HMT Context Flashcards
How does ‘the religious right’ link to Aunt Lydia and what is it?
Influential since 1970s.
Campaigns against gay marriage, abortion and pornography.
Label right wing Christian political group who try to influence governments to uphold traditional values.
Aunt Lydia thinks wives should be respectful and submissive to their husbands.
Says we should repent to god for not being submissive and husband should be the leader.
Thinks wives should help husbands but husbands are the head of the household.
Amish community and HMT links.
- Very religious.
- Females have the uniform long dresses (old fashioned ankle length) and males also have smart clothes. Head covering to show submission when praying.
- Lack of individuality to become part of the community.
- Religious is used as scaremongering to make the people stay- if they leave they’ll be shunned/ excommunicated by the church and family and will go to hell. Religion is used to get what they want (make their own rules that people have to accept).
- Girls are prepared at a young age to be a housewife and a mother and don’t have an education past the 8th grade (14).
- Patriarchal society- no female leaders.
- Being monitored on how they speak.
- Small and sheltered world- kept away from the outside world.
Conventions of dystopia
Recognisable to the reader as a nightmarish version of their own world.
Propaganda used to control citizens of society.
Independent thought and freedom is restricted.
The leader is worshipped by the citizens of the society.
The leaders of the state claim that this is a perfect society.
People live deprived lives and are in a constant state of fear.
HMT links to concentration camps.
Striped pyjamas- uniformity (like with red) to take away individuality and dehumanise.
Use of violence and dirty, compact sleeping conditions- ‘cattle prods’ animalistic and dehumanising to the victims- they’re treated like herds of cattle or pigs.
Fit men worked in concentration camps and the rest were killed in death camps- fertile women were handmaids, if they don’t produce a baby within a certain time (Unwomen) they are sent the the colonies to die.
Similarities between Philomena Lee (unmarried mothers had their children taken away from them in Ireland in the 1950s) and The Handmaids Tale.
Take Irish children away forcibly from their unwed mothers and given to rich/ successful US families that adopt them,
Aunts are like nuns. They supervise, look after and teach the women of their sin.
Sex is a sin and is not for pleasure.
Nuns make it very difficult for the mothers to find their children.
Women used as workers in the nunnery.
Corrupt religion.
Little respect for women as they have sinned.
The objectifying of women in modern society.
How does Atwood use Aunt Lydia to show this?
Other examples of objectification of women.
Atwood uses Aunt Lydia to highlight the sexualisation of women in modern societies. The religious extremism of Gilead partly rose out of this feeling that women were being degraded and sought to restore their purity and self-respect.
Playboy, strippers and prostitutes (bad pay- often do to support families). Video games. Dress codes (cover girls up- sexualising their body).
Changes to women’s rights in Iran after the 1979 revolution.
- Men and women were prevented from studying certain uni degrees.
- Men and women were segregated in public.
- Women could not be judges.
- The legal age of marriage was reduced to 9.
What was the average pay gap between men and women in 1985 in the United States.
Women make 33% less.
Men’s ownership of women
In marriage, the majority of the time the woman takes the mans name, reflected in the names for the handmaids e.g. ‘OFfred’
The feminist movement of the 1960s that Offred’s mother was involved in.
Second wave feminism that touched on work, politics, sexuality and family. National pressure group: National Organisation for women (NOW) (president was Betty Friedan author of feminine mystique) tried to write a bill of rights for women and found consensus on essential measures on ensuring women’s equality such as enforcing laws banning employment discrimination and they also fought for greater access to contraception and abortion.
Examples of protests include: strikes, smashing windows of pornography shops and flour-bombing beauty pageants.
Anti-feminists in history
Public executions in North Korea
It is reported by 610 North Korean defectors that offences from stealing a cow to watching South Korean TV can result in executions in North Korea. Public executions can take place near schools, sports grounds etc and crowds of 1000 or more would come to watch these executions, including the families and children of those being executed (made to watch). Most of these executions happen by firing squad (or hanging).
People who commit political crimes were executed in detention facilities in front of inmates and told ‘this could happen to you’
