The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale is a 1985 dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. The novel explores themes of women in subjugation, and the various means by which they gain agency, against a backdrop of the establishment of a totalitarian theocratic state. Sumptuary laws (essentially, dress codes) play a key role in the form of social control in the new society.

Themes

Dystopia

A revolution has taken place and the United States has become a dystopia. The Constitution has been abrogated, and a new order has been established: the Republic of Gilead. The Republic of Gilead is ruled through biblical propaganda and rigid enforcement of social roles. Most citizens have been stripped of their freedoms. All religions, except the official state religion, have been suppressed. Those who do not conform to the new societal norms are pressed into service as maids and personal servants or deported to "the colonies" (regions where pollution has reached toxic levels) — if they are lucky. Political and religious dissidents, abortionists, and homosexuals are executed and hung at "The Wall" for public display. The government has proclaimed martial law due to the destabilizing effect of "hordes of guerillas" roaming the countryside, although the actual threat from the "guerillas" may be greatly exaggerated.

Related Topics:
Revolution - United States - Dystopia - Constitution - Republic of Gilead - Biblical - Propaganda - Citizen - Freedom - Religion - Pollution - Toxic - Abortion - Homosexuals - Executed - Martial law - Guerillas

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In Gilead, many people are infertile for reasons not explored in the novel. It is possibly due to the ecological disaster which has made parts of the country unhabitable. Fertile women are forced to engage in sexual reproduction for the benefit of the upper classes. Lower class women who cannot reproduce are exiled. Although men may also be infertile, it is fundamental to the Gileadan power structure that they be beyond reproach.

Related Topics:
Infertile - Ecological - Exile

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Subjugation of women

In Gilead, women are stripped of their independence. They are no longer allowed to hold property, arrange their own affairs, read, wear make-up, or choose their clothes. Women are segregated into categories, and dressed according to their social function. There are five legitimate categories (Wives, Aunts, Marthas, Handmaids, and Econowives), and two illegitimate functional categories (Unwomen and prostitutes).

Related Topics:
Independence - Read - Make-up - Clothes

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Socially accepted and promoted categories of women in Gilead

• Wives are at the top social level permitted to women. They are women married to the Commanders who are the ruling circle of the new military dictatorship. They are often infertile for unknown reasons, possibly related to an unexplored ecological disaster or effects of a bioweapon. Wives dress in blue coloured suits.
• Daughters are the natural or adopted children of Wives, and though not mentioned perhaps also of Econowives. They wear white until marriage (at 14). Offred's daughter had been adopted by one of the Wives who are infertile.
• Aunts have the duty of training and monitoring the Handmaids. In return they receive — relatively speaking — a substantial degree of personal autonomy. It is a central organisational element of Gilead that women be used in the social repression of women. Aunts dress in brown suits.
• A Handmaid is a fertile woman whose social function is bearing children for the Wives. Handmaids are subjected to a monthly reproductive ritual derived from the biblical story of Rachel and Leah's reproductive competition (Genesis 29:31–35; 30:1–24). Handmaids dress in a red habit with a white head-dress which obscures their peripheral vision. The Aunt system produces Handmaids, by reeducating fertile women who have broken Gileadean gender laws. Due to the demands of Wives for fertile Handmaids, Gilead gradually increased the number of gender-crimes. Additionally, the Aunt system promotes the role of Handmaid, and seeks to legitimise the role of Handmaid by removing any association with gender-criminality.
• Marthas are infertile women whose compliant nature and domestic skills recommend them to a life of domestic servitude in the houses of the elite. There is conjectural evidence that Marthas may be African Americans (in the chapter "Shopping"), reflecting a long tradition of the American elite using black slaves and domestic workers as house servants. Marthas dress in green smocks.
• Econowives are women who have married low ranking bureaucrats. Econowives are expected to perform all the female functions: domestic duties, companionship, child-bearing. Econowives' dress is multicoloured: red, blue and green to reflect their multiple roles.

The division of labour between women engenders resentment between categories. Marthas, Wives and Econowives perceive Handmaids as sluttish, although Econowives also resent Handmaids' freedom from domestic work.

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Socially unacceptable categories of women in Gilead

Outside of society exist two further classes of women.

