Religion in The Handmaid's Tale

A Brief Guide

Colette Tennant, Colette Tennant

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781506456300
• eBook ISBN: 9781506456317
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Literary Criticism

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale captivates readers with its disturbingly prescient vision of the future and haunting insights into the world as we know it. Religion--especially elements of the Christian faith--pervades every inch of the world as Atwood imagines it. Gilead's leaders use perverse forms of Christianity to sustain their authority and privilege, making understanding religion an integral part of understanding Gilead. In the face of the inextricable role of religion in the novel, readers are left to puzzle out religious references and allusions on their own. From the significance of names to twisted uses of religion to the origins of the Ceremony, this book answers all the questions you might have about religion in this prophetic novel. For anyone who's ever googled a biblical precedent or religious phrase after encountering Atwood's dystopia, this essential guide explains it all and gives readers a fascinating look into the novel and its world. Read it and understand The Handmaid's Tale like never before.

1

Religious Significance of People and Place Names

It was the language again, I couldn’t use it because it wasn’t mine. He must have known what he meant but it was an imprecise word; the Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them, there ought to be as many for love.

~ Margaret Atwood, Surfacing

People and Titles

Offred

In the introduction to the 2017 Anchor Books edition of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood comments on the decision to name her main character Offred: “This name is composed of a man’s first name, Fred, and a prefix denoting ‘belonging to,’ so it is like ‘de’ in French or ‘von’ in German. . . . Within this name is concealed another possibility: ‘offered,’ denoting a religious offering or a victim offered for sacrifice” (xv). As Atwood explains in this introductory comment, the name Offred is full of religious significance. In the second part of her comment, Atwood indicates the name denotes “a religious offering.” Though the manipulative Aunts attempt to coerce the Handmaids into believing that their new role is heroic, Offred is a victim forced to sacrifice her name, husband, daughter, life, body, and freedom for Gilead’s religious society and its desire for children. Each month, she is continually forced to surrender her body in a rape described as a religious ceremony. Significantly, Offred is not associated with biblical women who voluntarily offer themselves and their lives, such as Ruth, who willingly follows her mother-in-law Naomi into a new life, or Esther, who risks death to save the Hebrew people from slaughter. Instead, through her role as a Handmaid, Offred is associated with enslaved women also forced to surrender their bodies and bear children—Bilhah and Zilpah, the biblical handmaids from whom Gilead takes the name and role (more on them later).

Luke

Offred’s husband, Luke, shares a name with the author of one of the four Gospels (narratives of the life of Jesus). The Luke of the Bible is the author of the third Gospel as well as the book of Acts. In the novel, we only know Luke through flashbacks. The word gospel in English means good news. It makes sense that Luke is named after a Gospel, then, because his character—the memory of his character—is a constant source of love and comfort for Offred. The novel takes care to tell us, though, that Offred’s Luke isn’t identical to the biblical Luke. The Luke of the Bible is believed to have been a physician (and is referred to as “the beloved physician” in Colossians 4:14); however, Offred tells us that her Luke wasn’t a doctor. As she walks past the Wall and sees the dead bodies of executed doctors, Offred feels “relief, because none of these men is Luke. Luke wasn’t a doctor. Isn’t” (33).

Serena Joy

Serena Joy’s name reflects two of the gifts of the Holy Spirit listed in Galatians: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:22–23 NIV). The gifts of the Holy Spirit are considered to be outward attributes of a person with sincere inner beliefs and a model for how people of faith should live. Serena is derived from the word serene, which means peaceful or calm. Atwood was being darkly humorous when she chose this name because Serena Joy is anything but peaceful and joyful, and the combination of the two names is incredibly ironic. At their first meeting, when Offred arrives for her new assignment, she looks at Serena Joy’s face and sees nothing like a look of joy: “Two lines led downward from the corners of her mouth; between them was her chin, clenched like a fist” (15). Throughout the novel, she is far from peaceful or joyful as she cries during the Ceremony, intentionally causes Offred pain, and seems filled with sorrow and anger at her lack of children and her assigned role in life.

Before the establishment of Gilead, she had been a TV evangelist and a well-known speaker who starred in a television program called the Growing Souls Gospel Hour, which suggests an origin for her religiously significant name. Offred ridicules these names that fit her Commander’s wife so poorly: “Serena Joy, what a stupid name. It’s like something you’d put on your hair, in the other time, the time before, to straighten it. Serena Joy, it would say on the bottle, with a woman’s head in cut-paper silhouette on a pink oval background with scalloped gold edges” (45). Here the image of the “cut-paper silhouette” suggests Serena Joy’s name doesn’t have any substance because it doesn’t reflect her actual identity.

The Aunts

The Aunts, who train and control the Handmaids, all have names taken from women in the Bible. It’s fitting that Gilead would choose to rename female authority figures with biblical names as it continually uses the Bible as a means of asserting its right to the authority and power it has claimed.

Aunt Elizabeth

Aunt Elizabeth shares a name with the biblical Elizabeth, whose story is told in the Gospel of Luke. As the story goes, Elizabeth and her husband, Zechariah, are blessed with a child in their old age. She gives birth to John the Baptist, who will later baptize Jesus. She is pregnant at the same time as her cousin, Mary, the mother of Jesus. Atwood’s choice of Elizabeth makes sense in that the biblical character Elizabeth’s importance hinges on the significance of pregnancy and childbirth. Also, the biblical Elizabeth gives birth to a child after a long period of infertility, much as Gilead creates the role of Handmaids due to an incredible decline in birthrates and a need for children.

