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Craig White's Literature Courses Critical Sources Text Guide for Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (1986) |
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Characters (roughly in order of appearance)
Offred
Aunt Lydia
Commander (i.e. "Fred")
Serena Joy, the Commander's Wife, birth name: Pam
Rita and Cora, "Marthas"
Luke
Nick
Ofglen
Moira
Janine
"she," Offred's lost daughter
Terms / Glossary / Allusions
218 Balm / Bomb in Gilead: rare perfume mentioned in Bible, named for region now in Jordan
303 "emotion recollected, if not in tranquility, at least post facto": paraphrase of "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility," from William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800)
117 "From each one according to her ability; to each one according to his needs."<--"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," from Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program (1875)
"gravid smell of earth and grass" (111): gravid = pregnant, heavy with child
"greatly multiply thy sorrows and thy conceptions" (114): Genesis 3.16. [Yahweh speaks to Eve as he drives her and Adam from Eden:] Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.
Libertheos ): (p. 25: ) Liberation Theology, Marxist-influenced theology ascendant in Latin America, 1960s-80s.
Lily of the Valley perfume (p. 80): name taken from the Bible's Song of Solomon 2:1: "I am the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley." Also the name of a popular Christian hymn written in the 1870s for the Salvation Army by Charles W. Fry (1837-1882), who with his family started the Salvation Army's first brass band.
80 marquetry end table: marquetry refers to veneer or thin pieces of wood applied decoratively to cabinets, tables, or chairs; for illustrations, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquetry
Marthas: in the Bible's Gospel of Luke (10: 38-42), Jesus visits the home of sisters Mary and Martha, where Mary sits at his feet to learn while Martha remains busy in the kitchen. Therefore the Republic of Gilead assigns some women to be "Marthas," i.e. cooks or kitchen workers. In the home represented in Handmaid's Tale, the two Marthas who work in the kitchen are Cora and Rita.
Merry Widow (242): a plumed hat, popularized by actress Lily Elsie in the title role of the operetta The Merry Widow (1908). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily_Elsie#Merry_Widow_and_peak_years
Nolite te bastardes carborundum (first on p. 52; interpreted on p. 187)
120 You were a wanted child . . . pronatalist: Pronatalism or Natalism promotes childbearing as beneficial to society and human survival; Antinatalism assigns a negative evaluation to procreation and birth.
Quakers (pp. 83 et passim) (follow link to summary of Quakers or "Society of Friends," a pacifist, social-justice Christian church)
Rachel, Leah, & Bilbab (p. 88, et passim) In the Bible's Genesis 29, Rachel was the Jewish patriarch Jacob's second but favorite wife; Leah, Rachel's sister, was Jacob's first wife; Rachel, unlike Leah, was infertile and gave Jacob her maidservant Bilhah as a surrogate mother. After Bilhah gave birth to two sons, Rachel conceived Joseph, who became the next leader of the Jewish people.
300 Sumptuary Laws [sumptuary = pertaining to or regulating expenditure]
Les Sylphides (p. 70): a 1909 ballet blanc—a dance scene in which dances wear all white dresses or tutus—choreographed in 1909 by Michel Fokine with music by Frederic Chopin orchestrated by Alexander Glazunov. A sylphide (French) is a young sylph or ethereal spirit, or in transferred meaning a young, graceful girl.
119 I see my mother . . . Take Back the Night: international event and non-profit organization with the mission of ending sexual, relationship, and domestic violence in all forms
Early Take Back the Night events include a protest in San Francisco against pornography in 1978. One of the first "Take Back the Night" marches was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in October 1975, after the murder of a microbiologist, Susan Alexander Speeth, who was stabbed to death while walking home alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_Back_the_Night_(organization)
168 cf. Tibetan prayer wheels
46 true shape of things to come [allusion to title of H.G. Wells novel, 1933]
Possible historical references from 1980s
p. 83 anchorman cf. Pres. Ronald Reagan (1981-89): elderly patriarchal figure who assures that secure traditional past will return if disturbances repressed
p. 121 a backlash. History will absolve me: popular term for 1980s social reaction against feminism and for traditional family values, later codified by Susan Faludi's nonfiction Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1991).
