The Handmaid’s Tale – Themes (OCR A-Level English Literature): Revision Notes
The Handmaid's Tale – Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, several key themes work together to create a powerful critique of totalitarianism, gender oppression, and the dangers of political extremism. Understanding these themes is essential for analysing the novel's deeper meanings and Atwood's social commentary.
Women's bodies as political instruments
The Republic of Gilead exists because of a fertility crisis. With dramatically falling birthrates threatening society's survival, the state builds its entire structure around one goal: controlling reproduction. To achieve this, Gilead takes complete control of women's bodies through systematic political oppression.
How Gilead controls women
Women in Gilead face severe restrictions on their freedom:
- They cannot vote or hold political power
- They cannot own property or hold jobs
- They are forbidden from reading or writing
- Their movements are constantly monitored and restricted
These limitations serve a clear purpose: preventing women from becoming independent or challenging their husbands and the state. Despite Gilead's claims to protect and value women, these policies create a society where women are treated as less than human.
Reduction to biological function
The novel shows how women become reduced to their reproductive capacity. They are treated as nothing more than a set of ovaries and a womb. A key moment illustrating this occurs when Offred lies in the bath and reflects on how her relationship with her body has changed. Before Gilead, she saw her body as an instrument of her own desires. Now, she recognises herself as merely a mound of flesh surrounding a womb that must be filled to make her useful.
Gilead deliberately strips women of their individuality to transform them into docile carriers of the next generation. This reduction from person to biological function represents the core of Gilead's oppression.
Exam tip: When writing about this theme, connect it to specific examples from the text. Consider how Offred's identity is literally replaced by her function (Of-Fred, meaning belonging to Fred), and how the Ceremony reduces her to a reproductive vessel.
Language as a tool of power
Gilead creates an official vocabulary that distorts reality to serve the ruling elite's needs. This manipulation of language becomes one of the regime's most powerful tools of control.
The system of titles
By making it illegal for women to hold jobs, Gilead invents a system of titles that define people by their roles:
- Men are identified by military rank
- Women are defined solely by gender roles: Wives, Handmaids, Marthas
- Individual names are stripped away, removing personal identity
This naming system does more than categorise people. It attempts to erase individuality and reinforce the social hierarchy.
Dehumanising language
Gilead uses specific terms to make persecution easier:
- Unwomen: feminists and other women who don't conform
- Unbabies: deformed infants
- Children of Ham: Black people
- Sons of Jacob: Jewish people
By using biblical or invented terms, the state sets these groups apart from 'normal' society, making their mistreatment seem acceptable or even necessary.
Ritualistic vocabulary
Special terms define Gilead's ceremonies and rituals:
- Prayvaganzas: mass wedding ceremonies
- Salvagings: public executions
- Particicutions: participatory executions where women kill perceived criminals
Literary connection: Atwood follows a tradition in dystopian literature of exploring how totalitarian states pervert language to control thought. George Orwell's 1984 features 'Newspeak', a famous example of linguistic manipulation. The Handmaid's Tale continues this tradition, showing how Gilead maintains control over women's bodies by maintaining control over names and language itself.
The causes of complacency
Atwood suggests that in totalitarian states, people will willingly endure oppression if they receive even small amounts of power or freedom in return. This theme explores why people comply with systems that harm them.
Offred's mother's wisdom
Offred remembers her mother saying: it is "truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations." This observation proves painfully accurate throughout the novel.
Nick as compensation
When Offred begins her relationship with Nick, her complacency demonstrates this principle. Despite living under horrific restrictions compared to her former life, her relationship with Nick allows her to reclaim a tiny fragment of her previous existence. The physical affection and companionship become just enough compensation to make the restrictions almost bearable.
This contentment has consequences. Offred becomes so satisfied with this small freedom that she refuses when Ofglen asks her to gather intelligence about the Commander.
Women as agents of oppression
Women generally support Gilead's existence by willingly participating in the system:
Serena Joy:
- Has no power in the male-dominated world
- Exercises authority within her own household
- Appears to delight in her tyranny over Offred
- Jealously guards and eagerly wields her limited power
The Aunts:
- Willingly serve as agents of the Gileadean state
- Indoctrinate other women into the ruling ideology
- Watch closely for rebellion
- Function similarly to Jewish police under Nazi rule
Atwood's bleak message: Atwood condemns Offred, Serena Joy, the Aunts, and even Moira for their complacency, yet she suggests something even more troubling: even if they stopped complying, they would likely fail to make a real difference. In Gilead, tiny rebellions or acts of resistance don't necessarily matter. Ultimately, Offred escapes through luck rather than resistance, undermining any sense that individual action can overcome totalitarian power.
