Motifs 

- Sexual violence, flowers, waiting, religious terms and color

Sexual violence

A reoccurring concept in The Handmaid’s Tale is the sexual violence against women. The Aunts learn the handmaid’s how the women that are raped, provoke the act by their own behavior. Janine is a girl at the centre that was gang-raped at fourteen and had an abortion. “Her fault, her fault, we chant in unison.

Who led them on? She did. She did.

Why did God allow such a terrible thing to happen?

Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson,” p.82   

 The handmaid’s to be mean every part of their chanting which is exactly the point that the Aunts want to make. They even convince the handmaid’s of how their roles are so much better than the ones of women before the Gilead society. “Sometimes the movie she shows would be an old porno film, from the seventies or eighties. Women kneeling, sucking penises or guns, women tied up or chained or with dog collars around their necks (…),” p.128. The films shown at the centre underscore the horror of women like that and makes the handmaid’s a better advocate of Gilead’s regime. Nonetheless, Gilead’s regime claims to restrain sexual violence, the handmaid’s ceremonies forces them to have sex and the regime even consists of its own state-sanctioned brothels for use of the Commanders.

Flowers

Throughout the novel flowers are used as a reference to women in general. Offred recurrently describes them in terms of color and variety. Later in the novel she admits that the flowers are one of the “good things” she has tried to put in her story. Therefore the flowers are everywhere to be found in the novel. “On the wall above the chair, a picture, framed but with no glass: a print of flowers, blue irises, watercolor. Flowers are still allowed,” p.17 This quote underscores how flowers are to be treasured as a sign of hope as they are something from the past, yet allowed. “It’s papered in small blue flowers, forget-me-nots,” p.72

Ironically, Offred even compares blood stains with flowers: “I look at the one red smile. The red of the smile is the same as the red of the tulips in Serena Joy’s garden, towards the base of the flowers where they are beginning to heal,” p.43

However flowers are specifically known as a symbol of fertility which is an important aspect of the novel. “We hear Serena coming, (…) along the edges of the veil: flowers and fretwork. Even at her age she still feels the urge to wreathe herself in flowers. No use for you, I think at her, my face unmoving, you can’t use them anymore, you’re withered. They’re the genital organs of plants,” p.91

Whereas Offred sees no use in Serena Joy wearing a veil with flowers while she is not able to produce offspring, Serena takes pleasure in mutilating flowers. “She was aiming, positioning the blades of the shears, then cutting with a convulsive jerk of the hands. (…) some kamikaze, committed on the swelling genitalia of the flowers? The fruiting body,” p. 161.

At one point Offred even tries stealing a withered daffodil from the dried arrangement: “I find the daffodils, crisp at the edges where they’ve dried, limp towards the stems, use my fingers to pinch,” p.109

Waiting

Waiting is a recurring concept in the novel. “I walk to the corner and wait. I used to be bad at waiting. They also serve who only stand and wait, said Aunt Lydia. I used to be bad at waiting,” p.28

Most importantly, everybody is waiting for babies. Wives are hoping to get babies and if not they wait for the handmaids to bear one for them. Serena Joy is very desperate in the situation that she is in. She wants her husband back, not having to share him anymore. She is waiting for the humiliating ceremonies to be over and to get the family back that she once had.

On the other hand the handmaids are waiting to. Offred is waiting for the day of freedom and to be reunited with her long lost husband and daughter.

Waiting is very unpleasant, especially when you wish to be in another situation. I think Atwood chose such a motif to emphasize on the hopelessness of being captured in your own society. Gilead’s regime won’t stop, but still everyone secretly treasures hope. Hope to rise against the power system and to go back to the old days. As part of the feminism present in the novel, especially the women wait all the time.

Often when Offred needs to wait, to be washed for example, she thinks about how life was before. The thoughts wander through her hand when she’s waiting for Luke to return from the pass check. This shows her despair. Also after Serena Joy confronts Offred with evidence of her trip to Jezebel’s the only thing Offred can do is wait. She knows that there is nothing else she can do and there has never been. 


Religious terms
Throughout the novel several religious terms are used. Gilead's religious values and norms are to be lived up to by all people . The state therefore provides multiple biblical references:
- Martha derives from a biblical figure called Martha that rather served Jesus than listening to his teachings. This underscores the Martha's compliant nature and obedient skills.
- The local police is are called "Guardians of the Faith" , the soldiers are Angels, and the offical term for the Commanders is "Commanders of the Faithful"
- Also the shops have biblical names: Loaves and Fishes, All Flesh and Milk and Honey.  

All that religious terminology constantly reminds the people that the Gilead's regime is right since they act on the authority of the Bible. 

