The Handmaid's Tale Flashcards
“We yearned… talent for insatiability?”
“We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?”
The word “insatiability” indicates the shame associated with desire in the novel. Offred’s words evoke disgust and condemnation of women’s sexuality.
“Waste not… do I want?”
“Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?”
Moral disdain for desire, as Offred has internalised the idea that women are more like objects than people, and so it is morally wrong for women to feel.
Use of well-known saying- deeply embedded Gileadan idea.
“I try not… must be rationed.”
“I try not to think too much. Like other things now, thought must be rationed.”
Austere, dull scarcity of life in Gilead. Offred has lost access to material pleasures, intimacy, freedom, and now even her thoughts are restricted and impoverished. Perhaps thinking is dangerous for such a tightly controlled life.
“I enjoy… passive but there.”
“I enjoy the power; power of a dog bone, passive but there.”
Gilead has not completely eliminated desire- remains in more secretive ways.
“I would like to believe… have a better chance.”
“I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who believe such stories are only stores have a better chance.”
Despite narrating the terrible events of Gilead, Offred wishes to believe that they are only a story in order to preserve her dignity and sanity.
“Nolite….”
“Nolite te bastardes carborandorum.”
“Nothing changes instantaneously;….. before you knew it.”
“Nothing changes instantaneously; in a gradually heating bathtub, you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.”
The novel shows how features of our present world might be distorted with nightmarish results, with this passage serving as a warning.
“It’s the… terrifies me.”
“It’s the choice that terrifies me.”
“I don’t want to… so completely.”
“I don’t want to look at something that determines me so completely.”
Offred has been reduced to a tool appreciated only for its use.
“But maybe boredom… for men.”
“But maybe boredom is erotic, when women do it, for men.”
The “boredom” that she feels is due to her having no freedom, independence, nor access to resources. If men find this erotic, it suggests that men’s sexual attraction to women includes the desire to control and belittle them.
“A thing is valued… hard to get.”
“A thing is valued, she says, only if it is rare and hard to get.”
Aunt Lydia’s concern over value is degrading, by implying that women are commodities with conditional rather than inherent value.
Echoes contemporary USA- young women are encouraged to play “hard to get”.
“You wanted a women’s culture…. small mercies.”
“You wanted a women’s culture. Well, there is one now. It isn’t what you meant, but it exists. Be thankful for small mercies.”
The backlash against radical feminist activity helped to bring about Gilead. “Be thankful” is a largely ironic reference to the religious imperative that Offred be thankful for the hellish world in which she now lives.
“You can think… clothes on.”
“You can think clearly only with your clothes on.”
Offred’s uniform is oppressive, as it robs her of her individuality and implies that her body is shameful.
“He doesn’t…. likes it.”
“He doesn’t mind this… maybe he even likes it.”
Sexism has created a communicative gulf between men and women.
“But people will do anything… no meaning.”
“But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning.”
Offred gives her own life meaning by making a story out of it, allowing her to feel sympathy for even the most reprehensible characters in the novel, as she believes their actions are motivated by their own fear and suffering.
“And so I step…. the light.”
“And so I step up, into the darkness; or else the light.”
Darkness represents the suffering, death and meaninglessness of Offred’s life if she is killed by the state, with light being hope, morality and the possibility of escape from Gilead. As the novel’s ending is ambiguous, so is its presentation of human nature.
“Our job… understand.”
“Our job is not to censure but to understand.”
The novel has frequently been banned from school syllabi and even burnt due to its explicit exploration of sexuality, but this implies that women’s bodies and sexuality are somehow shameful and should be controlled rather than understood.
