Handmaids_Tale_Speech

English Extension Speech, pretending to be Margaret Atwood. Yeah Dog... Ciara Warsop. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I’d like to thank you for inviting me back to Macquarie University to talk to you about The Handmaids Tale, its social and historical context, and why it is still valued 20 years after it was written. Now I understand most of you in the room are too young to remember 1985 and its political climate, so you may ask what was the social context of this book' Well to illustrate this as best I can let me take you back to 1985. Ronald Reagan had just been sworn into his second term of office, and was still opposing the equal rights amendment, a bill that protected racial minorities, homosexuals and women from discrimination. The feminist backlash was in full swing, and a return to traditional values was becoming apparent. As well as this, many feminists were arguing amongst themselves on issues to do with pornography and the sexual revolution. Also many bills were beginning to be passed throughout government that almost reversed what feminists had fought so hard for over the previous 2 decades, and it was thought many civil liberties were being attacked. I wanted to write The Handmaids Tale in the tradition of other similar dystopian novels such as George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, each of which were written as a horrible forewarning as to what may have happened in the future if we had continued on the same path. In my book I like to think that I began to explore the consequences of the reversal of women’s rights. It was written in a time when feminists argued for liberation from traditional gender roles, but it looked as though they may lose, Gilead however, is a society that has returned to traditional values and gender roles, and the subjugation of women by men. Women in Gilead are forbidden to read, write or vote. Essentially I wanted to write a novel that examined in detail the intersection of politics, religion and sexuality. In The Handmaids Tale I write of the oppression of women. In the novel I put this down to the beliefs of Christian misogynistic men, who are in control of what is known as a monotheocracy; that is, governments belief in one supreme ideal, usually being, Christianity. This power has two clauses, one being misogyny among Christian men, and the other being the sharp rise of the religious right in politics. It was ideal for these forces to join together because both of these groups share the same ideals, and both use their interpretation of the bible as justification for their actions and policies. In The Handmaids Tale the bible is used to condition the women to accept their new social roles as nothing more than subservient, passive reproduction machines, this text also conditions women not to resist the regime. In Today’s context, and the context of the 20th century, the Bible has been used as justification for things ranging from slavery to the Holocaust. Examples of the oppression of women being justified by the bible today may be a husband discouraging his wife from doing a uni course even though she has the time and money because the ‘wife is the keeper of the home’. I just take this justification for actions through the bible to a level as horrifying as the holocaust, and add Christian misogyny to the mix as well. This misogyny and theocracy of course leads to the oppression of women. Offred sometimes finds this so hard to take that she dreams that she is in charge, or that her situation is all a dream, for example.. “I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.” In this novel absolutely every freedom is taken away from Offred, and she goes through her own delusions to make the situation bearable. Another issue that is presented in the novel with regards to the religious right is the right to religious freedom, or lack of it. In the mid 1980’s religion and politics were becoming mixed, particularly with Roland Reagan being such a strong Christian, it seemed at that time you couldn’t open a magazine or turn on the TV without Christian values being force fed to you. The policies that the religious right held were set to reverse what the feminists had fought for less than 2 decades before then. I personally believe that the separation of church and state is in grave peril, thanks to the pendulum swinging back to the right in Australia and the USA. In Gilead, the government is engaged in combat against resistant religious functions such as the Baptists. The power in Gilead believes that Christianity is the only true religion. Now before I go on I must define two terms that you may be unfamiliar with, the first being pluralism. This is the belief that all religions are equal, and each religion should respect other religions rights to freedom of belief and practice. At the very least other religions should not try to enforce their beliefs on people of other religions. The second term is Christian reconstructionism, or simply, a reconstructionist. These people are by far the most conservative of the Christian faith. They believe all life on earth should live under the rules set out by the bible, and that their form of Christianity is the only true religion. Now here is an excerpt from an essay written by a rather influential reconstructionist by the name of Byron Snapp. Hopefully this quote will give you an idea on how close some people’s beliefs are to the extremists of The Handmaids Tale. Snapp declares; “The Christian must realize that pluralism is a myth. God and His law must rule all nations….At no point in Scripture do we read that God teaches, supports or condones pluralism. To support pluralism is to recognize all religions as equal. Such recognition denies God's glory that belongs