Postmodern Concerns about Historical Situatedness in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale
By Anouk de Bleyser
MA Thesis
-Master Literary Studies: English Literature and Culture
Anouk Suzanne de Bleyser
University of Amsterdam: Faculty of Humanities Supervisor: Dr. Kristine Johanson
26 June 2018
I acknowledge that I have read the UvA guidelines on Plagiarism, and that this thesis is my own work.
Abstract
This thesis aims to demonstrate that in The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood addresses the postmodern concern of the significance of the historical situatedness. By focusing on the three historical influences of the Bible, the Holocaust and the Second World War and the feminist movement, this thesis will adapt a postmodern reading of the novel. The historical influence of the Bible in the novel shows the dangers of the decontextualization of foundational texts, and how decontextualized fragments of the Bible can be misappropriated for political purposes. The historical influences of the Holocaust and the Second World War reflect the concern of the exclusion of victim’s testimonies and the creation of master narratives, which invites readers to think about the way in which history is constructed, and argues that history is always a human construct. The historical influence of the feminist movement argues that Atwood anticipates Butler’s notion of the subject “woman” as a political construct, based on the historical situatedness. The Handmaid’s Tale shows how such a subject may be politically constructed, and how this notion of a political subject may be undermined. Eventually, all these historical influences in the novel address postmodern concerns, which all return to the notion of historical situatedness.
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I would like to thank my thesis supervisor, dr. Kristine Johanson, for her constructive criticism on my drafts, for her time, and for her enthusiasm and care. Her guidance and experience were extremely helpful with composing my arguments and keeping a clear vision of what I wanted to achieve.
Furthermore, I want to thank my parents, for always taking me in when I was in need of a quiet place to write, and Koen, for his endless patience.
Table of Contents
Introduction……….. 6 Chapter 1. The Dangers of Decontextualization: The Bible as a Framework for Gilead………... 11 Chapter 2. History as a Human Construction: Attending to Post-Holocaust Fears………. 26 Chapter 3. The Subject “Woman” as a Political Construction: Postmodern Feminism in Atwood………... 44 Conclusion……….. 58 Works Cited……… 60
Introduction
It is safest to grasp the concept of the postmodern as an attempt to think the present historically in an age that has forgotten how to think historically in the first place.
- Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, ix.
Referring to the modernist movement as a movement that has forgotten how to think historically, Fredric Jameson states that the postmodern movement is particularly concerned with the significance of texts’ historical situatedness. Whereas modernism perceives works of art and therefore literary texts as “a closed, self-sufficient, autonomous object deriving its unity from the formal interrelations of its parts” (Hutcheon 125), postmodernism “suggests that to re-write or to re-present the past in fiction and in history is, in both cases, to open it up to the present, to prevent it from being conclusive and teleological” (Hutcheon 110). In A Poetics of Postmodernism, Hutcheon argues that postmodernism is characterized by “its theoretical self-awareness of history and fiction as human constructs” (Hutcheon 5) and, therefore, challenges the idea of one historical truth. Modernists believe in an objective, autonomous knowledge of the self, truth and history. This modern autonomous idea “is inextricably bound to the Kantian idea of freedom and truth. Autonomy involves the capacity to act in accordance with self-determined principles rationally formulated and not driven by irrational impulses from within or tyrannical pressures from without” (Waugh 295). The idea that every text is autonomous, and thus free from irrationality, is challenged by postmodernism, which “poses new questions about reference. The issue is no longer “to what empirically real object in the past does the language of history refer?”; it is more “to which discursive context could this language belong? To which prior textualizations must we refer?”” (Hutcheon 119). Postmodernism understands history not as an autonomous, objective truth about past events, but acknowledges the fact that history is always interpreted in a way
that is culturally influenced. Thus, the concern for the awareness of the historical situatedness of texts is predominantly a postmodern concern. Margaret Atwood is often recognized as a postmodern writer, for example by Vevaina, who states that: “In all her works, Atwood reveals a distinctly postmodern engagement with history” (Vevaina 87). Atwood shares the postmodern concern of historical situatedness in her novel The Handmaid’s Tale, in which she addresses the postmodern concern of the importance of the historical situatedness of texts. The Handmaid’s Tale is heavily influenced by historical events, which Atwood incorporates into the text to subvert them into her own speculative vision of the future. In an essay in the New York Times, Atwood reveals: “One of my rules was that I would not put any events into the book that had not already happened in what James Joyce called the “nightmare” of history, nor any technology not already available” (Atwood 2017, 1). The use of historical influences that are employed in the novel reflects a range of postmodern concerns about the historical situatedness of texts.
This thesis argues that The Handmaid’s Tale insists upon the crucial importance of the historical situatedness of texts. I will discuss the novel’s valuation on historical situatedness with regards to three different historical influences: the Bible, the Holocaust and the Second World War and the feminist movement. All three historical influences evoke questions with regards to the postmodern concern of historical situatedness, such as: What are the dangers of decontextualization? Is history a human construct? Is the subject “woman” a political construction? This thesis will attempt to provide clear answers to these questions in three chapters. In each chapter, I provide a specific postmodern background on the particular topic before I argue the chapter’s main claim.
The first chapter discusses the influence of the Bible on The Handmaid’s Tale, and argues that all texts are determined by their historical situatedness. Atwood shows the risks of decontextualization in her novel by taking biblical stories out of their original context as the
base of the constitution of Gilead. Atwood portrays the dangers of decontextualization by incorporating irony into names in the novel and through the theme of barren women. By using ironic biblical names which signify the complete opposite of what the Bible originally says, Atwood shows that decontextualization may lead to a false reliance on foundational texts. Gilead uses the Bible as a precedent for state laws and actions, but this precedent is based on false assumptions. The biblical stories about barren women are decontextualized to ensure an environment of female envy and an exemption of male responsibility. By using the Bible in such an extensive interpretation, Atwood shows that the Bible should always be seen as a product of its historical moment. However, the interpretation that is given to a text at any place in time is a product of the historical situation as well.
The second chapter argues that The Handmaid’s Tale contains echoes of the Holocaust and the Second World War, and it focuses on the exclusion of victim’s accounts in the creation of the master narrative of official history by historians, which was a common apprehension after the Second World War had come to an end, to emphasize the constructedness and inevitable incompleteness of any story and history in general, and the prevalence of master narratives. Atwood shows the constructedness of history through the story itself and in the novel’s concluding Historical Notes. The story itself contains echoes of the Holocuast to invite readers to think about how history is constructed. The novel’s Historical Notes evokes questions about the reliability of oral victims’ testimonies, and it discusses the place in history of victims’ accounts in a possible master narrative.
