2. Margaret Atwood 42 books; 10 novels Postmodern author B. 1933
The Circle Game
(1966, poetry)
Survival (1972, non-fiction)
The Edible Woman (1969, novel)
Surfacing
(1973, novel)
Lady Oracle
(1977, novel)
Dancing Girls
(1977, short)
Life Before Man
(1979, novel)
Dancing Girls and Other Stories (1982, short stories) Bodily Harm
(1982, novel)
The Handmaid's Tale (1985, novel) Bluebeard's Egg (1987, short stories)
Selected Poems: (1987, poetry)
Margaret Atwood
B. 1933
One of Canada’s finest living writers
42 books; 10 novels
Postmodern author
Numerous literary awards, including the Booker Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the Governor General’s Award, twice.
Concerned with Canada’s cultural identity
Feminist

4. Margaret Atwood She calls her writing “speculative fiction”
Selected Poems II:
(1987, poetry... US)
Cat's Eye
(1989, novel)
Wilderness Tips
(1991, short stories)
The Robber Bride
(1993, novel)
Good Bones and Simple Murders (1994, short stories)
Alias Grace (1996, novel) A Quiet Game(1997, The Blind Assassins (2000)
She calls her writing “speculative fiction”
Interest in women and the female experience emerges clearly in her novels
Futuristic, cautionary, science fiction novel

5. #patriarchy
The Handmaid’s Tale is dominated by an unforgiving view of patriarchy and its legacies.
As Barbara Holliday wrote in the Detroit Free Press, Atwood “has been concerned in her fiction with the painful psychic warfare between men and women. In The Handmaid’s Tale...she casts subtlety aside, exposing woman’s primal fear of being used and helpless.”
Atwood, however, believes that her vision is not far from reality: “The Handmaid’s Tale does not depend upon hypothetical scenarios, omens, or straws in the wind, but upon documented occurrences and public pronouncements; all matters of record.”

6. The Handmaid’s Tale Published: 1986
Plot: The simple, constrained life of a handmaid and her memories.
Narrative Voice: Offred
Setting: Gilead (fictional location~ located in the near future where Boston is now)
Conflict: Critique of patriarchal control~ how does the handmaid resist?

7. Initial Discussion Freedom to … Freedom from …
Do we, here and now in US society, have too much choice? (Think of arguments for both sides, but do take a side.)
List the things the U.S. government gives you freedom to do and things it gives you freedom from.
Freedom to …
Freedom from …

8. A note to the reader from Atwood:     Dear Reader, Every book is a sort of mushroom cloud thrown up by a large substance of material that has been accumulating for a lifetime. I had long been interested in the histories of totalitarian regimes and the different forms they have taken in various societies; while the initial idea for The Handmaid's Tale came to me in 1981, I avoided writing it for several years because I was apprehensive about the results--whether I would be able to carry it off as a literary form. In form, the book is a dystopia (negative utopia). A cognate of A Clockwork Orange, Brave New World, and Nineteen Eighty-Four, it is the story of one woman's altered circumstances, presented as a first-person narrative novel. The roots of the book go back to my study of the American Puritans. The society they founded in America was not a democracy as we know it, but a theocracy. In addition, I found myself increasingly alarmed by statements made frequently by religious leaders in the United States; and then a variety of events from around the world could not be ignored, particularly the rising fanaticism of the Iranian monotheocracy. The thing to remember is that there is nothing new about the society depicted in The Handmaid's Tale except the time and place. All of the things I have written about have--as noted in the "Historical Notes" at the end--been done before, more than once. It is an imagined account of what happens when not uncommon pronouncements about women are taken to their logical conclusions. History proves that what we have been in the past we could be again.  

9. Cultural Catylist Atavism: (n) a tendency to revert to ancestral type
a :  recurrence in an organism of a trait or character typical of an ancestral form and usually due to genetic recombination
b :  recurrence of or reversion to a past style, manner, outlook, approach, or activity <architectural atavism>
2:  one that manifests atavism :  throwback, vintage
— at·a·vis·tic adjective
— at·a·vis·ti·cal·ly adverb
In The Handmaid's Tale, the United States has been replaced by a theocratic totalitarian nation.

10. Make comparisons between Miller’s The Crucible and The HMT.

11. Analysis of the Novel’s Exposition: Setting
The fictional Republic of Gilead represents an “atavistic Puritanism.”
As for Puritanism, think of The Crucible, and the repressive lives of the citizens of New England.
What comparisons between The Crucible and HMT can you make?

