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Female Un-bonding in Margaret Atwoods The

Handmaids Tale
Margaret Atwoods 1985 novel, The Handmaids Tale although
categorised as a science-fiction work winning the first ever Arthur C. Clarke
Award is termed as a social-science fiction work by the Canadian author
herself. The title is inspired by those of the stories in Geoffrey Chaucers The
Canterbury Tales but unlike Chaucers Wife of Bath or the Alisoun in the
Millers tale, Atwoods titular handmaid is a repressed character left without
family, memory, resources or even her unique identity. This paper will
interrogate the politics involved in the formation of Foucauldian docile bodies
(1979, 138) while examining Sandra Lee Bartkys arguments in relation to The
Handmaids Tale. This paper aims to discuss the possibilities and perils of
female subjugation in matriarchal societies and the creation of male docile
bodies in such cases.
Atwoods novel, set in the dystopian Republic of Gilead, tells of a society
based on the occupation of reproduction. The novel describes Gilead as a
closed-off geographical entity somewhere in North America where divorced
women with newer lovers are uprooted from their lives on charges of moral
corruption of the highest order and are then put in a controlled environment
and full-time imprisonment in newly formed households. These households are
defined by the patriarch theyre ruled by, the Commander, and these women are
given new names derived from the Commanders name itself. The Handmaids
name is said to be Offred (Of-Fred) and this is a first step in making her a
property of the man of the house rather than an individual in her own right.
The household, in addition to the Commander, is composed of his sterile wife,

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and their class of cooks, cleaners and finally the handmaids whose sole purpose
is to be receptacles for breeding children, failing to do which they are executed.
Sine production of babies is labelled as a profession, the most intimate process
of making love is as a result so far removed from humane factors in the novel
that it appears to be a mechanised activity performed by docile bodies, as
Michel Foucault discusses in his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the
Prison. This production of regulated, subservient bodies, says Foucault, needs
constant coercion that influences body processes directly. Sandra Lee Bartky in
her essay Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power
discusses three ways in which female docile bodies are created and propagated,
viz. those that aim to produce a body of a certain size and general
configuration; those that bring forth from this body a specific repertoire of
gestures, postures, and movements; and those that are directed toward the
display of this body as an ornamented surface. (Bartky 2014, 95)
In her discussion of Foucaults idea of docile bodies, Bartky also refers
to Jeremy Benthams conceptualisation of the Pantopticon, which is the model
prison (Bartky 2014, 94) and her assertion follows that, in terms of
Foucauldian docile bodies, this structure represents the essence of the
disciplinary society (Bartky 2014, 94). The circular Panopticon which derives
its name from Greek (pan all; opticon seeing), has a central tower, each of
whose windows open toward the inner portion of the surrounding ring-like
structure. Bentham had also laid the principles for the school Utilitarianism
which believed in making maximum profits for maximum people with minimum
costs incurred in production and the Panopticon arguably furthers his
Utilitarian beliefs. Foucault observes that all that is needed, then, is to place a
supervisor in a central tower who then can overlook all the prisoners in the

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various cells. Even though it would be physically impossible for him to survey
all of the inmates at once, it could never be said with certainty as to whom he is
looking upon and thus, with minimal involvement of just the one supervisor, all
prisoners could be kept in check. Further, the cells were to be designed for
solitary confinement with no possibilities for communicating among the
inmates and thereby achieving a state of conscious and permanent visibility
(Foucault 1979, 201) in the prisoners and a condition of constant surveillance
from the supervisor.
Bartky, in her essay, appears to take umbrage with Foucaults discussion
of docile bodies for she believes that he indulges in an overarching
generalisation of the effects of power on men and women in that he treats them
both as similarly affected. Bartkys contention is that patriarchal power works
in different ways and seeks to subjugate women in more ways than it
subjugates a man. She begins her critique of Foucault by first taking up the
examples of recent trends of dieting and spot-reduction exercises which are
aimed at maintaining slimmer bodies that are more presentable and coveted.
Further, she elaborates on how the female body and its objectification and
ornamentalisation has resulted in and is in turn constituted by the ever-growing
industry of cosmetics and beauty products. The standards of beauty in the
modern world, argues Bartky, are skin-deep and superficial. She claims, then,
that whenever a woman checks her make-up in the mirror she bows to
patriarchy and becomes its victim all over again. Finally, Sandra Bartky also
talks about the social normative codes which put in place a specific repertoire
of gestures (Bartky 2014, 95) for women to adhere to. Bartky illustrates her
point by marking out how women imbibe a code of behaviour to sit with their
legs closed, while the men seem to preach patriarchal power by placing their

