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.

What do you make of Frankenstein?

Ways of reading the novel

Mary Shelley’s tale about the human creation of a creature has captured people’s imaginations since it was first published in 1818. What is it ‘about’? For a selection of interesting and varied interpretations, a new section has been added to the current Crossref-it.info guide on Frankenstein which will give you lots of ideas to think about. If you are a teacher, how about distributing them around the class and asking groups to justify each one from the text? A lively classroom debate might ensue!)

Whatever your consensus, why not let us know? (Post them in the ‘Any other comments’ box!)

A live version

Meanwhile, a dramatisation of the novel has been creating waves in the press, with the lead roles of Victor and the Creature being alternated by Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch.

All advance tickets for the production at the National Theatre have sold out, though some will be available each day if you turn up at the box-office. Thanks to the NTs collaboration with national cinemas, there are still some opportunities to see the production on the big screen, where ‘encore’ performances are being shown for those who couldn’t get to the initial screenings on the 17th and 24th of March.

Check out the NT site and see if you can’t get to a performance. Take note though that the production is 15 rated.

All about fiction

Just in time to be of huge help to any students studying for exams this summer, or still facing university interviews to study English, are three TV programmes currently airing. Yes, you really can justify sitting in front of the screen to ‘help you study’!

Wider reading and success

One of the things that a crammed term of revision no longer allows time for is wider leisure reading. And yet something that always impresses examiners and interviewers is a candidate’s ability to refer to more than just the set texts they have studied in class. If you can link your ideas on a particular text to other literature of the time, or trace the concerns of the novelist to the social movements of their era, you will be heading for an A*.

Speedy literary context help

Now the Beeb is running a season on fiction and there are some really illuminating programmes to catch:

• Faulks on Fiction - At 9pm Saturday on BBC2, author Sebastian Faulks is tracing the development of various types of character that recur in novels. So far he has covered ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lovers’, demonstrating how our perceptions of what makes a literary hero or lover have changed through the last three centuries. Lots of clips from TV adaptations bring his observations to life. Catching it on BBC i-player means that you don’t have to sacrifice your social life!
• Birth of the British Novel - At 9pm Monday on BBC4 an even more helpful series is being fronted by Henry Hitchins. This charts developments in novel writing from the earliest Robinson Crusoe to the present day. It is great for demonstrating how authors created, then adapted, different prose genres, either reflecting or subverting the literary context of their times. Again there are numerous drama clips as illustration.

English Language help

If you are taking AS/A2 English Language, another literary themed broadcast focuses on text production:

The Beauty of Books – Just before the Birth of the British Novel, at 8.30pm Monday on BBC4, as this series moves through the centuries it becomes ever more pertinent to the AS/A2 Development of Language modules. Already the second episode has considered the implications of moving from hand scribed manuscripts into print, thereby creating a medieval best seller with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Handy social context help

Meanwhile (in case you didn’t already know), Crossref-it.info has got lots of helpful articles about the worlds inhabited by Chaucer, Shakespeare, the Romantics and Victorians. They will help you to make links between your set texts and the political, social and philosophical movements of the day. Lots of brownie points there!

Every success!

Taking time out and defying convention

Delayed publication

The author of Wide Sargasso Sea, on which Crossref-it.info has just launched an A Level guide, had quite a job in getting her manuscript to a point of publication:

• In 1957 Jean Rhys told her editor, Diana Athill, that it would be ready in six to nine months time, claiming that a large part of it was already written
• In fact, the writing of Wide Sargasso Sea was not finished until the end of March 1966
• Diana Athill wrote to Jean about ‘the labour and torment’ that had gone into its writing. No doubt she was referring to herself as the editor, as well as to its author!

A new approach

Rhys was writing using innovative forms and a variety of perspectives. It took her a while to work out how these could be utilised to create a narrative whole. During that time, her life and work disappeared from popular view.

At Crossref-it.info we too have had to take some time and work out a different approach with our guide to Wide Sargasso Sea.

Like you, we know that the future of literary study lies on-line rather than in a book-case. That’s why we developed a web-based English Literature resource and that’s why it has proved so popular worldwide. For each text we have covered that is not in the public domain, the author’s publisher has understood the power of the medium and granted permission to quote from their text.

Problems and solutions

However, we faced a problem when Rhys’ publisher seemed anxious about having her novel analysed on-line.

What to do? We knew how important it was that the text wasn’t once again rendered invisible to a new generation of students, whose automatic port of call is the internet. It has taken a while, but the whole guide has been re-worked, aiming to be as clear and specific as possible in its explanation of Wide Sargasso Sea, without actually using Rhys’ words. Not so easy for a novel that doesn’t have numbered chapters!