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• Jezebels. Informally, the desires of Commanders for mistresses — as in the former times — has resulted in an illegal and collective form of prostitution available only to Commanders. The women who populate this system are informally known as Jezebels. These women are housed in the remains of a hotel from former times, and are used by Commanders to entertain foreign dignitaries. Jezebels dress in the remnants of sexualized costumes from "the time before": cheerleaders' costumes, school uniforms, and Playboy bunny costumes.
• Unwomen are sterile women, widows, feminists, lesbians, and politically dissident women confined to the Colonies (both areas of agricultural production, and sites of deadly pollution). Unwomen as a category embraces all women (and some men) unable to fit within the Republic of Gilead's gender categories. Unlike members of society who transgress and break fundamental rules (who are murderously punished), unwomen are categorically incapable of social integration as their society rejects them utterly. Males who engage in homosexuality (or related acts) are either executed, or declared unwomen and sent to the colonies. All unwomen, male or female, wear grey dresses.

"The Ceremony"

Human sexuality in Gilead has come under a general social regulation that sex for pleasure is fundamentally degrading to women. Men are seen as constantly desiring sexual pleasure, but obliged to abstain for religio-social reasons. The social regulation is enforced as a law with corporal punishment inflicted by Aunts for lesser offences, and capital punishment inflicted by a group of Handmaids for greater offences (particicution).

Related Topics:
Sexuality - Corporal punishment - Capital punishment

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"The Ceremony" is a sanctioned sexual act for the purposes of reproduction with two women present. This unites Wives, Aunts, Marthas and Handmaids in an urgent reproductive mission. Sex acts which defile the Ceremony (sex for pleasure involving Handmaids, homosexuality) are punished severely with death. It is uncertain what sexual relations exist between men and Wives, but the example of Commander Fred indicates a high degree of personal and sexual alienation in marriage. The sexual position of Econowives is also uncertain — the narrator has no interaction with them — but they are viewed with disdain by the reproductive alliance of Wives, Aunts, Marthas and Handmaids.

Related Topics:
Death - Marriage - Narrator

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The Ceremony reenacts in rather literal fashion the biblical passage where Jacob's infertile wife Rachel says to him "Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees" (Genesis 29:31–35; 30:1–24). The Gileadan variation on the passage has the Handmaid lying supine upon the Wife during the sex act itself.

Related Topics:
Jacob - Rachel - Bilhah

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The novel's narrator, the Handmaid Offred, describes the ceremony:

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: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's 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 on here that I haven't signed up for.

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Once a Handmaid is pregnant, she is venerated by her peers and by the Wives. When her baby is born, it is given to the Wife of her Commander, and she is reassigned to another household.

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Subjugation of women in pre-Gileadian society

Through Offred's memories, the novel makes clear that pre-Gileadian society was not the result of a triumph of feminist activism. In pre-Gileadian society, violence against women has reached a structural peak in terms of Western consumer society. Women were in a state of regular and constant fear of physical and sexual violence in public. Despite long running feminist campaigns (approximately 1970–2000 within the text), the social relations between men and women of 1970 prevail in private relationships. Feminist campaigners, particularly radicals like Moira (Offred's long-time friend), are persecuted by the state. Additionally, the advent of the mass commercialization of sexuality had occurred and prostitution had reached a nadir of "fast-food" and "home delivery" sexuality. Women outside of prostitution in "the former times" were subject to a socially constructed vision of romantic love which encouraged serial monogamy in favor of men's social and sexual interests.

Related Topics:
Consumer society - Violence - 1970 - 2000 - Radical - Fast-food - Romantic love - Serial monogamy

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In the former society, despite holding a University degree, Offred was a menial white collar worker. Offred's coworkers were all women, but her boss was a man. Apart from the oppressive cultural phenomena of the former society, women lacked full and meaningful control over their economic lives and careers.

Related Topics:
Degree - White collar

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Social regulation of human sexuality

As Commander Fred explains, the Gileadian elite has a definite analysis of the failure of society in "the former times"; women were too available to men. Men's ready sexual access to women led to violence and abuse. Gilead's solution is to limit men's access to women until they have proved themselves within social-ideological terms. Fred sees no problem in the fact that women are in both cases treated as the property of men, in the former case as individual property, and in the latter case as social property.

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Sumptuary laws

The sumptuary laws of Gilead are quite complex. All lower status individuals are regulated by sumptuary dress laws. Women, in particular, are divided into castes by their dress. Men too are regulated, but equipped with powerful military or paramilitary uniforms: constrained but also empowered. Only rare civilians (increasingly persecuted) and Commanders seem to be free of sumptuary restrictions. This freedom itself is indicative of power.

Related Topics:
Caste - Uniform

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Additionally, those punished with death are dressed for the occasion: priests in long, forbidding robes and Doctors in consulting gowns.

Related Topics:
Priests - Doctor

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Through its sumptuary law, Gilead is a society of appearance.

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