Comparison with The Dispossessed
14 what did I have to trade? [cf. Shevek]
20 youngest most dangerous. They haven't yet learned about existence through time.
31 The Wall
47 hands empty, full
56-7 newspaper stories like bad dreams . . . too melodramatic (cf. Birdseed)
72 Janine: self-criticism sessions; cf. Dispossessed, Tirin
268 What did I have to give? . . . not munificent but thankful; beggar's knock
General reading notes
"Best lack all conviction" could be adaptive in boom-bust revenge cycles?
review Parable of the Talents with Handmaid's Tale
Utopias concern time, chronotope?
both Atwood and Le Guin are poets, e.g. p. 39
Men's Salvagings [etc.] as public ceremony, spectacle
challenge of narrative vs. mimetic detail
Utopia as hope? You-hope-ia?
83 Resettlement of the Children of Ham
question: reconcile urge to read as feminist text with utopia; the gazxe, the body dismembered
Why important to acknowledge utopian dimensions of dystopia? (cf. Anthem) 119 some ideas sound, but Godless
architecture
question whether concern over births anticipates recent white panic over low white fertility rates and high fertility rates among immigrants, Muslims
question: why book popular (e.g. sequels)
Question on HT as dystopia--whole person divided, families separated
reading or literacy as essential to utopia? > free exchange of thought
113 you are the shock troops . . . march out in advance [utopian vanguard]
confiscate smartphones?
utopia humanizes? dystopia dehumanizes?
how much is self-reflection on language and feelings boomerish?
Commander as human: she likes some things about him; he does terrible things
utopias seem exotic, then see them everywhere, essential to social or cultural narratives; utopia / salvation necessary for most cultural narratives (romance)
x-lecture: utopias like religion: prolific, long-winded, infinitely provisional
limits of novel: privileges private over public
population: if we won't solve it, it will solve itself
Gretchen to visit for HT ?
p. 237 dialogue as expository? > mimetic? (references to absent representations)
+ extend range of human; shared language; figuration
human / humane as near absolute value (add to "human?")
"Historical notes": cf. Always Coming Home, anthropology & Handmaid's Tale postscript
is smell a counter-sense to male gaze?
glossary: Argentina, adpotion of children of Disappeared
Atwood, In Other Worlds
Reading notes
Introduction
xiii 1984 handwriting, manual typewriter; Iron Curtain
spied on, silences, changes of subject, obligque conveying of information
xiv sf, speculative fiction, utopias, dystopias
sermonize, allegory, x-plausibility
imaginary garden
no imaginary gizmos
Cambridge MS, Puritan theological seminary, Harvard Wall
biblical precedent: 1 man, 4 women, 12 sons
xv Handmaid's Tale < Cantebury Tales, fairy and folk tales
40+ languages, film, opera, ballet graphic novel, Hulu TV series
cameo!
slut-shaming of Janine
xvi women gang up on each other, social media
all pwoer relative
"feminist" novel?
not secondary players
xvii anti-religion?
totalitarian clothing [contrast Ecotopia, News from Nowhere]
predition? > anti-prediction
literature of witness
2 reading audiences: academic conference in future, recent American election
Night
Ch 1 3 old sex . . . yearned for the future
4 blankets still said U.S.
guards picked from Angels
something exchanged, some deal, some trade-off
still had our bodies
Shopping
Ch 2 7 the kind of touch they like: folk art, archaic, amde by women . . . no further use
A return to traditional values
7 Aunt Lydia: cf. army
8 I intend to last . . . I am alive, live, breathe
Aunt Lydia: not a prison but a privilege
cf nunneries: bells, few mirrors
red shoes, not for dancing
white wings, x-seeing, being seen
the room, x-my room, my
9 large, rich family
color code for rank; Rita in Martha's dress
the time before
10 the Colonies . . . the choice
the Unwomen
still real coffee
mischief of bodies
nod our heads as punctuation
exchange remedies
11 [70s idiom] I hear where you're coming from
an exchange, of sorts
Marthas: unofficial news
fraternize > sororize
tokens with pictures for object of exchange
Ch. 3 12 tulips read, darker crimson, cut, healing
12 garden domain of commander's wife
order, maintain and care for (cf. Genesis)
13 Angels at the front lines
cross and star pattern
Why envy me?
