Handmaid's Tale Flashcards
How does Atwood describe her experiences in East Germany (Berlin Wall)
“I experienced the wariness, the feeling of being spied on, the silences, the changes of subkect…these had an influence on what I was writing”
What was the Roes vs Wade Case
1973 - Supreme Court Ruling decriminalised abortion nationwide
How did the ‘New Right’ come about
The antiabortion movement, which began in the Catholic church and had remained an essentially religious movement, was the main vehicle for the rise of the New Right’s developed base and mass ideology
Brought the abortion debate into the limelight once again
How has the New Right and abortion debate influenced the Handmaid’s Tale
Atwood gestures towards the political and ethical controversies throughout the novel and it constitutes an important central theme
- Of who controls sex and sexuality within a society and the implications of this on individuals
Give some Puritan context
Most significant colony = new England (where THT is set)
Arabella ship left England in 1630 with the future governor John Winthrop stating “They eyes of all people are upon us”.
What do puritans believe in
Predestination
This doctrine states that God is all-knowing and powerful, therefore the fate of each individual soul is known from birth.
Individuals couldm’t change their fate
When was China’s one-child policy
1979 - demand grew for making the limit of one child per family
Resisted in rural places - houses pulled down and fines
Offered financial incentives and caused forced abortions and sterilizations on MAINLY women - THT
Give a quote that sums up Offred’s initial thoughts of Nick
“Perhaps he was an eye” - culture of fear
Give 3 quotes from the Ceremony
Offred describes it as “serious buisnes”
“Her legs are apart, I lie between them, my head on her stomach, her pubic bone under the base of my skull”
- List of body parts = dehumanises Handmaid’s, represents them as a function than as a whole being
'’What he is fucking is the lower part of my body. I do not say making love, because that is not what he is doing”
- “lower part” = Julia rebel from waist down
“The Commander too is doing his duty”
Give a quote that depicts the hanged men on the Wall
Its the bags over the heads that are the worst…it makes the men look like dolls on which faces have not yet been painted…The heads are zeros”
Give some Margret Thatcher Context
1988 - banned the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities and in schools
Prohibited the discussion of same-sex relationships with students
Councils were forbidden from stocking libraries with literature/films hat contained gay or lesbian themes
What is the Alabama Bill on abortion
2019
Law includes a ban of abortion in cases of rape/incest
Supporters want the court, which now has a conservative majority, to overturn the 1973 legislation
Doctors face 10 years for attempting to terminate a pregnancy and 99 years for carrying out the procedure
All those voting for the bill were men
Describe Romania’s contraception ban
Women who broke the law could be jailed for up to 2 years.
Women were subjected to mandatory gynaecological examinations at work, and those found to be pregnant were monitored by the secret police
Resulted in over 100,000 unwanted children being dumped in orphanages and the death of over 10,000 during or after illegal termination
What is significant about the timing of Atwood writing her book
Wrote it shortly after the elections of Ronald Reagan and Margret Thatcher, during a period of conservative revival in the West, partly fueled by a string, well-organized movement of religious conservatives
The growing power of this “religious right” heightened feminist fears that the gains women made in previous decades would be reversed
Who might Serena Joy be modelled on
Phylis Schlafly - an extreme right activist who travelled America, urging support for her conservative views on women
How does Atwood relate to Puritanism
Her relative Mary Webster was hanged as a witch in 1683
Survived the hanging and went free
Many historians see witchcraft accusations as a way of female suppression by men
Puritanism ideals is a Utopian society with…………..values. But in practice, this means………..,………………and patriarchy, all features of dystopian Gilead
Traditinol
Oppression
Theocracy
In New England, what was the first Puritan building
A prison and a gallow - symbols of oppression like the wall and university hangings
What is ‘The Laugh of Medusa’
Influential essay by French critic Hélène Atticus - foregrounded the ideas of feminist writing using the body
The poetic imagery of fertility and growth are markers of a…………language - expressing offred’s desires for……..in such a patriarchal society
Feminised
Belonging
Oceania was a universally repressive quasi-……..system that……..its entire populace, Gilead is a…………… repressive quasi-…..system that terrorises some more than others
(Shanbazian)
Soviet
Terrorises
Selectively
Fascist
(Shanbazian) For those in the in-group, totalitarianism is a utopia, whilst for other sits akin to………..
Slavery
(Shanbazian) - The removal of pleasure from sex is achieved by………..into a monthly ‘ceremony’ - a purely physical action with zero emotional…………….
Ritualising
Engagement
What is achieved by forcing people to display their social status through clothes
Gilead forces its citizens into their allotted place in society, demoralising them by preventing any expression of individuality
How else does Gilead rob people of their individuality
Takes away their names - Like Zamyatin We
What is the effect of renaming America Gilead (Shanbazian)
Cuts out American history, Gilead’s distorted official history is the only link to the past
Give a quote from Serena when Offred arrives for the first time
“So you’re the new one,” she said
Replaceable objects with no name
Give a quote from Japanese tourist encounter
“They seem undressed…I used to dress like that. That was freedom”
Give a quote on Serena Joy’s past
“How furious she must be, now that she’s been taken at her word…she’s become speechless”
Give a quote about only women being infertile
“There is no such thing as a sterile man anymore, not officially. There are only women who are fertile and women who are barren”.
