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wingedbeastWe've gotten to Chapter Six and that's the third straight chapter about... a walk... the same walk... in which nothing special happens. The only thing that's out of the ordinary, for the life of the handmaids at the time, is the end of the previous chapter in which foreign tourists ask them if they're happy. And, even then, the response is perfectly ordinary.
Everything about this walk is perfectly ordinary.
It was perfectly ordinary for the two handmaids, strangers to each other, to exchange structured and required banalities. It was perfectly ordinary for Offred (though we still don't know either that name or her former name of June) to note the differences between now and then, because it's not like she has anything else to stretch her mind on. It was perfectly ordinary to feel the constriction upon every inch of her life.
And, now, it's perfectly ordinary for the two to want to take the long way back.
It's perfectly ordinary for them not to be able to get a full look at the sky but take it a bit at a time, to get quick bits of beauty. As Offred says "We have learned to see the world in gasps." Not in flashes or in moments, but gasps. "Flashes" would be just as quick, but it wouldn't put you a mind of the most basic and ever-present necessity of life. That feeling of only being able to sneak in the basic capacity to breathe... also ordinary.
A once-church and now-museum, wherein people can go for free to see paintings of women in long somber dresses and serious, unsmiling men. That, too is so ordinary as to be open for Handmaids to go in. That was the excuse to go the long way home, but they don't go in. Other than that, it's remarkably unchanged.
Again, I note that, at this point in the book, if you came to this book blind and were motivated to do so, you could still be convinced that the controlling power of this society isn't Christian. The first straightforward hint otherwise is that Ofglen bows her head in prayer as she passes the church. Offred thinks it might be a genuine prayer, but it also might be an act of required piety.
Then again, the same must be true of Offred to Ofglen. That is also ordinary. "How can it be otherwise?"
Finally, the Wall is ordinary. The Wall is also hundreds of years old, but it has been changed for practical reasons. Now The Wall is around a prison, so it has barbed wire, flood lights, even broken glass set into the concrete along the top. If you intended to get over this thing (though it was nearly impossible to get as far as the Wall), you were going to do so at the cost of a bloody trail whereever you go.
Another perfectly ordinary matter of the Wall is the bodies hanging from hooks set into the Wall for just that purpose.
There are six bodies that weren't there before. The text says this means there must have been a Men's Salvaging (which, at this point in reading, I would have to guess to mean ceremonial execution) which would have meant bells to summon men for just that purpose. The narrator notes that she must have missed them... become that used to them.
These bodies are dressed in white lab-coats, suggestive of doctors or scientists. Pictures of fetuses around their necks indicate that these doctors were executed for the ex-post-facto crime of having, prior to the takeover, performed abortions. Offred goes over the ways they might have been caught, usually by informants lashing out or hoping to save their own lives by throwing someone else under the bus.
Another possibility occurs to me that they didn't perform abortions, but couldn't sufficiently prove... certainly not compared to the need for an example to scare anybody else from trying to abort a pregnancy. After all, the example of a doctor who performed abortions being executed is more valuable to Gilead than a doctor who, after having been suspected, proved innocent (and could continue being suspected, thereby Gilead suspected of having a crack in their system).
Like Oceania in 1984 Gilead finds proof and punishment of guilt more valuable than the innocents swept within. Of course people will give names in exchange for the chance at pardon. But, the names don't have to correspond to any guilt. And, the original name-givers don't have to be guilty of anything. Guilt or not is of far less importance than the example of punishment for guilt.
Offred, as narrator, remarks that the examples are hardly needed.
I don't know about Atwood, but I'm going to disagree with Offred, here. We can whistle past matters of risk to the pregnant woman's life. (I almost said "mother", but pregnancy in Gilead is no certainty that you will be the baby's mother.)
Along the walk, Offred has noticed at least one Econowife. That is, a woman who's expected to do all the womanly duties, including the grocery shopping, the cooking and cleaning, the childbearing, and being a wife. Being an econowife means that your husband isn't rich. It means that you're likely going to have to be, well, economic about a lot of things, including any daughter's future.
Over at Tor.com, in the comments of a The Handmaid's Tale deconstruction, someone asked how, in future, Gilead expected to come up with more handmaids. Assuming that they achieved their ends, it's not like war will provide them an inexhaustible supply. And, there will always be couples that find themselves not conceiving. So, how will they do it?
If the handmaids are done by biblical standard, poor people will sell their daughters as handmaids. They'll essentially be slaves of wives who can, if they so choose, legally compel said slaves to bare children for their husbands. Assuming the infertility among Gilead is both real and temporary (I have my doubts), handmaids would be folded in with the Marthas (or rather vice versa) and they might escape sex-slavery for just being slaves.
Oh, but said young girls could, if they're very lucky, become wives... After all, look how happy Serena Joy is.
I'd say the example is very necessary for Gilead. Gilead has made sure of it.
I've said this before about the pro-life movement. They haven't learned the lesson of the fable of "The Wind and The Sun". A quick rundown of the story is that the two forces agree to a contest to see who is more powerful. In some versions, the contest is about whether force or gentleness is more powerful. The contest is to remove a jacket from the back of a man walking down the road. The wind blows harder and harder and the man clutches harder to his coat because it's colder and colder. The sun shines warmly, and the man removes his jacket.
I'd say that Gilead has given everybody who takes a moment to think through the life of a baby born therein a good reason to think that, maybe, that soul's better off just skipping over this life.
Maybe Atwood's considered all of that. But, Offred might not have. That isn't to speak ill of her, of course, she's just trying to survive in a world where all of this is perfectly ordinary.
