Attwood: podcast
17th century US history puritanism, no female saints, Salem witch trials, her
ancestors involved.
Spec-fic, dystopian:
2nd wave fem 70s 80s pushback – what people would do if they had power –
clippings. “planning books”
Offred’s mother early 2nd wave.
2 wives and 2 handmaids: 12 tribes of Israel - actually from bible, shocking.
Cyclical nature of history: cataclysmic event disputes over reasoning of event
books, interpretations, movies = removed from the true people shifted for the
modern audience.
We get an overview, but Offred can’t know. Reader has to.
Infinite number of possible futures.
Non-explicit totalitarian methods of indoctrination: changing scripture. “cherry-
picking” the bible.
“if you can keep alive long enough it will change”
Fiction: human technology to testing possible futures or arrangements of society
(dystopias)
‘Of’ Patronymics ‘Mrs’ Neologisms
Less rebellious – realistic.
Hypocrisy: no abortion/ contraception but no support.
Pathogenesis: no biological need for men.
Unreliable narrator: our choice about what to believe, forces us to put ourselves
within the book and think what is more likely. Charlotte Bronte.
Christian iconography: Red(Mary Magdalene), a lot harder to run away, German
prisoners of war, expensive blue (Virgin Mary/ wives) = but, culturally specific!!
White – general ambiguity – daughters – future roles unknown.
Choice of evils, Offred’s rebellion.
Symposium (the HN conference) – ‘all we can do is understand the men’,
antagonise past figures, dumbfounded by their ‘stupidity’.
Novelist’s role = an imaginary novel in which everybody behaves plausibly.
Relative to the behaviour of Peixoto who arouses audience laughter.
Judith Butler - Gender reconstruction
Gender and sex are different. People are constructed by gender norms.
Influenced and propelled by society, fluid, interchangeable, atypical – pink
common for boys in the past and now girls.
, Christopher Lasch – Incurvatus
Durham essay: p15, 53, 58, 71, 147,
Dichotomy: contrast between two things that are or are represented as being
opposed e,g, science vs mysticism.
Ambivalent: mixed feelings towards someone. Offred to everyone.
Monolithic: large, powerful, indivisible and slow to change.
Feminism
de Beauvoir
Woman is defined in reference to man, the incidental/ other defined as such by
the absolute which is also defined as such. Leads to undermining of the female
ego.
Ego seeks male-female alliances, undermining female alliance. Gilead society.
No need for male-female rivalry, they believe it works. The male = immortal. The
female = immanent. Male protection = reward.
Happiness = subjective. Liberty is of upmost important, it grounds humanity
existence let alone right happiness.
Human liberty transcends Animal liberty = existing peacefully and comfortably,
but women are animalised, whilst men are immortal and transcendent.
The definition of ‘masculinity’ necessitates ‘femininity’.
The mother and father. Father = escape from the mother – paradox. Father =
culture, society. Mother = grounding nature and the wild. Mistreatment of mother
mistreatment of nature. Blame women punish women. The oppression of
nature + the female in the rise of masculine rationalism and ecofeminism.
Memories of freedom and goodness fantasies belief in the liberal self.
Showalter – women are ‘sociological chameleons’ – adopting the lifestyle and
culture of their male relatives. The repression and reconstruction of femininity
led women to fiction.
Attwood’s newspaper clippings: nuclear waste, declining birth rates, religious
cultism, surrogate motherhood etc.
Attwood’s assimilation technique.
20th century anti-utopia =
Inventoried: each female role positioned differently, kneeling, sitting, standing.
American puratinism and the totalitarian regimes in the inter-war period of the
30s, feminist utopia in the 70s.
When asked about the ‘good’ things in Gilead, Attwood responded: Yes. Women
aren't whistled at on the street, men don't come climbing in the window in the
17th century US history puritanism, no female saints, Salem witch trials, her
ancestors involved.
Spec-fic, dystopian:
2nd wave fem 70s 80s pushback – what people would do if they had power –
clippings. “planning books”
Offred’s mother early 2nd wave.
2 wives and 2 handmaids: 12 tribes of Israel - actually from bible, shocking.
Cyclical nature of history: cataclysmic event disputes over reasoning of event
books, interpretations, movies = removed from the true people shifted for the
modern audience.
We get an overview, but Offred can’t know. Reader has to.
Infinite number of possible futures.
Non-explicit totalitarian methods of indoctrination: changing scripture. “cherry-
picking” the bible.
“if you can keep alive long enough it will change”
Fiction: human technology to testing possible futures or arrangements of society
(dystopias)
‘Of’ Patronymics ‘Mrs’ Neologisms
Less rebellious – realistic.
Hypocrisy: no abortion/ contraception but no support.
Pathogenesis: no biological need for men.
Unreliable narrator: our choice about what to believe, forces us to put ourselves
within the book and think what is more likely. Charlotte Bronte.
Christian iconography: Red(Mary Magdalene), a lot harder to run away, German
prisoners of war, expensive blue (Virgin Mary/ wives) = but, culturally specific!!
White – general ambiguity – daughters – future roles unknown.
Choice of evils, Offred’s rebellion.
Symposium (the HN conference) – ‘all we can do is understand the men’,
antagonise past figures, dumbfounded by their ‘stupidity’.
Novelist’s role = an imaginary novel in which everybody behaves plausibly.
Relative to the behaviour of Peixoto who arouses audience laughter.
Judith Butler - Gender reconstruction
Gender and sex are different. People are constructed by gender norms.
Influenced and propelled by society, fluid, interchangeable, atypical – pink
common for boys in the past and now girls.
, Christopher Lasch – Incurvatus
Durham essay: p15, 53, 58, 71, 147,
Dichotomy: contrast between two things that are or are represented as being
opposed e,g, science vs mysticism.
Ambivalent: mixed feelings towards someone. Offred to everyone.
Monolithic: large, powerful, indivisible and slow to change.
Feminism
de Beauvoir
Woman is defined in reference to man, the incidental/ other defined as such by
the absolute which is also defined as such. Leads to undermining of the female
ego.
Ego seeks male-female alliances, undermining female alliance. Gilead society.
No need for male-female rivalry, they believe it works. The male = immortal. The
female = immanent. Male protection = reward.
Happiness = subjective. Liberty is of upmost important, it grounds humanity
existence let alone right happiness.
Human liberty transcends Animal liberty = existing peacefully and comfortably,
but women are animalised, whilst men are immortal and transcendent.
The definition of ‘masculinity’ necessitates ‘femininity’.
The mother and father. Father = escape from the mother – paradox. Father =
culture, society. Mother = grounding nature and the wild. Mistreatment of mother
mistreatment of nature. Blame women punish women. The oppression of
nature + the female in the rise of masculine rationalism and ecofeminism.
Memories of freedom and goodness fantasies belief in the liberal self.
Showalter – women are ‘sociological chameleons’ – adopting the lifestyle and
culture of their male relatives. The repression and reconstruction of femininity
led women to fiction.
Attwood’s newspaper clippings: nuclear waste, declining birth rates, religious
cultism, surrogate motherhood etc.
Attwood’s assimilation technique.
20th century anti-utopia =
Inventoried: each female role positioned differently, kneeling, sitting, standing.
American puratinism and the totalitarian regimes in the inter-war period of the
30s, feminist utopia in the 70s.
When asked about the ‘good’ things in Gilead, Attwood responded: Yes. Women
aren't whistled at on the street, men don't come climbing in the window in the