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feet wide apart. The other example is of heeled shoes and sandals for women
which would accentuate her bust and behind while the man wears flat-soled
footwear to present him standing straight.
Atwoods novel and the characters in it seem to be affected in ways
similar to those as expounded by Bartky. The Handmaids and other inmates of
the Commanders house all have their distinct uniforms that cover them from
neck to ankle and some even are forced to wear wings (Atwood 2010, 18) to
cover their faces when they step out of the house to purchase supplies. This
works towards desexualising their body by making an activity like wearing
clothes seem homogenous, uniform and not an exerted choice. The body, which
is the site of passion, is never on show to others or to themselves and thus
cannot be sexualised. A recurring trope of the novel focuses on moisturising
cream which none of the women of the house have access to, except the
Commanders Wife. Even as they lead a life of almost no comfort and barely
retain their memories, let alone material possessions, the cream symbolises a
sort of return to the earlier world. The unavailability of cream, a cosmetic, has
de-sexualised them and in order to regain the identity of a woman living in
modern society, they yearn for the cosmetic tube as an end in itself. However,
we note that this de-sexualisation does not mean that they are not docile
bodies because it is their will itself that has been disciplined, so much so that
to look at themselves naked is unthinkable. All their movements are
regimented and trained to be performed in certain manners such that despite
there being no heeled footwear, the bodies still work within a pre-set code of
conduct.
The act of love, the very gesture on which the Handmaids profession
depends is merely mechanical and becomes the site of perpetuation of docile

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bodies. Even though the propagation of the human race depends on these
women and their bodies, they are led to feel as subjects and not as equals, let
alone rulers. The Commander, himself a character without much agency lets
himself into the Wifes room to indulge in the act in the presence of multiple
other female inmates. A line in the novel reads This is not recreation, even for the Commander. This is serious business.
The Commander, too, is doing his duty. (Atwood 2010, 105)
The act of sex has no emotional meaning; it merely exists as a process of
production. The Handmaid herself feels so far removed from the act that she
has trouble in finding a name suitable to describe it. She says
What he is fucking is the lower part of my body. I do not say making
love, because this not what hes doing. Copulating too would be
inaccurate, because it would imply two people and only one is involved.
Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I havent signed up
for. (Atwood 2010, 104-105)
Here we observe the central problem in that the Handmaid has been down so
long that it looks like up to her. She seems to coax herself into believing that
she wilfully agreed to this when we know that she was in fact uprooted
forcefully from her previous life and pushed into this one. The creation of
Foucaults docile bodies seems to have been fully achieved here when the
subjugation is so absolute that the oppressed no longer feels the oppression as
an imprisonment of their free will.
Although the book predominantly seems like an indictment of a
patriarchal society, we realise as the story progresses that the case is one of a
female un-bonding under a matriarchal arrangement of the Commanders

