Sexuality and oppression in The Handmaids Tale

The Handmaids Tale is a dystopian novel of feminist scince fiction which depicts the theme
of women in various kinds of subjugation. The novel focuses on the ways of how a totalitarian
society can cripple both of the sexes with a special attention to the various forms of oppression and
objectification of women. This particular community, called Gilead, is based on the unequalty of
political and personal power of men and women but the manipulation of power is rendered more
complex by Gileads very basic nature of being determined by the Bible, especially by the Book of
Genesis, and by being reproductively challanged.
This society exists essentially within strict rules and barriers and this aspect is not only
percievable in the status of women, as depicted through the narration of a handmaid called Offred,
but also in the severe restricion of men who are also confined to particular duties and limits.
Through a limited introspection into the lives of Nick, of the Commander and that of certain classes
such as the Guardians or a doctor, a member of working class, a whole gammut of sexual and
emotional hunger and frustration is shown to us. The members of this community live in palpitable
isolation and in these circumstances not a single living soul seems to be happy. However,
considering this aspect, we have to keep in mind that our narrator has a limited perspective due to
being forced to pursue the life of a human vessel of babies, and, who consequently cannot convey a
panoramic view of the various social layers of Gilead.
The above-mentioned sociocultural viewpoints are all significant in the comprehension of
the ambiguous nature of sexualty as such in Gilead. On the one hand, this society has severe
problems with reproduction since nuclear, biological and chemical pollution rendered a large
portion of the population sterile but on the other hand, its controversial religious attitude towards
sexualty undermines the communitys struggle for survival. It values fertile women as a means of
survival for the community but it does not encourage a healthy humanistic attitude towards them
and also wastes many of the Handmaids fertile women whose social function is to bear children
for the Wives of the Commanders by giving them to sterile Commanders.
The Gileadean regime aspires for an absolute control over its habitants behavior and
sexuality. It pursues a dogmatic view upon sexuality by regarding it as a mere means of
reprodution, excluding and denying pleasure or love in the very notion and practice of a sexual
intercourse. This community conveys the idea that such an intercourse is essentially degrading for

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women, and men have to percieve it practically as well, by abstaining from non-marital sex with the
exception of The Ceremony. The Ceremony is a sanctioned sexual act of three participants: the
handmaid lies between the Wifes legs, the Wife holds her hands and the Commander fucks the
lower part of her body (p. 104). As Offred desribes this ritual in the sixteenth chapter; the
physical contact between her and the wife is supposed to mean that they are one flesh, one being
but what it really means is that she the wife is in control, of the process and thus of the product
(p. 104) - namely, that of a future baby. Her objectification is even more reinforced by the
practicality of the situation because the act is not exciting. It has nothing to do with passion or love
or romance or any of those other notions we used to titillate ourselves with. It has nothing to do
with sexual desire ... (p. 105). The handmaid lies still and pictures the unseen canopy over her
haid; the wife grips her hands in a way that her rings cut into her fingers, and the dominant male
fucks, with a regular two-four marching stroke ....He is preoccupied, like a man humming to
himself in the shower ... (p. 105). Offreds style of relating this traumatic experience is highly
practical and objective, she states that is neither rape nor making love and even adds that there is
something hilarious about it but she does not dare to laugh (p. 106).
The Ceremony would have a pornographic undertone if it were to happen in a
contemporary Europian setting. But this ritual is more pornographic in the sense that sexuality is
reduced even more to its formal elements. In pornography the pleasure principle is targated by its
attempt to incite sexual arousal in the audience but here nobody is ment to experience any pleasure
or desire. The utilitarianism of pornographic sexual intercourses treats its participants as objects and
dehumanises them, and the Ceremonies of Gilead pushes the limits even further by forcing the
handmaids to view themselves as human vessels without any personality and rights. They are
confined to a biological existence and thus have less freedom and choice then prostitutes or
pornofilm actors. The wives are also deprived of basic human rights in the sense that they cannot
decide about the members of their nucelar family: the Marthas and the Handmaids are assigned to
them as compulsory furnitures and their embittered attitude towards them does not promote any
camaradeship or healthy psychological relationship within the household.
Pornogrphy as such has a special form of occurence in the novel, as it can be detected in
The Ceremony. Angela Carters The Sadeian woman : an exercise in cultural history (published
in 1979) explaines that We do not go to bed in simple pairs; even if we choose not to refer to them,
we still drag there with us the cultural impediments of our social class, our parents lives, our bank
balances, our sexual and emotional expectations ...(p. 9) and the Handmaids treatment during a
sanctioned sexual intercourse symbolises perfectly the above mentioned aspect. The absolute lack
of romanticism or excitement of such a ritual conveys the message for them that they do not exist as