The last chapter argues that Atwood addresses the postmodern feminist concern that the subject “woman” is always politically constructed and that the meaning of this subject is always historically situated. In the novel, women are subjected to Gilead’s objectification of them as being purely reproductive vessels. However, the women in the novel regain their
identities mentally by remembering their relationships with other people and the roles they played within these relationships.
Postmodernism emerged as a reaction to modernism, “questioning the existence of any truth (universal or otherwise) and the ability of human reason to find it […] knowledge and belief are products of the environment, and that we should thus speak of contingent ‘narratives’ rather than absolute truths” (Wenzel 175). Furthermore, “no individual narrative has a legitimate right to exclude any other; everything is contingent on context and background” (Wenzel 175). Postmodernists see every text as a product of its historical and cultural situatedness. Atwood takes side along the postmodernists, arguing that all texts are dependent on their historical situatedness. In “In Search of Alias Grace: On Writing Canadian Historical Fiction”, she formulates an original and fitting description of her postmodernist views: “What does the past tell us? In and of itself, it tells us nothing. We have to be listening first, before it will say a word; and even so, listening means telling, and then re-telling” (Atwood 1998, 1515). With this statement, Atwood defines that all texts are dependent on their historical context. Atwood argues that history, and literature, are always a product of shaping influences, influences which may change over time. Context is everything. In The Robber Bride, she states: “Pick any strand and snip, and history comes unravelled […] History is a construct […] any point of entry is possible (Atwood 1994, 3-4). What she means by saying that any point of entry is possible, is that the current context of telling a story always influences the way in which a story is told, even if the story is about another point in history.
Linda Hutcheon, a leading critic in the field of postmodernism, “classifies Atwood as a postmodern novelist” (Obidic 9). Hutcheon argues that Atwood “revises ancient myths, legends, fairy tales, etc. and modernizes them by giving them a new meaning with a
contemporary parodic or ironic twist from the point of view of the twentieth and twenty-first century, as it is typical of postmodernism” (Obidic 10).
Atwood has been considered a postmodern writer by Hutcheon, but most critics seem more concerned with Atwood’s feminism rather than her postmodernism, because of the challenges she poses in her works. However, “while the challenges posed by Atwood’s work are prompted by feminist impulses, the urge to challenge is itself postmodern in nature” (Cooke 27). The reason why there is not much literature on Atwood’s postmodernity is because critics have predominantly been focused on Atwood’s feminism. However, the two concepts do not exclude each other and it would be interesting if Atwood’s postmodernity were explored more thoroughly.
Chapter 1
The Dangers of Decontextualization: The Bible as a Framework for Gilead
This chapter argues that with The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood shows that all texts are dependent on their historical situatedness. Atwood shows this by using the Bible as an example to demonstrate the dangers of pulling texts out of their historical context. She extracts a selection of passages from the Bible, takes them out of context completely, and uses them as the basis for the foundation of a totalitarian state, twisting and turning history in a way that is completely detached from its original meaning. Atwood’s novel is a postmodernist critique on modernist thinking. She exemplifies the dangers of a decontextualizing modernist view, as she imagines what might happen when certain passages from the Bible are exploited for totalitarian ends. The Bible lies at the centre of the Gileadean government’s policies and practices. Atwood shows the reader what can happen if certain passages of the Bible are taken out of context, and what the consequences for a society are if a government adheres to these decontextualized commandments letter by letter. Firstly, this chapter will provide a short explanation on the common use of the Bible in literature. Secondly, I will position Atwood’s ideas on the dangers of decontextualization within the movements of modernism and postmodernism. Then, this chapter shows how Atwood portrays the dangers of decontextualization, by incorporating irony in the names of the stores which appear in the novel. Finally, this chapter argues that biblical stories about barren women are reconstructed to assist the Gileadean oppressive government in two ways: Atwood uses the biblical passages on barren women to create an environment of female envy and to assert the exemption of male responsibility.
The use of the Bible in literature is common practice. Numerous authors incorporate the Bible in their writings because most people perceive it as one of the most influential texts in the world, even today’s secular Western world:
“While many educators might not read the Bible, think about it on a daily basis, or recognize its impact on our daily lives, the Bible, together with the traditions of classical Greece and Rome, serves as the basis for –and the seminal text of –Western thought and culture. Indeed, serving as much more than a religious text, the Bible has formed the basis of Judeo-Christian thinking, whether in religious or secular life, shaping not only religious thought but also politics, law, culture […] Eighty percent of Americans […] named the Bible as the most influential book ever published” (Segall & Burke 307-308).
Even in a world where religion seemingly plays an increasingly smaller role, biblical ideas are so ingrained in Western culture that the Bible still serves as a basis for politics, law and moral judgment. Therefore, authors critically employ the influential text in order to address contemporary issues and ideas. However, to what extent can the Bible be interpreted in the same way and to what extent can it be reconstructed if the historical context is so different? This question concerns many scholars, including Sternberg, who argues:
“To reconstruct the principles underlying the textual givens, therefore, we must form hypotheses that will relate fact to effect; and these may well differ in interpretive focus and explanatory power […] That they are not remarkable for being so in the present state of affairs is largely due to the tendency to read biblical texts out of communicative context, with little regard for what they set out to achieve and the
exigencies attaching to its achievement. Elements thus get divorced from the very terms of reference that assign to them their role and meaning: parts from wholes, means from ends, forms from functions. Nothing could be less productive and more misleading” (Sternberg 26).
Reconstruction of historical texts like the Bible then, are in danger of decontextualization and with this decontextualization, employ a seemingly canonical precedent in a way that does not correspond with the original meaning of these texts.
The debate on how to interpret the Bible in literature revolves around the dilemma of whether the text can be seen as an autonomous entity, or whether historical and cultural context plays a role on its interpretation and use. Two stances can be taken with regards to this issue. One view on the matter is that: “The age of the text makes no difference. It is from the story of David and Bathsheba itself that we infer its poetics, just as we do with Lolita, regardless of what its author or the modern theory of literature may say” (Sternberg 31). This view contends that every text is autonomous in itself, and will always have the same meaning, regardless of historical and cultural context. Sternberg also summarizes the opposite view, that: “The text’s autonomy is a long-exploded myth: the text has no meaning, or may assume every kind of meaning, outside those coordinates of discourse that we usually bundle into the term ‘context’” (Sternberg 31). Advocates of this view agree that the context of a text is essential to its understanding and meaning in different times and places.
