The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood

Among the many issues that are confronted in The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood,
one of the main focal points are the relationships between women. The narrators story was found
recorded on a set of cassette tapes locked in an army foot locker in Bangor, Maine. Offreds story has
been published as a manuscript titled The Handmaids Tale and the epilogue is a transcript of a
symposium held in 2195, in a university in the Arctic where they critique not only Offred, but
Americas downfall - or the Gilead Era. As mentioned earlier, Atwood establishes relationships
between women that not only allow you to critique them but to have sympathy for them as they are
simply products of their patriarchal structure. The narrator, whom we never know the name of, is
self-proclaimed as unreliable because she is speaking from her memories as she could not read or
write during this period of her life. After reading this book the ideas that arise are one of women vs
women in a male structure and how the different perspectives shown work together. In my opinion,
they do not for they contradict each other and its values change with each generation. Even more,
these forms of feminism are not actually produced organically by the women themselves, yet are
set up in the parameters that are given to them by men/patriarchal structures. I will give three example
of this that show Atwood challenging feminist as whole - past, present, and future.
We see an example of this in the beginning of the book where the narrator is critical of the
first feminist in her life - her mother. One of her earliest memories of her and her mother happen in
chapter 7 at a second-wave feminist burning of pornographic magazines. In this flashback she is
angry at her mother because instead of spending personal time with her daughter, her mother uses this
time to spend her own work. As she helps her mother throw the magazines into the fire she looks at
one and her mother says, Don't let her see it, as if to see the naked women's bodies would tarnish
her daughter (39). I think the narrator's next statement sums up her experience, still on fire, parts of
womens bodies, turning to black ash, in the air, before my eyes. This flashback sets the tone for her
relationship with feminist ideals and it exposes the hypocrisy in the ideals themselves. It is the
structure of patriarchy that sensors and policies how womens bodies should be seen and used.
Feminism in many ways, functions with the same type of policing that instructs women on how they
should or should not behave. The models for the magazine were not photographed without consent,
yet to these feminists there were doing work that they thought was immoral and are demonized for
their sexual freedom - a practice that seems contradictory to someone claiming feminist values.
Another example that would appear to the reader as an event happening in the present is found
in Chapter 13 when character Janine is made to testify about her gang-rape and abortion. After she
tells the story Aunt Helena (their guardian and policewomen) says But whose fault was it?. . . Her
fault, her fault, her fault, we chant in unison . . . Who led them on? . . . She did . . . Why did God
allow such a terrible thing to happen? . . Teach her a lesson (72). Aunt Helena beams with
pleasure as the girls taunt and bully Janine. This being reflective of a much older and religious form
of feminism is problematic because it creates a culture of victim-blaming and teaches women that
men cannot and should not be held responsible for their actions (an ideology that the current male
rulers would favor). This also shows that women cannot support other women in the choices they
make with their bodies (her abortion), nor the choices that are made for them including their bodies
(her rape). Consequently this is the current situation for every woman in the Gilead Era. They have
little to no freedom in choosing what they want to do with their bodies nor do they have any say in
what happens to their bodies. They are only a medium that patriarchy and feminism works through -
both of their goals being that of controlling women. We see the success of it in the next scene where
the women are made to testify again and Janine accepts full responsibility before the girls can
victimize her, Aunt Lydia says Very good...You are an example., notice that it works as a
self-internalized policing that is conducted amongst the characters. This keeps them (power
structures) from needing to do the work as the people will do it for them in their own selves.
The last example of feminist views being shown are at the end of the novel in the epilogue.
This epilogue functions as a symposium held in 2195 by Professor Pieixoto, an expert of the Gilead
Era. Amongst the many important things he mentions, I think the most important are the ways in
which they controlled the women:

Gilead outlawed the first two [marriages] as irreligious, but legitimized and enforced the third,
which was considered to have Biblical precedents; they thus replaced the serious polygamy
common in the pre-Gilead period with the older form of simultaneous polygamy practiced in
both in early Old Testament times and in the former state of Utah in the nineteenth century.
As we know from the study of history, no new system can impose itself upon a previous one
without incorporating many of the elements to be found in the latter. (305)

Whether Atwood wrote this (my italicizes added) to be a warning to women or as a plead for them to
create and define feminist ideals that exists outside of the parameters that patriarchal systems set for
us - whether or not she believes that is possible, we see the freedoms and restrictions available to the
women in those structures. It seems to me that this epilogue functions as an a-historical time in which
hindsight is 20/20 and can easily see that the way in which they controlled women during the Gilead
period could not have happened without the structure of older forms of feminism which is equally
oppressive in many ways. It ultimately leads to self-policing that teaches women to internalize hate,
repress sexuality, and to judge other women for making choices that in many situations determine life
or death.
 Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1986. Print.