Elizabeth’s story is recorded in the first chapter of Luke. According to Luke, when Mary comes to visit her, Elizabeth’s baby leaps in her womb. The first words we hear Elizabeth speak are a blessing for the pregnant Mary: “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb!” (Luke 1:42). This blessing is the source of the traditional greeting the Handmaids give each other when they meet: “Blessed be the fruit.” Similarly, these blessings sound like the exhortations Aunt Elizabeth and the other Aunts give to the Handmaids. The Aunts’ pep talks to the Handmaids seem like awful parodies of the blessings surrounding Elizabeth and Mary and their miraculous pregnancies and births. Offred recalls these so-called blessings from her time in the training center: “For lunch it was the Beatitudes. Blessed be this, blessed be that. They played it from a tape, so not even an Aunt would be guilty of the sin of reading” (89).

One of Aunt Elizabeth’s scenes connected to childbirth occurs during Ofwarren’s labor when Aunt Elizabeth plays the role of midwife. She helps bring about the birth of this baby, just as Elizabeth in the Bible announces the forthcoming birth of Mary’s child. Ironically, the biblical Elizabeth (and her husband, Zechariah) are called “righteous before God” (Luke 1:6). While the Aunts in The Handmaid’s Tale claim to have a righteous power that allows them to act as spiritual guides for the Handmaids, they actually abuse and manipulate the women under their control.

Aunt Lydia

In the book of Acts, Paul, who is called the apostle to the gentiles, baptizes a woman named Lydia on his second missionary journey to what includes modern-day Europe. Lydia is the first person converted to Christianity in Europe. In The Handmaid’s Tale, considering the enthusiasm the Aunts show for their role, they must have been among the early “converts” in the Republic of Gilead.

The biblical Lydia was a seller of purple cloth, and as such would have interacted with the wealthy and powerful of her day: “One of those listening was a woman from the city of Thyatira named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. She was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message. When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. ‘If you consider me a believer in the Lord,’ she said, ‘come and stay at my house.’ And she persuaded us” (Acts 16:14–15 NIV). Similarly, Aunt Lydia has worked her way into a powerful position in Gilead. She is one of the most frightening characters in the book as she fervently cheerleads the Handmaids on to their assigned purpose.

Atwood’s Aunt Lydia is a parody of the biblical Lydia, a sincere convert to Christianity. Aunt Lydia misquotes the Bible almost any time she tries to reference it. For instance, while she’s waiting for Ofglen, Offred remembers one of Aunt Lydia’s lessons: “I walk to the corner and wait. I used to be bad at waiting. They also serve who only stand and wait, said Aunt Lydia. She made us memorize it” (18). Aunt Lydia seems to believe this is a biblical maxim she’s teaching her Handmaids, but the line actually comes from John Milton’s poem “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent.”

Aunt Lydia also intentionally misquotes the Bible, ­trying—and failing—to be humorous. At the beginning of chapter 12, as she bathes, Offred recalls Aunt Lydia’s warning about wearing their veil: “Hair must be long but covered. Aunt Lydia said: Saint Paul said it’s either that or a close shave. She laughed, that held-back neighing of hers, as if she’d told a joke” (62). Here, Aunt Lydia misquotes a verse from Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians: “But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is the same as having her head shaved” (1 Corinthians 11:5 NIV).

Aunt Lydia misuses Scripture by altering verses to suit her own ends. Offred is astute enough to notice the omission: “You must cultivate poverty of spirit. Blessed are the meek. She [Aunt Lydia] didn’t go on to say anything about inheriting the earth” (64). Here, Aunt Lydia has shortened this Beatitude, leaving out any mention of the reward given in the second half. The full Beatitude reads “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5 NIV).

Aunt Sara

While Aunt Sara isn’t a major character in the novel, her name has a significant biblical connection. In the book of Genesis, Sarah is the wife of the biblical patriarch Abraham. God promises Abraham his descendants will be as numerous as the stars: “I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies” (Genesis 22:17 NIV). Despite this promise, Genesis records that Abraham and Sarah are childless until they are very old. Sarah doubts God will fulfill his promise through her own pregnancy. She sends her handmaid, Hagar, to Abraham to produce a child: “Now Sarai Abram’s wife bare him no children: and she had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai” (Genesis 16:1–2). Abraham and Hagar have a son, Ishmael. Sarah, however, eventually becomes pregnant with Isaac, whose son Jacob fathers the twelve tribes of Israel. Jacob’s wives, Rachel and Leah, also follow this practice for gaining more children later in the book of Genesis, and the Rachel and Leah Center where the Handmaids are trained in the novel is named for them.

Titles

The Marthas

Every woman in Gilead’s housekeeping class has the same title: Martha. Just as the Commander’s title becomes his name, so the housekeepers have a title as their name. The designers of Gilead’s society picked a fitting name for this group of women since the character Martha in the New Testament (described in the Gospels of Luke and John) is especially known for fretting over housework.

In the Bible, Jesus visits Martha, her sister Mary, and their brother Lazarus. Mary sits at Jesus’s feet and listens to every word he says while Martha complains about her sister not helping her do housework:

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:38–42 NIV)

The Gilead regime uses one woman’s story as a way to identify the prescribed ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Introduction
• Religious Significance of People and Place Names
• Biblical Allusions
• Religion Gone Awry
• Gender and Politics
• The Handmaid’s Tale on TV
• Acknowledgment
• Index