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household. Ironically, the only two times an escape route is opened to Offred is
by the two male characters she encounters regularly. As Offred breaks the
boundaries of accepted behaviour and enters into a relationship with the
Commander which has an emotional basis, she gains access to the symbolic
moisturising cream which appears to be a way for her to rediscover her
sexuality and once again yearn for life outside of her Panopticon-like household.
Traditionally, the women character would fear the male patriarch were she to
be caught in an act of transgression, but here both Offred and the patriarch
himself, the Commander, fear the discovery and wrath of the Commanders
Wife who in this case seems to hold power more superior than his own. Even
though still under the control of the Commander, Offred finds renewed freedom
in this heterosexual relation within her household and prepares to escape.
However, due to her transgression and subsequent betrayal of the matriarch,
she cannot successfully achieve her ends and is apprehended. The route for her
second escape, organised by the Wife herself to keep her household safe from
the stain of shame, is through the other male we encounter in the house Nick.
But in the house of an infertile matriarch, heterosexual love between any
characters is doomed not to find fruition. This, then, seems to be the reason
why Atwoods novel ends with ambiguity. Despite Nicks best efforts, we are not
told if Offred does truly find freedom outside her personal Panopticon.
The society of Gilead reminds one of the Orwellian commandments from
Animal Farm that reads All animals are equal, but some animals are more
equal than others (Orwell 2011, 69). If we apply this to the women of Gilead,
we find that it nearly sums up the situation. The initial patriarchal power of
society puts together a household of women who are then moved to the
periphery. This is achieved by first equating all women to each other and then

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banishing them to a level lower than that of the men of Gilead. However, inside
the household a caste system of sorts takes over to create hierarchies among
the women, offering some of them partial power in the larger system but this
translates to complete matriarchal power within the boundaries of the
household that leads to further subjugation of all the other women. The novels
epilogue from the future, in the form of an academic lecture itself says -The
best and most cost-effective way to control women for reproductive and other
purposes was through women themselves. (Atwood 2010, 320)
The matronly Aunts of the novel even while according respect to the
Handmaids for their reproductive powers form a fearful group who keep checks
on the Handmaids. They serve, then, as the guards of the Panopticon in that
they oversee that minimal to no conversation occurs between the inmates and
also keep a vigilant watch on them, even over spaces as private as bathroom
stalls. The Aunts act as indirect agents of patriarchy by culturally brainwashing
the handmaids by means of screening movies where horrible acts of physical
brutality are inflicted on women. The Aunts are so entrenched in the ideology of
female subjugation that they profess codes of conduct to their Handmaid
charges to make them believe in behavioural practices that are prescribed by
the men. The Commanders Wife herself as the supreme matriarch punishes
those housemates that she dislikes. The Ceremony of sex between the
Commander and the Handmaids involves the Wife in that the man is supposed
to look at the face of the Wife even as he has intercourse with Handmaid who
has her own head on the Wifes mid-section. This period of intimacy is yet
another for the Wife to hurt Offred as she does in the novel by digging into her
with her own nails. Further the only almost-friend is the Handmaids shopping
partner but when it turns out that she is a spy, it furthers the extent of the

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Panopticon which has its inmates under its watch even when they step out of
the structure itself.
Although Bartky argues that it is patriarchy which produces female
docile bodies, we see in Atwoods novel the creation of male docile bodies while
at the same time we witness the production of female docile bodies due to
matriarchy. Bartky concludes her own essay by seemingly hinting that the only
escape for female docile bodies is by forming a subversive closed-off lesbian
group, in the French radical feminist fashion of Helene Cixous or Luce Irigaray.
But on examination of a work like Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale we
are witness to an open-ended Janus-faced engagement with the dangers of
matriarchal society, too. This, in turn, highlights the need to find a coherent
dialogue to subvert patriarchal power from within a male-dominated power
structure. As Offred says in an early part of the novel - If Moira thought she
could create Utopia by shutting herself up in a woman-only enclave she was
sadly mistaken. Men were not just going to go away. (Atwood 2010, 181)

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaids Tale. London. Random House, 2010. Print.
Bartky, Sandra Lee. Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal
Power. Feminist Social Thought: A Reader. Ed. Diana Tietjens Meyers.
London. Routledge, 2014.

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Bentham, Jeremy. Panopticon; Or, the Inspection House. London. Dodo Press,
2008. Print.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. New York. W.W. Norton, 1989. Print.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York.
Vintage, 1979. Print.
Orwell, George. Animal Farm. Classic George Orwell. New Delhi. Penguin,
2011. Print.

Word Count 2484.