gender role theme

Question 1

society

Answer 1

Gilead is a strictly hierarchical society, with a huge difference between the genders

all women fired from their jobs and have their bank accounts drained when Gilead takes over

Question 2

Luke

Answer 2

he doesn’t seem so furious as Offred becomes dependent on him

suggests that even good men have embedded misogynistic attitudes- Gilead merely takes these views to the logical extreme

Question 3

women in power

Answer 3

Aunt Lydia may be in a position of power but she is only allowed a cattle prod, not even a gun

Question 4

Commander’s wife

Answer 4

once a powerful supporter of far right-wing religious ideas about how women should stay in the home- now finds herself unhappily trapped

Question 5

sexual violence

Answer 5

Gilead institutionalises sexual violence toward women. The ceremony is institutionalised adultery and a kind of rape

Jezebel’s- whorehouse for the social elite

Question 6

critiques religious right

Answer 6

it also shows the feminist left- Offred’s mother

still not the solution

Question 7

fault the commanders wife

Answer 7

for not showing solidarity to her gender and rebelling against Gilead

Question 8

passive power

Answer 8

“I enjoy the power; the power of a dog bone, passive but there”. Repetition of power for emphasis - one remaining power is her body. ‘dog bone’ connotations of being devoured - men as vicious predators who consume women for their own satisfaction.

Question 9

erotic boredom

Answer 9

“maybe boredom is erotic, when women do it for men”

Question 10

divisions in gender

Answer 10

Gilead has caused divisions that make women hate each other as Offred recalls Aunt Lydia saying that the Wives of the Commanders will hat ethe Handmaids and that the Handmaid’s should be empathetic

Question 11

Freud’s theory of ‘Penis Envy’

Answer 11

‘Pen Is Envy, Aunt Lydia would say’ - pun - play on ‘penis envy’ implying women who are literate want to be men - against traditional, preferred gender roles of Gilead. In Gilead women aren’t allowed to read or write. Knowledge is power - deny knowledge - deny power. Mediation of learning.

Offred’s envy of the Commander’s position and power. Similar to 1984.

Question 12

this book is

Answer 12

a story of “a woman’s survival narrative told within the confines of a patriarchal society” called Gilead - Coral Ann Howells

Question 13

the HMT offers

Answer 13

an explicit feminist critique of the objectifying male gaze and the binary logic that undergird’s patriarchal society

Question 14

influence by

Answer 14

events in Iran and Afghanistan - theocracy and diminished civil liberties, especially for women

Question 15

handmaids are

Answer 15

depersonalised and exploited as reproductive tools

“national resource” - collective ownership - reduces them to inanimate commodities. Satirising extremist political beliefs.