13 unsure about our exact status
a position of honor
So, you're the new one
14 cigarettes from black market > hope
no real money anymore
14 what did I have to trade? [cf. Shevek]
15 business transaction
x-ma'am, not a Martha
16 wouldn't have liked her, nor she me
voice of a doll
they can hit us . . . scriptural precedent.
One of the things we fought for [no divorce)
TV: Growing Souls Gospel Hour, Serena Joy
smile and cry at same time
So it was worse than I thought.
Ch 4 17-18 Nick, no woman, not even one. Misfit, winks
18 What if I were to report him? . . . Perhaps he is an Eye.
18 Sidewalks kept much cleaner
19 Ofglen quietly ordodox, maybe a real believer
war going well, defeated more of the rebels
20 Baptists
false news . . . must mean something
first barrier, red hexagon = stop
lanterns, floodlights, machine guns, pillboxes
Green uniforms of the Guardians of the Faith
20 youngest most dangerous. They haven't yet learned about existence through time.
21 passes inspected, stamped > Compucheck
event, small defiance of rule . . . possibilities, peepholes
never allowed solitude
Commanders of the Faithful
Salvagings, Prayvaganzas, Birthmobile
21-22 Black van with winged Eye
22 no more magazines, films
Ch 5 23 Doubled, I walk the street
23 street in a model town . . . no children
23 heart of Gilead . . . Gilead is within you
23 no lawyers, university closed
Luke and I . . . children, garden
24 stupid dresses: Econowives: not divided to functions, have to do everything, if they can
woman in black a widow
Women not protected then, couldn't run at night
rules never spelled out but every woman knew
laundromats: my own clothes, soap, money, control
freedom to and freedom from
24-5 dress store, Lilies of the Field, letters painted out
25 women seemed able to choose
society dying of too much choice
Central America lost to Libertheos
shopping, see someone knew from time before
26 vastly pregnant, a magic presence
carrier of life, closer to death
Compubite
Humongous, word of my childhood [Bakhtin period-worldview]
27 not many things plastic
27 she [daughter]
27 tourists from Japan
28 women seem undressed, took so little time to change our minds
28 Westernized
Modesty is invisibility
To be seen is to be penetrated
29 smell of nail polish
ch 6 30 We have a choice
30 thinking of past, pick out beautiful things, believe al like that
Football stadium, Men's Salvagings
31 church museum; only more recent history offends them
31 The Wall
32 six more bodies hanging
white coats, like doctors or scientists
drawing of human fetus
searched through hospital records . . . 33 informants, ex-nurses
33 two women required for evidence
like war criminals, crimes retroactive
made into examples
time travelers, anachronisms
ordinary is what you are used to
Night
ch 7 37 lie & lay . . . I lie, then, . . .
plaster eye in ceiling
Moira, purple, gold . . . beer . . . paper due PSYC, ENGL, ECON
38 date rape . . . borrowing $5
park with mother . . . women burning books, magazines [unforeseen consequences of limiting expression?]
39 still on fire, parts of women's bodies, turning to black ash
I know I lost time
Where is she? . . . with people who are fit
I would like to believe this is a story I am telling . . . control over ending
writing forbidden
40 telling [story] to someone . . . pretend you can hear me
Waiting Room
ch 8 43 weather is almost like June
43 three new bodies on wall
43 years ago, sect wars . . . Gender Treachery (purple)
43 May day 44 Mayday . . . help me
44 funeral [miscarriage] . . . Unbaby?
hands over hearts . . . Econowives do not like us
45 "Under His Eye" . . . [poetic image]
All flesh is weak > grass, I corrected her
Serena Joy = Pam: x-singing > making speeches: women stay home
46 funny? > in earnest
46 Serena Joy become speechless
46 true shape of things to come [H.G. Wells allusion]
defeated, unable
47 hands empty, full
yeast, nostalgic, smell, kitchens, mothers [free association, poetry]
all envy each other something
48 ain't like you're common . . . speak up
48 Dishtowels same, flashes of normality
talking about me as though I can't hear, cf. 38
49 Commander, violating custom . . . something shown, but what is it?
In my froom? I called it mine.
ch 9 50 trying not to tell stories, or this one
50 someone has lived in this room, before me
Luke in flight from his wife
51 Loved me? just an affair?
thought we had problems. How know we were happy?
like something you'd make up
52 Old love cf. p. 3 old sex
52 these attacks of the past
What is to be done?
