hello everyone I'm Jen and I make useful English Lit steud videos on Shakespeare poetry fiction literary ideas and more to help you become a litery expert so if that sounds like what you need make sure to hit the Subscribe button below so in today's video we are looking at the context of Margaret atw's novel The handmaid's taale which is arguably one of the most popular works of contemporary literature today and if you're watching this video is probably because you are studying it at school so I hope that this will be useful for you now one reason why handmaid's tellers hit the canonical jackpot so to speak is that it lies smack in the intersection between feminist dystopian political and allegorical fiction and the fact that Atwood is a master of stylistic Pros would qualify it as literally fiction as well this is really a novel where you can get the maximum bang for your intellectual buck so a great book All Around well it's definitely possible to read handmade without paying too much attention to the historical and sociopolitical fact ground and has simply appreciate as this cautionary tale against reducing humans to their base utilitarian value framing the novel within the broader contexts of second W feminism 1980s religious conservatism the rise of autocratic regimes as well as the tradition of dystopian and witness literature would indeed make our interpretation that much richer so having a list of real world parallels to the fictional dystopia of Gilead and handmade can also give us a useful framework to read the novel in an allegorical light which has always been an instructive approach to reading canonical works not least texts like the Bible which you've got all the allegorical Parables John Milton's Paradise Lost or even down to George Orwell's 1984 and William golding's Lord of the Flies so in the rest of this video I will be analyzing with reference to specific moments in the novel what I see are two dominant contextual threads that overarch handmade which are namely the politicization of religious ideology in 1980s America and the religiosity of political regimes throughout human history so with that let's dive straight into our context overview growing up in 1950s Canada Atwood was brought up in a cultural milar where more women started shifting away from the archetype of a full Homemaker what Betty fren in her feminist Mystique called The Cult of Domesticity and embraced the independent Persona of a college educated career woman atw herself had studied for a masters in doctorate at Harvard so even if she herself didn't identify as a card carrying feminist as reflected in her CI about the term and interviews she was definitely someone who embodied the Persona of a post second way feminism woman one who was independent intellectual and self-empowered as such the revivalism of moral traditionalist ideas in 1980s America about traditional gender roles the subsequent growth of Evangelical power factions which sought to overturn abortion rights and bared the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment and popular reception of the conservative Reagan Administration in 1984 would naturally have fostered anxieties about the possible regression of women's rights for someone like Atwood with the growing support of evangelic iCal organizations like moral majority and the Christian Coalition formed by pastors like Jerry fwell and Pat Robertson it became increasingly clear that religion itself wasn't so much the problem as it was the politicization of religion that undermined women's rights and drove a wedge between the two genders specifically pastors with a rapidly growing base of followers untapped a gold mine of political Capital by leveraging the ritualistic procedures and ecclesiastical markers of institutional religion which worked to get a lot of people in line with a singular belief ideas like a blanket ban on abortion even in the case of rape or incest the superiority of stay-at-home mothers over professional working women and the validity of patriarchal household structures would seem ludicrous to most of us today but back then in a sociopolitical landscape or wash with conservative support they seemed perfectly logical to a lot of people taken to an extreme this kind of social Dynamic reflects that often all it takes is for people to feel desperate helpless and unheard of enough before both men and women will agree to believe in and comply with the most outrageous of ideas and actions especially when served on a religiously packaged silver platter which is exactly what happens in Handmade by the way guys if you find this video helpful so far but I'd massively appreciate it if you could hit the Thumbs Up Button below and subscribe to my channel so that you don't miss out on any of my top grade lit study content going forward I'd also encourage you to check out my membership program by clicking the join button below if you want exclusive access to members only study content and make special video requests I'll see you there a particularly striking moment that illustrates the tremendously mindbending power of pseudo religious ritualism comes in chapters 15 and 16 When the euphemistically named ceremony takes place at the Commander's household where the commander his wife Serena joy and his handmade Offroad engage in their monthly intercourse ritual for the purpose of procreation what is in fact an intimate private sexual act is turned into a mock lurgical ceremony akin to a Eucharistic Mass where the commander is characterized as the celebrant directing the worship and his wife Serena Jo a sort of Deacon who assists him in the ultimate Act of consummation with his handmade so what