As I was reading Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale for another class this semester, I was intrigued by the ways the setting of the novel plays into its larger themes, particularly the control of women’s bodies as they relate to geographies of fear, and the ways in which the Handmaids—who, in the patriarchal/christofascist/totalitarian state of Gilead, are essentially wombs for elite men whose own wives can’t have children—fight against that fear. I had read the novel before, in high school, but I think this class specifically has allowed me to examine dimensions of the text I hadn’t before.
The setting of the novel, for those who don’t know, is Cambridge, Massachusetts, around the campus of what was once Harvard University. The connection is rarely stated outright, and the drastic transformation of a landscape dedicated to the pursuit of education into a repressive surveillance state makes the town nearly unrecognizable. Part of the university has become the “Red Center,” where new Handmaids are educated in the ways of Gilead and taught to internalize shame and fear.
More than telling the reader how much things have changed, the setting stands as a reminder of the structures of patriarchy that continue to perpetuate gendered inequality in the present day. Though Harvard was founded all the way back in 1636, it didn’t allow for the education of women until the founding of Radcliffe College in 1879, which itself was not formally integrated into the university as a whole until 1999. There’s an interesting article about the history of women at Harvard here, which is a fun and relatively short read.
Crucial to the novel’s control of the physical landscape is the control of language—they take away the written word, replacing the names of stores and buildings with pictograms that represent their purpose (eggs, for example, represent a place to buy animal products). This allows the state to anonymize the environment, removing the structures that recognize individual agency and disconnect the Handmaids from their physical surroundings. This environmental anonymity reinforces the disconnect that Handmaids feel from their own bodies—the mind has been made obsolete, and the reduction of a person to their womb creates a feeling of mindlessness.
Following that, it’s interesting to see the Handmaids exert their agency through forms of subtle self-expression. They make eye contact with men when they shouldn’t, they vary the routes they take through the town, and most importantly, they remember. The mind of Offred, the novel’s protagonist, is riddled with recollections of the world before Gilead, and whenever her memory pierces the veil of environmental anonymity it reminds the reader of the importance of remembering. Though they lack institutional power, the Handmaids’ avenues of resistance stem from their ability to conceptualize a better world. This means that, even limited to the domestic sphere as they are, “activities such as reading and cooking . . . become a weapon of the weak” (Hamdan-Saliba & Fenster 2012), co-opting structures made to oppress through transgressive memorialization.
Still, though, it’s not like everything is sunshine and roses. In fact, it sucks really, really badly; the strategies of power the Handmaids resist are not easily beaten. They “both symbolize the power of and strengthen existing structures, which organize and formulate spaces according to abstract models of political, social and cultural institutions. Thus strategies can create, organize, design and “enforce” spaces” (Hamdan-Saliba & Fenster 2012). In the case of The Handmaid’s Tale, the government of Gilead extends these strategies of power even to spaces that contradict their doctrine—while genuine sexuality is more or less outlawed in Gilead, and therefore a form of possible resistance, there are state-sponsored brothels that attempt to institutionalize avenues of possible resistance, neutralizing the threat that social deviance poses to their order.
The Handmaid’s Tale is, more than an unbearable future, a reminder of the darker parts of our present. Its use of the land as a direct extension of personal identity reveals just how closely our perceptions of the world are tied into our perceptions of other people, and therefore the importance of keeping memory alive when any power comes along wanting to snuff it out.
References
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. McClelland and Stewart, 1985.
Hamdan-Saliba, Hanaa, and Tovi Fenster. 2012. “Tactics and Strategies of Power: The Construction of Spaces of Belonging for Palestinian Women in Jaffa-Tel Aviv.Women’s Studies International Forum 35: 203-213.
