Prose Context

• Frankenstein Context - Shelley's dream

  • February 1815
  • Shelley's first baby is premature and dies after a few days
  • Mary dreams that the baby comes back to life through being warmed by fire
• Frankenstein Context - Shelley visits the Alps

  • She visits the Sea of Ice glacier on top of Mont Blanc with Shelley and later uses it as the setting for a pivotal scene in Frankenstein with the Monster
• "palimpsest"

  • Offred describes her environment as a "palimpsest" which is something that has been altered but still hold traces of what came before. The room she is being imprisoned in still hold traces of being a gymnasium
• The oral tradition

  • Women would share their experiences by speaking to family and friends because they weren't educated enough to be able to write their own stories
  • Offred records her voice on a series of cassette tapes
• Significance of red

  • Symbolises sin
  • The Handmaids wear red habits which links to the idea of shaming and humiliating women for their sexuality and bodies
  • "Everything except the wings around my face is red: the colour of blood,which defines us"
• Dystopian Fiction

  • Atwood said that The Handmaid's Tale is speculative fiction as it "could really happen"
  • Parallel to 1984 with the use of surveillance, neologisms (new words) such as Unwomen, violence as control
• Political Context - Berlin and Iran

  • Berlin wall is a symbol of segregation and isolation as the wall is a symbol of fear punishment and ideological control
  • Historical Notes - Prof Crescent Moon makes reference to the Iranian Revolution "Iran and Gilead: 2 late-20th century monotheocracies"
  • 1978-79 the Iranian rev saw the overthrow of the monarchy by the new Islamic republic
  • Led to the adoption of mandatory veiling (like the Handmaid's)
• Political Context - America and the New Right

  • Reagan part of the Republican Party. Promoted traditional family values, conservative beliefs and strong evangelical, Christian faith
  • Warned against the perceived sins of homosexuality, abortion and divorce "within the covers of the Bible are all the answers for all the problems men face" - rhetoric of The Commander, Serena Jot and Aunt Lydia
  • Fear grew in 1980s due to falling birth rates 'Birth Dearth'. New Right used this to promote traditional family values and women as pro creators to save us from homosexuality
  • Women as walking "wombs" in THT
• Historical Context - Puritan ideals

  • Puritans aspired to create a Utopian society through fear, intimidation and patriarchal rule
  • Women as inferior sex forced into passive domestic life. Covering themselves up and being a good dutiful mother and wife
  • Late 17thc many tortured as accused of witchcraft. Anyone who didn't conform to societal norms and values was a dissenter
  • Puritan New England inspired the creation of Gilead
• Underground Female Road

  • Underground railroad refers to secret smuggling of slaves into safe houses in US in 1800s to try and get them safely into Canada of free states
  • End of American CW brought slavery to an end. Estimated 100,000 slaves saved by the Underground Railroad
  • Piexioto belittles the Underground Femaleroad as he states some academics had called it "Frailroad" - neglecting the suffering of those involved
• Offred's Tattoo

  • Offred has a tattoo of an eye and 4 digits on her ankle. References to WW2 and Nazi CC - a brutal way of dehumanisation
• Particicutions and Salvagings

  • Iran and North Korea hold public death sentencing and even allow people to participate
  • In Iranian history female rape victims have been accused of adultery and buried up to their neck and stoned to death by several men
• Illegal Abortions

  • Decree 770 was a law in Romania passed in 1967 making abortion and all contraception illegal
  • The Government was worried about the decreasing birth rate and wanted their country larger and stronger. This led to enforced conditions on women including monitored trips to the doctor (like Offred)
• The Indian Adoption Project

  • The Child Welfare League in 1958
  • Widespread kidnapping and relocating Native Indian children to white, m/c families motivated by the idea that they were being neglected as they weren't brought up with 'American Values'
  • Like Offred's daughter
• Religious Context - Theocracy

  • Name Gilead comes from the Bible and is a place renowned for its fertility holding a special balm that is meant to heal
  • Creating the phrase "There is a balm in Gilead" which Moira satirically changes to "There is a bomb in Gilead"
  • Language used by the Handmaid's is prescribed by Gilead - patriarchal language to strengthen oppression: "Blessed be the fruit"
  • Shop names from the Bible - Milk and Honey, All Flesh and Lilies of the Field
• William Godwin

  • Shelley's father influenced the writing of Frankenstein raising issues about education and danger of knowledge
  • Wrote 'Caleb Williams' which criticises aristocracy
  • F is a direct criticism of her father around issue of father-child relationships, abandonment and emotional neglect as he refused to see her for over 2 years
• Mary Wollstonecraft

  • Shelley's mother who she never met
  • Proto-feminists who wrote 'A Vindication of the Rights of Women' in 1792 which proposed equality of sexes and criticised gender roles
  • In F, through flawed male narrators we view a world where women are usurped from the reproductive process by men
  • Wollstonecraft wrote a novel on the French Rev and F is an allegory of the event. The Monster acts as a physical manifestation of the anxieties the ruling class had about the oppressed masses who were presented as hideous and capable of rising against authorities
• Paradise Lost

  • Romantics such as Percy Shelley and Byron viewed it as an anti-authoritarian text with Lucifer as an anti-hero figure
  • Epigraph from Paradise Lost by Milton encourages the reader to equate Victor with God and the creature with Adam "Did I request thee Maker from my clay to mould me man?". Victor as an imposter to the role of divine life-giver
  • Monster also seen as Lucifer "depraved wretch" and "demon"
  • "I like the arch-fiend bore a hell within me"
  • "I remembered Adam's supplication to his Creator. But where was mine?He had abandoned me...so I cursed him"
• Division of power

  • Chp 13 - Monster learns of "division of property, of immense wealth and squalid poverty"
• The Modern Prometheus

  • Shelley draws upon Greek mythology to parallel the story of Victor with transgressions of Prometheus who was said to be the wisest of all Titans
  • Prometheus was asked to create a man from clay, stole fire from Mount Olympus in order to create and maintain life
  • As punishment he was chained to a rock to have his liver eaten by an eagle which would grow back overnight - eternal punishment
  • Victor swaps the fire for electricity
• The Rime off the Ancient Mariner

  • Letter 2 Walton "But shall I kill no Albatross...or should I come back to you as worn and woeful as the Ancient Mariner"
  • Shelley wishes us to view Victor as the mariner - defies God like the mariner when he shoots the albatross
  • Like the mariner Victor also descend into a hell devoid of family
• The Bible

  • Monster mirrors Adam - deprived of paternal love and exiled from paradisal life just as Adam suffers from The Fall of Mankind
  • Shelley promote the idea that instead of women, men are tempted by knowledge beyond their capabilities and women are the ones to then suffer (Elizabeth and Justine)
  • Monster identifies with Satan - turns against creator and wages war on him and all mankind. Victor in position of Almighty creator
• Rousseau

  • Born in Geneva
  • Argues if man stayed in his natural state away from society he would stay innocent & benevolent. Society has the power to corrupt man by imposing suffering & inequalities
  • Argued anyone abandoned at birth was the 'most disfigured of all'
  • He wrote 'Emile' which tells the story of an orphan educated by a mentor who becomes an ideal member of society
  • R abandoned 5 oh his children to the welfare system
• John Locke's tabula rasa theory

  • When Shelley was writing 'Frankenstein', she was reading Locke's 'Essay Concerning Human Understanding'
  • He caused a shift towards the study of knowledge and the rejection of the theory that humans are born possessing innate knowledge
  • Locke tries to demonstrate that we are born with no knowledge and that we only know things exist when we experience them - Monster only become monstrous due to his rejection from Victor