supposedly a sacred formality is instead reduced to a utilitarian Abomination but the fake piety of it all is what makes the whole Affair so unsavory to us Outsiders readers yet so intoxicating to the Insiders in the story as the following moment shows what's interesting about the Bible Motif here is that it's a text only meant to be read to from it by him who was the commander but not by the handmades themselves it is deemed an incendiary device suggesting the notion of the scripture as a kind of weapon yet weaponize only when exploited by someone in power the Bible as a metonym for religion per se is not in itself a pentious force it it is when locked up and packaged as an ornate brass-bound leather covered box just a mere object that to the uninitiated seem little else than a decorative item yet it seems so incendiary precisely because of the cloaked off mysterious aura that locking it up creates around it and because well offred and her palous ilk are told that it is an incendiary thing which they should stay clear away from and who's to challenge the premise of whether the Bible is truly dangerous or if it's just as harmless as a bedtime story The contradictory claims about the nature of scripture then highlights just how arbitrary and unreliable information can be in an autocratic Society like Gilead where people especially the powerless ones like the handmaids are expected to Simply accept whatever they are told at any given point and to numb themselves to jarring contradictions despite the illogicality of the claims and indeed the more they are indoctrinated with the same rituals be it listening to the Commander's sermons or copulating with him the more these handmaids are expected to numb themselves with a self-d drugging internal monologue that suppresses all rational judgment even while the scriptural passages that the commander reachs out are doed and reappropriated for their own selfish purposes off's narrative however shows that deep down she retains a defiant streak that enables her to see through through the Monkey Business of it all despite her inability to speak against it openly to justify the legitimacy of the ceremony then the commander must read out these selected and redacted passages from the Old Testament with the idea that whatever ghastly action can be justified simply by deferring to so-called scriptural Authority a lot of which is made up anyway frankly the ceremony is at best a biological engineering project for the most desperate of married couples a sort of perverse IVF procedure and at worst legalized rape masquerading as a consensual threeson but by glossing over the ugliness of it all with the trappings of religious ritualism which the very Act of sermonizing is one example of this creates distraction enough for most people to ignore the nonsensicality and immorality of it all and when coupled with sharp reminders of the handmaid's material dependent on P that be I.E the porridge with cream and brown sugar which they are lucky enough to be eating in an environment where there's already food scarcity then that just reinforces that slavishness these handmaids would feel towards their commanders andt and the oppressive gidan state so what the specific but hugely telling moment shows us then is that religion whether it be its scriptures ceremonies or rituals is often not the root of evil acts in the world but rather it's the politicization and exploitation of religious structures and practices that lays be the human heart of darkness while the vision of this is hyperbolized in a dystopian light in this novel such an Impulse has historically played out time and again from the burning of Jonah Arc at the stake for her so-called heresy in the 15th century to the late 20th century lobbying of Evangelical conservative politicians in 1980s America in service of anti-women agenda like pushing back against abortion rights and the ratification of the erra which only exacerbated with the Electoral victory of a pro-religious conservatism president like Ronald Reagan in 1984 the mid 20th century was a period of sharp cognitive dissonance for a lot of people who either lived through or at least witnessed the aftermath of World War II events like the Holocaust the Bengal famine and the rise of autocratic regimes reinforced the dark truth about human nature how ghastly it could be when self-interest ego and despair were pushed to the brink and how societies could collapse into inhumane authoritarian regimes when morality no longer mattered in the public Consciousness this applied to both religious and secular States as evidenced in the Spurt of totalitarian and Theocratic States like stallin Russia in the 1940s and the Islamic Republic of Iran in the 1980s indeed in the final Historical Notes section of the novel we know from one of Professor pigot's conference papers titled Iran and Gilead two late 20th century mono theocracies that Gilead is designed to be an autocratic state but of course the irony is that is not really a theocracy as in the sense of rule by God because the religiosity in Gilead is as I've Illustrated in the first context point of earlier a sham pseudo religion used as a structural cover for the pursuit of lust and power and in fact this model of adopting an ideological super structure to legitimize the seeking of Base human desires is a staple across all autocratic regimes where the head of state being Hitler in Nazi Germany Stalin in Soviet Union the Ayatollah Ki in the Islamic Republic of Iran or even the ubiquitous big brother in the fictional 1984's Oceania will be the de facto God who calls the shots in every aspect of civilian life but if there's any hope history has shown