HMT Flashcards
‘Better never means better for everyone…It always means worse for some’ (Chapter 12)
- The Commander acknowledges that powerful state regimes inevitably perpetuate inequalities.
- In an earlier line, the commander says ‘you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.
- Atwood emphasises both his willingness to justify violence as a means to mould Gilead’s society, and the lack of originality involved in suppressing female thought and sexuality.
‘Freedom to and freedom from’ (Chapter 5)
paradoxical ‘freedom from’ describing imprisonment framed as protection, it’s a classic example of Orwellian doublethink.
‘If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending’ (Chapter 7)
Like Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Offred’s use of the written word has the potential to be a symbolically powerful act of rebellion, a way to emphasise that she, and women like her, cannot be silenced.
‘A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze’ (Chapter 27)
Reinforcing Aunt Lydia’s paradoxical ‘freedom from’, the zoomorphic comparison with a caged ‘rat’ highlights the illusion of Offred’s liberty, which is in reality controlled by impossibly strict, grossly restricting parameters.
What is the context behind the ‘electric cattle prods’ ?
AO3 Key context = NIGHT, Chapter 1
As well as being used to control cattle, ‘electric cattle prods’ were used by the police in US civil rights and race riots of the late 1960s.
Here the term makes explicit the association between these women and breeding animals.
What is the context behind the word ‘Martha’?
AO3 Key context = Shopping, Chapter 2-3
The word ‘Martha, meaning a female domestic servant in Gilead, comes from the biblical story of Martha and Mary. (See Luke 10:38-42.)
In this society, it will be noted that almost all the characters are designated by their roles, for example, Commander, Wife, Aunt, Handmaid.
AO3 Key connection = shopping, chapters 4-6
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty- Four = similar abuse of language to that perpetrated in Gilead as a means to hide the truth is a feature of the totalitarian regime.
AO3 key context = chapter 10
In Chapter 10, Offred sings snatches of hymns like
‘Amazing Grace’ written by John Newton (1728-1807), and old pop songs like Elvis Presley’s 1956 hit
‘Heartbreak Hotel’
(featuring the words ‘I feel so lonely, baby’) ‘in my head’ (p. 64), to relieve her boredom. Such songs are outlawed, ‘especially the ones that use words like free’ (p. 64).
AO3 Key context = Chapters 8-10
Faith is one of the three primary Christian graces; see 1 Corinthians 13:13:
‘And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity? ‘FAITH’ is embroidered on a ‘hard little cushion’ in Offred’s room.
AO3 Key context = Chapters 11-12
‘Give me children, or else I die’ is an echo of Rachel’s plea in the Bible, Genesis 30:1, but it also underlines the threat to the Handmaid’s life. If she fails to produce a child this time, she will be reclassified as an Unwoman and sent to the Colonies. This is because - as Offred observes - ‘There is no such thing as a sterile man any more, not officially’
Instead the law says it is women who must be classified as either ‘fruitful’ or ‘barren’.
AO3 key context = chapters 14-17
The Ceremony is a parodic version of Genesis 30:1-3. Rachel and Leah were sisters who became wives of Jacob. Both gave their Handmaids to him, so that he had children by all of these women. See the Bible, Genesis 29:16 and 30:1-3, 9-12.
AO3 key context = chapters 26-27
Like so much else in Gilead, the stores ‘Daily Bread’ and
‘Loaves and Fishes’ take their names from the Bible. ‘Daily bread’ features in the Lord’s Prayer while ‘loaves and fishes’ is a reference to Christ’s miracle of the loaves and fishes, see Mark 6:38-44.
“Tibetan prayer wheels’ are cylindrical boxes inscribed with prayers, revolving on a spindle, used especially by the Buddhists of Tibet.
AO3 key context = chapter 31-32
The phrase ‘I tell time by the moon. Lunar, not solar’ underscores the fact that Offred’s life is regulated by her menstrual cycle - once thought to be connected with the cycle of the moon.
AO3 Key context = chapters 33-34
Atwood refers to popular rhyming games that mention common flowers. In ‘Do you like butter?’ buttercups were held under the chin to see their yellow reflection. In ‘Blow, and you tell the time’ you puffed at dandelions gone to seed. In ‘daisies for love’ you pulled off the petals and counted them to the words ‘He loves me, he loves me not’.
AO3 Key context = Chapters 35-37
Jezebel was a Phoenician princess and wife of King Ahab, king of northern Israel.
The word ‘Jezebel’ has come to be
synonymous with an immoral and deceitful woman, and also has connotations of a woman who ostentatiously adorns herself with make-up, wigs and other finery. By choosing this name,
Atwood alerts us further to the hypocrisy and sexism that characterise the military dictatorship of Gilead.
