Literary Theory
This lens examines how a text constructs and represents gender roles, and the power relations between men and women.
What is gender theory?
This is the name of the totalitarian, theocratic regime that replaces the United States in the novel.
What is the Republic of Gilead?
A feminist reading argues that Gilead reduces women to this single function, controlling their bodies for the state’s purposes
What is reproduction (fertility)?
Women in Gilead are forbidden to read and write, which a gender reading sees as a way of doing this to them.
What is denying them power and a voice (language as control)?
This acronym describes a paragraph structure of point sentence, evidence, technqiue/ heory, analysis and link.
What is PETAL?
Formalist critics focus on these elements within a text, such as imagery, symbolism, structure and narrative voice, rather than the author’s life or context.
What are literary devices (form and technique)?
The narrator’s name is a patronymic meaning “belonging to” the Commander she serves.
Who is Offred (Of-Fred)?
A Marxist reading treats the Handmaids’ fertility as this: a resource owned and exploited by the ruling class.
What is a commodity (reproductive labour)?
A formalist reading notes that the ritual greeting “Under His Eye” works on two levels, as a pious phrase and as a reminder of surveillance. This literary technique creates that effect.
What is irony (double meaning)?
This statement, outlines the argument the essay will prove.
What is thesis?
Marxist criticism focuses on power struggles between these two groups, defined by their relationship to wealth and production.
Who are the ruling class (bourgeoisie) and the working class (proletariat)?
This final section of the novel, set in 2195, presents Offred’s narrative as transcribed tapes discussed at an academic conference.
What is Historical Notes?
A formalist reading analyses the colour-coded costumes (red for Handmaids, blue for Wives, green for Marthas) as this literary device, with red suggesting fertility, blood and sin.
What is symbolism?
Gilead sets Wives against Handmaids and ranks women by class and dress, which a Marxist reading sees as preventing this among the oppressed.
What is solidarity (class consciousness)?
Besides your contention, an introduction to a literary perspectives essay must establish this so the reader knows how you are reading the text.
What is a literary theory?
Historical criticism argues a text cannot be fully understood without examining this, as it both shapes and is shaped by the period in which it was produced.
What is its historical and cultural context?
Atwood has said she set herself this rule when writing the novel.
What is “nothing goes in that hasn’t already happened somewhere in history” (everything in the novel has a real-world precedent)?
In a Marxist reading, the Handmaids’ reproductive work and the Marthas’ domestic work are examples of this: labour that benefits the ruling class of Commanders.
What is exploitation (of labour)?
Atwood began writing the novel in 1984 in this divided city, whose atmosphere of walls and surveillance informs Gilead.
What is West Berlin?
Words and phrases like “in contrast” and “furthermore” that guide the reader between ideas are known as these.
What are transitions (signposting language)?
Unlike formalism, which treats the text as self-contained, gender, Marxist and historical approaches all insist on the importance of this.
What is context beyond the text (social, economic, political and historical forces)?
The monthly Ceremony is based on this Old Testament story from Genesis.
What is the story of Rachel and Bilhah?
A new historicist reading connects the novel to real contexts Atwood has cited; name any two.
What are Puritan New England, Iran’s 1979 revolution, Romania’s ban on contraception, and the rise of the US religious right in the 1980s?
Serena Joy is a former campaigner for traditional women’s roles who is now confined by the regime she helped create. A gender reading sees her as an example of this.
What is complicity in (or internalised) patriarchy?
Acknowledging the limits of your chosen lens, or an alternative reading, strengthens an essay by demonstrating this higher-order skill.
What is evaluation (counter-argument or nuance)?