Result

It was worth waiting for Rhys’ masterpiece.

Hopefully everyone who uses the new Crossref-it.info guide on Wide Sargasso Sea will agree that it was worth waiting for this as well!

Why not check it out now?

Something for the end of your day...

Slightly different this week, a quick literary quiz to test your knowledge!

In two famous novels from the first half of the nineteenth century, the heroines receive an unwelcome proposal of marriage from a clergyman, having previously believed that each man was in love with another woman.

1. What is the first name of each heroine?

2. What are their surnames?

3. What hobby did these heroines share?

4. Which parent had both heroines lost?

5. What are the names of the two clergymen?

6. Who are the two women which each heroine thought that the vicars loved?

7. Who did the heroines finally marry?

8. Who were the eventual ‘brides’ of the clergymen?

9. Name the author of each novel.

10. Can you name one actress who has portrayed each heroine on film or TV (since 1990)?

How did you do? If you are struggling, then a clue is that one of these novels is featured on www.crossref-it.info (take a look under the green "Texts in detail" button)

Answers will be given next week!

Something out of nothing?

Where does literature ‘come from’? One of the requirements of the English A Level specifications is that students can:

‘Demonstrate understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which literary texts were written and received’ (AO4).

Signs of the times

Everything an author creates cannot help but reflect the nature of its creator and the times in which it was composed. Last week, just in time for these final weeks of revision a new web guide to Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus went live at Crossref-it.info.

Dr Faustus is a play which interestingly straddles the interconnection of the Medieval and the Renaissance minds, both in terms of its subject matter, its worldview and its theatrical heritage.

So, what were the ‘times’ against which we should view the play? It is interesting to see what was going on during the life of its creator.

1564 – a significant year

For example, did you know that 1564, the year Marlowe was born, also saw:

• The arrival of Italian scientist Galileo and dramatist Shakespeare
• The death of religious reformer John Calvin and artist Michelangelo?

When Marlowe was eight (1572), poets John Donne and Ben Johnson were born, and he was twelve (1576) when the first permanent theatre was built in London by James Burbage. On the international front, explorer Francis Drake set off to sail around the world the following year (1577) returning in 1581 and the first English colony was established in Virginia by Walter Raleigh when Marlowe was twenty (1584).

Tension throughout England

Marlowe was only seventeen (1581) when he became a spy for England’s secret service at a time of high political tension. There were plots to put the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots on the English throne instead of Protestant Elizabeth I, which came to a head when Mary was tried for treason in 1586. Marlowe was just 22, writing his first play, Dido, Queen of Carthage.

Elizabeth’s execution of Mary the following year (1587) sent shock waves through Europe – it was the year that Marlowe wrote Tamburlaine the Great, aged 23, while Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy was also performed.

Catholic retaliation against Protestant England came in the shape of the mighty Spanish Armada, which attacked the coast in 1588 and was memorably defeated. Alert to the threat of invasion, with warning beacons ringing the kingdom, the possible doom of such a small country cannot have escaped influencing Marlowe as, aged 24, he produced Dr Faustus that year.

Literary developments

Within the next three years (by the end of 1591), Edmund Spenser had published the initial sections of The Faerie Queene, Philip Sidney’s petrachan sonnet sequence Astroplil and Stella appeared and Shakespeare’s early plays such as Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors and Richard III were being performed. Marlowe himself was busy, getting imprisoned for a street fight and writing The Jew of Malta, all before he was 27.

Drama and facts

To get a sense of the tumultuous times which Dr Faustus reflects, why not take time out to watch Elizabeth: The Golden Age (with Cate Blanchett). This dramatises (though with a degree of licence) the world in which Marlowe operated.

For the more accurate information which A Level teachers know you need, go to www.crossref-it.info where you will find detailed commentary on the text as well as the background. Literature never emerges ‘out of nothing’.

One for the Teachers

It’s that final December slog for English teachers – getting through the text before the end of term, setting the assignments, writing reports, helping with the school production, covering for absences, rehearsing for the staff ‘skit’, preparing readings for the Christmas concert and final assemblies – oh, and maintaining a personal life!

It’s at times like these that any extra help is welcome. As you get more tired so your brain gets fogged and coming up with inspiring lesson ideas becomes ever harder. You probably already know that NATE’s associated Teachit! website contains a range of ideas and practical support. You may not yet know that there are some new teaching resources on www.crossref-it.info.

