Technology of Language in The Handmaid’s Tale

In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, verbal communication and language becomes a representation of gender and technology. The nature of representation is that it is not exact and through several levels of verbalized storytelling, gender is represented through the artful invention of language and words. The story is told in a series of reconstructions beginning with the memories of the main character, Offred, and then reconstructed into the verbalization of the memories onto a set of cassette tapes, which are then further reconstructed by historians who discovered the tapes. This chain of reconstructions is then recreated in Atwood’s book, which is then reinterpreted by the reader. The very existence of Offred as a woman and a handmaid becomes constituted by these reconstructions and representations. Essentially, language becomes the technology used to represent gender in Offred’s story.

The first level of reconstruction consists of Offred’s memories as she struggles to recall her experience as a handmaid. Offred’s story is reflective and told from a meta point of view- almost as if the reader was in her mind. She alternates between the present and the past, although many accounts of the present are littered with memories. Offred herself reflects on the reconstruction of her memories: “This is a reconstruction. All of it is a reconstruction. It’s a reconstruction now, in my head, as I lie flat on my single bed rehearsing what I should or shouldn’t have said, what I should or shouldn’t have done” (144). Although, the story is reconstructed from her memories, they themselves are part of a verbal repertoire, the technology which represents Offred as a female reproductive machine.

The next level is Offred’s story reconstructed from her memories and orally recorded through a series of cassette tapes. Offred’s meta point of view clearly shows the inaccuracy and nature of the representation of her story: “It’s impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out” (144). In other words, language is a technology that is able to represent and reconstruct her story. Offred’s experiences as a handmaid cannot be accurately transcribed, but rather it is merely linguistically represented. The restrictions and laws for handmaids is further shown in her self-reflection of storytelling: “It isn’t a story I’m telling. It’s also a story I’m telling, in my head, as I go along. Tell, rather than write, because I have nothing to write with and writing is in any case forbidden” (49). In this way, Offred’s story of being a trapped woman is again represented through the technology of oral language.

From the cassette tapes, historian James Darcy Pieixoto interprets and pieces together Offred’s story. This reconstruction in itself is inaccurate and entirely based on conjecture, as he claims, “all such arrangements are based on some guesswork and are to be regarded as approximate, pending further research” (314). Furthermore, their representation of Offred’s story is complicated by “accent,” “obscure referents,” and “archaisms.” Based on his assumptions and biases, Pieixoto manipulates the oral language in Offred’s tapes to reconstruct his own version of her story. During the symposium on Gileadean studies, Pieixoto makes several claims about Offred’s role as a woman and her experience in Gilead’s society. Again, the constant reconstruction of language is a form of technology that is utilized to represent gender.

As the author, Margaret Atwood is responsible for the inner linguistic representations in the book, while we, the readers of the Atwood’s book, represent the final level of reconstruction. By creating several levels of reconstruction of Offred’s story, Atwood emphasizes language as the technology, which allows for the representation of Offred as a woman. In a tunnel effect, each level of reconstruction further signifies Offred’s restrictive and trapped role as a handmaid. Offred’s memories serve as a mental, yet still linguistic foundation, which the subsequent reconstructions are built upon. Her memories verbalized on cassette tapes, represents a bridge between her past, pre-Gildean role as a woman and her current function as a handmaid. When the tapes are organized and the story is reconstructed by the fictitious historian, Offred’s specific experience as a handmaid is placed into a bigger context of the historical Gildean society. Manipulating the language in Offred’s tapes and looking back on the darkness of the past also re-emphasizes and re-represents womanhood. When we read the book in its entirety, the story is further reconstructed with our own interpretations and our own biases. Interpreting the language in our own contexts represents a final stage in verbally representing gender as we find our own meanings of being a woman.

This chain of interpretation and representation of a single story is mirrored by the chain of storytelling and interpretation among the handmaid’s themselves. Because of their restrictions, the handmaids are forced to whisper stories from bed to bed in order to stay connected to each other. In a telephone-game-like way, the technology of language allows each handmaid to interpret stories in their own contexts. As the stories are re-told over and over again, language is manipulated and the story becomes constantly reconstructed. With a similar tunnel effect, their meanings of being a female and a handmaid is continuously re-examined and represented. In The Handmaid’s Tale, language is a powerful representation that bridges verbal technology and the female gendering of handmaids.