A Cage of Red: Oppression, Resistance, and the Weaponization of Tale in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

The novel has become increasingly urgent over time: a dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (1985), a chilling vision of a theocratic regime that reduces women to their reproductive functions. The essay argues that the subject of the novel is not just the horror of Gilead, but also the act of testimony itself. Making a story of subjugation into a tool of resistance, Offred's first-person narrative is written in secret and addressed to an unknown listener. I argue in this essay that Atwood holds storytelling to be the ultimate and most important freedom, by considering the body as a location of political control, the use of language and scripture by the regime, Offred's disjointed and associative narrative voice, and the public displays of violence that uphold the power of Gilead. The final framing device of the novel, the "Historical Notes" that show Offred's words have been preserved as a fragmentary oral account, establishes that the voice of the oppressed outlives the regime that sought to silence it.