The use of psychoanalytic theory and destruction can act as a lens with which to dissect a work of literature. Psychoanalysis can help to determine how a character in a novel is affected by their unconscious. Using Freudian theory as a launching point in which to determine the effect of coercion managed effectively through the use of religion and how this has an effect on the unconscious of those being coerced. This essay will analyze Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale and how it exemplifies these concepts.
The story of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood follows Offred who was a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. The Republic of Gilead replaced the United States with a totalitarian and theocratic government. The purpose of the handmaid is to bear children for elite couples who are having issues conceiving a child of their own. The story follows Offred, who is the narrator, and her servitude to Commander Fred and his wife Serena Joy while being a handmaid.
While Offred narrates the story of her daily life in the Commander’s service, she frequently slips into flashbacks; using these flashbacks we are able to construct the events leading up to her service as a handmaid. During one of Offred’s flashbacks, we learn our narrator had an affair with a man named Luke before Gilead even exists. Luke divorced his wife in order to marry Offred, and they had a child together. They named this child Hannah. We are also told about Moira, Offred’s best friend.
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According to Offred, the military assassinated the president and members of Congress and then launched a coup. The military began their reign with the claim that their power would only last temporarily. According to the members of this newly formed government, women had too many rights.
Offred, her husband, and her daughter were caught and separated while attempting to flee Gilead. Offred was then sent to the Rachel and Leah Re-education Center; this particular center was called the Red Center. The women at the Red Center were indoctrinated into Gilead’s ideology to prepare them for becoming handmaids. The Red Center was run and managed by women who were known as the Aunts.
Since Offred has now been assigned to her Commander, she goes about her daily routine as normal, like taking daily shopping trips with other handmaids. However, there are also additions that she has to make to her normal routine, such as a ceremony. The ceremony is a sacred time when the Commander reads to the household from the Bible, he then goes to the bedroom, where his Wife and Offred are waiting for him, and he then has sex with Offred. Offered participates in this ceremony once a month.
After one of these ceremonies, the Commander sends his gardener and chauffeur, Nick, to ask Offred to come to see him in his study the following night. She then begins visiting him regularly. The two of them play Scrabble and the Commander lets her look at old magazines such as Vogue. At the end of each of these secret meetings, he asks her to kiss him.
After considerable time passes in the service of the Commander without Offred becoming pregnant, Serena Joy, the Commander’s wife, suggests that Offred have sex with Nick secretly and pass the child off as the Commander’s. Both Offred and Nick agree. That very night the Commander secretly takes Offred out to a club called Jezebel’s, where the Commanders can mingle with the prostitutes. Offred sees her best friend Moira working there. The Commander takes Offred upstairs after a few hours and they have sex in what used to be a hotel room.
Sometime later, Serena finds out about Offred’s trip to Jezebel’s and she sends her to her room to await her promised punishment. As Offred waits there, she sees a black van from the Eyes, those who watch the citizens of Gilead and punish those who step out of line, approach. Nick then comes in and tells her that the Eyes are really Mayday, the rebel group, members who have come to save her. Offred chooses to leave with them over the Commander’s fruitless objections, on her way either to prison or to freedom—she does not know which.
Sigmund Freud, in his essay “The Uncanny” explains that to live outside of oneself is a coping mechanism that can be employed by the unconscious mind of an individual in order to combat psychological trauma. According to Freud, “What interests us most in this long extract is to find that among its different shades of meaning the word [canny] exhibits one which is identical with its opposite, [uncanny]” (Freud 420). What Freud is saying here is that there cannot be one without the other.
In chapter two of The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred reveals some uncanny qualities. Margaret Atwood writes, “I can see it as I go down the stairs, round, convex, a pier glass, like the eye of a fist, and myself in it like a distorted shadow, a parody of something, some fairy-tale figure in a red cloak, descending towards a moment of carelessness that is the same as danger” (Atwood 9). Offred in her life as a handmaid cultivates this sensation of ambiguity surrounding her identity and the validity of her tale.
Offred tends to compulsively makes mental notes of her physical surroundings throughout the novel. She states that, “A window, two white curtains. Under the window, a window seat with a little cushion. When the window is partly open – it only opens partly – the air can come in and make the curtains move…Sunlight comes in through the Window too and falls on the floor which is made of wood” (Atwood 7). All this Offred does to remind herself that what she is going through is real; she is not imagining it. Offred also has a longing to comprehend her unconscious double, were she says that, “She’s like my own reflection, in a mirror from which I am moving away” (Atwood 45). According to Freud, this “inner repetition-compulsion is perceived as uncanny” (Freud 427), and for Offred, in order to protect her own ego, her sense of self, she has employed it as a psychological mechanism. Offred is trying to save herself, from herself, with her uncanny self. As Freud explains,
After having thus considered the manifest motivation of the figure of a “double,” we have to admit that none of it helps us to understand the extraordinarily strong feeling of something uncanny that pervades the conception; and our knowledge of pathological mental processes enable us to add that nothing in the content arrived at could account for that impulse towards self-protection which has caused the ego to project such a content outward as something foreign to itself. (Freud 426)
From the start of her new life in Gilead, Offred’s identity was removed from her. Aunt Lydia says that “modesty is invisibility” (Atwood 28). With the removal of her identity, Offred is then forced to construct a new identity for herself; she then impulsively seeks answers to explain her role as a Handmaid from this, “sister, dipped in blood” (Atwood 8). Just as she cannot escape her assigned position in the community, Offred has an inescapable case of tunnel vision – “the white wings framing my face direct my vision” (Atwood 9). Offred is then forced to search her unconscious for companionship and answers. However, when Offred or her unconscious companion dare take a glimpse at the external world, their tunnel vision turns reflective and projects yet another realm of psychological regression from which neither can escape.