Nolite te bastardes carborundum
a message in writing, forbidden by that very fact
imagine the woman, turn her into Moira
53 which one?
a grapevine, an underground of sorts
ch 10 54 Amazing Grace, Heartbreak Hotel outlawed
56 Moira underwhore party
56 Is that how we lived then? . . . by ignoring
Nothing changes instantaneously
56-7 newspaper stories like bad dreams . . . too melodramatic (cf. Birdseed)
57 We were the people who were not in the papers.
Commander silverhaired. The one before this was bald, so I suppose he's an improvement.
58 coed dorms reveerted
ch 11 59 doctor's office, Compudoc
59 nurse with pistol
60 snake and sword, broken bits of symbolism from time before
60 doctor x-see face; torso only
60 tic of speech from the other time
60 I could help you . . . never know it isn't his.
61 old guys can't make it, or sterile (forbidden word); only women fruitful or barren
generic term: we are all honey
shipped to Colonies, Unwoman. None of this is said, but knowledge of his power
the choice that terrifies me. A way out, a salvation
ch 12 62 bath a requirement, also a luxury
62 St. Paul: hair long or a close shave
63 nakedness shameful, immodest
x-look at body, determines me so completely
she's there with me
eleven months old, a woman stole her out of supermarket cart
both of us had jobs
Luke at meat counter, some differences, studies said
63-4 her baby, the Lord gave it her, sent a sign
64 ghost of dead girl; x-things, x-attached to material world
Blessed are meek, x-inherit
easier to think dead; no hope, wasted effort
puritan aids (brush, pumice)
65 tattoo on ankle, eye + four digits, reverse passport
a national resource
that film about the women kneeling in the square
some of what we uised to call privacy left
ways of making her resentments felt
a worthy vessel
66 wonder how she [Serena Joy] manages to get herself noticed.
my self a thing I must compose
a made thing, not something born
V. Nap
Ch 13 69 spare time, harems, boredom, erotic
69 pig balls, pig marketers
70 caged rats, pigeons
Domestic Science room, Les Sylphides
pill or drug in food to keep us calm
Moira to gymnasium
71 Testifying. Janine gangraped at 14
72 Janine: self-criticism sessions; cf. Dispossessed, Tirin
You are an example [utopia]
72 nakedness of men's lives
73 public display of privates, flashin gof a badge
73 blood - expectations of others become my own
my body : instrument of pleasure, transportation, will > womb
[dream of apartment and Luke]
running with her . . . being carried away
VI. Household
ch 14 79 as if I'm a piece of furniture
79 sitting room subdued, symmetrical; shape money takes when it freezes
80 passing paintings off as ancestors
80 Serena Joy's tastes: hard lust for quality; soft sentimental cravings
80 marquetry end table
Lily of the Valley perfume
81 Commander head of the household
all need to be here, the Ceremony demands it
82[flowers =] genital organs of plants
TV: gospel, preacher cf. businessman
news could be faked; read beneath it
Appalachian Highlands: Angles of the Apocalypse x Baptist guerillas
83 anchorman cf. Reagan
heretical sect of Quakers
83 Resettlement of the Children of Ham
84 [memory] another name
the little girl who is now dead . . . going on a picnic
85 forged passports, x-pay in $, Compucount
Don't think that way, Moira said. Think that way and you'll make it happen
ch 15 86 Commander black uniform
87 Bible locked up, read to but we cannot read
To be a man, watched by women, must be entirely . . .
87-8 the stub of himself, his extra, sensitive thumb, tentacle
88 a darkness composed of women
hell
just fine to be a man like that . . . very silent
88 he has the word. How we squandered it, once.
