2 Those who see Offred as a rebel, such as Michele Lacombe, Hilde Staels, and David S. Hogsette, cite her irony, her language play, her insistence on retaining personal memories, and even the fact that she \"wrote\" the Tale in the first place as subversive.1 For Coral Ann Howells and others such as Hilda Staels, storytelling is Offred’s means of survival and resistance, reinforcing her identity and challenging those who would silence her (93). The problem with this view is that she did not in fact \"write\" anything; as numerous critics have reminded us, the text we have is a much later reconstruction — by male scholars with not very feminist opinions — of audiotaped fragments. Offred commits nothing to paper because she cannot and she would be in serious trouble if she tried. Similarly, Jeanne Campbell Reesman argues that Offred’s \"voice offers a moving testament to the power of language to transform reality in order to overcome oppressive designs imposed on human beings\" (6). While it may be true that Offred transforms her own reality, Gilead remains as fictionally real as ever, and as the Historical Notes tell us it gets even worse after Offred’s account (e.g., 316). Carol L. Beran says that \"Offred’s power is in language\" (71), but we need to ask how much power that truly is. If this is resistance, as J. Brooks Bouson notes, it is a very silent and ineffectual kind (147).

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The Value/s of Dystopia: The Handmaid's Tale and the Anti-Utopian Tradition

Offred’s Complicity and the Dystopian Tradition in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is an explicitly political novel which became an immediate bestseller when published in Canada in 1985 and the United States in 1986.1 The novel emerges from the long traditions of Utopian fiction, particularly the anti-utopia or dystopia, which, prominent since Swift's "Voyage to the Houyhnhnms," has become a common feature of this century's political and literary landscape. Atwood also joins the ranks of the writers of specifically feminist Utopias and dystopias. This sub genre, rejuvenated in the early seventies with the women's liberation move ment, includes works such as Joanna Russ's The Female Man, Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed, and Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time. The feminist novels show that power is gendered, that gender distinctions are pervasive and extensive, and that the personal and political interweave. In The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood's narrator tells a very personal tale of under standing and ignoring, activity and complicity, fidelity and betrayal, in the political settings of the contemporary United States and the future dystopian society of Gilead. Many commentators on The Handmaid's Tale have characterized the narrator as a heroine, a developing consciousness, or an emerging woman. Some have looked to the pre-Gilead period (our present) as a happy (or tol erable) alternative to the Gileadean nightmare; others have interpreted the Gileadean society as, in part, a by-product of cultural feminism; and a few have found hope or assurance in Gilead's obvious demise before 2195, the date of the epilogue's academic conference.2 But these interpretations are unseated by a close reading of the text and attention to its dystopian context,3 which demonstrate the need for sustained political, feminist con sciousness and activity among women by exploring what may happen in their absence.

Identity, Complicity, and Resistance in The Handmaid's Tale*

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Nahe Zukunft, Utopie und Dystopie in Margaret Atwoods The handmaid's tale und Kim Stanley Robinsons Orange County Trilogie

This thesis uses an analysis of Fay Weldon's Puffball and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale to explore the construction of identity, particularly female identity. It takes into consideration the influence of both biology and culture on identity and explores how, within the context of the patriarchal societies depicted by the novels, female identity is closely linked to reproductive function. It examines how the construction of female identity based on reproductive function further objectifies the female body in society, and how it can aid patriarchal domination and oppression of women. The analysis of the novels draws on both essentialist and social constructionist feminist approaches to oppression and female identity. The essentialist approach views female biological difference (reproductive function) as responsible for the way in which women are oppressed. The social constructionist view argues that female oppression stems from the social construction of female identity around concepts of motherhood and femininity. The thesis takes both approaches into account as it seeks to explain how patriarchy oppresses women through the construction of female identity. The thesis also explores how control over the female body and identity can be exercised through reproductive technology. An examination of the role reproductive technology plays in contributing to patriarchal dominance, suggests that new technologies may compel women to conform to stereotypes of femininity based on pregnancy and motherhood. The thesis considers the impact infertility and the choice not to have children have on female identity and takes into account the options available to these women. The main focus, with regard to infertility and choice, is on the relationship between women who have children and those who do not. This thesis refutes the notion that there is solidarity between women based on shared childbearing experience, and focuses on the conflict that occurs between fertile and childless women. It finds that the conflict that occurs is a result of the socialisation of women into viewing motherhood as an essential aspect of 'normal' femininity. The thesis also considers what causes the desire to have children and finds that, as in the case of the conflict between women, it is as a result of socialisation and an innate/instinctual biological drive. Stellenbosch University http://scholar.sun.ac.za

Puffball and The handmaid's tale : the influence of pregnancy on the construction of female identity

This paper attempts to explore the aspects of reviewing personal history and
analyzing personal identity presented in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale.
Offred’s story, which is presented to the reader as a written narrative reconstructed from tapes two centuries after her death and the end of the dictatorship of Gilead, are discussed at a scientific conference held on June 25, 2195. As a Handmaid in a service of Commander Waterford and a prisoner in his household, Offred‘s identity, her past and
even her first name are taken away from her. Her role is limited to a child bearer only.
Throughout the novel, Offred rethinks her former life, her tendency to live by ignoring,
to take everything for granted and to trust fate. She remembers the days in the pre-Gilead society, where freedom to do something is replaced with freedom from doing in Gilead. She reviews her relationship with her mother and her attitude towards her mother’s values and feminism. She recollects her relationship with her husband, her role as a mother and her way of life in the pre-Gilead society. Offred compares her previous and her present status in a situation in which her personal freedom is almost non-existent. In her newly-discovered self- awareness, she finds ways to redefine herself as a woman, as a lover and even as a victim.

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The Value/s of Dystopia: The Handmaid's Tale and the Anti-Utopian Tradition

Citations

Offred’s Complicity and the Dystopian Tradition in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale

Identity, Complicity, and Resistance in The Handmaid's Tale*

Nahe Zukunft, Utopie und Dystopie in Margaret Atwoods The handmaid's tale und Kim Stanley Robinsons Orange County Trilogie

Puffball and The handmaid's tale : the influence of pregnancy on the construction of female identity

Rethinking personal history and maintaining indentity – offred in margaret atwood's the handmaid's tale