describe what existed before, and what she had. Her narrative is internal because of the amount of time she spends by herself as a Handmaid, and because she cannot talk to anyone openly.

In preparing to go out shopping, Offred describes the inhabitants of the house where she lives, what they do, and specifically her first meeting with the wife of the house, Serena Joy. We learn more about her later. Nick is mentioned as she leaves to meet Ofglen, who is her shopping partner.

When out shopping, Offred recounts the changes that have been made to the town where she has lived all her life, it seems. They see other Handmaids, including one who is pregnant, and also some Japanese tourists who provide a counter balance of near normality for the reader.

After shopping, Ofglen and Offred go to the Wall, where traitors’ bodies are displayed as a warning to others. Once back, Offred slips off into thinking about the past and Moira; events of the novel are interspersed with memories of the past, and Moira plays a large part in Offred’s thoughts. She also thinks about how her daughter was nearly kidnapped, and then her mother. These fragmented memories provide glimpses of the past that can be grafted together by the reader to understand what has happened.

Out, again, Ofglen subtly mentions the underground resistance movement called Mayday, but Offred does not respond and remains silent, as she does not understand the full implications of what has been said. When she goes back to the house, she thinks about how she recognised Serena Joy from the television before Gilead existed. Serena Joy used to be a singer, but then became a crusader for women staying at home. Luke and Offred used to laugh at her, though Offred saw the threat of what she symbolised. While going up to her room (which she acknowledges as her’s for the first time), she sees that the Commander is there; his interest in her and breaking of the rules will develop later into a sort of relationship.

While having a routine gynaecological exam, Offred is approached by the doctor, who offers to impregnate her. She refuses it through silence.

From here, the next moment of significance is the Ceremony of mating, which is described in cold, clinical and cynical terms. This chapter is written in a detached style so that Offred can survive remembering it, and also because the actions are so clinical. However, she does acknowledge the difficulties that Serena Joy faces during the Ceremony, albeit ironically.

Afterwards, the Commander further breaks the rules through inviting Offred into his study. Nick is used as the go-between. In the Commander’s study they play Scrabble together. The novelty of words and letters seems to be almost pornographic in its illicit nature. This is followed up with the Commander giving her fashion and beauty magazines to read. She feels like his mistress, which accentuates the loss of normal life for her.

Offred goes out shopping with Ofglen again, who finally broaches the subject of Mayday more explicitly. This symbol of hope seems to spur her on to think of the past more, and what happened when the Gileadean Republic was instigated. She remembers losing her bank account and her job, and the way that Luke did not seem to be bothered by her loss. She also thinks about Moira and her mother.

This hope continues when Serena Joy offers her information about her daughter in exchange for a baby. Serena suggests that the Commander might be infertile, and encourages Offred to sleep with Nick.

She does eventually receive a picture of what might be her daughter on the day of a Prayvaganza, where members of Gileadean society gather to celebrate arranged marriages. It is here that Offred hears that the baby born earlier on is dead (a ‘shredder’), and this makes her think about how its mother often lost her mind whilst they were in the Red Centre.

Later on, in the evening, Offred’s commander takes her out to a club, Jezebel’s, where women are kept as whores. Moira is there, and tells Offred about what happened to her after she escaped from the Red Centre. However, Offred feels let down by Moira’s attitude now, and thinks that she has been beaten and has given up. After Jezebel’s, Offred tries to remember and tell the story of what passed between her and Nick. She cannot be satisfied with how she puts it, and tells it several times, looking for the truth in what has occurred.

This moment of sensual pleasure is followed by a salvaging the next day, where traitors are executed in public. A man who has apparently been convicted of raping a Handmaid is handed over to the Handmaids, and they are expected to tear him apart. Ofglen recognises him as a member of Mayday, and tried to make his suffering less.

Because of this, Ofglen later hangs herself, to protect her colleagues. Offred learns of this through the new Ofglen, who advises her to forget about Mayday and all that it stands for.

The story ends abruptly at night, with some Eyes appearing at the house, and asking for Offred. She thinks that she has been betrayed somehow, but Nick whispers that it is Mayday come to rescue her. This, however, is never made certain, and the reader is left in doubt as to what happens after the narrative ends.

That is not the end of the novel, though, as there is a parody of an academic symposium about the problems of authentification of this fictional story. There are suggestions in this final section that Gilead has ceased to exist, and that Caucasians are now an ethnic minority who are studied by what are now ethnic minorities. This part of the novel forces the reader to reappraise what they have read so far, and question the issues that have been raised. For example, Professor Pieixoto tries not to pass moral judgement on the Gileadean regime. This makes the reader think about atrocities in the past with the coldness of distance, and never with an emphasis on the individual.

From S-Cool