Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale: Power of Language

In a dystopian society there is a lack of freedom, and constant surveillance which creates an atmosphere of fear and control.  The definition of a totalitarian regime is a “form of government that theoretically permits no individual freedom and that seeks to subordinate all aspects of individual life to the authority of the state”. In Gilead there was a constant abuse of power, and a strict control of the individuals. In Margaret Atwood’s Novel The Handmaid’s Tale There are various sources of power such as language, religious authority and the control of information. The power through language has great control on the handmaids and like any other dictatorship governments, is used as an instrument of control. Throughout the novel, Atwood demonstrated how the power of language incredibly exploits the mind and disregards reality. The use of language is a rhetorical tactic that Atwood uses to give characters the manipulation of  power and to contrast a totalitarian regime with individual power.

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Freedom of speech and religion gives the wives and commanders power but the handmaids are restricted in the way that they speak to each other, and other people which gives more power to the government. The Handmaid’s Tale is a collection of diaries written by an individual who is restricted in a fundamental regime. Offred uses the language of past that she is used to it, however, the language of the past is an opposing discourse to the new language of the authority. The official language seeks to reject and repress the previous language and replace it with biblical discourse. Gilead as a fundamental regime attempts to abuse the biblical and religious values as their basic ideology to establish the social norms. Offred’s diary performs to be an explicit deconstructive scrip of the social and conventional norms that mock the present society through language. The evident of the official language used in Gilead comes from Offred’s commentary and explanation of the new realm. The powerful regime can ignore the past but it is never possible to erase the human memories which serve to threaten the authority. Although actions and deeds can be controlled; minds and thoughts are not a system that can be easily dominated because people are not completely concomitant with the beliefs of the new realms. Aunt Lydia, who instructs and disciplines the handmaids according to the official language, attempts to indoctrinate them the importance of normalizing the regime’s idea and belief as something ordinary and acceptable. "Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary" (Atwood 43). The official language must be accepted as normal and ordinary discourses and women whether to be Handmaids, Marthas, Econowives or Jezebels are forced to act according to the norms. The regime acknowledges them that ideal future will be gained when women accept the norms and attempt to forget their past. In this case, Aunt Lydia tries to persuade the handmaids as the transitional generation that should accept the new belief system: “You are a transitional generation. It  is the hardest for you. We know the sacrifices you are being expected to make. It is hard when men revile you. For the ones who come after you, it will be easier. They will accept their duties with willing hearts.” (127) In Foucault’s term, knowledge is power and power has control over knowledge, therefore the Republic forces the transitional generation to gradually accept the ideal system of the Republic. The regime believes in future they will have ultimate control over the past generation’s thought and belief in order to disempower their attack against the official language. As a means to gain the power of language, the authority manipulates the language for their own purposes. For instance, Gilead believes the kind of freedom existed in past was some of the reasons that anarchy occurred. Aunt Lydia tells the handmaids: “There’s more than one kind of freedom, freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it.” (34) By underestimating discourses of the past, the Republic can control and reinforce the language. As a matter of fact, language is the foundation for thoughts and those who can control the language can also restrict the thought, therefore the concept of “freedom” in Gilead for future generation will only exist as “freedom from”. “Freedom to” which is the concept of freedom we know it, will no longer exist and the usage of the word “freedom to” will be strictly forbidden in future generation. Gilead, also denies literacy for all women to have a permanent control on them. The regime forbids all literature and replaces it with biblical stories read by Commander. It is not possible for power to be exercised without knowledge; it is not possible for knowledge not to engender power.” (Power 52) No handmaids and apparently any other women are allowed to read and write, because the knowledge can empower them to resist against the rules. Therefore, the Republic keeps women at an appropriate level of subservience. These rules indicate that those who have control over the words and language have dominant power. For those who cannot read and write, there is no form of communicating that opposes the authority’s belief and no form of thinking other than what the regime learns them to believe. Offred is consciously aware of the power of words and language: “[The Commander] has something we don’t have, he has the word. How we squandered it once.” (Atwood 99) However, words provoke discourses based on knowledge of the past and afford power, knowledge and power that are integrated with one another (Power 52); the only way to reinforce the power on generations. Offred consciously deconstructs the social reality through her narrative discourses. She is aware of the power that surrounds them and produces knowledge, the knowledge that reinforces the power. Her narrative becomes a weapon to keep her sanity and struggle against the perpetual rules. For this reason, she narrates the situation as there is someone to hear and respond one day: “But if it’s a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don’t tell a story only to yourself. There’s always someone else.” (Atwood 49) Offred tells her story because she knows that one day it will be heard. She knows that those who will hear her story will be beyond the Gileadean reign of power and will truly judge the regime. She knows it will be difficult for the future to believe this story as sometime real: “If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off. It isn’t a story I’m telling” (49) Then Offred expresses that writing is something forbidden in the regime and the only way to communicate with the future generation is narrating her terrible story: “Tell, rather than write, because I have nothing to write with and writing is in any case forbidden.” (49) Therefore, she uses the power of language and words through narrating her story. She has strict control over her own language; however, she is aware that she is completely powerless in the Gileadean hierarchy. She believes if she chooses certain words, she will be able to achieve the meaning that will connect her to former self and reveal the situation of the new society. For instance, Offred refuses to say “my” room when she is compelled to live in the Commander’s house, it is the way she rejects the social expectations and standards. The word “my” relates to some personal belonging, and “my room” means my privacy. She believes there is no privacy in Commander’s house and she does not belong to that place, this is the way she attempts to hold on her former beliefs. In this way she shows the difference between her new society and former life. In contrast, Offred takes official words, such as “household” rather than “family”, she finds the word “family” an intimate relationship between its members, which does not make sense in the new society: “Household: that is what we are. The Commander is the head of the household. The house is what he holds. To have and to hold, till death do us part. The hold of a ship. Hollow. (91) Offred alters the meanings of words so that the words lose their authority, in this way she has control over words and uses the power of language to deny the social standards. With using the power of language, Offred challenges the Gileadean official language and tries to survive herself both mentally and emotionally: “There are the kinds of litanies I use, to compose myself.” (120) Offred realizes, what is between knowledge and power is the issue of discourse. Power is held by those who create context and context is based on language, where language is related to the organization and regulation of knowledge. The relationship between discourse, context and knowledge creates power. Offred is aware of this relationship between knowledge and power, because she examined two different ideologies, her former life and the new society that forces her to accept the standards. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood depicts a society which establishes a rigid social belief through the domination of language. However, Offred, the protagonist deconstructs the language because she is not bounded to the struggle for domination of language and has control over the social reality. Offred narrates her diary in a language of the past and in this way she explores the opposing discourse to resist against the social authority. Therefore, regardless to what level of power the society achieves by the end of the novel power is undermined through the words and discourses of language used by the narrator. The reader also realizes the reality of Gileadean society through the leaning experience of the narrator. The Handmaid’s Tale as a dystopian novel depicts a society that intends to achieve an ideal system of belief by empowering its own language and discourse and repressing other languages. Within this society, Offred, the narrator reveals the role of power and the real truth of the regime through language and discourses.

Works Cited

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