The two most recently featured texts are now accompanied by free, downloadable worksheets. Written by an experienced Head of English, these cover a range of themes and approaches to ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’ by Thomas Hardy and the ‘Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale’ by Geoffrey Chaucer. You can use them to create a series of lessons, or just take individual aspects and link them in to existing work. Just what you need when the brain fog threatens to swamp you!

Please let us know how you get on and feel free to contribute your own tried and trusted suggestions!

Things ain’t wot they used to be

Change is something we’re used to. Our grandparents’ experience of being a teenager was probably very different to what it is like today. Life as reflected by Hollyoaks is a world away from the radio programmes, books and magazines they read.

The A Level syllabus you are studying has built into it a concern that students really grasp how texts are the product of their times. But how much do you really need to know to make sense of an author’s output?

• It helps to find out what were the key events of the era
• The tangible world of transport and technological advances, political change and social upheaval affected how people survived
• The intangible world of philosophy, faith and ideas shaped people’s expectations about life – expectations shared by both author and reader
• The existing literary world influenced how any text was received by its original and subsequent audiences

www.crossref-it.info has focussed on all these areas to help students get the most out of literature created in other eras. You don’t need to spend too long reading the material before it starts to make ‘difficult’ works seem much more accessible.

Some things don’t change

So some things are very different. What does not change however, is what writers throughout the ages have chosen as their subject matter: human nature. Love and anguish, greed and fear, the desire for power and protection – English Literature is full of human struggles we can identify with whatever times we live in.

Change in life and language

It seems like 21st century life is already quite different to 20th century life. Who, in the 1990’s, would have recognised any of the following:

Tweets and twitters that have little to do with birds
9 and 11 that have more significance than being 3² and a prime number
A bluetooth unseen by any dentist

These terms don’t just illustrate that our language is shifting at a mighty fast rate, but that our lifestyle and worldview is too.

Getting to grips with the past

If all this has happened just in the last ten years, imagine the changes compared to a 100 years ago (the era of Thomas Hardy, writing in Modern English), 400 years (Shakespeare, using Early Modern English) or even 640 years previously (Geoffrey Chaucer, a Middle English author)! The further back you go, the greater the cultural differences are.

Thank goodness for sites like www.crossref-it.info.

Aiming to do English at university?

You made it!

Congratulations to those of you whose results enabled you to make it on to your chosen degree course! Now you have had time to recover from Freshers’ Week, we hope you are enjoying your studies.

If you find yourself plunging into the mysteries of Piers Plowman or the medieval pageant plays, with the benefit of hindsight, you can now appreciate how helpful it was if you were lucky enough to encounter Middle English at A Level.

You want to make it!

However, if you are taking A’s right now, and struggling through Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales for the first time, it might not seem that way! Middle English takes a bit of getting used to. Plurals and possessives are different and the spelling of words can be pretty fluid.

Actually, one of the best things to do when faced with a page of Middle English text is simply to read it aloud – it often makes the meaning clearer and you can start to get a sense of the humour and energy in much of Chaucer’s writing.

Help is on hand so you can succeed

The keen eyed among you will have spotted that www.crossref-it.info has got a new Chaucer text online – The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale. It is full of notes and background info to help you get to grips with a text which was as scabrous in its time as The Thick of It is today. Chaucer paints a wicked portrait of his narrator, whose corruption puts modern political scandals in the shade. Yet at the same time we are able to appreciate his audacity and persuasive sales ‘patter’.

It may be in Middle English, but this medieval tale has a contemporary punch!

Crossref-it.info hits the national media

In an interview published in today's Guardian, Andrew Motion, the poet laureate, makes the point that, without a knowledge of the Bible it will be difficult to understand the very concepts that lie at the centre of English literature.

"Take any of the metaphysical poets, almost any of the Victorian poets," he says. "Even reading the great romantics like Keats requires you to know things about the Fall, who some of the people in the Bible are, ideas of sinfulness and virtue."

The article also mentions that "If Motion is correct, today's newly qualified teachers may themselves have limited knowledge of the Bible, so how can they be expected to integrate this in their teaching? Accessing suitable teaching resources could be problematic. Aside from the Cross Reference Project, which ... provides resources to help students to understand how literature has been shaped by the Bible, there is little out there." (Italics added)

The Cross Reference Project, or Crossref-it.info is a free comprehensive English Literature website that contains interactive A-Level study guides, background material, literary analysis, essay and exam help and more - geared towards helping students succeed in their exams and course work.