Everything about this walk is perfectly ordinary.
It was perfectly ordinary for the two handmaids, strangers to each other, to exchange structured and required banalities. It was perfectly ordinary for Offred (though we still don't know either that name or her former name of June) to note the differences between now and then, because it's not like she has anything else to stretch her mind on. It was perfectly ordinary to feel the constriction upon every inch of her life.
And, now, it's perfectly ordinary for the two to want to take the long way back.
It's perfectly ordinary for them not to be able to get a full look at the sky but take it a bit at a time, to get quick bits of beauty. As Offred says "We have learned to see the world in gasps." Not in flashes or in moments, but gasps. "Flashes" would be just as quick, but it wouldn't put you a mind of the most basic and ever-present necessity of life. That feeling of only being able to sneak in the basic capacity to breathe... also ordinary.
A once-church and now-museum, wherein people can go for free to see paintings of women in long somber dresses and serious, unsmiling men. That, too is so ordinary as to be open for Handmaids to go in. That was the excuse to go the long way home, but they don't go in. Other than that, it's remarkably unchanged.
They haven't fiddled with the gravestones, or the church either. It's only the more recent history that offends them.
Again, I note that, at this point in the book, if you came to this book blind and were motivated to do so, you could still be convinced that the controlling power of this society isn't Christian. The first straightforward hint otherwise is that Ofglen bows her head in prayer as she passes the church. Offred thinks it might be a genuine prayer, but it also might be an act of required piety.
Then again, the same must be true of Offred to Ofglen. That is also ordinary. "How can it be otherwise?"
Finally, the Wall is ordinary. The Wall is also hundreds of years old, but it has been changed for practical reasons. Now The Wall is around a prison, so it has barbed wire, flood lights, even broken glass set into the concrete along the top. If you intended to get over this thing (though it was nearly impossible to get as far as the Wall), you were going to do so at the cost of a bloody trail whereever you go.
Another perfectly ordinary matter of the Wall is the bodies hanging from hooks set into the Wall for just that purpose.
There are six bodies that weren't there before. The text says this means there must have been a Men's Salvaging (which, at this point in reading, I would have to guess to mean ceremonial execution) which would have meant bells to summon men for just that purpose. The narrator notes that she must have missed them... become that used to them.
These bodies are dressed in white lab-coats, suggestive of doctors or scientists. Pictures of fetuses around their necks indicate that these doctors were executed for the ex-post-facto crime of having, prior to the takeover, performed abortions. Offred goes over the ways they might have been caught, usually by informants lashing out or hoping to save their own lives by throwing someone else under the bus.
Another possibility occurs to me that they didn't perform abortions, but couldn't sufficiently prove... certainly not compared to the need for an example to scare anybody else from trying to abort a pregnancy. After all, the example of a doctor who performed abortions being executed is more valuable to Gilead than a doctor who, after having been suspected, proved innocent (and could continue being suspected, thereby Gilead suspected of having a crack in their system).
Like Oceania in 1984 Gilead finds proof and punishment of guilt more valuable than the innocents swept within. Of course people will give names in exchange for the chance at pardon. But, the names don't have to correspond to any guilt. And, the original name-givers don't have to be guilty of anything. Guilt or not is of far less importance than the example of punishment for guilt.
Offred, as narrator, remarks that the examples are hardly needed.
No woman in her right mind, these days, would seek to prevent a birth, should she be so lucky as to conceive.
I don't know about Atwood, but I'm going to disagree with Offred, here. We can whistle past matters of risk to the pregnant woman's life. (I almost said "mother", but pregnancy in Gilead is no certainty that you will be the baby's mother.)
Along the walk, Offred has noticed at least one Econowife. That is, a woman who's expected to do all the womanly duties, including the grocery shopping, the cooking and cleaning, the childbearing, and being a wife. Being an econowife means that your husband isn't rich. It means that you're likely going to have to be, well, economic about a lot of things, including any daughter's future.
Over at Tor.com, in the comments of a The Handmaid's Tale deconstruction, someone asked how, in future, Gilead expected to come up with more handmaids. Assuming that they achieved their ends, it's not like war will provide them an inexhaustible supply. And, there will always be couples that find themselves not conceiving. So, how will they do it?
If the handmaids are done by biblical standard, poor people will sell their daughters as handmaids. They'll essentially be slaves of wives who can, if they so choose, legally compel said slaves to bare children for their husbands. Assuming the infertility among Gilead is both real and temporary (I have my doubts), handmaids would be folded in with the Marthas (or rather vice versa) and they might escape sex-slavery for just being slaves.
Oh, but said young girls could, if they're very lucky, become wives... After all, look how happy Serena Joy is.
I'd say the example is very necessary for Gilead. Gilead has made sure of it.
I've said this before about the pro-life movement. They haven't learned the lesson of the fable of "The Wind and The Sun". A quick rundown of the story is that the two forces agree to a contest to see who is more powerful. In some versions, the contest is about whether force or gentleness is more powerful. The contest is to remove a jacket from the back of a man walking down the road. The wind blows harder and harder and the man clutches harder to his coat because it's colder and colder. The sun shines warmly, and the man removes his jacket.
I'd say that Gilead has given everybody who takes a moment to think through the life of a baby born therein a good reason to think that, maybe, that soul's better off just skipping over this life.
Maybe Atwood's considered all of that. But, Offred might not have. That isn't to speak ill of her, of course, she's just trying to survive in a world where all of this is perfectly ordinary.
Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after time it will. It will become ordinary.