88 Rachel, Leah, & Bilbab
89 sin of reading
Blessed are the silent. Scripture made up, left out
90 smell of her crying
Nolite te bastardes carborundum . . .
91 Moira beaten; feet and hands not essential
ch 16 94 What he is fucking is the lower part of my body
94 x-a lot of choice but some, and this is what I chose
95 not recreation, serious business
smells
ch 17 96 only the insides of our bodies important
96 decree of the wives, x-attractive
97 touched again, in love or desire
a wishing moon
to be held and told my name . . . I repeat my former name
98 someone in the room, behind me
VII. Night
ch 18 103 nobody dies from lack of sex . . . lack of love
106 She'll remember us and we will be all three of us together
contradictory way of believing
VIII. Birth Day
ch 19 one of my homes (dreaming)
109 mother stays home from work [private-public conflict]
sanity a valuable possession, save it [for] when the day comes
114 [free association] [words] None of these facts has any connection with the others . . . litanies I use to compose myself
114 what God must look like: an egg
the minimalist life
111 a familiar
the siren
111 gravid smell of earth and grass
red Birthmobile . . . Ofwarren
112 Unbaby? (chances 1 in 4) Whatever it is must be carried to term
112 air, toxic molecules, fatty cells
myself, my body, skeleton to an election
exploding atomic power plants, San Andreas Fault
mutant syphilis
113 you are the shock troops . . . march out in advance [utopian vanguard]
graph population birthrate, past zero line of replacement
no future? excuse . . . sluts
habits of former times lavish, decadent, immoral
pathos of all vanished civilizations
no dates after mid-80s; schools closed, lack of children
114 some masculine pursuit (read)
no anesthetics . . . greatly multiply thy sorrows and thy conceptions
blue Birthmobile, for Wives
115 No Agent Orange in her family. [anachronism[
Janine thinks of nothing
ch 20 116 pig out [70s]
116 master bedroom, good name
117 she's one of us . . . this district
117 From each one according to her ability; to each one according to his needs.--St. Paul?
a transitional generation > no memories
movies
118 projection equipment . . . old porno films . . . woman cut to pieces
Unwoman documentary
119 some ideas sound, but Godless
119 I see my mother . . . Take Back the Night
120 pro-choice slogans
120 You were a wanted child . . . pronatalist
121 What use man?
121 a backlash. History will absolve me.
women's lives, bodies
Luke cooks
model offspring, incarnation of her ideas
I want her, everything back . . . no point in this wanting
ch 21 123 smell of our own, flesh, organic . . . smell of matrix
124 Alma
124 Identify with your body
125 spiked the grape juice
Commander's Wife behind Janine on Birthing Stool
126 Angela
127 [sympathetic lactation]
Mother, you wanted a woman's culture. [satire?]
ch 22 128 hats like an idea of paradise
129 story of Moira < alliances
Aunts allowed to read and write
132 Moira marched straight out . . . And disappeared.
taste for freedom, finding walls secure.
Moira our fantasy
ch 23 134 a reconstruction
134 man reading . . . never subjected to temptation you must forgive, a man, as a woman
135 Commander: kiss me
136 illegal to be alone with Commander
two-legged wombs
a small crack in the wall
137 Computalk, pen-holder set, papers
books . . . an oasis of the forbidden
Hello . . . old form of greeting
138 Scrabble!
139 like being on a date, conspiracy
IX Night
ch 24 143 [aphorism] You can think clearly only with your clothes on.
143 perspective, 3-D x face smashed up against a wall
live in moment, x-where I want to be
Time's a trap
thirty-three years old, brown hair, 5-7, viable ovaries, one last chance
But something has changed, tonight.
144 I can ask for something [exchange]
Men are sex machines
documentary (Holocaust)
146 invent a humanity for anyone at all
unbutton . . . broken . . . noise inside body, broken place
Nolite te bastardes carborundum
X Soul Scrolls ch 25 151 Cora: one of the early signs
152 We for me, a link between us
153 she shears
153 something subversive about this garden of Serena's; a sense of buried things bursting upwards
[aphorism] Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.
