Critics Quotes Flashcards
Allan Weiss
Offred’s complicity
“while she does not belong to the upper levels of Gilead’s power hierarchy, she is no less responsible for its destruction of freedom”
he also argues that all those who ignore are equally guilty, thus making Offred a complicit participant in the regime and in her own oppression
Lee Briscoe Thompson
description of Moira
Moira is Offred’s “rebel alter ego”
this highlights the contrast between the two women and the two types of female heroism, Offred practises rebellion through covert subversion and independence of thought but does not dare to do more, whereas Moira’s escape is an active rebellion
both are courageous but in different ways, Offred seems to have finally made her escape and ironically it is Moira who is reduced to subversive behaviour in Jezebel’s
Margaret Atwood
description of dystopias
dystopias are “often more like dire warnings than satires, dark shadows cast by the present into the future…. they are what will happen to us if we don’t pull up our socks”
Susanne Becker
freedom of the press
THT is “Atwood’s strongest manifesto for freedom of the press — its abolition in the novel signifies an end to individual freedom and human rights”
Susanna Becker
the kind of writer Atwood is
“Atwood belongs to those writers of contemporary world literature who…. address pressing global issues”
Margaret Atwood
dystopias challenge us to re-examine
dystopias “challenge us to re-examine what we understand by the word human, and above all what we intend by the word freedom”
Margaret Atwood
hope at the end of THT
“A society exists in the future which is not the society of Gilead and is capable of reflecting about the society of Gilead….. Her little message in a bottle has gotten through to someone – which is about all we can hope, isn’t it?”
Heidi Macpherson
Atwood and feminism
argues that Atwood sees herself as “not a propagandist but an observer; her work merely reflects the reality of an uneven distribution of power between men and women”
Lorna Irvine
Moira’s costume in Jezebel’s
“she simultaneously parodies the demeaning nature of the female outfits in Hugh Hefner’s former bunny clubs, while she also stands for the irrepressible return of everything the Republic has attempted to obliterate”
Gina Wisker
contradictory nature of the Handmaid’s costumes
“it is ironic that the Handmaids, whose entire purpose is to reproduce, are expected to wear the white-winged headdresses of nuns in extreme orders, but also the long red dresses and red shoes which both suggest blood, and the traditional idea of a scarlet or loose woman”
Barbara Hill Rigney
Handmaids’ uniforms
“incongruously resemble religious habits; their faces are obscured by peaked hats which also function to prevent their seeing anything but what lies immediately in front of them”
they are “personifications of a religious sacrifice, temple prostitutes doomed to a kind of purdah in perpetuity”
Margaret Atwood
successful tyranny
“what is needed for a really good tyranny is an unquestionable idea or authority”
Carol Ann Howells
Offred’s storytelling
“by an irony of history, it is Offred the silenced Handmaid who becomes Gilead’s principal historian when that oral ‘herstory’ is published 200 years later”
Barbara Hill Rigney
Offred’s storytelling
Offred’s “responsibility… is to report, to chronicle her time, to warn another world… communication is imperative; she must assume a future audience”
Barbara Hill Rigney
Nick
sees Nick as a hero who “redeems all men by his act of saving Offred, although it may mean his own death”
“He is a kind of Orpheus to her Eurydice, as he brings her out of the world of the dead” and ensures her escape from Gilead at the end of the novel
Atwood
THT not being a feminist dystopia
“I wanted to try a dystopia from the female point of view – the world according to Julia, as it were. However, this does not make The Handmaid’s Tale a ‘feminist dystopia’…. giving a woman a voice and an inner life will always be considered ‘feminist’ by those who think women ought not to have these things”
Atwood
THT being more speculative fiction than science fiction
“…nothing happens that the human race has not already done at some time in the past, or that it is not doing now… We’ve done it, or we’re doing it, or we could start doing it tomorrow. Nothing inconceivable takes place”
“the projected trends on which my future society is based are already in motion”
Madonne Miner
male characters
Offred “wants to imagine these men as unique: Luke as her ‘real love’… the Commander as her Gileadean ‘sugar daddy’… Nick as her illicit love…. but the novel’s only significant male characters are in fact eerily similar”
Madonne Miner
Nick suppressing Offred’s capacity for independent resistance
“after Offred begins her affair with Nick, she loses all interest in Mayday and in the possibility of escape… whatever political commitment Offred might be capable of making vanishes in light of her commitment to romance”
Madonne Miner
Offred’s need to narrate some kind of romance or fairy story
Offred’s desire to narrate a romance or fairy story “closes off other plot options: what would happen if she were to work with Ofglen, to spy on the Commander and communicate his secrets to Mayday?”
