Margaret Attwood – a humanist over a feminist
Best know for her: Prose Fiction and
Feminist perspective
Master’s degree: English Lit at Radcliffe
College, 1962
Her Work: Double Persephone
(1961)
Her Work: The Circle Game (1964)
The Handmaid’s Tale: 1985
PEN winner for The spirit of political activism in work
Common Themes
Role Reversal
New beginnings
Women seeking their relationship to the world
The Handmaid’s Tale
Constructed around the concept and reality of women living in sexual slavery
A repressive Christian theocracy of the future.
Her religious and political beliefs and ideas
‘ if the united states were to have totalitarianism, what kind of totalitarianism would it
be’
She says that religion isn’t the problem – it is our notions of utopia and dystopia, in
fiction in real life.
Ponders human behaviour
Celebrates the natural world
Condemns materialism
Inspiration for her writings
Influenced by critic Northrop Frye, who introduced her to the poetry of William Blake
Impressed by William Blake’s mythological imagery
Leading to interests in dystopia, genetic experimentation and extinction issues
Inspiration for a Handmaid’s tale
,17th century American Puritan Theory
Utopias and Dystopias
The political climate of the early 1980s
Dystopia Utopia
- Everything that society - Considered an ideally
isn’t perfect place socially,
- Makes the bad look worse politically and morally
- Shows we need balance in - The idea derived from a
society 1516 book by Sir Thomas
- Escapism More
- Imaginary
- Idealism and perfection
Dystopian Literature
Dystopia in Handmaid’s
,Chapter 1
General Points
- Tone of nostalgia and loss
- We hope that the present of the book is the future and that it is better
- Sense of menace and threat
- 3 time frames (past, more distant past and now)
- Claustrophobic
- False sense of security
- Religious connotations – ‘guardians’ and ‘angels’
Themes
- Dystopia
- Autonomy
- Female experience
- Sexual experience
- Inequality of power
Setting
, - Disorientations
- Unclear of time, or type of place
- Fluctuating perspective
- Don’t know what to expectations
Summary
Flashback of The Red Centre
‘a balcony ran around the room, for the spectators’
Double-meaning, foreshadowing – basketball watchers vs watchers of birth
Double Flashback
‘like an afterimage’ ‘the music lingered’ ‘undercurrent of drums’
Flashback of her reminiscing in the centre whilst reflecting on the centre in the
present
Gender Roles established
‘electric cattle prods slung on thongs from their leather belts. No guns though…
Guns were for guards, specially picked by the angels’
Men had ultimate power – reflection of men with guns in the US and the impact
‘we still had our bodies. That was our fantasy’
Questioning their human rights
Chapter 2
The novel shifts into the present and the commencement of a shopping trip
that will last for several chapters.
Offred has been stationed as a Handmaid in the Commander's home for five
weeks. Offred describes her white bedroom, which contains a window and
minimal furniture—a bed, a chair, and a picture of flowers. All items that might
be used as weapons or to assist in suicide have been eliminated. Offred
Best know for her: Prose Fiction and
Feminist perspective
Master’s degree: English Lit at Radcliffe
College, 1962
Her Work: Double Persephone
(1961)
Her Work: The Circle Game (1964)
The Handmaid’s Tale: 1985
PEN winner for The spirit of political activism in work
Common Themes
Role Reversal
New beginnings
Women seeking their relationship to the world
The Handmaid’s Tale
Constructed around the concept and reality of women living in sexual slavery
A repressive Christian theocracy of the future.
Her religious and political beliefs and ideas
‘ if the united states were to have totalitarianism, what kind of totalitarianism would it
be’
She says that religion isn’t the problem – it is our notions of utopia and dystopia, in
fiction in real life.
Ponders human behaviour
Celebrates the natural world
Condemns materialism
Inspiration for her writings
Influenced by critic Northrop Frye, who introduced her to the poetry of William Blake
Impressed by William Blake’s mythological imagery
Leading to interests in dystopia, genetic experimentation and extinction issues
Inspiration for a Handmaid’s tale
,17th century American Puritan Theory
Utopias and Dystopias
The political climate of the early 1980s
Dystopia Utopia
- Everything that society - Considered an ideally
isn’t perfect place socially,
- Makes the bad look worse politically and morally
- Shows we need balance in - The idea derived from a
society 1516 book by Sir Thomas
- Escapism More
- Imaginary
- Idealism and perfection
Dystopian Literature
Dystopia in Handmaid’s
,Chapter 1
General Points
- Tone of nostalgia and loss
- We hope that the present of the book is the future and that it is better
- Sense of menace and threat
- 3 time frames (past, more distant past and now)
- Claustrophobic
- False sense of security
- Religious connotations – ‘guardians’ and ‘angels’
Themes
- Dystopia
- Autonomy
- Female experience
- Sexual experience
- Inequality of power
Setting
, - Disorientations
- Unclear of time, or type of place
- Fluctuating perspective
- Don’t know what to expectations
Summary
Flashback of The Red Centre
‘a balcony ran around the room, for the spectators’
Double-meaning, foreshadowing – basketball watchers vs watchers of birth
Double Flashback
‘like an afterimage’ ‘the music lingered’ ‘undercurrent of drums’
Flashback of her reminiscing in the centre whilst reflecting on the centre in the
present
Gender Roles established
‘electric cattle prods slung on thongs from their leather belts. No guns though…
Guns were for guards, specially picked by the angels’
Men had ultimate power – reflection of men with guns in the US and the impact
‘we still had our bodies. That was our fantasy’
Questioning their human rights
Chapter 2
The novel shifts into the present and the commencement of a shopping trip
that will last for several chapters.
Offred has been stationed as a Handmaid in the Commander's home for five
weeks. Offred describes her white bedroom, which contains a window and
minimal furniture—a bed, a chair, and a picture of flowers. All items that might
be used as weapons or to assist in suicide have been eliminated. Offred