Color

Color is a very important motif in The Handmaid’s Tale. In the totalitarian society of Gilead, most characters are defined by the colour that they are forced to wear.

Wives are supposed to wear blue dresses. Blue is the color of the earth, sky and sea and symbolizes purity. In addition, Virgin Mary is known for wearing a blue mantle and this reference is presumably the reason that the wives wear blue.

In Gilead the children of the ruling class are named daughters which wear white. White is the color of purity, kindness and in many countries brides wear white because it symbolizes virginity.

Econowives are the lower class women that have married a man with a low status. They wear red, blue and green stripes because they have to fulfill multiple roles. They have to keep up the household, bear children and be a wife to their husband.

The central women in the novel are the handmaids. The red color costumes concealing their shape of the handmaids symbolizes fertility.  Also red literally suggest the blood of the menstrual cycle and childbirth. Even though the position of the handmaids is justified through the Bible, red might mean how sinful they are having sex with married men. PAGE 18.

The older infertile women that are of obedient nature and consist of domestic skills are called Marthas. They wear green which amongst others is the color of wellbeing and balance. The Commander’s household always need to be able to count on the Martha and therefore that symbolism underscores their compliant nature and obedient skills.

The infertile and unmarried women that train the Handmaid’s are called Aunts.

The Aunts wear brown costumes and brown is known for being a “safe” color signifying intelligence and trust. This is exactly the message that the Aunts should spread.

Jezebels prostitute at state-sanctioned brothels that were unable to adjust to handmaid status. They were sexualizing costumes from the time before the Regime to excite their visitors.

 “… they are dresses in all kinds of bright festive gear. (…) feathers and glister, cut high up the thighs, low over the breasts. Some are in olden-days lingerie, shortie nightgowns, baby-doll pyjamas, the occasional see-through negligée. Some are in bathing suits, one-piece or bikini; one, I see, is wearing a crotcheted affair, with big scallop shells covering the tits. Some are in jogging shorts and sun halters, some in exercise costumes like the ones they used to show on television, body-tight, with knitted pastel leg warmers. There are even a few in cheerleaders’ outfits, little pleated skirts, outsized letters across the chest. (…) All wear makeup,” p.246  

Guardians wear green and do practical chores around the house. 

Character Studies Second Part

Hi! Here the second –and final- part of the character studies! Hope everything’s clear.

Best, Woutje

Serena Joy
The Commander’s Wife Serena Joy used to be a Gospel star and homemaking advocate. She used to speech about women who must stay at home, looking after their household and children. Now she’s a bitter woman, spending her days knitting or walking through her garden. She’s unhappy, which causes her to take out her frustrations on Offred. Even though, Serena Joy has no problem asking the narrator to betray the Commander and break the law by having sex with Nick, to increase the chance of getting the narrator pregnant. This way she’ll get rid of the Handmaid, and have a child to raise.

Nick
The gardener and chauffeur of the household, and the Commander’s Guardian. He becomes the sign of the Commander, for when the narrator is supposed to visit the Commander in the evening. The narrator is interested in his mysterious personality throughout the novel, and they start an affair after Serena Joy sets them up once to get the narrator pregnant.

Character Studies-Major Characters

Hi there!

If you really want to get insight of this book, you need to know a little more about its characters. I’ll start with the major characters, and add some more characters later. Enjoy!

Best, Woutje

Offred
The protagonist of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. You are shown the story from her point of view. She’s a Handmaid, which is in this society a fertile woman, forced to bear children for the elite group of Commanders and their infertile wives. She always wears red dresses and white wings to protect her face, as all Handmaids do. The name of the narrator, Offred, is not her real one. It’s a constructed name, indicating that she belongs to her Commander; of-Fred. We never get to learn what her real name is or what she looks like. What we do know, is that she has viable ovaries.

Telling us the story, the narrator glances back to the past many times, as her mind is easily distracted by flashbacks; however, she is always trying to listen to others, trying to be kind. She has a hint of a dark sense of humour, mocking some aspects of the Republic of Gilead, sometimes trying to manipulate her world in the little ways she can. She’s interesting in the men living around her, taking small digs at them.  Also, she contemplates stealing things to take back a little of her power, or to use it as a weapon.

Key Themes

THE POWER OF GILEAD AND HOW IT IS ESTABLISHED

POWER can be considered as one of the most common themes in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. Gilead is a dictatorship, which implies power is imposed entirely from the top. The power of a dictatorship must be shown in some way to overwhelm and scare the population living within. The government of Gilead displays their power in many different ways.

