Historically Contextual Information Flashcards
Atwood’s Historical Inspiration
“As I’ve said about a million times, I didn’t make it up”… “ so many different strands fed into ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ - group executions, sumptuary laws, book burnings, the Lebensborn program of the SS, and the Child stealing of the Argentine generals, the history of slavery, the history of American polygamy…”
- Atwood drew inspiration from 1979, Iran, when Islamic fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini took over from the deposed Shah and imposed widespread suppression upon women, who had to give up paid work, return to the home, and don the veil.
- Similarly, she also drew inspiration from fundamentalist Christian political activist groups, such as the North American Promise Keepers, which views it self as the ‘Godly army) prophesied in Bible verse.
- Ceaușescu and Romania: he passed laws that said women had to have four babies. They had to have pregnancy tests every month and if they weren’t pregnant they had to explain why.
- the Lebensborn movement in Nazi Germany, when SS men were given racially pure extra ‘wives’ to make more little SS men
- In the book, the dominant “religion” is moving to seize doctrinal control, and religious denominations familiar to us are being annihilated. Just as the Bolsheviks destroyed the Mensheviks in order to eliminate political competition and Red Guard factions fought to the death against one another, the Catholics and the Baptists are being targeted and eliminated.
Where did Atwood write her novel?
“ I was living in West Berlin, which was still in tackled by the Berlin Wall: the Soviet empire was still strongly in place, and not to crumble for another five years. Every Sunday, the east German air force meets sonic, booms, to remind us how close they were.… I experience the wariness, the feeling of being spied on, the silences, the changes of subject… The repurposed buildings.”
Useful Atwood Quotes
“It can’t happen here” could not be depended on: Anything could happen anywhere, given the circumstances.
“ One of my rules was that I would not put any events into the book that had not already happened”
“The biblical precedent is that story of Jacob & his two wives, Rachel and Leah”
“The control of women and babies has been a feature of every repressive regime on the planet. Napoleon and his “cannon fodder”…”
“The book is not ‘antireligion’. It is against the use of religion as a front for tyranny.”
“It’s an anti prediction: if this future can be described in detail, maybe it won’t happen”
McCarthyism
Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) in the Cold War = US Senator from 1947 = McCarthyism, also known as the Second Red Scare, was the political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals and a campaign spreading fear of alleged communist and Soviet influence on American institutions and of Soviet espionage in the United States during the late 1940s through the 1950s.
Apocalypse
Comes from the Greek work ‘apokálypsis’ which translates to ‘uncovering’ = we can suggest that an apocalypse might uncover the worst of human nature, forcing people to act selfishly and immorally for the sake of their own survival ( see THE ROAD and questions of morality)
Margaret Atwood: A Short Biography
Margaret Eleanor Atwood is a Canadian writer, born on the 18th of November, 1939, in Ottawa, Ontario, moving to Toronto in 1946. She travelled a good deal in her early childhood, spending half of each year in the wilderness of northern Ontario where her father worked as a forest entomologist. By the age of sixteen Atwood was determined to be a writer. She received her BA from Victoria College, University of Toronto in 1961 , at her MA from Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1962. She also studied at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 1962-63 and 1965-67; Notably, it is here that she studied Puritanism in early American history under Perry Miller, to whom she has dedicated this novel.
In 1966, aged twenty-seven, Atwood published her first collection of poetry, The Circle Game, which was awarded the Governor General Award that year. When studying The Handmaid’s Tale it is pertinent to consider Atwood’s proficiency and acclaim in this field; her use of simile and sensory description in all her novels owes much to her poetical roots. In 1969 she published her first novel, The Edible Woman.
Birth Dearth
Birth dearth was coined by Ben J. Wattenberg in his 1987 book Birth Dearth. This term refers to the declining fertility rates observed in many modern industrialized nations. It is often cited as a response to overpopulation. Countries and geographic regions that are currently experiencing declining populations include Europe, Russia, South Korea, and Spain. Populations of people of these descents in other countries, such as the United States, are also being impacted.
