Critical viewpoints on The Handmaid's Tale Flashcards
Amin Malak, ‘Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” and the dystopian tradition’ (what Gilead reduces sex to)
“The dictates of state policy in Gilead thus relegate sex to a saleable commodity exchanged for mere minimal survival.”
Amin Malak, ‘Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” and the dystopian tradition (the hypocrisy of the so-called ‘Christian state’)
“One of the novel’s successful aspects concerns the skilful portrayal of a state that in theory claims to be founded on Christian principles, yet in practice miserably lacks spirituality and benevolence.”
Amin Malak, ‘Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” and the dystopian tradition (how THT is characteristically dystopian)
“The state in Gilead prescribes a pattern of life based on frugality, conformity, censorship, corruption, fear, and terror […] the usual terms of existence enforced by totalitarian states, instance of which can be found in […] Zamyatin’s We, Huxley’s Brave New World, and Orwell’s 1984.”
Amin Malak, ‘Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” and the dystopian tradition (relation between the Handmaid’s and the Commander’s)
“The women then become possessed articles, mere appendages to those men who exercise sexual mastery over them.”
Amin Malak, ‘Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” and the dystopian tradition (Offred’s Commander)
“the Commander appears more pathetic than sinister, baffled than manipulative, almost, at times, a Fool.”
Kate Baty, ‘Under His Eye: Seeing and Surveillancein The Handmaid’s Tale’, 2020
“The Republic of Gilead […] is deeply preoccupied with visual appearances.”
Kate Baty,’Under His Eye: Seeing and Surveillance in The Handmaid’s Tale’, 2020
“In Gilead […] citizens are forced to comply at all times because they don’t know when they are actually being watched or who is an ‘Eye’ […] the subjects learn self-discipline and compliance.”
Kate Baty, ‘Under His Eye: Seeing and Surveillance in The Handmaid’s Tale’, 2020 (Under His Eye)
“surveillance in The Handmaid’s Tale is often gendered, evident in the repeated phrase ‘Under His Eye’ […] The ‘His’ can obviously reference God, but it is also a sinister and recurrent reminder that women are being watched by an evidently male power.”
Jeanne Campbell Reeseman, ‘Dark Knowledge in The Handmaid’s Tale’, 1991
“describing in its dystopia a general contemporary sense of the tiredness of our world’s institutions.”
Jeanne Campbell Reesman, Dark Knowledge in The Handmaid’s Tale’, 1991
“its heroine’s voice offers a moving testament to the power of language to transform reality in order to overcome oppressive designs imposed on human beings.”
Angela Gulick, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood: examining its utopian, dystopian, feminist and postmodernist traditions’
“Another important consideration of dystopian fiction is that it sought not to predict future events, but to voice concerns about events, technological and otherwise, existing in the authors’ own lifetimes”
Erika Gottlieb, ‘Dystopian Fiction East and West: Universe of Terror and Trial’
“Since the dystopian regime denies its subjects’ free will, the central character cannot be made responsible for his or her failure or defeat in the repressive system that overpowers individuals”
