Although Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is often described as a work of feminist literature there are no heroic, or even admirable female characters. Instead, the cast of female characters serves as an inventory of all the ways a woman can fail in the context of oppression.
Serena Joy was an advocate for the return of “family values,” she campaigned for women to return to the domestic sphere. If any woman should have wholeheartedly embraced the Republic of Gilead, it should have been her, but she is not happy. Offred even wonders: “Which of us is it worse for, her or me?” (95). The only thing she seems to take pleasure in is abusing her power over the other women of the house. She does have real power over them, particularly Offred, whom she can have sent to the colonies on a moment’s notice. She punishes Offred for stealing husband’s attention even through the tiny practice of digging her rings into Offred’s hands during the all-important “ceremony.” Gilead causes makes her hypocritical and cruel. Aunt Lydia did in fact wholeheartedly embrace the oppressive regime of the Republic of Gilead; she played an active part in its implementation and persistence as a matron of the reeducation centers. She goes beyond simply accepting the oppression, and actually adopts an oppressive role, and she relishes it: “we, sitting in our rows, eyes down, we make her salivate morally. We are hers to define” (114). Aunt Lydia is particularly repulsive in her active suppression of the “right to” for women, given that she herself is a woman.
Janine, a.k.a. Ofwarren, is similarly distasteful because of her apparent acceptance of her existence as a handmaid, even though this appearance is completely contrived. Though in another context, we might forgive her behavior as a necessary evil for survival, here as readers it is incredibly difficult. She supplicates herself at the feet of the regime. She does so literally at the red center “kneel[ing] at the front of the classroom, hands behind her back… her red face and dripping nose” and she admits, as to the cause of her rape at the age of 14 “It was my own fault. I led them on. I deserved the pain” (72). Later, as a handmaid, she partakes in the bloodlust of the particicution.
Moira, at the beginning of the novel, is promising as a heroic female figure. She escapes from the red center and becomes the handmaids’ “fantasy” (133). Throughout her time at the Commander’s house Offred fantasizes about the “frisky” Moira at large in the world, as a last remnant of the old world. We finally meet Moira again at Jezebels. She is, in a certain sense, freer than Offred. She can smoke, and drink, and have sex with women, she has face cream and drugs, she only works nights. But she’s not really free, she’s a prostitute, but sells her body for only modest freedom. She wasn’t supposed to, as Offred says “give in, go along, save her skin,” we, like Offred want “gallantry from her, swashbuckling, heroism, single-handed combat” (249). But even her spirit is broken.
The resistance of Ofwarren, our theoretical heroine, is potentially even more pathetic than that of the other women. She’s incredibly apathetic. She spends more time making excuses than being angry. She gives up resisting, to the point of being annoyed by Ofglen’s plans for resistance, simply because of a small sexual outlet, in the form of Nick. She, more than anyone else, has internalized her oppression. This fact manifests itself in her descriptions of the world. She illustrates the world around her in compulsive detail, her justification being that it keeps her mind from her oppression. However, these descriptions show her obsession with the color red, it shows up more than any other color in her descriptions. She describes the red of the blood-smile and the Serena Joy’s tulips. The smell of the flowers in the garden is red. She comments on the dusk-rose velvet on the drapes in the commander’s house and remembers the veiny redness of a leaf on the ground of the forest when she was captured. For her, red is the color of her robe, representative of her definition as being functional purely on a biological level, representative of her adultery and shame. That she should be so aware of it in her life shows how deeply she has internalized her shame.
Given that this novel is so often read as a work of feminist literature, clearly Atwood wasn’t trying to show that women are weak or inferior to men. Rather this pervasiveness of shame, and guilt, the fact that they all felt that they “deserved it” (177) goes to show just how debilitating subjugation can be. An effective oppressive regime can cause even the freest of spirits to surrender if given a small chance for release within the system, whether that release is control over other women, uncertain sexual relief, or forbidden pleasures at a steep cost. For this reason, the novel is just as humanist as it is feminist.