Tennyson garden
153 Rendezvous, terraces, sibilants run up my spine
metamorphosis run wild
154 an arrangement . . . the signal is Nick
The difficulty is the wife, as always. [humor? sarcasm?]
Marthas x-retire, not many old women anymore
155 a bargain < terms of exchange
156 a little present, a women's magazine, Vogue [est. 1892]
157 What was in them was promise
Having broken the main taboo, why hesitate over a minor one?
images of my childhood: bold, striding
158 dangerous in hands of multitudes
too banal to be true
some hand lotion?
159 ? I could have slapped him
truly ignorant of the real conditions under which we lived
only a whim
Ch. 26 160 pretend not to be present, in the flesh
161 like being on an operating table
no longer a thing . . . it complicates [dehumanization]
taken something from Serena Joy
162 now had power over her
162 women will all live in harmony together [utopia]
162 when the population level is up
Women united for a common end [utopia]
163 each performing her appointed task
a little garden for each one of you
fact is, I'm his mistress
happier than before, something to do
To him I am not entirely empty.
ch 27 164 sea fisheries defunct
all extinct like the whales?
165 Ofglen less passive, melancholy
166 Women's Salvagings
store known as Soul Scrolls, franchise
167 Holy Rollers . . . print prayers, ordered by Compuphone
Offred, Ofglen into each other's eyes . . . risk
168 Do you think God listens to those machines?
168 cf. Tibetan prayer wheels
I thought you were a true believer
You can join us . . . 169 Us? . . . we.
169 hope is rising . . . an opening
170 something sharp and brutal without relief: it wasn't me
ch. 28 172 first job . . . worked a computer in an insurance company
172 [realism] cockroaches, dripping sink, linoleum
172 Moira: create Utopia by shutting herself up in a woman-only enclave
173 new apartment, job in a library
transferring books to computer discs
jobs / Book of Job
paper money > plastic cards > Compubank
174 after the catastrophe, shot president, machine-gunned Congress
blamed on Islamic fantatics
you and me up against the wall
174 newspapers censored, shut down
Identipasses
Pornomarts shut [no internet]
It's high time . . .
175 children . . . disappearances
man replaces woman, inequality not valid
176 Not fired. Let go
177we deserved it?
178 Compucards with F frozen . . . push a few buttons [fragility, vulnerability of advanced technology]
Women can't hold property anymore
179 transfer account to Luke
179 I'll go underground
Luke patronizing
some other army
180 couldn't tell who was doing it
x-free assembly
more housework, more baking
careful to exchange nothing
porn riots, abortion riots
181 I wanted from her a life more ceremonious
mother-daughter not ideal, worked out well enough
Body language
Everyone's on the take
182 [Luke] doesn't mind this. Not each other's. I am his.
ch. 29 184 Commander positively daddyish
184 What would you like to do tonight?
185 exchange with Ofglen
market research, a scientist
Nolite te bastardes carborundum. Write it down.
186 Pen is envy
Not real Latin . . . a joke
same ink as hair on Venus: Nolite te bastardes carborundum
187 Don't let the bastards grind you down.
She hanged herself. Serena found out.
If my life is bearable, maybe what we're doing is all right after all
188 I have something on him now.
I would like to know . . . What's going on
VI. Night
ch 30 191 scent, night-blooming flowers
192 cannot be exchanged
aphorism Moira: can't help what you feel, can help how you behave
192-3 create an it M kill [dehumanize / objectify]
193 the Eyes of God
194 wanted us to look like something Anglo-Saxon
195 [70s jargon] ripped off
XII Jezebel's
ch 31 191 x-Fourth of July; Labor Day for mothers
199 tell time by the moon; Lunar, not Solar. [feminist symbolism]
200 Jews > Sons of Jacob. Choice: convert or emigrate to Israel
201 Amputated speech
Moira grudge-holding against past
202 password: Mayday . . . networks. Networking
204 Maybe he can't. God or the Commander? Heresy either way.
206 something you want . . . a picture
ch 32 209 Radio Free American < Cubans . . . universal daycare
210 [Commander] way up there, the very top
210 main problem with men. Nothing to work, fight for.