These opposing views tie into the two movements of modernism and postmodernism. It is important to discern between the two movements, since Atwood employs a postmodern view on the dangers of decontextualization. Modernists, according to Habermas, have “the extravagant expectation that the arts and sciences would promote not only the control of natural forces but also understanding of the world and of the self, moral progress, the justice
of institutions and even the happiness of human beings” (Habermas 9). Modernism claims art for art’s sake, and wants to “rely as little as possible on empirical or conventional interests and as much as possible on the internal logic developed by the artwork” (Altieri 2). Modernists argue that, indeed, “The age of the text makes no difference” (Sternberg 31). Thus, the idea that all texts are dependent on their historical situatedness is incompatible with the modernist movement, since modernists believe that the text can be seen as an autonomous entity, separate from historical situatedness.
Atwood demonstrates the danger of decontextualization of the Bible by consistently using irony in her novel, to show that the original biblical meaning is taken out of context and employed in a radically different way by the Gileadean government. The irony in Atwood’s biblical references truly surfaces in the names of the stores the narrator visits. She discusses three different stores, which have ironic names, signifying the complete opposite of what they represent. Atwood uses these names to provide criticism between the lines. Even though she does not state this criticism on decontextualization in so many words, her cynic representation of the Bible speaks louder than words. By taking the biblical reference out of its historical context and employing it to suit the Gileadean government’s practices, she shows that every text is inherently dependent on the context it is created in, thus emphasizing the importance of historical and cultural situatedness. She demonstrates that, when taken out of its original context and used as an autonomous source, the Bible may be used to create and sustain a totalitarian regime.
The first instance where the Bible is ironically pulled out of context to show the dangers of decontextualization, is when the narrator visits one of the stores, called Lilies of the Field, where the handmaids can buy their robes. The name is derived from Matthew 6:25-31:
“Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment
[…]
And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin” (Matthew 6:25-28).
This passage condemns vanity: food, drink and appearances are declared worthless. The lilies of the field are taken as an example: they do not need anything besides their natural course of life to be as beautiful as they are. If you remain as pure and good as the lilies of the field, God will sustain you. Naming a clothing store Lilies of the Field is quite ironic. The biblical passage seems to express the complete opposite view of what clothing is intended for originally. Atwood applies this contradiction to articulate a divergence between the intentions of the Bible and Gileadean reality.
Another biblical reference that is used to show the dangers of decontextualization in the novel is the name Milk and Honey, a supermarket where the handmaids go to get their produce. In the Bible, “a land of milk and honey” is a synonym for the Promised Land of Canaan, mentioned in Exodus. Moses declares: “And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites” (Exodus 3:8). The Promised Land of milk and honey was a place where the Israelites, God’s chosen people would be brought to, if they obeyed the Lord. However, for the people that did not obey him, there were severe repercussions: “For the children of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, till all the people that were men of war, which came out of Egypt, were consumed, because they obeyed not the voice of the Lord: unto whom the Lord sware that he
would not shew them the land, which the Lord sware unto their fathers that he would give us, a land that floweth with milk and honey” (Joshua 5:6). Thus, the land of milk and honey is destined only for the people who obey the Lord in the right way. In a sense, this is the same in Gilead: everybody has to follow the rules of the Gileadean theocracy, or they will be sent to the Colonies, or murdered, or imprisoned, or sent to Jezebel’s. However, it might also be interpreted in the way that Gilead itself is the land flowing with milk and honey, and therefore the Promised Land, overflowing with richness, which is definitely the image the Gileadean government wants to portray. This sense of richness and abundance does not comply with Gileadean reality, where food is scarce: “I see they have oranges today […] oranges have been hard to get […] I look at the oranges, longing for one. But I haven’t brought any tokens for oranges” (Atwood 2010, 35).
Atwood magnifies the contrast between what is meant by the biblical name and the unfortunate reality. This ironic way of contrast invokes a critical view of the way the Gileadean government uses the Bible in their totalitarian pursuits, and represents a contemporary concern of the influence of the Bible, and possibly other foundational texts and belief systems.
Another store that Atwood uses in an ironic way is All Flesh, the local butcher. This name in itself, regardless of its biblical meaning, is witty. Flesh reminds us of meat, has a distinct connotation to humanity and is commonly associated with sex. In the Bible, the phrase “all flesh” is first mentioned quite early on, in the story of Noah:
“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
[…]
And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth” (Genesis 6:5-13).
This Bible passage refers to all flesh as all human beings, and refers to humankind’s inherent corruption. The Gileadean government seems to agree on the lines that all mankind, all flesh, was corrupted and should be destroyed: “Consider the alternatives, said Aunt Lydia. You see what things used to be like? That was what they thought of women, then” (Atwood 2010, 128). Further on in the novel, there is an extensive description of what things used to be like:
“We’ve given them more than we’ve taken away, said the Commander. Think of the trouble they had before. Don’t you remember the singles bars, the indignity of high-school blind dates? The meat market. Don’t you remember the terrible gap between the ones who could get a man easily and the ones who couldn’t? Some of them were desperate, they starved themselves thin or pumped their breasts full of silicone, had their noses cut off. Think of the human misery […] And then if they did marry, they could be left with a kid, two kids, the husband might just get fed up and take off, disappear, they’d have to go on welfare. Or else he’d stay around and beat them up. Or if they had a job, the children in daycare or left with some brutal ignorant woman, and
they’d have to pay for that themselves, out of their wretched little paycheques. Money was the only measure of worth” (Atwood 2010, 231).
Humankind’s corruption, according to the Gileadean government, is traceable to the ways in which women portrayed themselves and the choices they made. The Commander feels that women corrupted themselves in only valuing their exterior appearance and money, and prefers Gilead over the way things were before. The Gileadean government feels that the establishment of the new theocracy was like Noah’s ark, cleansing and saving the world and ridding it of greed and evil. However, the danger of decontextualization arises out of this extract from the novel. When, in the Bible, God spoke of the corruption and end of all flesh, it is doubtful he was referring to the desperation of women, or to silicone breasts or nose corrections. Certainly, corruption in biblical times differed greatly from the corruption mentioned in The Handmaid’s Tale. Therefore, it is an interpretational question. The Commander is applying the ancient text that has been rewritten numerous times and of which the origin is not even known in his own particular historical moment. Atwood makes her readers recognize this by putting recognizable situations into the Commander’s mouth, someone the reader would find it hard to sympathize with normally. By making the situation relatable for her readers, Atwood uses her own historical moment to create irony and to create a problematic relationship between the Commander and the reader, playing to the contextual nuances of the historical moments. Atwood shows here, once again, that the circumstances of the time in which the reader interprets is crucial to the interpretation of words itself.
