AO5

Question 1

Greenwood (2009)

(cultural feminism)

Answer 1

“The arguments of cultural feminism are seen through THT to have been taken up by the regime, twisted and used against women”

Question 2

Clist (2013)

(speaking & language)

Answer 2

“When simply speaking is dangerous, daring to play with language could be thrillingly taboo. Offred is indeed intoxicated by the freedom”

• Link to the Scrabble games.

Question 3

Green (1986)

(hero)

Answer 3

“Offred is no hero”

Green’s view suggests that Offred’s passivity leaves the character lacking in attributes
essential for the label ‘hero’.

Question 4

Beran (1990)

(language)

Answer 4

“Offred’s power is in language.”

Beran argues that Offred is not the powerless character she appears, but rather her power is
in the form of words.

Question 5

Carol Ann Howells (1996)

(feminist concerns)

Answer 5

“Atwood’s feminist concerns are plain here but so too are her concerns for basic human rights.”

Howells highlights the issues for all members of the society, not only the women who are so
clearly disadvantaged; Atwood’s “concerns” are not exclusively “feminist” in nature, but rather also apply to all
“human rights”.

Question 6

Cooke (1998)

(cowards)

Answer 6

“an ordinary, more-or-less cowardly woman (rather than a heroine).”

Atwood suggests that cowardice in the face of such oppression is usual, and that Offred is an
example of that “ordinary” behaviour – in a similar situation we would all be “more-or-less cowardly”.

Question 7

Calloway (2008)

(misogyny)

Answer 7

“The evolution of a new form of misogyny, not as we usually think of it, as men’s hatred of women,
but as women’s hatred of women.”

Calloway sees the novel as a warning against not only the more oft-considered female
oppression in the face of patriarchy, but also of female complicity in this oppression.