211 We thought we could do better . . . Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse, for some. [utopia]
ch 33 2112 from a distance: picturesque
213 off to the Prayvaganza
213 God is a national resource
214 exchange news more freely
Janine paired with new woman; "a shredder after all"
215 She thinks it's her fault.
they don't have the same feelings we do. [dehumanization / objectification]
people will do anything rather than admit their lives have no meaning. No use . . . No plot.
216 right back here. You aren't there anymore. That's all gone.
ch 34 218 Balm / Bomb in Gilead
219 [public spectacle, ceremony] [utopia]
marriages encouraged, by mothers
Do they remember?
Commander: given more than taken away
This way they all get a man
Money was the only measure of worth. [utopia / dystopia]
220 Those years an anomaly . . . return to Nature's norm
women's Prayvaganzas for group weddings; men's for military victories
ceremony: renounce celibacy, sacrifice for common good
an odor of witch
[confusion over gender ID?]
221 Genesis! . . . saved by childbearing
Angels will qualify for Handmaids . . . but you girls are stuck
222 cameraderie among women
power in whispering obscenities about those in power
223 find out and tell us . . . anything you can
ch 35 224 unfamiliar uniforms
225 falling in love . . . the way you understood yourself
We were falling women.
God is love, but we reversed that.
226 precautions like prayers
227 change was for the better always
a refugee from the past
228 a Polaroid print . . . network of Marthas
white dress . . . I am not there
ch 36 229 everying this evening is little . . . diminish things, myself included
229 He prefers me frivolous
230 [sexy lingerie] [public humiliation]
black market
an enticement in this thing
231 subverts perceived respectable order of things [Bakhtin carnival]
232 Nick: both invisible, functionaries
233 an evening rental
ch 37 234-5 men in uniform, women all kinds
235 melange, whatever scrounce or salvage [tradition?]
Joy? Have they chosen?
Like walking into the past . . . but the mix is different
truants; official creed denies them
236 keep your mouth shut and look stupid
236 showing off, demonstrating his mastery of the world
feet tired . . . grateful [human as exchange, shared subjectivity]
men not homogeneous [human?]
237 Everyone's human, after all. You can't cheat Nature . . . demands variety for men . . .
typo than > that
procreational strategy
Nature's plan
He says this as if he believes it.
irony, but he doesn't acknowledge it. [x-human]
really like to talk with the women
only for officers [military as utopian organization]
Who are these people? . . . I mean the women.
quite a collection
238 Sociologist, or was. Lawyer. Executive.
Then I see her. Moira.
239 [Playboy Bunny] She sees me. . . . Oour old signal
240 show the tag . . . know you're taken
ch 38 241 rest area, mirror
242 like the Whore of Babylong . . . supposed to?
You pick that out? . . . thought it was me
Merry Widow
[characterization, Moira]
244 [Moira's account] I've tried to make it sound as much like her as I can
[confession]
245 Q for Quaker
246 Underground Femaleroad
248 Colonies burn dead bodies; toxic dumps and radiation spills
old women, a quarter men (Gender Traitor)
249 Nobody in here with viable ovaries
indifference, lack of volition
Butch paradise
250 I'd like to tell a story . . . don't know how she ended
ch 39 251 Bathroom as retreat [utopia]--disinfectant, isolation
feel comforted
252 saw your mother in that film
that jauntiness
253 don't call the police
sweeping up deadly toxins the way they used to use up old women, in Russia, sweeping dirt
254 Why bring me here? ownership, experiment
You said you wanted to know
XIII. Night
ch 40 259 heat lightning, phosphorescence, infrared [science fiction]
259 smell of it or him either [i.e., they did it]
blue shape, red shape, eye of mirror, myself, my obverse (poet)
260 whispering, as if she is one of us
storm's moving closer
sex, unobserved
261 punctuation thunder
love, I'm alive in my skin again
I made that up . . . what really happened
262 acknowledgement both acting
no romance = no heroics [romance genre!]