Complicity
Building on the theme of complacency, Atwood explores how ordinary people become complicit in a totalitarian regime's appalling acts. This theme examines the difference between being a victim and being a perpetrator, and where those boundaries blur.
Victims who choose complicity
Although all women in Gilead are victims to some extent, many choose complicity over rebellion:
Serena Joy's complicity:
- Miserable and severely restricted in her freedom
- Yet enjoys and exploits the power she holds over Offred
- Actively participates in Offred's oppression
The Aunts as perpetrators:
- Not merely complicit but among the novel's worst perpetrators
- Responsible for torture and psychological abuse
- Actively enforce the regime's most brutal policies
Offred's ambiguous position
Offred's place on the spectrum of complicity remains deliberately unclear:
- She hates and fears the regime
- She doesn't believe in its values
- Yet she accepts her role without complaint
- She doesn't rebel, despite her beliefs suggesting she should
The Ceremony and self-deception
Offred's internal response to the Ceremony reveals her complicated relationship with complicity. Even in her own thoughts, she refuses to call the Ceremony 'rape', because "nothing is going on here that I haven't signed up for" (Chapter 16).
Question for reflection: Offred's choices invite us to consider where passivity ends and complicity begins. Is accepting oppression to survive the same as supporting it?
Exam tip: This theme works well for exploring moral complexity in the novel. Consider how Atwood refuses to present simple heroes and villains, instead showing how totalitarian systems corrupt everyone, even their victims.
Seeing
Atwood draws on feminist theory that in male-dominated societies, the way men look at women constitutes a form of control and even violence. This theme explores the power dynamics of observation and the male gaze.
Limited vision
Offred's 'white wings' (Chapter 2) severely restrict her ability to see. These blinkers prevent her from looking around freely, symbolising her limited agency and perspective. She can only see what Gilead allows her to see.
Constant surveillance
Meanwhile, Offred constantly feels observed and threatened by eyes:
- She sees the plaster patch on her bedroom ceiling as a 'blind plaster eye'
- The convex mirror on the stairs appears as a 'fisheye' (Chapter 17)
- The secret police are called the 'Eyes'
- Their emblem, a winged eye, is painted everywhere
Eyes and male power
Offred thinks of these eyes as male. She even makes explicit connections between eyes and male sexuality, describing the Commander's penis as a 'stalked slug's eye' (Chapter 15). This unsettling comparison links male sexual power with the power of surveillance and observation.
The co-opting of feminist concepts
Whilst the novel endorses the feminist concept that men's way of looking at women can be a form of violence, it also warns that feminist concepts alone don't protect women from male domination.
Co-opting feminist ideas: Ironically, the only character who directly states this feminist idea is Aunt Lydia: "'To be seen—to be seen—is to be'—her voice trembled—'penetrated.'" (Chapter 5).
Aunt Lydia's quote demonstrates how even feminist concepts can be co-opted and weaponised to oppress women. She uses this idea not to empower women but to justify forcing them to cover themselves and restrict their movements.
Reproduction
The Handmaid's Tale argues that legally controlling women's reproductive freedom is morally and politically wrong. This theme connects the novel's dystopian setting to real-world political debates.
Direct cause of suffering
The suffering experienced by Offred and the other Handmaids stems directly from the Gileadean state's desire to own and control women's fertility. The entire oppressive system exists to solve the fertility crisis by treating women as reproductive resources.
Connections to contemporary politics
Certain details link Gilead's goals to the political objectives of the 20th-century U.S. religious right:
- Gilead executes doctors who performed abortions
- The sharply declining birthrate is partly caused by women who chose to become infertile
- The state treats fertility as a moral rather than personal issue
Women's bodies as national resources
The Handmaid's Tale suggests that women's reproductive function can be viewed as a form of wealth, a 'national resource' (Chapter 12). However, this framing serves as a warning: figures in power will always be tempted to control women's bodies when reproduction is treated as a political or economic resource rather than a personal choice.
Atwood's warning: By showing the horrific consequences of state control over reproduction, Atwood warns readers about the dangers of allowing governments to regulate women's reproductive choices. The novel suggests that such control inevitably leads to the dehumanisation of women and the destruction of individual freedom.
Key Themes to Remember:
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Women's bodies: Gilead controls reproduction by treating women as subhuman vessels, stripping them of individuality and reducing them to their biological function.
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Language as power: The regime manipulates language through dehumanising terms, enforced titles, and ritualistic vocabulary to control thought and maintain oppression.
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Complacency and complicity: People endure and even support oppression when given small compensations. The novel explores the blurred line between being a victim and being complicit in a totalitarian system.
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The male gaze: Surveillance and observation function as tools of control. The novel shows how even feminist concepts can be co-opted to oppress women.
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Reproductive control: The state's control over women's reproductive freedom drives all the novel's oppression, warning against treating women's bodies as political or national resources.