uniquely to Him. Clearly our founding fathers had no intention of supporting pluralism for they saw that the Bible tolerates no such view.” As well as this view, reconstructionists believe that all security and police services should be provided by local militias that are controlled by the local church. Reconstructionists advocate the death penalty for a wide variety of offences and that if their type of society was ever implemented in the untied states, and I quote Byron Snapp in this. “few people would be left to live in it!” This movement toward a new society along strict Biblical interpretation is frighteningly close to the dystopia I represent in The Handmaid's Tale where people were picked off the street without warning by church's militia, women were not allowed to read or do anything beyond their designated roles and disagreeing with the government was a capital offence. So it seems mine and many other feminists worries were not so extreme. I simply wanted to write a novel that would reflect what was in very real danger of happening. I thank our lucky stars that the pendulum swung slightly towards the left again, although unfortunately the pendulum seems to be going back to the right now. My work reflects the fears of many people during the mid 1980’s, as the religious right gained power. I guess I chose exactly the right time to write a feminist dystopian novel. I believe this is the reason this book did so well, it just reflected the political climate and the deepest fears people had at the time. It shows what would happen if the religious right’s values were taken too far. I am glad this book was able to reach so many people. I believe what keeps my novel from being only a work of propaganda for feminist ideology is the complexity and roundness of all of the characters. Among the male characters, one is willing to fight with the underground against the oppressive government and another, who is at the top of this male-oriented social order, feels trapped by it and secretly breaks the laws in order to indulge himself in simple, meaningless pleasure. The female characters may be oppressed, but they are not portrayed as powerless victims. I believe the novel's harshest judgments are applied to the Handmaid-in-training who sells out her own integrity by declaring that it was her fault for being raped as a child, and to the narrator herself for lacking the nerve to help the underground resistance movement. However there is a reason my book endures today, and I think I would rather my work to not endure, to not be relevant today and have a better political climate than for it to endure for the reasons it does today. Even today there are places in the world where there is startling similarity to my fictitious dystopia. In Pakistan, women's rights are non-existent, and many policies are that of Gilead in The Handmaid's Tale. In Gilead, the handmaids must cover their bodies and faces almost completely with vales and wings. In Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Bahrain, and similar South Asian and middle eastern countries, this is a must for women. Other Gileadean-like persecutions take place towards women. In Pakistan, women can be raped, and unless there is full proof that there was no consent, the man will get off scot free, and the woman charged with pre-marital sex and sentenced to a prison term. In Afghanistan, the police force has and continues to torture and rape innocent women for unnecessary reasons. This is similar to The Handmaid's Tale in that Offred, and other handmaids, not only go through the devastation of "The Ceremony", but also can be used and possibly even raped by their Commanders, and there is nothing the handmaid can do about it. If she speaks, she is usually not believed, and then she is sent away because she broke the law. The handmaid would usually die for making such accusations. My predictions of a monotheocracy were drawn from the cultural climate existing in the mid 1980’s. Today, I believe my work still endures, even after 20 years, because it talks of issues that are unfortunately still very relevant today. The uprise of Christian misogynists and their efforts to control and subjugate women, as well as the Religious Right's major incursions into local and national politics in the USA are paving the way for the regime I described in The Handmaid's Tale, again. As the Religious Right's critics, myself included, point out, the separation of church and state is clearly in danger if the present trend continues. All the fundamentals of the state religion in The Handmaid's Tale seem dangerously close to reality. I believe this books continuing popularity rest on the chillingly believable blending of modern religious fundamentalist attitudes with the historically proven methods of almost all totalitarian governments. Before I close I would like to leave you with a quote from The Handmaids Tale, I think this best highlights how a regime can come into our lives, little by little, through little changes that eventually remove our freedom, which I believe is something we are faced with today…..and it goes… “Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.” Without some sense of the unstable agendas of mid-20th-century feminists and the internal debates of those agendas this novel will not make much sense. Women who participated in the feminist movement from the late sixties and early seventies I found responded to this novel strongly, often finding it extremely alarming. Younger women lacking the same background, such as yourselves, often found it baffling. Ask yourself as you read not whether events such as it depict s are likely to take place, but whether the attitudes and values it conveys are present in today's society. Thankyou very much. Peace out.