176 Atwood, Margaret
[the owner’s] will” becomes shameful. However, the
passive reproductive body is sanctified. It is a sacred
vessel that can be used (and abused) by the leaders
of the land to reach that higher collective biological
purpose: the survival of the species. In the funda-
mentalist Gilead system, what is sanctified must
be protected; thus, the female body remains hidden
(all women wear veils when they go outside). The
Handmaid’s body is only to be seen naked by her
Commander, who, during an event called “the Cer-
emony,” has intercourse with the Handmaid in order
to procreate the highly hoped-for child.
The Gilead system of oppression, which is
defined by Offred’s commander as an opportunity
for women to be protected from any harm and play
their natural roles “in peace. With all support and
encouragement” is, in fact, a punitive system where
torture, both mental and physical, or death comes to
individuals who do not want to or cannot fulfill their
duty for the community. In the Center, uncoopera-
tive women are physically abused: “It was the feet
they’d do for a first offense. They used steel cables,
frayed at the ends.” Moreover, if a Handmaid, after
three trials in different households, fails to give birth
to a child, she is taken away; nobody knows what
happens to her—death is the guess. Never is the
commander’s fertility questioned because “There is
no such thing as a sterile man anymore, not officially.
There are only women who are fruitful and women
who are barren, that’s the law.” The hypocrisy and
cruelty of the oppressive gendered system and its
perpetrators lie in their daily criminal actions and
in the existence of an underground web of prostitu-
tion organized by the Commanders themselves. In
underground clubs, Commanders find alcohol and
women and do in the obscurity of a back bedroom
what the very system they have imposed forbids
everyone below them to do, men and women alike.
Sophie Croisy
HerOism in The Handmaid ’s Tale
In a tyrannical, hierarchical society where the free-
dom of a past life must be forgotten, every act
of memory can be considered an act of heroism.
Remembering the past implies suffering but pre-
vents hope from vanishing. The main character in
the text, the handmaid call Offred, commits these
acts of memory throughout her detention and thus
infuses hope from the past into the present. The
quaintest memory, the memory of “laundromats.
What I wore to them: shorts, jeans, jogging pants.
What I put into them: my own clothes, my own
money, money I had earned myself ” comes back to
counter the Gilead system of repression based on
keeping women oblivious, separating the genders,
and forcing blind submission to the rules. These
moments of remembering help her participate in
the struggle against institutionalized forgetting,
against the lies scattered by the leaders of Gilead.
What is more important is remembering her name,
though in this new order, she is given the name of
her owner. She is Offred, but she keeps the knowl-
edge of her real name “like something hidden, some
treasure I’ll come back to dig up, one day,” and she
projects herself into the future—a time when she
will be allowed again to wear her name, to recover
her stolen identity.
If remembering is a silent, individual form of
heroism in a system that forces forgetting upon its
human elements, acting against that system is cer-
tainly the most subversive heroic endeavor. Offred is
witness to different types of rebellious actions, some
individual, others organized by a countergovernmen-
tal underground organization called Mayday. When
still in training to become a handmaid, Offred goes
through a coercive brainwashing program meant
to force young women into a life of inaction and
servitude. Moira, one of these women “in train-
ing,” tries to escape any chance she gets despite the
knowledge that harsh punishment will come if she
gets caught. She goes so far as to threaten the life
of one of the Aunts with a metal prod. She takes
the Aunt’s clothes and her pass, and she leaves the
gymnasium pretending to be an Aunt. After her
successful escape, Moira becomes the handmaids’
“fantasy. We hugged her to us. She was with us in
secret, a giggle; she was lava beneath the crust of
daily life. In the light of Moira, the Aunts were less
fearsome and more absurd. Their power had a flaw
to it.” This act of heroism resonates throughout the
gymnasium and becomes another symbol of hope,
another successful, counter-traumatic action in the
midst of global trauma.