Give a quote that initialises Offred and Ofglen’s new-found partnership
“Do you think God listens to those machines…right now its treason”
“The Ceremony goes on as usual…Nor does….cover it: nothing is going on here that I haven’t signed up for. There wasn’t a lot of….. but there was some”
Rape
Choice
What is a Salvaging and what does it highlight
Execution carried out by a group of Handmaid’s by beating the condemned to death
Clearly demonstrates how emotionally suppressed they are as this is their only form of expression
links to 2 mins of hate
Give a counter-argument to there is only a lack of individuality in dystopian writing
Both protagonists are ins some ways intellectuals ina. a society where individualism is suppressed
Who says “We were a society dying of too much choice”
Aunt Lydia
Give a quote that epitomises appearance vs reality (ministry if Truth link)
“The lawns are tidy, the façades are gracious, in good repair”
“Façade” = veneer
Give a quote that depicts the Handmaid’s walking in twos
“Doubled I walk the street”
- Like they’ve been cloned, lack of individuality
How does religion differ across the two dystopias
THT - Theocracy and religious fundamentalism are used as a means of justifying the totalitarian regime by painting it as morally good.
1984 - no religion, as it would divert people’s attention from the Party. One authority = BB who is ‘godlike’
Give a quote that encapsulates Offred’s suppression and stripped individuality
“They used to have dolls for little girls, that would talk if you pulled the string at the bac; I thought i was sounding like that, the voice of a monotone, the voice of a doll”
Conditioned speech - talks when asked for
Give 3 Aunt Lydia quotes
“The Republic of Gilead knows no bounds. Gilead is within you” - biblical allusion “The kingdom of God is within you”
“Modesty is invisible…never forget it. To be seen is…her voice trembled - penetrated”
What is a palimpsest
Past and present layered on top of one another -
Give two quotes on the degraded view of women /wives
“Many of the wives have such gardens, its something for them to order, maintain and care for”.
- Lack of order and control in society
“Sometimes the commander’s wives have a chair brought out and just sits in it…From a distance, it looks lime peace”.
- Ostensibly clam and tranquil, degraded view of women - like the Eloi they have no intellectual capability
What is symbolic about the garden
Cultivated an artificial - mirrors the artificial creation of families
Give a quote that links to the perpetual warfare in 1984
“Perhaps she’s sewing…or knitting scarves for the ANgels on the front lines…Sometimes I think these scarves aren’t sent to the Angels at all, but unravelled and turned back into balls of yarn”
No purpose for women
Mirrors women - once were like scarves with purpose and colour, now unravelled and turned into basic yarn
What is the enforced clothing related to contextually
Supplementary Laws
In England 17th C - supplementary laws dictated what colour and type of clothing people could wear to enforce distinction of rank and status
Describe the purpose of each feature on the handmaid’s dress
White wings - Not distracted by sin
contrasting colour to rest of body = they’re not in control of their bodies
Restricts their view = narrow view of society
Red dress - the colour of blood and fertility - prominent importance, lack if hiding, unable to blend into society, their sin marks them out
Give an example of the imposed hierarchy and the effect
“Commanders” - imply they have ultimate control over everything, with the wives and Marthas falling behind them
Devours equality and imposes corruption and tyranny.
The lack of contact and interaction between the social groups illustrates humanity’s lack of morality and sympathy for others
Give a quote from Offred that links Handamid’s bodies to ‘vessels’ and some analysis
“We are containers, it is only the insides of our bodies that are important”
Surrounded herself to Gilead with the use of “we” and “are” implying that ‘the body politic has permeated its way into her private narrative, which was her only form of individual expression’.
How is sex viewed as in ‘Zamyatin We’
“Duty to society”
D-503 on one occasion considering an ageing woman’s intention to write his name on her pink coupons;
“I did not hurry her, although I realized I ought to be pleased, and there was no greater honour than gracing someone’s evening years”
Give context for the distortion of sex and relationships
Nazi Germany - the law for the ‘Protection of German Blood and German Honour of 1935’ not only rewarding mothers and women with the more children they had with medals etc
but also was done in the name of ‘The 3rd Reich’ in the hope of increasing the Aryan race long into the future.
How does Katherine describe sex in 1984
“Our duty to the party”
Party has twisted the action of sex to become part of the machinery of a totalitarian regime, by supplying the party with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of loyal labour and members.
How does offred describe the ceremony
As “serious business”
“Arrasoul and orgasm are no longer thought necessary”
What does Doctrow claim
1984 and THT could be read as ‘companion novels’
How is family presented in Zamyatin We
Not mentioned - doesn’t exist
The main character D-503 feels a want for a mother, “If I had a mother, like the ancient”
Give 2 quotes that objectives women
“Nick hadn’t been issued a woman. Not even one”
Objectifies women and make relationships appear polygamous, thus destroying the machinery for a healthy family to exist
Jezebels - “he retains hold of my arm”
Illustrating how he does not have Offred’s best interests at heart and seeks to objectify her for his own satisfaction
Give a quote that highlights how everything is done for the tyrannical elite (men)
“The problem was with men. There was nothing for them anymore”.
This encapsulates how the creators of Gilead have twisted and distorted society for the benefit of a tiny elite of men so that they could “feel again”
Explain the significance of “Better never means better for everybody”
Selfish statement that not only references how women are at the bottom of the hierarchy but attempts to justify the negative impacts his Utopia has on the rest of society
Give a novel that also depicts everything serving the tyrannical elite
Lord of the Flies
Jack’s totalitarian reign forcing the other boys to hunt ralph, the only character that has not joined Jack’s tribe. Jack’s misuse of power is evident when he sets the whole island on fire to find the only character who poses a threat to his absolute power
Give a quote from THT that illustrates complete surveillance
“The Eyes of God run all over the Earth”