us that such autocracies Never Last largely because the human desire for autonomy and freedom resides in every individual and despite one staying silent about their dissenting thoughts such thoughts will always be present growing ever stronger the more they are suppressed ultimately then Rebellion begins in the mind as we see at the start of the pray theza service in chapter 34 when offred reduces the solemn looking Commander to a base humiliating state in Her Imagination the military uniform with sober Black Rows of Insignia and decorations invokes the figure of Hitler who is almost never seen not in his Stuffle wear and swastika yet despite the outward solemnity of the commander he is promptly recast in the pathetic and disgusting simile of an animal fertilizing away like mad like a rotting salmon that he has to pretend to take no pleasure in the sexual act also suggests an animalistic inclination since only humans copulate for pleasure and reasons other than reproduction but of course sexual pleasure is Taboo in Gilead but we know from ofr's own experiences with the commander and his requests for her to have sex and play Scrabble purely for Romance that this artificial taboo goes against basic human nature under their intimidating facade the commanders and those with the greatest power actually craved to have their deepest rawest desires validated by another human being and just like those they deem beneath them in Social Power or stature these commanders and rulers have the same set of Base needs as every other person I.E eat sleep defecate and fornicate could use simpler words but YouTube is going to ban this video anyway stripped of their power signifying plumage these commanders are just another sex hungry priming slavish to the women whom they must fornicate with to achieve sexual satisfaction that they so crave note offer its biting sarcasm in her rhetorical question when the Lord said be fruitful and multiply did he mean this man which is especially satisfying for the reader because we see that the moral puritanism that the galyan ruling class supposedly subscribes to is nothing more than hypocrisy designed to shame women into mute subserviant but of course we know that the women are not mute or subservient at least not as long as they still have the freedom to think which offred clearly does in any case neither the commanders nor their wives care for moral Purity as the Willing participation in the ceremony and the commanders night outs with their handmaids at The Jezebel nightclub shows while the ANS are seen to uphold this tenant of supposed sexual virtue out of Envy Spite and crude self-protective instincts now one reason as to why handmade is such a refreshing and empowering novel I suspect is that offer's Vivid Narrative of remembrance reimagination and redefinition uncovers a surprising yet hugely inspiring Insight which is that sweet victory against even the most monstrous powerful political States can be gained entirely within the locus of one's mind and once you have enough people activating their creative defiant imaginations against the autocratic state and its perpetrators that is when a ground swell of revolutionary descent starts taking on a life of its own as this later moment reflects the notion that even Whispering obscenities about those in power is like a spell suggests that any individual as long as their cognitive faculties allow them to imagine and think things as they wish possesses the agency to triumph over their presses even if such Triumph is not manifested openly in legitimate structures of power indeed as offred reflects even the mere idea of a Lydia doing such a thing as waving a rebellion flag from the hilltop was in itself heartening and this is perhaps why Atwood has said that a primary inspiration for handmaid's narrative style is the specific genre of the literature of witness which is the kind of memoir likee writing where victims of trauma oppression or Injustice write down their experiences for posterity and documenting even these micro moments of mental Rebellion OFA demonstrates the power that one's mind possesses in subverting against external structures of Oppression and in spires others to see beyond their objective state of victimhood as these handmaids are shown to be in and to reimagine themselves as Victors by simultaneously reimagining their oppressors as brutish clowns and these ignominious failures with flaccid like three week old carrots ouch but you go go and there you go guys that's my analysis on the two main contextual influences that I see overarching the handmade's tail speci specifically on the politicization of religion and the religiosity of politics throughout human history I'd love to hear your thoughts on these ideas and how you view their relationship with Atwood's book so please comment below and we can get the discussion started for your next video I recommend that you watch my analysis on whether handmade can really be called a feminist novel which will give you a unique insight into the ideas of gender and Womanhood now hit that Thumbs Up Button below if you found this video helpful in any way so that the YouTube algorithm will know to spread it to other passionate lit Learners like yourself all around the world and that you can encourage me to keep making these useful stud videos for you going forward please also subscribe if you haven't already and hit that Bell notification below so you never miss out on my future weekly videos you can also consider joining my membership program for exclusive video requests and Essay review perks you can click the join button below to find out more and as always I will see you in the next one bye