by: Claire Krummenacher
“Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some”— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the democratic government of the United States has fallen, the three branches replaced with “Commanders” who have decreed that under this new regime women deemed “Handmaids” will be forcefully recruited to become surrogates for high-ranking couples. One such Handmaid, Offred (literally, “Of Fred”), serves as the unreliable narrator of life in Gilead: a life dominated by Collins’ structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal domains of power. This piece will explore how Atwood interacts these various domains into the novel in order to demonstrate the extent of the brutality of the governmental regime in Gilead—in particular, the ways that it erodes the women’s solidarity with one another.
In Gilead, structural, disciplinary, and hegemonic oppression are rigidly enforced through the autocratic government. Within The Handmaid’s Tale, the structural domain—which refers to women’s exclusion from social institutions—manifests through the national ban on women’s entering political office or entering most professions (Collins 277). While it is true that the majority of women would not choose to take part in the regime willingly, there is an element of exclusion given that there remains a sizeable population who would prefer to participate in the new structure as Wives, Handmaids, Aunts, or servants, but who are labeled as irredeemable by the government. As a result, these women are classified as “Unwomen” and condemned to a lifetime of nuclear waste clean-up in the Colonies, a ravaged wasteland on the outskirts of Gilead (Atwood 61).
The disciplinary domain of oppression, on the other hand, dictates power relationswithin organizations, which then deploy surveillance techniques to monitor those who are granted entry (Collins 280-281). In Gilead, this domain is primarily evidenced by the manner in which Handmaids and Wives are constantly monitored by male guardians and by mysterious plainclothes policemen titled simply “The Eyes”. In addition, the Aunts, who supposedly possess some power over the Handmaids, still operate under male Commanders. In this sense, women have managed to enter a large-scale institution, but are ultimately still monitored by higher forces.
Structural and disciplinary domains of oppression are only made possible by hegemonic oppression, which refers to the manipulation of ideology and culture in order to justify the practices themselves (Collins 284). Within the hegemonic domain, the dominant group—within Gilead, men—propagate a system of “commonsense” ideas that justify their right to remain in power (Collins 284). In The Handmaid’s Tale, this manipulative ideology manifests in the form of Bible verses manipulated to emphasize the importance of women’s roles as wives and mothers, which the women are forced to recite daily (Atwood 88). The Handmaids, for instance, are mandated to greet one another with the phrase “Blessed be the fruit” (Atwood 19).
Interpersonal oppression, by contrast, results from the manipulation of the oppressors’ ideologies by the oppressed. In other words, those who are oppressed contribute to their own subordination by enforcing the oppressors’ beliefs amongst one another (Collins 287). In The Handmaid’s Tale, interpersonal oppression is the most psychologically devastating given that it robs the Handmaids of their last source of comfort in the hellish world of Gilead: their ability to trust and rely in one another. For example, as part of a health regiment designed to ensure they become pregnant easily, each day the Handmaids and walk outside with one another in pairs. In theory, this presents the Handmaids an opportunity to provide support to one another outside of male surveillance; however, Offred’s description of this exercise—“The truth is that she is my spy, as I am hers. If either of us slips through the net because of something that happens on one of our daily walks, the other will be accountable”—reveals how the Handmaids have become complicit in the regime by monitoring one another and ensuring that no one seizes the opportunity to escape (Atwood 19).
Although it is possible to argue that given the autocratic and brutal nature of the regime, the Handmaids do not truly choose to become complicit, but are rather forced to survey one another for their own survival, the presence of certain women who choose to stand in solidarity with their fellow Handmaids demonstrate that a choice is indeed possible. For instance, Offred’s walking partner, Ofglen, makes the decision to inform Offred of an impending raid upon the resistance movement:
“Then she does an odd thing. She leans forward, so that the stiff white blinkers on our heads are almost touching, so that I can see her pale beige eyes up close, the delicate web of lines across her cheeks, and whispers, very quickly, her voice faint as dry leaves. “She hanged herself,” she says. “After the Salvaging. She saw the van coming for her. It was better” (Atwood 285).
Ultimately, it is the presence of these particularly brave outliers that encourage Offred to overcome her Handmaid conditioning and join the Mayday resistance. Although her fate remains uncertain, her gradual character arc following her interactions with fellow resistors is a testament to the power of solidarity—even if stemming from a gesture as gentle as a whispered warning.
References:
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. New York: Anchor, 1998. Digital file.
Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 2000.