The fact that the word “flesh” has a human and sexual layer to it cannot be ignored. This sexual attribution to the word also derives from the Bible, where it is mentioned in Genesis: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). In marriage, man and woman will be
unified and this marriage will be consummated. The act of sex represents the consolidation between man and woman, despite their differences, physical and non-physical. As it states in the book of Mark: “And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh” (Mark 10:8). After consummating the marriage, man and woman are one instead of two, not only in body, but in their entire being, because of the act of creation, because of marriage and because of intercourse. As Dennis P. Hollinger argues: “The term flesh in the Old Testament refers not just to the physical body, but often connotes the wholeness of a person and their relationships. Thus, this one-flesh union is about more than sex: it envelops the couple’s entire life in covenant relationship” (Hollinger 147). Thus, the term “flesh” is referred to especially as the consummation after marriage, which unifies men and women. We must not forget what the consequence of this joining of flesh is, that is, if all goes well: procreation. Only if a man and a woman “join their flesh”, life on earth will be secured. Producing offspring is the primary concern of the Gileadean government within The Handmaid’s Tale. After God has thinned the herd, the earth needs to be repopulated, but in the novel, this is complicated by fertility issues. Because such a small percentage of the population is fertile, the system of handmaids is set up as a way to be able to keep repopulating the earth. The means of procreation are contradictory: the union of flesh should be between husband and wife, but in the novel, the wife is not the one who is sexually unified with her husband, it is the handmaid. All of a sudden, within this construction, this union of flesh does not seem to be so symbolical anymore, because the handmaid is not allowed to bring forward “the wholeness” of her person, thus making the construction decidedly un-Christian. However, the Gileadean government wants to disseminate that the wife and the handmaid are as one during the Ceremony in which the Commander attempts to impregnate the handmaid: “Above me, towards the head of the bed, Serena Joy is arranged, outspread. Her legs are apart, I lie between them, my head on her stomach, her pubic bone under the base
of my skull, her thighs on either side of me […] This is supposed to signify that we are one flesh, one being” (Atwood 2010, 104). This could be used as an argument that the biblical text is not pulled out of its context. However, I argue that the joining of flesh which the Bible addresses is the unification of husband and wife, not wife and handmaid. By emphasizing these inconsistencies between the Bible and Gilead, Atwood once more substantiates the idea that there are dangers in decontextualization. The biblical words are used to provide biblical precedent, but in a way in which the words are twisted so that they do not contain the same meaning they originally did.
In the novel, the Bible is pulled out of context and used in an alternative way to strengthen the domination of the totalitarian patriarchy. Atwood demonstrates the dangers of this decontextualization of the Bible, not only by ironically commenting on the interpretative question of names and their changed meanings in the novel which are inconsistent with the original meaning of the Bible, but stretches it into a larger theme in the novel: the theme of barren women. In The Handmaid’s Tale, biblical stories about barren women are reconstructed to assist the environment of oppression in two ways. Atwood uses the biblical passages on barren women to create an environment of female envy. Additionally, these stories are employed to assert the exemption of male responsibility for infertility. By referring to the biblical story of Rachel and Leah as a justification of the system of handmaids, the treatment of barrenness and all its consequences, the Gileadean government seems to take the Bible as an autonomous text. Gilead is what happens when we attempt to take a text out of its context, and create a regime around the separated text. The stories of barren women in the novel are used as an assertion of the totalitarian regime. Female envy is an intrinsic part of Gileadean life. The wives of the Commanders are barren, and “barrenness was generally seen as a violation of the law of life, a denial of the Divine creative element with which woman was blessed” (Dresner 443). It is in God’s will to procreate:
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it” (Genesis 1:27-28).
In the novel, the wives are confronted with their barrenness by the presence of the fertile handmaids. They cannot perform God’s will because they are infertile. The fertile rivals have the function of asserting the male’s fertility, by creating a female rival for the wives, constantly reminding them of their limitation. This aspect of female rivals occurs in the Bible, in the story of Rachel and Leah. The story of Rachel and Leah is addressed explicitly as the novel’s epigraph:
“And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.
And Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel; and he said, Am I in God’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?
And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her” (Genesis, 30:1-3).
This short Bible passage is the basis of the entire system of handmaids, wives and Commanders, according to the Gileadean government. The passage relates part of the story of Rachel and Leah, two sisters who both marry Jacob. Leah produces four sons, but Rachel is barren, although Jacob loves her more than Leah. Rachel becomes jealous because she is unable to bear her husband a child. As a solution, she offers her handmaid Bilhah as a stand-in and is able to beget children “through her”.
The primary reason for the contempt of the wives in the novel is thus their envy towards the fertile females, and this benefits the totalitarian government. Because of the envy, women distrust each other, as is stated in the novel: “It’s not the husbands you have to watch out for, said Aunt Lydia, it’s the Wives. You should always try to imagine what they must be feeling. Of course they will resent you. It is only natural” (Atwood 2010, 56). The distrust between women, created by the decontextualized biblical precedent, is highly beneficial for the Gileadean government. As Hedman states about the female rivals:
“Their presence nullifies the option of sisterhood over patriarchy. It also serves to contribute to gender attributions which suggest that inter-female relationships are fraught with cruelty, envy, pettiness, bickering […] and exploitation by the appropriation of another’s body” (Hedman 19).
Although there are many examples in the novel where sisterhood is not nullified at all, like in the friendship between Offred and Moira, the friendship between Offred and Ofglen, and the relationships between the women at Jezebel’s, the novel mirrors the relevance of the presence of a female rival as well, providing the basis for the culture of envy and hate between Handmaids and the other women in the society. At one point, the narrator comments on this: “The Marthas are not supposed to fraternise with us. Fraternize means to behave like
a brother. Luke told me that. He said there was no corresponding word that meant to behave like a sister. Sororize, it would have to be, he said” (Atwood 2010, 21). Sisterhood is not even an option linguistically, let alone realistically. Women in the novel distrust each other because the issue of fertility is put between them to assert totalitarian control. The Bible serves as a basis for the Gileadean government to install this environment of distrust and contempt, but again, this is taken out of its context. The story of Rachel and Leah can hardly have been meant as an instruction manual in case fertility rates drop, to exploit fertile women as “two-legged wombs” (Atwood 2010, 146), as Atwood calls them. Once more, Atwood shows what can happen if a certain text is taken out of its context and manipulated for political goals.