Political and Religious Context of THT
• At the time of writing, in the 1980s, religious right-wing fundamentalist groups were growing in influence in America:
○ These groups were generally characterised by a strong backing for President Reagan and the Republican Party, who valued conservatism and “family values”
○ “Family values” equated to traditional, heterosexual nuclear families
○ He appealed to white, working-class Americans who felt racist resentment against the advances black people had made during the civil rights movement
○ Reagan also appealed to religious groups such as the Moral Majority, who pushed for a return to traditional ideas such as the role of women as housewives and no sex outside of marriage
○ They also resisted abortion and LGBTQ rights
• Today’s readers might receive the novel in the context of more recent President Trump’s authoritarian tendencies and his vice-president’s anti-abortion beliefs
• In addition, in June 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the constitutionally protected right to access abortion in the US, leaving the question of how to regulate abortion to individual states:
○ Millions of women and girls now live in US states where access to abortion is either heavily restricted or totally inaccessible
• The first cases of HIV and AIDS in the US were reported in 1980:
○ At the time Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale, the prognosis for AIDS was death within a year of diagnosis
○ Public fears about AIDS fed into Christian right propaganda that opposed sex outside of marriage, and homosexuality
○ This propaganda likely inspired the political backdrop of Gilead
○ In the Historical Notes, the reader learns that the reduced fertility rate in Gilead was as a result of a sexually transmitted disease
Feminist Context of THT
• Feminism is the term for anything concerning the rights of women and gender equality
• The Western feminist movement is generally seen to be divided into four waves:
○ The First Wave started with the suffrage movement in the mid-19th to early 20th centuries
○ The Second Wave, during the mid-20th century, was characterised by advocacy for women’s rights in the workplace, in marriage and in society more generally
§ More feminist organisations were founded, and abortion was legalised in the US (via the Roe vs. Wade legal case in 1973)
○ The Third Wave relates roughly to the period from the 1990s to the 2010s, and is characterised by the abolition of gender stereotypes, the expansion of discussion about violence against women, the reclamation of derogatory terms and more emphasis on race, class and transgender rights
○ The Fourth Wave covers from roughly the 2010s until the present, and is characterisation by the rejection of gender norms and binaries, the utilisation of social media for activism and movements such as #MeToo
• Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale during the 1980s, during Second Wave feminism:
○ Women were beginning to embrace lives that existed outside of the traditional, domestic sphere
○ In Gilead, those in charge want a return to the pre-Second Wave conditions of domesticity and strict gender roles
○ Atwood viewed this as a setback from the progress that feminists had made
• Offred’s flashbacks and memories of her mother includes the rise of Second Wave feminism and the anti-feminist backlash of New Right Christian fundamentalism
• The voices of the women in the novel represent both traditional feminine and new feminist positions (as represented by Moira and Offred’s mother)
• There is some implied criticism of more radical feminism in the novel, which calls for a radical change to society where male supremacy is removed completely:
○ The reader can infer that Offred’s mother was a feminist activist, as she supported a protest which burnt pornographic books
○ These were feminists protesting the misogynistic nature of such material
○ Even Moira, although working at Jezebel’s, uses wit to undermine sexism
• Therefore, two of the main women in Offred’s life are representations of active feminism, and yet Offred seems to observe their fight and politics from a distance:
○ It is left to the reader to consider whether Offred could be considered a feminist via her subversive behaviour rather than active resistance
While background knowledge of the historical context in which a text was written and received is useful, any reference to historical context should be made judiciously and linked carefully to the themes in the novel and the focus of the exam question. Below you will find some comments about historical context relevant to the key themes and ideas in the novel.
