Coffee Coffee Coffee: Fuel of the Resistance!

I've been keeping my notes in a journal this past couple of weeks so it's time for me to start playing catch up. First, I need to refuel on an obscene amount of coffee to prepare to summit this mountain of notes. Ready, go!

Okay, now that the coffee is taken care of, let's talk about Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985). I've read this text before, but when I last read it, it seemed very abstract and distant. Compelling but in a hypothetical way. It felt much more real this time, but I don't want to talk about politics right now (is it bad to say "not today of all days! Not on Rex Manning Day!"?).

Let's jump into the nitty gritty of the content. The three things that stod out to me this time were the focus on the body/soul divide, the repeated references to flowers and the moon, and the emphasis on language.

Atwood seems to be engaging with the historic depictions of the body-soul divide and the ways in which they've been gendered. For this context, we want to think about Augustine (a human being is a synthesis of body and soul), maybe some Descartes (mind over body), and feminist scholars such as Beauvoir, Wittig, and Irigary. Like these feminists, Atwood is challenging the notion of a rational masculine mind to which the irrational female body is subject. June frequently expresses a discomfort with her body that stems from being defined as only a body. In Gilead, women are viable wombs or not viable wombs and this is what determines all subsequent categories. June most explicitly expresses this repulsion when preparing for her required bath: "My nakedness is strange to me already . . . I avoid looking down at my body, not so much because it’s shameful or immodest but because I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to look at something that determines me so completely.” This determination is completely external--from the systems of Gilead, the Commander, Serena Joy, the Aunts, other Handmaids, etc.--and causes a sort of cognitive dissonance for June which is easier to avoid. She has to avoid it if she wants to survive and stay sane.

Nevertheless, June knows that her body is not her identity. She recognizes that identities are fluid--composites of experience, context, and values. Identities can be adapted to reflect and respond to the current situation. As June prepares herself to participate in the sexual ritual with Serena Joy and the Commander, she considers, "My self is a thing I must now compose as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born.” June herself is in control of her identity. She was not born a walking womb nor was she born a static being. She is the active creator of her self, making choices on how to develop and mold her identity. She uses her body to express or mask this interior self, from the intentional sway of her hips in front of guards to the disconnect during intercourse to maintain her integrity. June knows her body is subject to her soul and her soul is subject to no one else.

This is little comfort, though, when her body--although subject to her--is also subject to the larger systems. This is obviously where flowers come into play. The word "flower" or "flowers" is mentioned 45 times throughout the novel. June underscores the nature of flowers for the reader: flowers are genitalia, "[t]he fruiting body." They represent reproduction, but a reproduction in which the masculine component is made invisible. I mean, just think about Georgia O'Keefe paintings. We don't think about how flowers are both the masculine and feminine reproduction units; we represent them as purely feminine. It almost becomes a virgin birth, a purely feminine act of (pro)creation.

But consequently, the fault of conception all lies with the women as well then. Problems conceiving, birth defects, unhealthy children--all the responsibility of the woman rather than the shared burden of partners. This is the anxiety of motherhood: when something is wrong with a child, with whom does the fault lie? Because of the body-soul divide and because of the way we represent procreation, we imagine the fault is purely the mother's. Even in cases of accidents or external issues or just the brutal reality of nature, we blame the mother. Mothers are simultaneously closer to life and closer to death. They are responsible for the creation of the future or its destruction. See: Lee Edelman.

Atwood underscores the influence of language in constructing all of the above. A student of Northrop Frye, Atwood incorporates his ideas regarding structuralism and the influence of myths in her work. Atwood reiterates again and again the ways language is used to assert a reality: the use of pronouns to establish hierarchies and guilt, the labels created by institutions, and names themselves. June reflects on the purposes of language when in her room, thinking, “I sit in the chair and think about the word chair. It can also mean the leader of a meeting. It can also mean a mode of execution. It is the first syllable in charity. It is the French word for flesh. None of these facts has any connection with the others.” She recognizes that vocabulary is entirely a human construct and thus subject to human agendas and values. She feels very intimately the destruction language can have when she thinks about her own re-naming and what it signifies her her identity in the world:

My name isn’t Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it’s forbidden. I tell myself it doesn’t matter, you name is like your telephone number, useful only to others; but what I tell myself is wrong, it does matter. I keep the knowledge of this name like something hidden, some treasure I’ll come back to dig up, one day. I think of this name as buried. This name has an aura around it, like an amulet, some charm that’s survived with an unimaginably distant past. I lie in my single bed at night, with my eyes closed, and the name floats there behind my eyes, not quite within reach, shining in the dark.

Here Atwood incorporates indigenous spirituality and myth to relate the importance of names. She uses myths, fairy tales, and biblical stories for similar purposes throughout the text. The words we use, the stories we tell all serve specific purposes in the creation of individual and cultural identities. If we are not careful, we will be the subject of these identities rather than the composers.

I'm going to wrap up here because the caffeine is wearing off and I need to refuel. I'm still trying to figure out the connection to Chaucer here, especially in light of the way Atwood is manipulating stories and language. The similarities extend beyond the title: giving voice to those not typically represented, satire of the current institutions, an epilogue that seems to challenge the text itself, etc. I think it's INCREDIBLY interesting that Atwood seems to include second wave feminism in the systems being challenged.

But alas, I need more coffee to continue too fight through these notes. Til next time.

k

#margaretatwood #beauvoir #gendertrouble #genderidentity #judithbutler #bodymind #thehandmaidstale #leeedelman #nofuture