Biblical stories about barren women in the novel also function to assert the exemption of male responsibility for infertility. According to Hedman, the element of the unsupportive husband is put forward to ensure the husband’s dissociation and disapproval of the woman’s barrenness. Because of the presence of two women, one of whom the man in the story is able to have children with, male infertility is deemed impossible in the biblical texts. Women are blamed for barrenness. In the Bible: “Jacob became angry with her [Rachel] and said, “Am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children?” (Genesis 30:2). Jacob uses the word “you”, emphasizing that he blames Rachel for the barrenness. The males safely distance themselves from the infertility question, making it a female issue. Of course, the presence of a female counterpart who can conceive asserts the male fertility even further.
The novel mirrors this stance of blaming the female. Right before the Ceremony, the Commander’s wife gets very emotional, but the Commander does not do anything about it: “Serena has begun to cry […] She’s trying not to make a noise. She’s trying to preserve her dignity, in front of us […] The Commander opens his eyes, notices, frowns, ceases to notice” (Atwood 2010, 101). By remaining unemotional about the Ceremony and all it implies about
Serena’s infertility, the Commander confirms that he agrees with the Gileadean perception that only the woman can be blamed for infertility. By ignoring Serena, the Commander is able to brush off any responsibility he may have, disregarding her and blaming her for the problem of infertility. In Gilead, it is unthinkable that the inability to have children could be attributed to the Commanders: male infertility seems to be unimaginable. All failed attempts at pregnancy, all miscarriages and all dead babies are regarded as the woman’s fault: “There is no such thing as a sterile man any more, not officially. There are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that’s the law” (Atwood 2010, 71). The idea of female responsibility for infertility is so ingrained in Gileadean life that the handmaids believe failed procreation as their own fault, too:
“‘It was no good, you know,’ Ofglen says near the side of my head. ‘It was a shredder after all.’ She means Janine’s baby, the baby that passed through Janine on its way to somewhere else […] ‘It’s her second,’ Ofglen says. ‘Not counting her own, before. She had an eighth-month miscarriage, didn’t you know?’ We watch as Janine enters the roped-off enclosure, in her veil of untouchability, of bad luck [...] ‘She thinks it’s her fault,’ Ofglen whispers. ‘Two in a row. For being sinful” (Atwood 226-227).
Janine thinks she has been sinful because she has conceived with somebody else than her Commander, precisely because she believed her Commander to be infertile. She does not even consider the possibility that the miscarriage can be attributed to the other man who impregnated her. Instead, she blames herself completely for rejecting the Gileadean principle that men are fertile per definition and believes this is God’s way of punishing her. Of course, in the reality of Gilead, men can be infertile, too. This is acknowledged by a doctor the
narrator visits, who offers to impregnate her himself because he suspects that her Commander is infertile:
“His hand is between my legs.
‘Most of the old guys can’t make it any more,’ he says. ‘Or they’re sterile.’ I almost gasp: he’s said a forbidden word. Sterile” (Atwood 2010, 71).
While the biblical text used by Gilead simply does not deem it possible for men to be infertile, in The Handmaid’s Tale, the word “sterile” is forbidden when it is connected to a man. Gilead goes to extremes to prevent any possibility of male responsibility with regards to the issue of infertility. The Gileadean government blames women for barrenness rather than men, because men lead the patriarchy and women are subordinate. The idea of barrenness as a female issue, taken from the Bible, is taken out of context by Atwood. In the Bible, the concept of male infertility is not discussed, seemingly not an option, but in Gilead, male infertility is definitely on people’s minds. The government clings to the biblical impossibility of male infertility in order to safeguard their totalitarian regime. In this respect, the Bible is taken out of its context and used as a loose fact by the government to maintain in control.
The Handmaid’s Tale shows that all texts are dependent on their historical situatedness, and that it is extremely dangerous to pull a text from its historical context. Atwood promotes a postmodernist view by adapting a modernist method of incorporating the Bible as an autonomous text in the novel, showing how it may be adapted by a regime in order to gain totalitarian control, giving meaning to the text that is entirely different from the original intention. Atwood shows that passages of a foundational text like the Bible cannot simply be snatched and used for different ends. The Handmaid’s Tale creates awareness of the dangers of decontextualization in two ways: by incorporating irony into the names of the
stores which appear in the novel and by reconstructing the biblical stories about barren women to assist the Gileadean environment of oppression, through creating female envy and by asserting the exemption of male responsibility.
Chapter 2
History as a Human Construction: Attending to Post-Holocaust Fears
The Handmaid’s Tale calls attention to the constructedness of history and to the mere possibility of representing one complete truth or reality. History is formed by prevailing master narratives and can never include a complete account of everything that has ever happened. This chapter argues that Atwood uses echoes of the Holocaust in her novel and focuses on historians’ exclusion of victim’s testimonies as reliable accounts of history, to stress the constructedness and incompleteness of history and the prevailing of master narratives. Atwood emphasizes the constructedness of any story, and thus history in general as well, in twofold: in the story itself and in the section Historical Notes. First, I will discuss several echoes of the Holocaust that appear in the novel, predominantly Kristallnacht and the use of tattoos to mark oppressed groups. Atwood’s historical references show that she was heavily influenced by the Second World War and the Holocaust in writing The Handmaid’s Tale, and this chapter argues that the novel invites its reader to think about how history is constructed. Then, focusing on the Historical Notes at the end of the novel, which approaches the story as an oral testimony and questions its reliability and therefore its place in history, I will discuss how Atwood shows that master narratives are created in history, and how this raises awareness of the exclusion of victim’s testimonies and the incompleteness and inaccuracy of history.
Echoes of the Holocaust
The Second World War and the Holocaust have, just as the Bible, had a significant impact on The Handmaid’s Tale, and references to these events are recognizable throughout
the novel. In an interview with the New York Times, Margaret Atwood explains how the Second World War influenced her thinking:
“Having been born in 1939 and come to consciousness during World War II, I knew that established orders could vanish overnight. Change could also be as fast as lightning. ‘It can’t happen here’ could not be depended on. Anything could happen anywhere, given the circumstances” (Atwood 2017, 2).
This fear of the vanishing of established orders, of a sudden change in political systems, as a result of the events of the Second World War is expressed vividly in The Handmaid’s Tale, where the totalitarian regime of Gilead is established overnight, as the narrator makes clear: “I guess that’s how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand” (Atwood 2010, 182). In earlier work, I summarized the unfolding of events in the novel:
“The President was shot and Congress was taken over. The Constitution was suspended and the newspapers were censored. Roadblocks were installed, and Identipasses were distributed. Women’s debit cards were blocked and all of their money was transferred to their husbands. All women were fired, and they were not allowed to hold property anymore” (De Bleyser 16).
