| Woman's innate fear of man stems from the obvious difference in the physical strengths of the sexes. Even Simone de Beuvoir cannot argue that women are, biologically, the second sex. Therefore, women must believe that men maintain power over women because women subconsciously know that men are physically superior. When Offred observes the guards outside her imprisonment, she notes that, "the Angels stood outside it with their backs to us. They were objects of fear to us, but of something else as well" (Atwood, 4). The Angels� backs are turned to the women because they choose not observe the harsh cruelty that the Aunts are subjecting on these women. However, Offred interprets these men as the ones who are in control of her suffering, wishing that "they would look. If only something could be exchanged, we thought, some deal made, some trade off, we [would still have] our bodies. This was our fantasy" (Atwood, 4). As far as Offred is concerned, all of the men in her life are in on something she does not know, controlling the misery of her life. However, the Commander, with whom she is assigned to, is more interested in striking up some sort of personal, sexual bond than oppressing her. Yet, Offred convinces herself, "the Commander could give me away so easily, by a look, by a gesture, some tiny slip that would reveal to anyone watching that there was something between us now" (Atwood, 162). When he reaches up to softly touch her face as a sign of affection, paranoid Offred snaps, "Don't try to touch me . . . You could get me transferred" (Atwood, 162). When her boss asks her to resign from her original job, he speaks to her "almost gently, as if we were wild animals, frogs he'd caught, in a jar, as if he were being humane" (Atwood, 176). Though she blames him for firing her, her guilty boss was merely following orders, trying his best not to upset the women in the office. When Offred's gynecologist offers to impregnate her during her exam, she refuses, though he compassionately tells her that if she is running out of time before she is considered a failed handmaid and sent to death. '''I hate to see what they put you through,' he murmurs. It�s genuine, genuine sympathy'' (Atwood, 61). Because Offred has learned to project her paranoia onto men, she assumes the doctor is setting a trap and will somehow fake the test results and have her shipped off for a premature death. ''None of this has been said, but the knowledge of his power hangs nevertheless in the air as he pats my thigh'' (Atwood, 61), Offred writes, associating power with sexuality. Offred even believes that Nick, the friendly chauffeur who the Commander's wife arranged for her handmaid to become pregnant by, must be hiding information from her. She supposes that he is an undercover spy for the central authorities that refuses to help her because, ''Maybe he just likes the satisfaction of knowing something that secret. Of having something on me, as they used to say. It's the kind of power you can only use once'' (Atwood, 182). It is important to reflect upon the way Atwood expresses women's paranoia in this dystopia. By creating a character that writes a secret account, the author is able to place the reader more directly into the city, Gilead, and the personal thoughts of a handmaid. Most striking is the narrator's name, Offred, because she is the handmaid of Fred, the Commander. Even her name was taken from her. Because the only reality of this world is known through Offred, the reader has no choice but to accept her narrative as the truth. But, because of her position as an oppressed woman and the nature of her situation, she is unable to admit to herself, and therefore the reader, that the women are the ones who are dictating her subjection. Even so, Offred is obsessed with figuring things out. She strives to discover what has happened to her lost family: her husband who she was taken away from, her mother who was sent to die on a radioactive island full of useless women, and her child, who was most likely given away to a sterile family. This, of course, in addition to her profound confusion of how she could be so enslaved and objectified, what the Commander wants from her and how to escape from the household, if not the system. Offred is what Freud would consider an epistemophiliac, not by nature, but my circumstances. "Epistemophilia is possibly the foundation of all intellectual activity" (Nicol, 44). Seeing that the handmaids have been stripped of the freedom to explore their own intellect by reading and writing, Atwood gives Offred's chronicles crucial significance, as one of the only accounts of a handmaid. In fact, The Handmaid's Tale ends with Offred's failure to make sense of her life thus far, frighteningly unaware of, "whether this is my end or a new beginning I have no way of knowing: I have given myself over into the hands of strangers, because it can't be helped . . . And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light" (Atwood, 295). Freud claims that Epistemophilia, the "desire to know, takes root as a result of curiosity about sexuality" (Nicol, 44). This argument would help explain Offred's sexual analysis of the pen that the Commander gives her to write with for the first time since the privilege was taken away from her. The pen between my fingers is sensuous, alive almost, I can feel its power, the power of the words is contains. Pen Is Envy, Aunt Lydia would say, quoting another Center motto, warning us away from such objects. And they were right, it is envy. Just holding it is envy. The envy the Commander his pen. It's one more thing I would like to steal. Atwood, 186 Although Offred's phallic interpretation, as well as Aunt Lydia's pun, suggests fairly obvious sexual undertones, her feelings focus more on the power behind the pen. Equating power with knowledge, Offred is only somewhat interested in reading and writing. She is more concerned in her efforts to discover what information those who can read and write have that she does not. After she puts the pen down, the Commander asks his handmaid what she would like, to which she responds, '''I would like . . . I would like to know.' It sounded indecisive, stupid even, I say it without thinking. "Know whatever there is to know," I say, but it sounds too flippant. "What's going on" (Atwood, 188). Of course, Offred has no legitimate reason to believe that the men are hiding information from her and setting her up to be taken away. This dystopic "test of the imaginative power of feminist paranoia" (Ehrenreich, 35) succeeds in manipulating the women into paranoid, testosterone-fearing vessels. The perverse, feminist Aunts have convinced the handmaids that, in the end, women will be united in a peaceful collective. Too late, Offred begins to suspect the Commander's wife of harboring deep-rooted hatred towards Offred for meeting with the Commander so many nights in secret. "Sometimes I think she knows. Sometimes I think they're in collusion. Sometimes I think she put him up to it, and is laughing at me . . . Maybe she's withdrawn from him, almost completely; maybe that's her version of freedom" (Atwood, 162). Even when she is being dragged away, and the Commander's wife yells, '''Bitch . . . after all he did for you,''' Offred still thinks, ''I was her hope, I've failed her. Now she will always be childless'' (Atwood, p. 295). After all of the physical and emotional abuse the Aunts, the Commander's wife, and the servants force her to endure, Offred still feels remorse for failing in her duty to produce a child for the household. She hardly makes any progress in her search for truth and meaning, for she is too busy investigating her own paranoid suspicions about men to question the knowledge and motivation of the women who oppress her. The Aunts have trained the women to long for a foolish future that Gilead can only achieve by subjugating women. Instead of rebelling from the system, these objectified women "yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability? It was in the air, and it was still in the air, an afterthought, as we tried to sleep" (Atwood, 4). |
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