Revision Cards - The Handmaid's Tale: A Level, Themes

Revise the key points

The gymnasium where Offred is trained as a Handmaid provides a powerful sense of a bleak existence without the cultural norms of family, home and security.
The Commander tells Offred to ‘go home’ (p. 149). He means her room, which is symbolic of the way her existence under the new regime is diminished.
The Commander’s household offers a model for Gilead’s new concept of ‘home’; it is a place full of tension and deceptions.
Ironically, it is at Jezebel’s that Offred finds a sense of familiarity redolent of home – a stark contrast to her time at the Red Centre.

Themes

The Handmaid's Tale: A Level

In Gilead, identities are stripped away and replaced by functions such as Handmaid, Econowife and Guardian.
Handmaids and Unwomen are defined in terms of their body; a new identity is expressed through fertility, which is of primary importance to the regime.
Groups of women are labelled by colour, such as Handmaids, described by Offred as ‘bundles of red cloth’ (p. 137), or Commanders’ wives, in blue.
Handmaids are objectified – named only in terms of possession. ‘Of Fred’ becomes Offred – but she resists, refusing to give up her real name.

Themes

The Handmaid's Tale: A Level

For Offred, the most important issue is simply to stay alive; the streets in Gilead are dangerous and the ‘Eyes’ – state spies – are everywhere.
Offred’s other priority is to survive psychologically, after suffering the loss of her husband and her child.
The narrative uses remembered story to remind Offred of who she was before the state coup; in fact, storytelling becomes her chief survival strategy.
The love affair with Nick is key to Offred’s emotional survival; with him, she can experience love, which is banned by the regime.

Themes

The Handmaid's Tale: A Level

Children are very precious in Gilead; ironically, the novel presents ideas of birth and children through absence, in the shrivelled bodies of Commanders’ wives.
The only children who appear are Offred’s lost daughter, and the baby born to Janine.
Janine’s baby is later found to be an Unbaby; the environment of Gilead is so toxic that a normal birth is very unusual.
When Offred finally sees a photograph of her child, she realises that her daughter will no longer recognise her – she is a lost mother too.

Themes

The Handmaid's Tale: A Level

The return to ‘traditional values’ in the Gilead society is a deception which masks a bleak reality of totalitarian oppression and brutality.
The ‘boy and girl’ figures (p. 23) that Serena Joy knits into scarves can be viewed as ironic symbols of fraudulent Gileadean family values.
The idea that piety and faith can be ‘purchased’ through prayers printed at Soul Scrolls, is part of the grand deception of the state.
The most ironic sham perhaps, in a society with such conservative values as Gilead, is the existence of the brothel, Jezebel’s.