After reading dreamfall17's comments about the loss of hope in Children of Men, I did some thinking about hope in The Handmaid's Tale, and stumbled on the idea – which I presume to see, at least – that sex is the predominant source of hope in this novel. Constantly, various male characters in the book seem to be offering illicit intercourse to Offred – from the doctor offering to impregnate her (60-61) to the young Guardian who looks her in the eye, implying some sort of sexual possibility (21). Even though she does not take them up on these offers, they provide her the opportunity to imagine having the freedom to do so. These “moments [that] are the rewards†Offred keeps “like the candy [she] hoarded as a child†(21) – just the minuscule breaking of rules which permits Offred to imagine “what if†they secretly met romantically. Similarly, the way she can make “the full red skirt sway†like “teasing a dog with a bone held out of reach†is a source of “power†(22).
In this way, Nick and Fred provide similar hope: the pleasure of Nick's approach in the sitting room is a refreshing pleasure: “It's so good, to be touched by someone, to be felt so greedily, to feel so greedy†- almost as if Luke had returned to her (99). Every encounter like this provides a hint that the desexualized – or rather, desensualized – society of Gilead isn't inevitable, that there are others like Offred who want to have – dare I say – “sexy encounters†with each other and will go to great lengths to do so. Just like the scene where Fred hands her a preserved copy of Vogue and watches her read through it. It's not sex – but with the content of those magazines being what they are, it's still a “naughty†pleasure beyond just breaking the rules (157).
But the only actual “sexual act†regularly occurring in Offred's life is not hopeful. It is “performed... in a perfunctory way†(160) with only the emotion of embarrassment. So it's sex, but it's not sexuality. In reality, the true hope in the book is not the act of intercourse, but the act of lovemaking.
In reality, the true hope in the book is not the act of intercourse, but the act of lovemaking.
Is there anything that approximates love in the novel? I need to ponder this...
It takes a liberal definition of "love", I admit -- or, rather, of "lovemaking". One might say that flirting, or something to that effect, is the real emotion here, but I think I tend to conflate one with the other to some degree. To put it in another way, the "lovemaking" I mean is the effort of stimulating some sort of romantic attraction - not just sex or sexual desire, but not quite a traditional definition of love; something in between. I think the point is the construction of intimacy on the basis of acts other than "The Ceremony" as they describe it.