12. Historical Context
Atwood herself has indicated that part of the book was inspired by a trip to Afghanistan in the late 1970s. She and her husband were impressed by the beauty of the country and by the silence of its women, who rarely spoke or looked directly at them. 
The novel was published in 1986 during a backlash against the feminist movement.
The defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, the rise of the religious right, and the election of Ronald Reagan led writers like Atwood to fear that the antifeminist tide could not only prevent further gains for women, but turn back the clock.
The US tide had turned in favor of conservative values, and religious fundamentalism experienced a period of rapid growth of power and influence.

13. Iranian Revolution (a. k. a
Iranian Revolution (a.k.a. Islamic Revolution or 1979 Revolution) انقلاب اسلامی
Date
January 1978 – February 1979
Causes
Westernization
Discontent with the Shah's rule
Exile of Ayatollah Khomeini
Social Injustice
Goals
Overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty: replaced a pro-Western semi-absolute monarchy with an anti-Western authoritarian theocracy
Methods
Demonstrations
Strikes
Civil resistance
Result
Overthrow of Mohammad Rezā Shah Pahlavi
Establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Iran hostage crisis
Iran–Iraq War

14. Equal Rights Amendment
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal rights for women.
In 1923, it was introduced in the Congress for the first time.
In 1972, it passed both houses of Congress and went to the state legislatures for ratification.
The resolution in Congress that proposed the amendment set a ratification deadline of March 22, 1979.
Through 1977, the amendment received 35 of the necessary 38 state ratifications.
Washington ratified the amendment on March 22, 1973
Five states later rescinded their ratifications before the 1979 deadline, though the validity of these rescissions is disputed.
WA did not rescind
In 1978, a joint resolution of Congress extended the ratification deadline to June 30, 1982, but no further states ratified the amendment before the passing of the second deadline, leaving it three short of the required threshold.

15. Equal Rights Amendment
Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

16. So … by now … have we passed the Equal Rights Amendment?
The amendment has been reintroduced in every session of Congress since 1982.
On March 5, 2013, the ERA was reintroduced as S. J. RES. 10 by Senator Bob Menendez (D, NJ)
This amendment has not yet passed.
AMENDMENT XIX Passed by Congress June 4, Ratified August 18, 1920.
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

17. Genesis Epigraph: Analysis
Genesis 30:1-3 is one of several biblical passages that make clear that in patriarchal Hebrew times it was perfectly legitimate for a man to have sex and even beget children by his servants (slaves), particularly if his wife was infertile.
It is unknown how widespread was the custom described here, of having the infertile wife embrace the fertile maidservant as she gave birth to symbolize that the baby is legally hers.
Atwood extrapolates hyperbolically from this point, as is typical of dystopian writers:
It is highly unlikely that the puritanical religious right would ever adopt the sexual practices depicted in this novel.
She argues that patriarchal traditions which value women only as fertility objects can be as demeaning as modern customs which value them as sex objects.

18. Swift Epigraph: Analysis
She compares herself to Jonathan Swift, who in 1720s A Modest Proposal highlighted the hard-heartedness of the English in allowing the Irish masses to starve by satirically proposing that they should be encouraged to eat their own children.
Atwood uses reductio ad absurdum, a theoretical exercise designed to stimulate thought about social issues rather than a realistic portrait of a probable future
It is not so obvious what the application of the third epigraph is to this novel. It seems to say that no one needs to forbid what is undesirable. Can you interpret it any further? We’ll return to it at the end of the novel and see if we can pull any further meaning from the text.

19. Setting: Biblical Allusion
Gilead is the name of two places and three people in the Bible
Gilead was a mountainous region east of the Jordan River divided among the tribes of Gad and Manasseh, and situated in modern-day Jordan. (Genesis, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Psalms)
In Hebrew, Gilead can also mean a memorial site
Do you see some irony in the naming of this new society “Gilead?”
The Hebrew Bible repeatedly mentions a "balm in Gilead" or "balm of Gilead", references and symbolism which have appeared repeatedly in Western culture
In Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven," the speaker asks the spectral bird: “Is there balm in Gilead? —tell me—tell me, I implore!”
In The Handmaid's Tale, the United States has been replaced by a theocratic totalitarian nation. One character sings the spiritual, substituting “balm” with “bomb.”

20. Read chapter 1-3 in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale for Thursday.
Homework
Read chapter 1-3 in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale for Thursday.