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The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood Human beings are emotional creatures. Their feelings steer them in one direction or the next, and greatly determine who they are, and what they do. It is the human environment that triggers these feelings, and these feelings that in turn influence the human environment. They can be either positive or negative in nature, and are central to society and government. Since the government controls a great deal of what we are exposed to, they can control our emotions to some extent. Someone living in a populace that preaches love, friendship, and freedom is more likely to lead a happy life than someone in a populace that enforces fear, ignorance, and abasement.
Such is the case in Atwood's The Handmaids Tale. Gilead took environmental control to an extreme, and controlled almost all aspects of the inhabitants lives. The handmaids were controlled within society by means of the self worth lowering ignorance, de-humanizing abasement, and the fear instilled by strict consequences to illegal actions. The narrative in this story does not unfold chronologically, and this helps to show how the ideas scattered and feelings of handmaids were in the story, as well as how many issues the author wanted to discuss. The Handmaid's Tale is partly an extrapolation of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, attempting to imagine what kind of values might evolve if environmental pollution rendered most of the human race sterile.
It is also the product of debates within the feminist movement in the 70 s and early 80 s. Atwood has been very much a part of that movement, but she has never been a mere mouthpiece for any group, always insisting on her individual perspectives. Atwood here examines some of the traditional attitudes that are embedded in the thinking of the religious right and which she finds particularly threatening. But another social controversy also underlies this novel. During the early 80 s a debate raged (and continues to rage, on a lower level) about feminist attitudes toward sexuality and pornography in particular. Outspoken feminists have taken all kinds of positions: that all erotica depicting women as sexual objects is demeaning, that pornography was bad though erotica can be good, that although most pornography is demeaning the protection of civil liberties is a greater good which requires the toleration of freedom for pornographers, however distasteful, even that such a thing as feminist pornography can and should be created.
The sub-theme of this tangled debate which seems to have particularly interested and alarmed Atwood is the tendency of some feminist anti-porn groups to ally themselves with religious anti-porn zealots who oppose the feminists on almost every other issue. The language of "protection of women" could slip from a demand for more freedom into a retreat from freedom, to a kind of neo-Victorianism. After all, it was the need to protect "good" women from sex that justified all manner of repression in the 19 th century, including confining them to the home, barring them from participating in the arts, and voting. Gilead's government had taken away freedom to and given freedom from to the handmaids.
They regulated what they could and could not know, forcing them into ignorance, and called it freedom. Reading had been forbidden, and even the names of shops were too much temptation, and are known by their signs alone (p. 33). The only word that Offered was given to look at is FAITH in square print (p. 75) on a small pillow in her room. Even looking at this she wondered, If she were caught, would it count? (p. 75). They were so used to not being able to read, that even at the sight of words and letters, they took precaution, and feared the consequences.
It was at the red center that the handmaids were first pumped full of the brainwashing propaganda that made them think in this manner, Once a week they had movies, old porno films from the seventies and eighties (p. 152). These movies were used to make them hate the role women had played in the days of anarchy, and turn them against their past. They were successful in this, and made women believe that they are containers, it is only the inside of their bodies that counts (p. 124). Handmaids were kept on some kind of pill or drug, that was put in the food (p. 91), so that after a time the un ordinary would become ordinary, and they would have conformed to the Gileadian lifestyle. Freedom of speech had also been taken away.
They were only allowed to speak at certain times with accepted greetings and responses that have been created for them. Additionally, people could not sing songs in public anymore, especially ones that use words like free, they are considered too dangerous (p. 71). It was in these manners that the government of Gilead used ignorance to control the handmaids and successfully forced them to not want things they cant have (p. 151). The last way that Gilead controlled the handmaids was through fear.
There were strict consequences to illegal deeds and acts within their society, and they had made punishment a public ordeal, to sway would-be-rebels. There were huge prison walls where bodies were hanging by the necks and stages where the public had to watch readers having a hand cut off. However, that was only on the third conviction. These things were there to intimidate them and let them know who was in control, to remind them that none of them wanted to look like that or be in those situations. There was barbed wire along the bottom and broken glass set in concrete along the top of their prisons, making these buildings look even more intimidating. They were effective in detouring rebellion, since no one will even go through the gates willingly (p. 42).
The law enforcers in Gilead also carried around electric cattle prods strung from their leather belts to discourage rebellious actions. These objects of fear let the handmaids know that any ideas they got were too dangerous, and that in a lot of cases, the penalty was death. They also lived with the fear of being beaten or tortured, because the wives can do almost anything to them they just arent allowed to kill them (p. 354). With all of these fearful and intimidating influences surrounding them, the handmaids stayed in line with no questions asked. In the despotic society of Atwood's The Handmaids Tale, the government controlled the environment that the populace lived in, and therefore, controlled the emotions and lives of its inhabitants.
They kept the handmaids ignorant of outside news, influence and knowledge because what they dont know wont tempt them (p. 252). They de-humanized them in front of their peers, to lower their esteem and morale. And they instilled fear into them by displaying the gruesome consequences of crime for all the public to see. Through all that control methods, the handmaids were molded into True Gileadians against their free will, or rather, against the lack there of.
Emotions were like the Achilles heel of the human race, humans were at their weakest beneath them, their most shameful, pitiful, vulnerable, and hateful. They were the keyhole to the lock of power and control over the human race, a lock to which Mammon will always seek to hold the key. The result of such politics practiced by the governments was establishing of the society where people were limited in their basic desires and wants, where all the actions which were against the law were persecuted so severely that no one had courage to break those laws or at least argue about their rationality. Since government possessed control of literacy, freedom of thought, and sexuality, the handmaids were deprived of any chances to live normal lives, they were totally suppressed by the regime, and there was no way out for them. As a consequence, the society was deteriorating to such an extent that it was almost impossible to live in, and people were so much preoccupied with fear that no rebellion was possible due to the low morale.
The elite commanders of Gilead denied access to the avenues, which were to satisfy the basic wants and desires of the average individual. They wanted to control the society as a whole, and they were successful in their endeavor, since the society of Gilead became an example of the totalitarian regime, which the government imposed at all the individuals it could reach. They wanted to concentrate the access to all the society's productive resources at their hands, and thus control the population using methods, which would have been labeled outrageous and unlawful in any civilized society. While most of the public policies imposed by the regime on the society were said to improve the society and the life of the individuals within that society, actually they were aimed at controlling the population completely, and reserving power to the privileged few.
The restriction on reading and free thought, for instance, assured that none of the handmaids would be able to compare life at Gilead with some other communities, since the results of such a comparison would undoubtedly show that life at Gilead was not that good and promising as claimed by the governmental propaganda. The divide and conquer tactics used by the patriarchal regime at Gilead were successful enough to provide the commanders with an opportunity to usurp their power in any area of the everyday life, since there was no one capable of opposing them. The artificial division between wives and handmaids enabled Gilead leaders to impose control over women more efficiently, since they were divided into two groups, which could not possible find a common language between themselves. Overall, The Handmaids Tale provides the reader with a good overview of what living in the totalitarian society is.
The handmaids are the objects over which the power of the governmental officials is exercised, and they are successful in controlling the whole society. The tactics and strategies which Gilead elite commanders use are aimed at totally humiliating the significant part of the society, and also the governmental officials claim that all they do is for better, in reality the way of life in Gilead is simply intolerable. Words Count: 1, 676. Bibliography 1. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaids Tale, New York: Random House, 1997.
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