One of Gilead’s most imposing tools to show their power is the control of LANGUAGE. “Most of those old guys can’t make it any more,” he says. “Or they are sterile.” I almost gasp: he’s said the forbidden word. Sterile. There is no such thing as a sterile man any more, not officially. There are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that’s the law. (Page 70). This passage in the book underlines that some words like Fertile, Infertile and Sterile are forbidden in the society of Gilead. Through this, Gilead creates an official vocabulary and in this way the people are conducted in a way the government would like to. They think, walk and talk like the government dedicates them. Throughout the book Offred explains that everything is a re-interpretation of something else; nothing is an exact description of the truth. When Offred talks about the word ‘Work out’, she interprets and analysez this is two different ways. Working out to keep your body in shape and working out the difficulties you experience during a relationship.

Plot analysis

Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale, published in 1985, is a highly confrontational feminist fiction novel that observes the culture of female identity. The novel portrays the oppression of women on physical and physiological level. The story takes place in the Republic of Gilead (the old United States): a republic with a totalitarian regime. This regime portrays women as being childbearing, voiceless creatures. People living under this manipulative regime are becoming less human-like every step of the way.

Offred, the narrator of The Handmaid’s Tale, is a handmaid to the powerful commander. Offred role in the Commander’s house is being the childbearing, voiceless creature to be made pregnant. The Commander wants to ‘enjoy’ his time with Offred and wants to take her to the Jezebels (the whorehouse). The Commander is married so he and Offred are not supposed to have that kind of fun because of the complications it would cause in the Commander marriage. This conflict shows how men have little to no respect for women including their own wife.

Key Passages

Key passages:

 1.      Above me, towards the head of the bed,  Serena Joy is arranged, outspread. Her legs are apart, I lie between them, my head on her stomach, her pubic bone under the base of skull, her thighs on either side of me. She too is fully clothed. My arms are raised; she holds my hands, each of mine in each of hers. This is supposed to signify that we are one flesh, one being. What is really means is that she is in control, of the process and thus of the product. If any. The rings of her left hand cut into my hingers. It may or may not be revenge. My red skirt is hitched up to my waist, though no higher. Below it the commander is fucking. What he is fucking is the lower part of my body. I do not say making love, because this is not what he is doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate, because it would imply two people and only one is involved. Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going here what I haven’t signed up for.  (Chapter 15, pp. 104-105)

Key Quotes #2

Hey guys!

Here are some more key quotes to the novel, they might be useful for essays, orals or just to understand the book. Good luck!

Love, Barbara

1.“Her fault, her fault, her fault, we chant in unison.” (Chapter 13, pg. 82)

Group forming is an important aspect in Gilead, things like the particicutions, the obligatories walks, births, marriages are all preformed in groups. This simply is because group pressure is a very powerful and efficient way to control people. This method is also used in the red centre and it shows how the handmaid’s are ‘trained’ and why the Gilead society is so effective.

2.“I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or a

implement for the accomplishment of my will.” (Chapter 13, p.83)

This quote is from Chapter 13, when Offred sits in the bath and contrasts the way she used to think about her body to the way she thinks about it now. Offred’s thought show how accepted she has become of Gilead’s attitude toward women, which treats them not as individuals but how they are objectified as a tool to bare children. This quote shows how internalized Offred has become with the society and therefore this quote is very important to the story.

 3.“The fact is that I’m his mistress. Men at the top have always had mistresses, why should things be any different now?”(Chapter 26, p. 172)

On the other hand this is a very controversial quote to the others ones, most of the important quotes are about the changes in the society while this one is about the similarities. It is about Offred realizing she is the Commander’s mistress and I believe this somehow gives her faith as she realizes that there are still things like there used to be. That no matter how much has changed, there are still some clichés left.

4.“Every night when I go to bed I think, In the morning I will wake up in my own house and

things will be back the way they were. It hasn't happened this morning, either.” (Chapter 31, p.209)

Hope is one of the themes throughout the novel and is clearly pictured in this quote. Offred

talks about how hope (and illusion) keep reviving every evening, only to be defeated again

and again by reality. It shows that even in a situation like this people can still believe, dream

and especially hope.

5.“There is something reassuring about the toilets. Bodily functions at least remain democratic. Everybody shits, as Moira would say.” (Chapter 39, pg. 263)

I chose this quote because it might not be the most beautiful quote written throughout the book, however because I thought it had a couple of important function though. First of all it is something which pulls the attention of the reader, because all the language used in the book is poetic and thoughtful, while this quote is quite blank and blunt.Second of all it clearly shows the contrast between Moira and Offred and they’re way of thinking while at the same time the quote is about how similar everybody still is.