• Atwood was born and raised in Canada, spending much of her childhood in the countryside:
○ This helped to foster an interest in the environment, and has often spoken about the ways in which climate change could make existing inequalities in society worse
• In the 1970s, harmful pesticides began to be banned by the US government, and there was an increase in awareness of the environmental problems caused by the use of pesticides and chemicals:
○ This theme is highlighted in the novel, such as when Offred mentions that grocery stores like “Loaves and Fishes” rarely open anymore because the seas are so polluted that there are no longer enough fish
• Atwood also had an interest in 17th-century American Puritanism in New England:
○ In particular, the Salem witch trials, in which her relative Mary Webster was hanged for being a witch, but survived
○ The novel features hangings on the Wall for those whose crime is being “labelled”
• Many of the practices of Gilead are reminiscent of those of the Puritans, who lived in a rigid theocracy based on a few choice selections from the Bible:
○ For example, Gilead’s attitudes towards women as an inferior sex are directly linked to a Puritan mindset
○ New England Puritan women were often assigned names such as “Silence”, “Patience”, “Comfort” and “Fear”
• The use of Cambridge, Massachusetts as the inspiration for the setting of Gilead allowed Atwood to indirectly link fictional Gilead with the historical Puritan society created hundreds of years earlier:
○ However, the novel does not directly name a setting which broadens its appeal, suggesting that such authoritarianism could arise anywhere
• In addition, televangelists were popular in the US during the 1970s and 1980s, and the gospel evangelist Tammy Faye Bakker is often cited as a possible model for Serena Joy
THT CONTEXT: Reagan, the New Right and the Moral Majority Movement
During the 1980s, far-right religious organisations like the Moral Majority movement and the Christian Coalition gained a foothold in US politics. Their radical positions were further legitimised by President Reagan. In both The Handmaids Tale and US politics, religion was used to marginalise women and maintain the patriarchy. A lot of the oppression and violence towards Offred and Moira in these chapters is justified with teachings from the Bible.
THT CONTEXT: Second Wave Feminism
During this time, rape within marriage was still legal, but eventually the case of R v R in 1991 lead to rape within marriage being recognized as a criminal offence. R was convicted of attempting to rape his wife, and he appealed that decision citing the marital rape exemption. The case was reviewed by the House of Lords, and it was unanimously agreed to overturn the law and uphold the husband’s conviction of rape within marriage. This law is also held for people who cohabit as if they are spouses, despite not being legally married.
THT CONTEXT: Puritanism and Christian fundamentalism in the United States
The Moral Majority were fighting against what the believed was the secularization of America. They fought against gay rights, pornography, the removal of Christian prayers from schools and abortion. We learn in this section that outfits like the one the Commander gives Offred for their trip to Jezebels were burned by the government, and Atwood is potentially presenting her idea of what would happen if the Moral Majority gained power over America.
THT CONTEXT: Theocratic and Totalitarian Regimes and their impact on women
Ceausescu’s Decree 770 - In 1967, Romanian leader banned abortion and contraception to increase the birth rate. In both Romania and Gilead, the main objective was to take away women’s reproductive rights so that the population’s birth rate can increase.
Biblical Context Behind ‘Jezebel’s’
Jezebel was the daughter of the Phoenician priest-king Ethbaal whose identity and name have come to signify a power-hungry, violent, and whorish woman. When she married Ahab, she persuaded him to introduce the worship of the Tyrian god Baal-Melkart, who was a nature god. She tried to destroy those who opposed her, and many of the prophets of Yahweh were killed at her command. As a follower of Baal, she promised to kill the prophet Elijah, who fled when he heard her plan. She also manipulated many powerful men around her in a story about land ownership, leading to the death of several men. Jezebel was ultimately murdered by palace officials who pushed her out of a window, and when guards looked for her body to give her a proper royal burial, they found that her body had been mostly eaten by dogs. She is referenced consistently in biblical texts as the epitome of an evil, non-believing woman, however, her narrative shows that she wielded significant power and was one of few women to do so in the Bible, and resentment of her can be at least partially attributed to the general scriptural dislike of powerful women.