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psychical and spiritual human beings but as living objects of their social class, that of the
Handmaids. Similarly to the effect of rape, which is a kind of physical graffiti, the most extreme
reduction of love, in which all humanity departs from the sexed beings (Carter: 6) the Handmaids
experience a fear of psychic disintegration, of an essential dismemberment, a fear of a loss or
disruption of the self which is not confined to the victim alone (ibid.). Offred tries to fight this
disintegration by the power of language, by playing with words in her haid and also by seeking
camaradeship with the others and by exploiting her illegal sexual power with the Commander.
However, the Commanders wish to play Scrabbles with her and to get a real kiss at the end of her
secret sessions illustrates a reaction to a slightly similar fear of desintegration in his psychic world.
The factor of the bank balance refers to their economic dependance since they cannot work
and thus cannot possess any money; the influence of this dependance with respect to equality and
sexual desire is also illustrated by the episode when Offred-June experiences the vertigo of being
deprived of her bank card and economic power and reacts by not wanting to make love to Luke,
who, from now on, she is exposed to (p. 191).
Angela Carter points out that Flesh comes to us out of history; so thus the repression and
the taboo that governs our experience of flesh and accentuates that the Judaeo- Christian heritage
of shame, disgust and morality that stand between the initial urge and the first attainment of this
most elementary assertion of the self ... (The Sadeian Woman, p. 11) distorts human relationships,
what is consequently reflected in their sexual intercourses. The deprivation of women of their
power and that of the Handmaids of their humanity as well is ment to be founded by religion and
can be detected in their treatment in the field of sexuality as well. The Ceremony is, thus,
forcefully pornographic in the sense that The sexual act in pornography exists as a metaphor for
what people do to one another, often in the cruellest sense ... (Carter: 17).
Thus, sexuality as such is ment to be separated from love and desire in this dogmatic society
but basic human nature cannot be changed from one day to the other. The members of Gilead do
obey, but only on the surface. The Wives hate the Handmaids, the Commanders go to secret sex
clubs to feel sexual passion by having sex with the Jesabels and the Handmaids and many other
oppressed classes form an underground resistance against Gileaden dictatorship. As Offred writes,
she wants to be valued and wants to be held and told her name (p. 108) and such feelings are basic
psychological musts in a human being. This emotional yearning is accompanied with a physical
desire; she says that I hunger to commit the act of touch and makes many references to her
emotional and physical longing for Luke, her common-law husband. She describes her sensations
and sexual experiences in details, that with the Commander and with Nick as well.

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 The Commander appears to be rather a shadow in her narration until he invites her to his
room to play Scrabbles with him and to kiss him as if she ment it in the end of the evening. Offred
has an ambiguous emotional response to him in general; initially she says that she ought to feel
hatred for this man but what she feels is more complicated than that and that it isnt love (p. 68)
which can be taken for an example of Stockholm Syndrome. Later on in the flow of events she
admits to herself that she has become his mistress and that stupidly enough, she is happier than
she was before because to him she is no longer merely a usable body ... To him she is not
merely empty (p. 172). However, she is aware of her subjection with respect to him and she
percieves the sexual undertone of their encounters in his study: While I read, the Commander sits
and watches me doing it, without speaking but also without taking his yes off me. This watching is
a curiously sexual act, and I feel undressed while he does it. I wish he would turn his back ... (p.
194). This violating male gaze gains a complex signification in this dystopian context because it can
be taken for a sign of sexual desire that on the one hand objectifies the woman but on the other hand
is a reminiscent of pre-Gileadean times when the free expression of desire ment freedom and could
lead to love. However, when the Commander takes Offred to the secret club of the ruling class she
discovers that she cant be with him, any different from the way she usualy is with him and
that usually she is inert (p. 267). She tells herself to fake it and to bestir herself but even this
pathetic sexual intercourse has more warmth in it than the sanctified Ceremony.
Nick, the Commanders chauffeur lingers around her like a long lost memory of the
possibility of attraction and she develops real feelings for him by the end of the novel. Her
description of their nights together has a bittersweet undertone because she feels it to be a betrayal
but also feels to be safe with him in spite of the risk they take by breaking a capital rule of Gilead.
The style of Offreds narration by the XIIIth-XIVth chapter changes from inert and grey to passionate
and romantic, it is highly percievable how Offred, a human object, changes to a romantic heroine in
the verge of Nothing and love.
She succeeds in conveying her feelings and sensations with the aid of a highly sensual
imagery, by relying on the smells and visual details of her surrounding. When she enters Serena
Joys sitting room, she describes the alien territory by smells, which bear a strong allusions to its
owner as well: The room smells of lemon oil, heavy cloth, fading daffodils, the leftover smells of
cooking that have made their way from the kitchen or the dining room, and of Serena Joys
perfume: Lily of the Valley (p. 90). The perfume of the Lily of the Valley remains a constant sign
of its owners omnipresence and misery as this smell is a cheap perfume of young girls and also
refers to Balzacs novel entitled Lys dans la Valle where the protagonist, associated with the
same flower, is a slowly fading housewife in XIXth century France. Considering visual and physical