The abrupt shift of power strongly recalls a crucial event for the Holocaust: Kristallnacht. In the night of 1938, a wave of violence against Jews broke out in Germany, as a response to the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by a Jewish teenager. This night, “Germans destroyed many of the countries synagogues and vandalized thousands of Jewish
homes and Jewish-owned businesses. They killed dozens of Jews and abused many more” (Steinweis 1). This night is called Kristallnacht, which loosely translates to the night of broken glass, because it “refers to the fragments of shattered window glass that littered the sidewalks in front of Jewish shops that had been vandalized during the night” (Steinweis 1). An event like Kristallnacht seems to be exactly what Atwood refers to when she says that change could be as fast as lightning. In fact, an event much like Kristallnacht is described in the novel, showing that Holocaust events were certainly on Atwood’s mind while writing The Handmaid’s Tale:
“That’s been on the TV too: raids at night, secret hoards of Jewish things dragged out from under beds, Torahs, talliths, Mogen Davids. And the owners of them, sullen-faced, unrepentant, pushed by the Eyes against the walls of their bedrooms, while the sorrowful voice of the announcer tells us voice-over about their perfidy and ungratefulness” (Atwood 2010, 210-211).
The novel’s references to the Holocaust do not apply to the prosecuted minorities in the novel, since Gilead does not necessarily prosecute Jews: the Gileadean government holds varied attitudes towards Jews. In the novel, Offred explains that Jews were given the opportunity to emigrate when Gilead was established because they were considered Sons of Jacob, but she also discloses that it is prohibited to be Jewish, since everyone in Gilead is obligated to be Christian: “The body is marked with a J, in red. It doesn’t mean Jewish, those would be yellow stars. Anyway there haven’t been many of them. Because they were declared Sons of Jacob and therefore special, they were given a choice. They could convert, or emigrate to Israel” (Atwood 2010, 211). This confirms that the prosecuted group is different in the novel, but the resemblances to Kristallnacht remain between the turn of events, both during the
Holocaust and in Gilead. The effects of Kristallnacht had enormous consequences for the Jewish community in Germany. After Kristallnacht:
“The German government promulgated dozens of laws and decrees designed to deprive Jews of their property and of their means of livelihood. Many of these laws enforced “Aryanization” policy –the transfer of Jewish-owned enterprises and property to “Aryan” ownership, usually for a fraction of their true value. Ensuing legislation barred Jews, already ineligible for employment in the public sector, from practicing most professions in the private sector” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
The chain of events in the novel is quite similar to the consequences of Kristallnacht. Jews in Nazi Germany and women in Gilead have to relinquish their property and money and lose their jobs, the two major ways to obtain autonomy. Whereas the Jewish people become subordinate to the Germans, the women in The Handmaid’s Tale become dependent on men. However, whereas the Jewish community during the Holocaust was massacred on a large scale, in Gilead, there is no program to eradicate all the women. They are only eradicated when they object to the system or when they prove to be infertile. Basically, a woman’s value depends entirely on her ability to have children, but this is something that I will discuss further in the third chapter of this thesis.
Another striking resemblance the novel bears to Kristallnacht is the lack of objection raised against the new legislation. The narrator states: “There were marches, of course, a lot of women and some men. But they were smaller than you might have thought. I guess people were scared” (Atwood 2010, 189). This inactivity echoes the way people responded to Kristallnacht: “The exclusion of Jews was largely met by passivity from the population at large whereas former colleagues and neighbors took advantage of the situation to their
benefit” (Guiora 4). People just “went with it”, trying to continue their everyday life without realizing the horrific effects of the events that were unfolding before their eyes, or trying to ignore them. Atwood communicates this same passivity:
“We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it. Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it […] The newspaper stories were like dreams to us […] How awful, we would say, and they were, but they were awful without being believable” (Atwood 2010, 66).
In these flashbacks, where Offred remembers her previous life before the institution of Gilead, she seems unable or uninterested in undertaking action against the events around her, even though she was aware of the fact that something was off, the same as people reacted to the events of Kristallnacht. Thus, Atwood utilizes Kristallnacht in the novel as a historical event, to emphasize that history is cyclical and therefore a human construction in being constantly retold. Vevaina states:
“By taking us back into the past through her fictive reconstructions of history, Atwood seeks to make her readers aware of our present state and lead us into the future with the hope that we will learn to act responsibly in ways which will make our rapidly shrinking and increasingly threatened world a better place for ourselves and the generations to come” (Vevaina 97).
The awareness Atwood raises by using historical references to the Holocaust in The Handmaid’s Tale is aimed at the constructedness of history. Numerous other references to the
Second World War and the Holocaust can be traced throughout the novel. Atwood has copied the use of tattoos in her novel to identify the targets of oppressive regimes to ensure immersion in the new regime: “I cannot avoid seeing, now, the small tattoo on my ankle. Four digits and an eye, a passport in reverse. It’s supposed to guarantee that I will never be able to fade, finally, into another landscape” (Atwood 2010, 75). Even if the handmaids were to escape, they will always carry this way of identification with them, until their deaths. The same happened to Jewish prisoners: “The Jewish people brought into concentration camps were tattooed on their left forearm” (Bullock & Yoeckel 1). Even after the Second World War had ended, they still carried their prisoner number around on their bodies. Atwood draws this comparison to stress that history is cyclical and therefore a human construction in being constantly retold.
Comparisons between the Holocaust and Gilead, which show that Atwood was influenced by the Second World War in her writing and therefore invites her readers to think about historical constructedness, can also be drawn with regards to the prosecution of individuals deemed to be ‘abnormal’, especially handicapped people and homosexuals. In Nazi Germany, handicapped people were separated and prosecuted, as has now become known: “ample evidence shows that people with disabilities were subjected to slave labor, were looted, plundered, and otherwise exploited, both within Germany and in the territories conquered by the Nazis” (Disability Rights Advocates 1). Gilead copies this tradition. This becomes clear when Offred talks about the so-called Unbabies, “with a pinhead or a snout like a dog’s, or two bodies, or a hole in its heart or no arms, or webbed hands and feet?” (Atwood 2010, 122). The fate of these Unbabies is unknown to the handmaids, but Offred does know that “they were put somewhere, quickly, away” (Atwood 2010, 123), which can only refer to the same atrocities that Nazi Germany committed with regards to handicapped people. The annihilation of homosexuals can also be regarded as an echo of the Holocaust. In the novel,
Offred discloses that there are two bodies on the Wall, with “purple placards hung around their necks: Gender Treachery” (Atwood 2010, 53). This purple placard reminds of the “pink triangle –the badge worn by gay men in Nazi concentration camps” (Moeller 100). In Gilead, homosexuals are treated like the way they were treated in Nazi Germany. Finally, the use of propaganda is used by the Gileadean government in the same way as in Nazi Germany, modifying the news in such a way that it is beneficial for Gilead: “They show us only victories, never defeats. Who wants bad news? Possibly he’s an actor” (Atwood 2010, 93). Hitler acknowledged the significance of propaganda himself in Mein Kampf dedicated to the use of propaganda:
“The first duty of the propagandist is to win over people who can subsequently be taken into the organization. And the first duty of the organization is to select and train men who will be capable of carrying on the propaganda. The second duty of the organization is to disrupt the existing order of things and thus make room for the penetration of the new teaching” (Hitler 427).
Gilead obviously copies Nazi Germany’s policies on propaganda by the way news is portrayed to the people. This, again, shows Atwood’s concern with the war’s impact on the future and the creation of history.
Exclusion of victim’s testimonies
The previous examples of references to the Second World War and the Holocaust demonstrate that Atwood’s writing of the novel was clearly influenced by the events of the war. The most important concern that Atwood addresses by referring to the horrors of the Holocaust, however, is a concern related to the importance of historical situatedness of texts,
which I will discuss in this part of my chapter. The Handmaid’s Tale is influenced by the Holocaust and the Second World War in the sense that it draws attention to the constructedness of history, emphasizing the issue that there is an exclusion of victim testimonies, which may lead to an incomplete account of history.
The horrors of the Second World War left writers, and people in general, at a loss for words. Concerns were raised about the mere possibility of testimony and witnessing:
“The Holocaust is "an absolute historical event whose literally overwhelming evidence makes it, paradoxically, into an utterly proofless event" […] The unprecedented nature of the Holocaust, the speed with which it was carried out, and the number of victims it produced in so short a period of time exceeded any possible frame of reference, and rendered impossible any attempt to witness and ultimately comprehend the event; instead, the Holocaust left the victims, as well as other nations, ethnic and cultural groups who were not directly affected by the mass murder, numb, empty, and speechless - in short, deeply traumatized” (Raethel, 38-39).
After the war, many people felt insecure and a major sense of loss prevailed worldwide, causing people to re-examine their traditional values and belief system, which included the cultural movement of modernism that had been prevalent before the war. The Second World War changed things: “World War II marked the beginning of the end of literary modernism in Britain” (Mackay 1). People wondered how such horrific events like the Holocaust could be translated into literature, and even into history. To quote the famous lines by Adorno: “The critique of culture is confronted with the last stage in the dialectic of culture and barbarism: to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric, and that corrodes also the knowledge which express why it has become impossible to write poetry today” (Adorno 34). The modernist claim that
history represents an objective truth about past events seemed impossible to apply because what had happened had been so unfathomable. Modernism did not fit into the new world view and the insecurity that developed after the Second World War:
“The great self-confidence and progressivism characteristic of the modern enterprise, and especially what seemed its nineteenth-century fruition, all looked even more difficult to accept after the historical horrors or the twentieth century. The fact that art, intellectual pursuits, the development of the natural sciences, many branches of scholarship flourished in close spatial, temporal proximity to massacre and death camps had raised for many doubts about not only Modernity’s self-assurances, but about all of Western culture, has raised the issue: Why did humanistic traditions and models of conduct prove so fragile a barrier against political bestiality?” (Pippin 7).
The ideas of the modernist art movement did not apply to the world view any longer. As a critical response to the flaws of modernism, the movement postmodernism emerged, rejecting:
“any claim of absolute truth as an attempt to impose one world view over others. No individual narrative has a legitimate right to exclude any other; everything is contingent on context and background, so there is no ‘inside track’ to truth” (Wenzel 4).
Because of the Holocaust, in which history and facts had been contorted and changed to fit certain ideological goals, people were more aware of the fact that everything that constitutes history is a construction, therefore rejecting an objective view of the past. In The Handmaid’s
Tale, Atwood agrees with this rejection of a modernist view on history claiming that there is an objective view of the past. With The Handmaid’s Tale, she insists that history is a human construct, influenced by those narratives which are chosen to be accepted as history. Her rejection of an objective view of history is
“[…] not to deny that the real past existed, but simply to point out that any historical account is only a reconstruction from fragments of the past which are available to us, and that any historical narrative is largely governed by the perspective adopted by a particular historian; telling his story is always a question of interpretation” (Vevaina 86).
Atwood rejects the modernist view of history and stresses the fact that history is a human construct, because history is a human reconstruction, and not all stories can be remembered as part of history. Unfortunately, most master narratives that prevail are not victim testimonies, but rather official statements from the point in time the specific historical reconstruction is made from:
“Traditional historiography is, for the most part, comprised of official documents; in the case of the Holocaust, however, those few that were preserved merely documented –in a typically German, that is, bureaucratic manner –the names and dates of deaths of the victims. Official Holocaust historiography tends to exclude the victims and their personal histories because its focus is by definition on the context in which the genocide took place rather than on the actual victims themselves. Thus, by subjugating the individual fates and histories of its victims to mere numbers, Holocaust
historiography runs the risk of creating a master discourse of history in which the personal histories of the victims become excluded yet again” (Raethel 22-23).
Excluding victim testimonies from the construction of history may have an altering effect on it. By only looking at official documents, by only searching for objective truths, a significant and essential part of the truth of history is ignored and, eventually, forgotten.
The exclusion of victim testimonies in historiography is a concern that Atwood addresses in her novel, by providing an oral account which, in the end of the novel, is interpreted by a historian some time later. Arriving at the Historical Notes at the end of the novel, the reader discovers that the account he has been reading is actually a transcription of an oral account retrieved by scholars long after the Republic of Gilead has been suspended: “I say soi-distant because what we have before us is not the item in its original form. Strictly speaking, it was no manuscript at all when first discovered, and bore no title” (Atwood 2010, 313). The manuscript the reader has read has been reconstructed by Professor Pieixoto and his colleagues, and it therefore altered from its original form. Pieixoto’s reconstruction is not the only form of reconstruction that is mentioned in the novel. The narrator of the story, Offred, repeatedly discloses that she is reconstructing the truth herself and her struggle with the clash between truth and reconstruction:
“I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it […] It isn’t a story I’m telling. It’s also a story I’m telling in my head, as I go along” (Atwood 2010, 49).
Atwood emphasizes the constructedness of any story, and thus history in general as well, in twofold: in the story itself and in the section Historical Notes. Seemingly influenced by the exemption of victim’s testimonies which occurred after the Second World War had ended, Atwood shows several things: how everything that is ever written or told is essentially a reconstruction and that there cannot be one truth or one history, and how master narratives are formed.