Jacques Lacan in “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience” explains to the reader that the mirror stage establishes the ego as a creation of identity that is resultant from the reproduction upon exterior objects (Lacan 444). We as the reader can easily spot characters whose ego is defined from self-reflection of others in literature, we then identify these characters as stuck in the mirror stage and in search of their true identity (Lacan 441- 446). Offred lives in the mirror stage so that she therefore must look outside of herself; to others and objects to give her existence a reason to survive. Who she was before her identity was taken from her, the reader is never even told Offred’s real name, no longer exists in her unconscious mind. If for any reason Offred were to look away, it would then disguise the only authenticity she knows; it would mask who she really is. Lacan says that, “If we observe the role of the mirror apparatus, in the appearance of the double, in which psychical realities, however heterogeneous, are manifested” (Lacan 443), the reader then begins to examine the reliability of Offred’s memory and her interpretation of certain incidents in the story. Any construction of falsehood would be as a direct result of her psychological trauma and her repressed psychological state. Offred must welcome uncertainty in order to have any identity and even assemble new uncertainties to welcome. For Offred, these uncertainties not only re-enforce her identity, but they also act as a catalyst for her embellishments. Atwood writes, “This is what she [Moira] says, whispers more or less. I can’t remember exactly, because I have no way of writing it down. I filled it out for her as much as I can: we didn’t have much time so she just gave me the outlines.” (Atwood 243), leaving the reader to speculate if the re-construction that ensues is embellished, fictional, or if Moira even exists.
Perhaps the meaning of The Handmaid’s Tale is not in the story or in the language. Perhaps it rests in amongst the narrator’s understanding and delivery of events along with the reader’s interpretation and comprehension of those exact same events. Throughout the book, Offred reports the events happing in her life; she wavers between obsessive description, disturbing thought, exaggerated memories, discourse, dreams, and more. The only viable route that is left for readers to determine meaning is unconsciously— without employing conscious effort regarding analyzing the plot, characters, or themes. It is during this exchange of mid-conscious thought that the reader absorbs Offred’s story. Regardless of the general consensus surrounding Offred’s identity and because this story is told in mid-conscious thought, its importance and authenticity can exist only in the minds of its readers. All interpretations of this story and any assumptions pertaining to the authenticity of this account, are in fact, all valid. In his essay “Identity and Difference” Martin Heidegger considers metaphysics, existence and identity, and he concludes with:
What we are now primarily concerned with in our undertaking is gaining an insight into the possibility of thinking of difference as an issue which is to clarify in how far the onto-theological constitution of metaphysics derives its original essence from the issue which we meet at the beginning of the history of metaphysics, runs through its periods and yet remains everywhere hidden, and hence forgotten, as the issue in an oblivion which escapes even us. (Heidegger 272)
Heidegger is explaining that difference is the requirement for identity. Difference not only the requirement for identity, but he also implicates that identity can only be ascertained through difference, without difference there can be no identity, and without identity there can be no difference. Considering at Atwood’s novel, we see difference and identity in Offred’s compulsive reflection of the household umbrellas. “There are several umbrellas in it: black, for the Commander, blue, for the Commander’s Wife, and the one assigned to me, which is red” (Atwood 9). There can be no mistaking one’s external identity in Gilead. Each character’s existence has been reduced to that of a specifically assigned umbrella that provides just enough constraint to protect and relieve, while instantaneously presenting a colorful array of difference.
With a unified projection of difference promoting identity, one may begin to question reality. Is an assigned reality truly reality? Can reality exist when all that is different is also the same? The simple answer to all of the above is yes. But possibly with everything connected, sameness can produce difference. In his essay “Differance” Jacques Derrida discredits the existence of temporal and spatial realities, particularly when applied to thought as derived from language. He comes to an appropriate assumption that there is no place and no time; there is only difference. All existence of thought depends on this difference (Derrida 277-299). In The Handmaid’s Tale, placing doubts on validity aside, one cannot deny the copious fairy-tale, dream-like quality inter-woven throughout. But determining what is real and what is fake in Offred’s world, is undeniably irrelevant. She exists on a brink, where “there will be an ending to the story, and real life will come after it” (Atwood 39). Her temporal reality is equally uncertain and distinctive, “like steel question marks, upside-down and sideways” (Atwood 32), and it depend on upon a mid-conscious exchange for moments of clarity. When the reader and the writer are removed from literature, the narrative is eliminated along with any conscious interpretation of words, inferences of setting, or explanations of the story. What remains then is difference; and for each individual the interpretation of the in-between – a complicated relationship between the writer and the reader, the writer and the text, the text and the reader, the reader and the text, the reader and the writer, and countless alternative combinations of the three. Derrida say that, “What appears to be is not an accident here. It belongs to the very production of speech. Between what I say and what I hear myself say, no exteriority, no alterity, not even that of a mirror” (Derrida 286-287). There can no legitimacy in the in-between. There is nothing to authenticate. There is only conjecture, apparent in Offred’s last acceptance of the unknown, “And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light” (Atwood 294), where every difference exists the same.
The haphazardness of Atwood’s description and Offred’s narration can only be explained as chaotic. It is, however, a required chaos. Essential for Offred to make sense of her ambiguity, and necessary for the readers to accept the existence of all thought and accept the difference of all story. There is no truth to be found nor falsehood to be revealed, and from Atwood’s constant flow of mid-conscious thought the reader can conjure the difference that “makes the movement of significance possible” (Derrida 287). This difference blurs the lines that formerly defined perception of language and challenges the compulsion to authenticate the story.
The Republic of Gilead prospers on its struggle with the inhabitants. The escalation in rebellions against it cause the accumulation of even more laws. With this the society can progress in such a way to continue to oppress such attempts of overthrowing Gilead. In the beginning of the downfall of the United States, women conducted protests in an attempt to regain their autonomy; in response, their efforts generated an air of increasing futility and their rights were able to become more and more restrictive. By Gilead logic, this justifies more severe restrictions, as is shown by the fact that the women are forbidden to read. Freud in his book The Future of an Illusion says,
Thus culture must be defended against the individual, and its institutions and its laws, are all directed to this end; they aim not only at establishing a certain distribution of property, but also at maintaining it; in fact, they must protect against the hostile impulses of mankind everything that contributes to the conquest of nature and production of wealth. (Freud).
In this passage, Freud explains that for a civilization to remain intact, it must consider the individual as an enemy due to their tendency to tendency to combat society for their own success. Everyone, even the upper class, have a struggle in such a tightly regulated society, which creates slight rebellions such as the masters’ going off with prostitutes., Fred attempts to have a real relationship with Offred and says “‘Not like that,’ he says. ‘As if you meant it’” (Atwood, 140) Nobody is able to rebel openly in such a manner, as those who do are often killed and displayed on a wall by the sea., According to Freud, another struggle presents itself against the society—which is mankind’s—when not for the betterment of the individual. A version to work for the whole of society, “does not even appear certain that without coercion the majority of human individuals would be ready to submit to the labour necessary for acquiring new means of supporting life” (Freud 5). With such an assumption backed up by the lack of opposition, one may continue further and consider the Freudian ideal that when humanity is not working normally within a society, coercion becomes a necessary tool of the civilization and a move to help fight against the individual.
Coercion is then necessary to keep this new society in balance, and so it must be made so that such coercion does not create a rebellion within the system, particularly from those of a lower standing, otherwise a threat to the new society will form. Freud believes, according to his book, that to prevent a rebellion of the classes while utilizing the idea of coercion, it becomes necessary to cater to humanity’s “Narcissistic ideal” (or the want of superiority (12-13)). To manipulate this Narcissistic ideal, the Republic of Gilead parallels Freud’s belief of satisfying the lower class with illusions of superiority, and in the case written by Atwood: males’ dominance over females, Gilead’s religion over all others, Caucasians over all other races exemplified in the quote. Hence a class lower than each other class is made, satisfying all who are not that one excluded class of the others who are imprisoned and murdered so do not pose a threat to the social order. Furthermore, to put pride in the shared “superiority”, those who fall into the system of the less-persecuted lower class are invited to partake in certain rituals, such as the killing of lawbreakers, or the large-scale prayers held. It is this control of the Narcissistic ideal that separates the Republic of Gilead, from any other failing theocracy, as any other up to date has not had such control over all denominations of their society.
On its own, such inequality would not go unchecked and without continuous rebellion and religion is used to maintain all stay in their set place. What is so ingenious about employing religion in such a manner is the impossibility to argue with it; for what defies logic cannot be refuted by such. There is no proof of any deity, and yet certain individuals are able to obtain followers with unlimited solutions to problems, rewards and eternal life, and the answer to the desperation to remain living beyond one’s own mortality. With such factors many are driven to believe in the religion, while the belief enforces them to not question, and in turn they are held by the very shackles that promises them freedom of life’s burden.