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confinement, Offred says that they the Handmaids - have learned to see the world in gasps and
she relates this neverending caustrophobic experience with a frightful detailedness. She stares at
every little detail of the objects around her and plays with words in her head to have enough
stimulus to not to lose her right mind. These aspects highlight Margaret Atwoods talent to create an
authentic language to write about the feminine experience in subjugation and confinement in The
Handmaids Tale.
The powerful language of Margaret Atwoods protagonist can be traced back to feminist
theorists and women writers such as Hlne Cixous or Angela Carter. Offred relates her own story
in retrospective and it is recorded on tapes which illustrates one of the important guidelines of
Cixous with respect to a real feminine voice of fiction. Hlne Cixous in The Laugh of the
Medusa ( 1976) points out that If woman has always functioned within the discourse of man, a
signifier that always referred back to the opposite signifier which annihilates its specific energy and
diminishes or stifles its very different sounds, it is time for her to dislocate this within .1.She
argues for displacement of speech through voice (peopling), accentuating the bodily aspect of
language and promotes womens revindication of their body.2 Writing, then, is holding a mirror to
our bodies (and subjectivities) so as to transform into symbols those bodily symptoms which want
to speak but which on their own are iconic rather than verbal signs.3 Margaret Atwood gives voice
to the heroines body by insisting upon its sensations and desires and at the same time accentuates
its confinement as a result of the red nun-like dress and its social objectification for the mere
purpose of reproduction. She challenges the representation of a traditional, passive female sexuality
by her heroines frequent references to her autonomous sexual desire towards Luke and Nick and by
her artless way of narrating her bodily sensations and longings.
Hlne Cixous argues in The Laugh of the Medusa that women have to free themselves
from the shame and the dogma of castration men have implemented in them with respect to their
body and sexuality. She explains that men have rivited us between two horrifying myths: between
the Medusa and the abyss (p. 85). The myth of the abyss woman as black hole, with no penis
refers to the artificial male-created myths which men represented as too dark to be explorable for
women and Cixous says that women have to question these myths to liberate themselves from them.
The Medusa4, the woman with snakes too many penises , refers to mens fear of castration by

1
In The Women and language debate, ed. by Camille Roman and others (New Brunswick: N.J. Rutgers Univ. Press,
1994), pp. 78-94 (p. 87).
2
Cixous argues in The Laugh of the Medusa that weve been turned away from our bodies, shamefully taught to
ignore them, to strike them with that stupid sexual modesty; weve been made victims of the old fools game: each one
will love the other sex, p. 86.
3
Cixous cited in The Women and language debate, 1994, p. 15.
4
Freud reads the Medusa as part of the fear of castration, the woman whose hair is writhing penises; she's scary, not
because she's got too few penises, but because she has too many for hair.

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women, that is, their fear of losing power. Cixous says that women have to look at the Medusa
straight on to see her and realise that she is not deadly. Shes beautiful and shes laughing.(ibid.)
in order to free themselves from the oppressive constraints of a phallogenic society.
In The Handmaids Tale men chose an overt way of oppressing women in their basic human
rights, but in sexualty they opted for an absolute denial considering its association with the pleasure
principle5 and with emotions with respect to both of the sexes. Thus, the fact that in this society
women are deprived of their power in its every possible form can be taken for a result of mens fear
of castration by women but Glieads masculin population also developed a system where even if
their gender holds the absolute power, they are bound to refuse sexual pleasure and to live for their
duties. The secret sex club of the ruling males exemplifies the impossibility and the hypocrisy of
such a dogmatic and unnatural attitude towards sexualty and attraction. Consequently, even if the
Bible is ment to support and determine the human relationships of Gilead, the system cannot be
maintained, as illustrated by the dnouement of the novel.
To summarize the above mentioned points, The Handmaids Tale depicts themes of women
in subjugation and deals with sexuality as a means of reflection of their socioeconomical and
ideological oppression. The Handmaids of Gilead are deprived of their basic human rights as well
as being objectified and dehumanised sexually; and furthermore, all the other classes of this
community suffer from severe frustrations as a result of Gileads unhumanistic and unnatural
attitude towards human relationships. The separation of love and attraction from sexuality creates
an artificial and hypocritical environment in this community, which consequently cannot be
maintained and, finally, ceases to exist.

Bibliography

Atwood, Margaret: The Handmaids Tale, London: Vintage, 1996.

Carter, Angela: The Sadeian woman : an exercise in cultural history, London: Virago, 1997.

5
The pleasure principle is a psychoanalytic concept, originated by Sigmund Freud, that continuously drives one to seek
pleasure and to avoid pain.

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 Cixous, Hlne: The Laugh of the Medusa (1976) in The Women and language debate, ed.
by Camille Roman and others, New Brunswick: N.J. Rutgers Univ. Press, 1994.
Wikipedia: The Handmaids Tale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale