Gilead: A Religious Dystopia
When I hear the word “technology”, I think of arts, communication, and a plethora of inventions. I think of all the languages, cultures and political systems in the world. I think of everything that makes our lives easier, and everything we use to define ourselves as an individual or a society. But anyone who turns on the news knows that technology is also a powerful medium through which acts of violence and repression are committed. Margarget Atwood’s Republic of Gilead in A Handmaid’s Tale shows us a grim possibility of the future, where society is divided by a strict hierarchy, women’s identities and purposes are defined solely by their relationships with men, and advanced technology has been used by religious fundamentalists to make gender flexibility a prosecutable crime. In the Republic of Gilead, gender is no longer a personal state of mind or a spectrum of identity or expression, but the strict and moral code by which one must abide in order to live. Sex is no longer a personal or even pleasurable connection, but a mechanism of reproduction, and in the protagonist’s case, of survival.
In Offred’s descriptions of her life in Gilead, it is clear that many of the customs and social expectations have deeply religious connotations. After the United States government as we know it was overthrown by religious fundamentalists, the identity of each individual has been forcefully reconstructed. The resulting caste system is strengthened by both language and visual symbolism. African Americans are no longer blacks, but Sons of Ham. Wives are forced to wear blue, a color usually seen on traditional paintings of the Virgin Mary. Handmaids such as Offred wear red, a color of fertility. The role of the Handmaid is also justified through religious means: in the Bible, Abraham has a child with Sarah’s handmaiden when it seems that Sarah is unable to get pregnant.
Even the process by which the Handmaid is impregnated is highly reminiscent of sex as it is written in the Bible: mechanical, straightforward, and serving the sole purpose of reproduction. “My arms are raised,” Offred describes, “she holds my hands, each of mine in each of hers. This is supposed to signify that we are one flesh, one being. What it really means is that she is in control, of the process and thus of the product … 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… It has nothing to do with passion or love or romance… It has nothing to do with sexual desire… (93-94)”
For me, one of the most interesting and also perplexing characters in the book is the Commander’s Wife, Serena Joy. She is understandably unhappy about her own status in life and the humiliation of having to see the Commander sleep with Offred, but the irony of it is, she was probably one of the people that made such a system possible. Before the creation of Gilead, she was a deeply religious celebrity who publicly supported a reestablishment of traditional values. Clearly, her life after the creation of Gilead was not exactly what she had in mind. To an extent, I sympathize with her, but at the same time, I see her as highly symbolic of the ignorance and stubbornness of Americans in real life. Even after what has happened to her, she doesn’t quite learn her lesson about the dangers of repression, and instead of becoming more open-minded and compassionate, she abuses and exploits Offred.
I will never forget Bill Maher’s concluding words in his 2008 documentary, Religulous. “If the world does come to an end here, or wherever, or if it limps into the future, decimated by the effects of religion-inspired nuclear terrorism, let’s remember what the real problem was. We learned how to precipitate mass death before we got past the neurological disorder of wishing for it. That’s it. Grow up or die.” I get the feeling that Margaret Atwood is presenting a very similar argument in The Handmaid’s Tale: when our advancement of technology greatly surpasses our collective maturity level, the consequences are disastrous. Especially for women.
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. New York, NY: Anchor Books, 1986
Religulous (2008) by Bill Maher
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I have a number of small questions. Gender in Gilead, you say, is “no longer a personal state of mind or a spectrum of identity or expression,” “no longer a personal or even pleasureable connection,” but rather a strict moral code, a mechanism of reproduction and survival. Is that different from the world as we know it, and have studied it in this class? Is gender, in the virtual and real worlds in which we all live and work, not a code of tightly enforced behavior, as well as a site of expression and pleasure? You describe sex in Gilead as following a Biblical script; there are several of those, and the characters in Atwood’s novel follow only one of them; for a striking and very sensuous alternative, see The Song of Solomon: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.”
I was as intrigued as you are by the perplexing character of Serena, and your observation is acute: she certainly contributed to the making of the world in which she now finds herself so unhappy. But I’m not sure how you get from there to the summary of Atwood’s novel as “grow up or die.” In what ways is Gilead about an “advancement of technology” that “greatly surpasses our collective maturity level”? What passages in the novel are testimony to that interpretation? You argue, by analogy, from the Religulous documentary; I’d like to see more of Atwood’s actual text, in support of your argument about what it’s up to.