Hi Patrick,
ReplyDeleteFirst, I want to state that I absolutely love your blog post. I am not very familiar with the Handmaid's Tale but now I am intrigued to watch the show and reading based on your explanation on some of the major themes. One of the many things that I appreciate you noting is the importance of conceptualizing a better world. I think in many fights against the systems of oppression, we forget that the amount of work we put in means nothing if we cannot imagine it actually working. I think the hope for a better world is one of the best ways to continuously maintain any forms of activism. I would also like to address the subtle acts of oppression as a means of resistance. I think sometimes the world thinks of activism and resistance as only things that people see. Similarly to the novel that you read; I believe that the acts of resistance of the world can come from a variety of actions. Including the ones that we take in silence and the ones that are not necessarily as visible such as boycotting a business. I also really enjoyed your closing as a thought piece. As your connections to the world are key to the perceptions on how you can change it for the better in my opinion.
Hi Patrick,
ReplyDeleteI have never watched The Handmaid’s Tale, although I have heard a lot about it, especially about how the show “stands as a reminder of the structures of patriarchy that continue to perpetuate gendered inequality in the present day.” The Handmaid’s Tale has been in discussion, especially in regard to the status of reproductive rights within the U.S.
I think what you wrote about the “state-sponsored brothels that attempt to institutionalize avenues of possible resistance, neutralizing the threat that social deviance poses to their order” was super interesting.
It makes me wonder what kinds of resistance are allowed or turned a blind eye towards in our societies. The first thing I thought about was within our justice system, where being in certain positions of power means you can get away with things average citizens cannot. Is this similar to the women within The Handmaid’s Tale? Where certain women, perhaps ones with different statuses than others, are allowed their sexuality? Is being in these state-sponsored brothels a form of punishment or liberation? I guess this is where I should watch the show to get answers!
Hi Patrick,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your blog post and your connecting of Hamdan-Saliba & Fenster 2012 to the literary piece.
I have read the Handmaid's Tale. It is, as you rightly described, a quite terrifying world built directly on ideas reflected in our own modern world. I would further argue that when we talk about the geography of fear, the society of Gilead is built on fostering fear among women. For characters like Serena Joy, her fear is that she will loose her status of relative privilege. Thus in the space that Offred is forced to inhabit she is treats her like filth. The systems in place in Gilead seek divide women entirely for the purpose of dividing solidarity and conditioning complacency.
I also think is extremely interesting that Margret Atwood chose Boston as the location for the novel. Boston, and New England more generally, is the most irreligious area of the country and among the most liberal. I think this choice was very deliberate to facilitate a sense that any space can be weaponized if the circumstances change. As you stated, Harvard has not always been a place of equality among the sexes. When people are desperate as they were in the book, they turn against the people who have already been marginalized.
Warning: I read the Handmaids Tale in 2019 so pardon if some of my references to the text aren't completely accurate.
ReplyDelete"" are used to denote outside literature.
'' are used to denote references to your blog post.
When I was reading through Hanaa Hamdan-Saliba and Tovi Fenster's "Tactics and strategies of power: The construction of spaces of belonging for Palestinian women in Jaffa–Tel Aviv" I did not fully understand the concept of " reading or cooking" being a form as resistance contextualized as a "weapon on the weak" (204). My conjecture was that it those activities being a way to resist the "globalization" of social and economic life as discussed in that article, for example, home cooking to perpetuate culture through cuisine (passing tradition through cooking) as a form of defying the highly delocalized food system of production and distribution in a modern globalized economy. I then went and read the referenced source material: Michel de Carteau's "The Practice of Everyday Life" (Chapter 3) which explains these "weapons of the weak" as "tactics" used to resist the status quo through appropriation of space by using small cultural or educational practices (like reading or cooking) to impress ones own sense of identity onto their environment despite what the systems of control decide are acceptable. In Offreds case, this appropriation of controlled space comes in the form of her remembering what it used to be is that concept of 'transgressive memorialization' which pierces the veil of 'environmental anonymity' which Gilead impresses upon what was Cambridge Massachusetts. She resists the dogma of spatial identify used to alienate the lower class citizens of Gilead's regime from their environment, their rights, and their body. You already drew this connection and I'd like to commend you on the synthesis of these concepts and writings through your post.
I've heard the show is fantastic and your post has pushed it back to the top of my watch next list!