Feminist SF Wiki - User contributions [en]

The Handmaid's Tale

2006-06-07T01:28:32Z

Hexiety:

by [[Margaret Atwood]]

''I've heard that Atwood gets very annoyed if people call THT a sf text -- can anyone provide a ref/quote for this?''

PLOT:

Set in a dystopian vision of North America, society has been taken over by religious zealots who have founded the Republic of Gilead. In this republic, the bible is used as a means of repressing and controlling women for the purposes of breeding. The handmaid of the title is known now only as Offred (her real, pre-Gileadean name is never exposed), and her role in this new society is as a 'vessel' for barren wives. Handmaids are ritualized surrogate mothers who live in family households and provide a 'vessel' for the husband's sperm - any babies born then become the property of the wive and the handmaid is moved onto another household. In this environment, Offred dreams of escape and rebellion even as she submits to the routine imposed upon her.

OFFRED:

Offred is a woman who clearly remembers the pre-Gileadean society (which is essentially the same as late 20th century America). Seperated from her husband and young daughter by the Gileadeans, she and women like her are subjected to a training/brainwashing regime for the vocation of handmaid and then packed off to different households. Offred's dearest memories and the source of her ability to resist the indoctrintion process are the recollections of three important females in her life: her radical feminist mother, who seems to have been part of the 1960s/70s feminist movement; her young daughter, and her feminist, rebellious friend Moira.

WOMEN IN GILEADEAN SOCIETY:

Women are segregated into colour-coded roles:
* Handmaids (red) - women who have proved to be fertile, often also the ones who pose the biggest threat to the republic's repression of sex and sexuality. Handmaids are perhaps the most scorned of the female groups in the republic.
* Wives (blue) - live lives of dull, polite monotony, knitting, going to each other's houses to gossip, occasionally sharing the excitement of a birth.
* Econowives (multi-coloured stripes) - poor wives who cannot afford servants.
* Marthas (green) - servants.
* Daughters (white)
* Aunts (''can't remember colour - brown?'') - the women who run the indoctrination centres for handmaids.

==adaptations==

* [[The Handmaid's Tale (film)]]
* Opera

[[category:1985 Publications|Handmaid's Tale, The]]

List of stereotypes of female characters

2006-06-07T00:47:57Z

Hexiety:

Common portrayals of women in SF/fantasy that rely on stereotypes of gender, ethnicity, age, sexuality.

* woman as nurturing partner / sex object ([[Deanna Troi]] in [[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]; Josella in John Wyndham's ''The Day of The Triffids'')
* woman as nurturing mother ([[Dr. Beverly Crusher]] in [[Star Trek: The Next Generation]])
* woman as encapsulating Otherness; often monstrous evil, but also sometimes just the feared or inferior Other ([[Borg Queen]] in [[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]; hive-like matriarchies a la [[Frank Herbert]]'s [[Hellstrom's Hive]])
* woman as cold, powerful, threatening, dangerous (the [[Ice Queen]] myth, C.S. Lewis' [[Queen of Narnia]])
* woman as pandora: curious, lacking self-control, leading to trouble ([[Eve]] in [[Genesis]], [[Pandora]] in [[:category:Greek mythology|Greek mythology]])
* woman as victim, needing rescue (the princess St. George rescues from the dragon)
* woman as controlling bitch
* woman as sex fantasy object
* wicked stepmother (stepmother in [[Snow White]] and [[Cinderella]])
* hapless ingenue, innocent but sexually available to the Right Man
* the [[Black Warrior Woman]] - too powerful to touch; must be feared; may be sexually unattainable
* the [[Asian Warrior Woman]] - "exotic", alluring, and dangerous Asian woman with martial arts skills, undercover jobs, and frequent large dragon tattoos on their bodies: deadly but beautiful, with mad sex skills, but not attainable; may be good or evil.
* professional old maid scientist (e.g., Asimov's [[Susan Calvin]])
* spunky teenage girl ([[Podkayne]])
* the mother of the Chosen Boy ([[Irulan Corrino-Atreides]] from [[Dune]]; the [[Virgin Mary]]; [[Sarah Connor]] in [[The Terminator]])
* loyal female subordinate, such as a secretary (Duffy in Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man; Tildy in Pohl and Kornbluth's The Space Merchants; Eunice Branca in [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s [[I Will Fear No Evil]])
* bitter and/or suffocatingly small-minded, petty wife (see most wives as portrayed by Philip K. Dick)

User:Hexiety

2006-06-07T00:38:18Z

Hexiety:

Helen Fitzhugh, from the UK.

I'm new to Wiki stuff, and this, coupled with some shocking spelling habits (if dyslexia is an excuse, I plead it!) means any entries I make may well be rather poor. Please feel free to edit the hell out of them to spare my blushes!

User:Hexiety

2006-06-07T00:33:25Z

Hexiety:

Helen Fitzhugh, from the UK.