The development of master narratives in history is addressed when the reader arrives at the Historical Notes at the end of the novel. The reader has just experienced Offred’s Gileadean journey, accepting her story as the only perspective they will receive. They are thrown off, however, by the lecture which follows, set in the future, which questions the authenticity and reliability of the oral account of The Handmaid’s Tale: “First, the tapes might be a forgery” (Atwood 2010, 314), Pieixoto states. Professor Pieixoto expresses his concern about the subjectivity of the account, addressing his worry that this victim testimony must not tempt the reader into following its subjective view because it is not trustworthy: “Also, there is a certain reflective quality about the narrative that would to my mind rule out synchronicity. It has a whiff of emotion recollected, if not in tranquillity, at least post facto” (Atwood 2010, 315). Criticizing the emotional content of the tapes, Pieixoto questions Offred’s view as being historically correct and reliable. He is looking for an objective truth about history, adopting a modernist view of history.
Pieixoto is Atwood’s incarnation of the exemption of victim’s testimonies on basis of their subjectivity and unreliability, which increasingly became an issue after the end of the Second World War. Using Pieixoto, Atwood stresses the constructedness and incompleteness of history and the prevailing of master narratives. Pieixoto is sceptical about the victim’s testimony, addressing the fact that her account is too subjective, and therefore questioning its reliability. He passes Offred’s story off as an influenced story, not to be trusted, except for the
few actual facts she has stated in her account: “She could have told us much about the workings of the Gileadean empire, had she had the instincts of a reporter […] However, we must be grateful for any crumbs the Goddess of History has designed to vouchsafe us” (Atwood 2010, 322-323). By saying that only “crumbs” of history can be extracted from Offred’s account consisting of thirty tapes full of voice recordings, Pieixoto acknowledges that he rejects most of Offred’s account as historical, much like modernists would. As discussed earlier, modernists valued official documents more as a part of history rather than subjective accounts. That Pieixoto clearly feels the same way, is visible from the following exclamation: “This item –I hesitate to use the word document –was unearthed on the site of what was once the city of Bangor” (Atwood 2010, 313). This extract shows that firstly, Pieixoto believes that documents are the desirable pieces of information which construct history, and secondly, that Offred’s testimony cannot be regarded as such a document in his opinion. Pieixoto’s rejection of this victim testimony addresses the concern of the formation of history, which was very much alive after the Second World War had ended. The general concern with the exclusion of victim accounts was that history and historiography were limited in the sense that: “History may never capture certain elements of memory: the feel of an experience, the intensity of joy or suffering, the quality of an occurrence” (LaCapra 20). LaCapra argues that history was lacking in totality, but still acknowledged its importance as a discipline, as history “includes elements that are not exhausted by memory, such as demographic, ecological, and economic factors” (LaCapra 20). The demographic, ecological and economic factors are highly important and these facts should be preserved, but according to LaCapra and other scholars of the time, memory should play a more important role in the discipline of history, since memory and history are interdependent on each other. Incorporation of memory into history “can create an emotional proximity to events disallowed by traditional Holocaust historiography” (Raethel 24). So memory and history should be
incorporated into each other and should no longer be seen as separate entities. LaCapra calls for a “reconfiguration of the concept of historiography, where personal memories and testimonies are seen as vital components of the history of the Holocaust” (LaCapra 4-5). Essentially, he wants testimonies to be accepted as historical documents, and he rejects the view of testimonies as being too subjective and unreliable to be accepted as a part of history. Atwood affixes the section of Historical Notes at the end of the novel to show the reader the dangers of the modernist view on history, demonstrating that this view ignores an integral part of what constitutes history: the inclusion of victim’s testimonies. Because Offred’s account, according to Pieixoto, is too much based on subjectivity and memory, he rejects the story, dismissing the emotional value completely. It is true that Offred’s account is very subjective in its nature, and can therefore be interpreted as less reliable. Offred acknowledges this herself throughout the novel on several occasions, a most prominent example being when she talks about her romance with Nick. After having just given the reader a detailed report on her amorous and passionate engagement with him, Offred confesses that this story is inaccurate: “I made that up. It didn’t happen that way. Here is what happened” (Atwood 2010, 273). Only after providing another story on the issue, she relates that this story was fabricated, too: “It didn’t happen that way either. I’m not sure how it happened; not exactly. All I can hope for is a reconstruction: the way love feels is always approximate” (Atwood 2010, 275). Offred confesses that she cannot provide a completely accurate description of events, which is exactly the awareness Atwood is attempting to raise with The Handmaid’s Tale: that every story is subjective and even the “objective” account of history is ambiguous.
This ambiguity of truth, this acknowledgment of the impossibility of knowing the truth, is hard to accept as a part of history by Pieixoto and modernists alike, since “the very core of the modern project” (Wenzel 175) was to find “the existence of any truth (universal or otherwise)” (Wenzel 175). Modernists attach great value to the belief that history is an
objective truth about past events, and there can be no place for ambiguity in this view. Therefore modernists would disregard Offred’s story as a part of history. Offred’s story, with all its recognition of ambiguity and the effect of memory does not make it easy for Pieixoto to accept her account. Reading in retrospect, focusing on Atwood’s intentions when writing, it seems that the author incorporates these acknowledgements on the fragmentation of memory and the unreliability of narrative to provoke exactly a discussion like the one that unfolds in Pieixoto’s conference in 2195. Offred seems to address Pieixoto’s concerns quite directly in the part where she tells about her affair with Nick, mentioned in the extract above. These incomplete, ‘inaccurate’ accounts and the corroboration of this inaccuracy by the narrator seem to be speaking towards Pieixoto directly, and therefore addresses the concern of the exclusion of victim’s testimonies and how this affects the construction of history. Atwood does not use these acknowledgements of inaccuracy in order to encourage Pieixoto’s view on the matter. In fact, she attempts to prove the exact opposite of what Pieixoto argues. Atwood is “saying that the truth is complex and multiple and not captured by a few words” (Gulick 134); that is, the narrator’s own words can never compile the complete truth about her life or about Gilead, but neither can a historian’s account of history ever lead to a comprehensive and exhaustive version of the truth. Atwood comments on this herself in an interview with Tom Vitale: “I evoke; evoking is quite different from writing down the whole truth […] The truth is very very large and very multiple. When you are telling a story, you have to necessarily select […] If we had total recall we would remember everything, but we remember selectively” (Gulick 137).
The narrator in The Handmaid’s Tale shares this view that all stories are selective, and puts this into words on several occasions, forcing the reader into consciousness on this fact:
