Prefatory Material Flashcards
who is the book dedicated to?
Mary Webster
Perry Miller
(both of these names hint at the Puritan background used for Gilead)
who was Mary Webster?
one of Atwood’s Puritan ancestors who was hanged as a witch in Connecticut during the Salem Witch Trials in 1692
but she survived and was allowed to go free (an extraordinary escape from death)
both Mary and Offred are women who successfully disregard and resist the law of a Puritan state
Atwood notes that “they strung her up and let her dangle…. when they came to cut her down the next morning, she was still alive”
who was Perry Miller?
Atwood’s Director of American Studies at Harvard University
had a reputation as an authority of Puritan history and encouraged Atwood to undertake research into the American Puritans
what three quotations make up the epigraph and what do they suggest?
1) biblical quotation from Genesis
2) quotation from Jonathan Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’
3) a Sufi proverb
(they all suggest possible approaches to the text)
1) biblical quote from Genesis, the Old Testament
extract from a story in the Old Testament about surrogate mothers and handmaids on which the novel was based
provides biblical precedent for the sexual practices in Gilead and immediately raises the issue of religious fundamentalism
Gilead uses this story of Rachel and Leah to justify the use of Handmaids as surrogates for elite couples
also opens up the feminist critique of the patriarchy where women are regarded as nothing more than sexual and domestic objects for the service of men — biblical precedent is used to legitimise the ways in which infertile women are devalued, degraded and cast out of society
inspired the name of the Rachel and Leah Re-education Centre, linking to how Handmaids are taught to accept their inferior status and subservience to the official Wives
the story of Rachel and Leah (the first quotation in the epigraph)
Rachel was unable to bear children so asked her husband to use her servant, Bilhah, as a surrogate
according to the Bible, the 12 tribes of Israel are descended from the sons that Jacob fathered with 4 different women — his 2 official wives (Rachel and Leah) and their 2 handmaids (Bilhah and Zilpah)
reminds us that barrenness and infertility is always said to be the fault of the wife as opposed to the husband (Rachel is believed to be infertile and they never question whether it might be Jacob who is at fault) — like in Gilead
2) quotation from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift
A Modest Proposal was a satirical piece of work depicting a desperate plea to improve conditions in Ireland in the 1720s, which was suffering terrible poverty and famine
takes the form of a pamphlet recommending cannibalism and the treatment of women and children as cattle
he proposes that to save hordes of Irish babies and children from dying of starvation, they should instead cook and eat them — he even offers a range of options such as boiling, frying and baking
satirically recommends that women be treated as ‘national resources’, like the Handmaids are in THT
by including this, Atwood signals her satirical intentions — Swift presented an insane scheme of state sponsored cannibalism to solve famine in Ireland, much like Gilead’s extreme proposals to solve the problem of infertility in North America
3) quotation from a Sufi proverb
suggests two key ideas that underpin THT….
1) the proverb seems to suggest that under extreme conditions the human survival instinct is extremely strong and can be trusted
2) the state does not need to regulate every aspect of its citizens private lives, since legislating against the obvious is pointless — suggests that no totalitarian regime can ever really destroy our essential humanity and that Gilead’s micromanagement of its citizens lives is completely unwarranted
it’s a comment on the polluted world of Gilead where the balance of nature has been destroyed
it may also be an implied criticism of the state’s overregulation of social and sexual activities, only things that are desirable have to be forbidden
the extreme intolerant bigotry of Puritanism
Atwood credits Perry Miller with pointing out the extreme intolerant bigotry of Puritanism
noting that although Puritans “wanted the freedom to practice their religion…. they were not particularly keen on anyone else practicing his or hers”
how does Gilead link to Puritanism?
the conception of the theocratic Republic of Gilead is eerily reminiscent of the extreme religious intolerance of the early Puritans, who persecuted the likes of Mary Webster
Gilead turned to the past to formulate and justify its ideological structure
Atwood seems to be making a point that “no society ever strays completely far from its roots”
link between the Historical Notes and the Newspeak Appendix
Atwood notes that the Newspeak Appendix is “…written in standard English and in the past tense, which can only mean that the regime has fallen, and that language and individuality have survived. For whoever has written the essay on Newspeak, the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four is over”
she makes an explicit link between this and her own Historical Notes, which she says “owes much to Nineteen Eighty-Four… it’s the account of a symposium held several hundred years in the future, at which the repressive government described in the novel is now merely a subject for academic analysis”