263 no thunder . . . made up
a reconstruction: the way love feels
like to be without shame, ignorant
XIV. Salvaging
ch 41 267 wish story were different
267 so much else getting in way: gossip, secrecy
then red events
pain in story, fragments, like body caught in crossfire or pulled apart
hurts me to tell it over . . . but keep on going
268 future, heaven, prison, underground: some other place
I tell, therefore you are
268 What did I have to give? . . . not munificent but thankful
beggar's knock
benevolence & luck
269 safety, a cave
270 talk too much, tell him my real name
x-word love = romance, bad luck
Don't change anything
271 hand on my belly. It's happened.
We could get you out.
I no longer want to leave, escape
ashamed and pride; cf. war stories, seriousness
cf. settlers' wives and women who survived wars
Humanity is so adaptable
Ofglen giving up on me
ch 42 272 in case of hysteria . . . a district Salvaging, for women only
272 always segregated
273 Women's Salvagings less frequen, so well behaved
273 long rope smells of tar
273 two Handmaids, one Wife
274 two Salvagers and Aunt Lydia
275 making us watch her as she silently reads, flaunting her prerogative. Obscene
275 x-public account > copycat crimes; crimes of others a ssecret language
276 touch rope as unity, complicity
ch 43 277 form a circle
278 Particicution
279 penalty for rape is death. Deut 22:23-24 (23 “If a young woman who is a virgin is betrothed to a husband, and a man finds her in the city and lies with her, 24 then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry out in the city, and the man because he humbled his neighbor’s wife; so you shall put away the evil from among you. [NKJV])
He says, "I didn't . . . "
This is freedom, in my body also
280 He has become an it. [dehumanization / objectification]
280 x-rapist > a political
281 get smell off my skin
ch 44 282 She isn't Ofglen . . . 283 "I am Ofglen"
284 my body no longer for pleasure only but senses its jeopardy
285 Dear God, don't make me choose.
She hanged herself . . . She saw the van coming for her.
ch 45 286 do what they like with me. I am abject, feel their true power
287 I've been found out
XV. Night
ch 46 291 waiting, suspension. Don't let the bastards grind you down.
292 Fatigue is here, in my body . . . what gets you in the end
293 there were always two of us
293 black van, Nick, it's Mayday, calls me by my name
294 Trust me . . . snatch at this offer [exchange, reception]
245 my end or a new beginning
"Historical Notes to The Handmaid's Tale"
[utopian genre as satire?]
299 partial transcript, twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies, U. of Denay, Nunavit
Depart of Caucasian Anthropology
Professor Maryann Cresent Moon
300 Sumptuary Laws [sumptuary = pertaining to or regulating expenditure]
Iran and Gildead . . . monotheocracies
co-editor, manuscript
"Problems of Authentication"
301 homage to Chaucer
thirty tape cassettes, 80s & 90s > compact discs
The A. B. Memoirs, Diary of P.
typo
antiquarian technician, reconstructed tape machine
music > speaking voice
302 Elvis, Boy George, Twisted Sisters [?]
not to censure but understand
303 emotion recollected, if not in tranquility, at least post facto
establish an identity for narrator
Gilead wipes computers and print-outs after purges, upheavals
304 propaganda, Save the Women societies (England)
plummeting Caucasian birthrates
birth control, intentional
R-strain syphilis & AIDS; nuclear, chemical and biological warfare, insecticides, herbicides
305 Rumania x-birth control, compulsory pregnancy tests
serial polygamy > simultaneous polygamy of Old Testament
incoproporation of previous period, esp. racism
306 Spheres of Influence Accord
sociobiological theory of natural polygamy
irony "Fred" name survives [but why wouldn't narrator change this name too?]
307 National Homelands & Jewish boat-person plans
big mistake was teaching them to read in the first place
tear a man apart [Maenads]
308 Salvagings at equinoxes, solstices
effective totalitarian regimes
control women through women themselves
[aphorism] when power scarce, a little tempting
309 sterility-causing virus < gene-splicing
310 Nick as double agent
Goddess of History
311 The human heart remains a factor
any questions?
Wikipedia article on Handmaid's Tale
The night sections are solely about Offred, and the other sections (shopping, waiting room, household, etc.) are the stories that describe the possible life of every handmaid, though from the perspective of Offred.
