The Handmaid’s Tale

Contemporary social satire

In the 19th century, Charles Dickens dramatised a variety of social evils in adventure-filled novels, which alerted British society to a range of issues on which action was later taken.

In a series of novels which have drawn on elements of late 20th / early 21st century culture, the Canadian author, Margaret Atwood, has achieved a similar, chilling ‘wake up call’. Some fiction writers create idealised societies (utopias). In contrast, Atwood’s fables are dystopias, worlds whose horrific elements are shown to be only a step away from behaviours already seen in the world around us.

> Oryx and Crake (2003) deals with genetic engineering, the power of the internet and desensitising pornography

>Aspects of this story are amplified in The Year of the Flood (2009)

> Published in 1985, The Handmaid’s Tale is less about science and technology than the impact of totalitarianism, religious fundamentalism and the repression of women.

A human story

As with Dickens, simply to list the issues Atwood deals with misses the heart of her novel. Her Tale is an engaging story about one woman’s desire to live as a fully recognised individual in an era when that is a dangerous quest. Atwood draws the reader in to the internal world of Offred (whose original name is possibly June), which is full of passion and sensuous appreciation, in contrast to an external environment which recognises neither.

It is a story full of unresolved tension and Atwood’s narrative methods keep the reader having to interpret, then re-interpret events, just as Offred must. This can be a dislocating experience for readers, particularly at the novel’s end, so it is handy that there is a new Crossref-it.info study guide to help students get to grips with the text.

The impact of the title

With the novel’s title, Atwood is trying to show how the impact of an entire society is refracted through the experience of one, almost anonymous, voice. In this she consciously echoes the medieval works of Geoffrey Chaucer, who tried to depict different aspects of his era through a series of individualised narratives, such as The Wife of Bath’s Tale.

Both are great, thought provoking stories. Enjoy!

Intertextuality

The effect of time and text

Writers never exist in isolation. They are affected by the era in which they live and the work of other writers. Since many tend to have an interest in books already, their literary influences can also be wide ranging.

Where a source is famous, authors can reasonably expect their readers to be familiar with it themselves, and to already have expectations shaped by the way they have encountered that original text.

Playing with expectations

A writer can play with these expectations to witty or powerful effect in the text they are creating.

An excellent example of this is Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry volume The World’s Wife (see also: The Poetry of Carol Ann Duffy: AS / A - Level Student Text Guide: Selected Poems - The World's Wife).

In this, she offers a wife’s perspective on the events and stories of famous men (whether it was recorded that they were married or not).

Living with Icarus

A well known classical myth concerns the fate of a man trying to escape from the imprisonment he shares with his father. His craftsman father creates ‘wings’ for Icarus by sticking feathers on him with wax, but warns him not to fly too close to the sun. However, his son disregards this advice, and, when his ‘wings’ melt, plunges into the sea. The story is usually framed as a narrative that warns of the dangers of too great an ambition.

In Mrs Icarus, Duffy acknowledges how it might feel to be married to a man who has doubtless failed in his grand plans on previous occasions, yet remains undaunted. Rather than maintain the high moral tone associated with the Icarus narrative, she deals with it according to the personal embarrassment of a care-worn spouse:

Mrs Icarus

I’m not the first or the last

To stand on a hillock,

Watching the man she married

Prove to the world

He’s a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock.

With comic effect she deflates the lofty ambitions of a proud male, who seems to be blissfully unaware of the fact that he is not universally admired.

Living with Lazarus

On a more sombre note, Duffy re-uses the biblical account of Jesus bringing his dead friend Lazarus back to life. In the New Testament, this is regarded as a wonderful, miraculous reprieve for the grieving relatives, as well as evidence of Jesus’ divine power over nature (see [6John 11:176], [6John 11: 32-456]). Within a space of four days (long enough for the body to start to deteriorate in a hot climate) he turns a desperately sad situation around into one of joy and life.

In Mrs Lazarus, Duffy takes this idea of a dead man being returned to life, puts it in a modern context and, crucially, alters a key aspect of the account – lengthening the time frame from days to at least a year. And suddenly the story is framed very differently.

Having come to the poem with expectations of joy and miracle, readers are wrong-footed by Mrs Lazarus’ negative perspective. Yet we are led to share the narrator’s shock at the return of her old husband after her life has moved on:

Mrs Lazarus

I breathed

his stench; my bridegroom in his rotting shroud,

moist and dishevelled from the grave's slack chew,

croaking his cuckold name, disinherited, out of his time.

By powerfully evoking the horror of the apparition, Duffy thereby get readers to re-consider their attitude to the original biblical account – after all, given the concerns of his sister, evidence of decomposition might have been an aspect of the original Lazarus’ return.

Thus one text shapes another, and is in turn re-shaped by it. Intertextuality at work.