Under His Eye: Politics of Survival through Complicity and Resistance - The Women of Gilead

This paper explores Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments through a dual lens of intersectional feminism and deconstruction. My intention is the analysis of a woman’s navigation through the theocratic patriarchal society of Gilead, imposing systemic op-pression. Though current scholarship leans towards a traditional feminist interpretation, this paper will reflect a more complex explanation of the internal caste system within Gilead’s private female sphere. Placing an emphasis on the main female roles, Handmaids, Wives, and Aunts, I will demonstrate that the fractured power structure in Gilead chose to weaponize women through the discourse of biblical precedent and piety. I will draw from theorists, including Michael Foucault, Kimberle Crenshaw, Judith Butler, as well as various others inclined to confirm the destructive influence of power, compounded by a discourse of subjugation. Adopting the approach of close reading, my research will present the paradoxical relationship of survival and complicity; and comparatively, of resistance and ac-ceptance. As Atwood presents, a woman’s complicity does not discredit their agency. Both novels, The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments highlight how complicity is not acceptance of oppres-sion, nor is it the absence of resistance. Gilead’s structural environment complicates definitive ex-amples of such independent labels. My research will contribute to feminist criticism by providing the gap found in scholarship, while also illuminating Atwood’s choice to emphasize extreme ideological adoption and its impact on society. As Atwood considers her two-part novel a work of speculative fiction, rather than a dystopia, she sheds light on the paradox of religion and power, how survival grows from rebel-lious desires, and how blurry complicity can be.