In my first post on this novel, I immediately took the side of Luke, against what I perceived to be an unjust representation of men. I seem, as a side effect, to have ignited a flame war between RoseBlack, JackKerouacSucks, and the world. As a result of that war, in addition to the conversation that we had in class, I’ve taken the time to look closely at my opinions on this novel. As much as it galls me to admit in a public forum, my first impression was quite narrow-minded, and reveals the basic prejudice with which I read feminist literature.

(As a side note to RoseBlack – I think that one of the most detrimental effects of personal attacks in debate is the resulting difficulty for people to change their opinions on further thought without losing face to their attacker.)

That is not to say that I was strictly wrong in my first post. I still have little respect for Luke’s character (though I no longer assign his opinions to Atwood). The narrator clearly loved Luke (Seeing the corpses of dissidents hanging outside, she makes sure none of them is Luke (33)), and in my opinion that colored her reactions to him, giving him a more favorable portrayal in the novel than he otherwise might have. In the first stages of their relationship, the narrator was the second woman in Luke’s life. In competing with another woman, she must love more, love better in order to win the ultimate prize – Luke. Because of this, I think, she is more willing to see Luke in a better light, even after he has left his wife. Once she loses her job, she doesn’t go on any of the protest marches, because she must “think about them, my family, him and her. [She] did think about my family. [She] started doing more housework, more baking” (180). When Luke wants to have sex after she lost her job, she meekly finishes his sentence, “We still have each other” (182). She cannot seem to see him in a bad light, even though he does not resist anything that is happening to her, for the large part of their time together.
Even when he does resist, it is far too late. He has waited too long, been complicit too long, for his last gesture to make any difference. I would go so far as to say that the failure of their escape attempt is his fault. They lived in a society in which men increasingly had all the power (literally), and with that responsibility, Luke did nothing, until it was too late.

But in going back over my thoughts, I’ve realized that Luke is by far not the only character to deserve scorn in the novel. In fact, his ability to so totally undermine his wife’s way of life displays the complicity of the narrator, as well. She is very passive, throughout the book. She meekly follows the orders of Serena Joy, to get pregnant with Nick. She follows the summons of the commander, every night he calls her, and follows him to Jezebel’s without resistance. There are many more examples, but these cases come after the advent of Gilead, and so it could be argued that they display only her post-oppression psyche. However, in the time before, she displayed the same passivity. When her job was taken away, she “thought [she] should do something, take steps; but [she] didn’t know what steps she could take” (177). She is not a strong woman, by any means, and in being indecisive at that key juncture, she displays her willingness to accept what is coming, instead of face and resist it. She goes so far as to ask “What was it about this that made us feel that we deserved it?” (177). It is clear that her passivity stems from something deeper than the meekness ingrained by Gilead. In reading the novel from her perspective, it is easy to see the faults of others, instead of examining the way the she herself interacts with her world. I think that is one of Atwood’s greatest achievements in this book, is to make the narrator’s thought process seem normal, seem right, and lure us as readers into the same complicity and passivity that the narrator exhibits. The examples of Luke, of the commander, of the horrible things that men do, serve as a prod to encourage a deeper analysis, to discover the distorting lens through which the entire story is told.

The narrator is not the only one. I could go through the characters of the book, and find their faults, their role in the downfall of their nation. Nearly every character has a serious flaw, from Nick, who is “indifferent to what I have to say, alive only to the possibilities of my body,” to Janine, who submits to the other handmaid’s blaming her for her own rape, and finally admits that it was her fault (270).

There is only one character, in my opinion, who deserves commendation – Moira. She has her flaws, of course – she smokes, she constantly mooches off of others, she is overtly sexual, and doesn’t frown on being a whore in Jezebel’s – but their obviousness belies the depth of her character. She resists everything that is done to her, and maintains her attitude even through everything she’s been to before Jezebel’s. Every other character in the novel has been subsumed in the culture of Gilead, and is in some way responsible for its formation. They exist in a fog of selfishness, passivity, apathy, and only Moira stands out in resistance. Even when the narrator escapes, through the fake Eye van, it is not by her will, not through her resistance, but only because she has friends in the right places, and they act for her.

Not only does Moira act for herself, but she brings good around her in everyone she meets. When she’s escaping, she inspires people to take her in, despite the risk. In one of the only examples of actual organized resistance in the book, she is whisked toward the border by “people who didn’t like the way things were going” (247). These are normal citizens, not people in power, and the proximity of their mention to Moira further accentuates the quality that women like her can bring to the oppressive Gilead society.

Moira is strong enough to resist Gilead, without the vitriol that the narrator’s mother pours on everything she opposes. In fact, Moira is the feminist that Atwood believes every woman should be – strong, independent, but looking out for herself as a person acting against oppression, and not a woman acting against men. And that’s a feminist that I can support, wholeheartedly.