Heidi Macpherson
ways in which the name Offred can be interpreted
“She is off-red, or not quite fully aligned with her role; she is offered up; she is off-read, as in mis-read, and she is afraid”
Heidi Macpherson
Offred as unheroic
Offred “is not heroic. She is, instead, a passive everywoman, awaiting rescue”
Atwood
we cannot blame Offred for her complacency considering how trapped she is
“You’re dealing with a character whose ability to move in the society was limited. She was boxed in… the more limited and boxed in you are, the more important details become”
AO5: Serena and Offred as sympathetic characters
we can sympathise with Offred for the systematic oppression she endures as a Handmaid, but we can also sympathise with Serena Joy in her humiliation
after the Ceremony, Serena lies like an “effigy” on her bed and this corpse-like image highlights the pain she feels
not only is she made to witness her husband having sex with another woman, but the Ceremony also serves to emphasise her advancing age and infertility
Atwood
power balance in Gilead
“Some people think that the society in The Handmaid’s Tale is one in which all men have power, and all women don’t. That is not true”
Atwood
the purpose of the Historical Notes
“I’m an optimist. I like to show that the Third Reich, the Fourth Reich, the Fifth Reich did not last forever”
AO5: the significance of the words Offred spells out in Scrabble
critics have suggested that the words Offred uses in Scrabble may be a code for her hidden protest against the regime’s sexual coercion and silencing of women
“larynx”, “valance” and “zygote”
Carol Ann Howells
female narrator
Atwood’s “choice of a female narrator turns the traditionally masculine dystopian genre upside down”
Margaret Atwood
THMT is a reflection of society, nothing features that has not already happened somewhere, frightening
“if i was to create an imaginary garden i wanted the toads in it to be real”
“one of my rules was that i would not put any events into the book that had not already happened… nor any technology not already available”
“no imaginary gizmos, no imaginary laws, no imaginary atrocities”
Margaret Atwood
puritanism, Gilead is a reflection of the past, aspects of it flow through the history of the USA
“the Republic of Gilead is built on a foundation the 17th century Puritan roots that have always lain beneath the modern day America we thought we knew”
Margaret Atwood
the power of women and why regimes must always quell this by oppressing them
women are “not secondary players in human destiny, and every society has always known that… without women capable of giving birth, human populations would die out”
“that is why the mass rape and murder of women, girls and children has long been a feature of… campaigns meant to subdue and exploit a population”
“kill their babies and replace their babies with yours, as cats do”
Margaret Atwood
control of reproduction and sex, especially female sexuality
“the control of women and babies has been a feature of every repressive regime on the planet”
Margaret Atwood
a warning, not a prediction
“it isn’t a prediction… let’s say it’s an antiprediction: if this future can be described in detail, maybe it won’t happen”
“but such wishful thinking cannot be depended on either” (action needs to be taken)
Karen Stein
the purpose of satire
“satire… addresses its exaggerated version of present evils to readers who have some power to act and, by this means, hopes to bring about social and political change”
Rebecca Stokwisz
Offred’s complacency in feeling sympathy for the Commander
“when Offred meets the Commander in frequent rendezvous in his office, we are shown that it is all too easy to create a humanity for someone… she feels sympathy for him: “he was so sad””
Rebecca Stokwisz
sexual power games throughout the novel
“the relationship with the Commander is still a game of sexual power”
“the doctor is another ambiguous figure who represents the evils of a patriarchal structure, he is prepared to abuse his position for his own sexual gain”
