Writing the Body: The Revision and Subversion of Traditional Feminine Embodiment in the Fiction of Atwood and Winterson
In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood portrays a revision and reclamation of the feminine body in the face of a society that has created a totalitarian ownership of the feminine form. In small actions, the protagonist Offred works to remain small inklings of possession over her own physical body and works to revise the sense of femininity that is being forced upon her under the Gileadean regime. In Sexing the Cherry, Jeanette Winterson portrays a subversion of femininity through a powerful, grotesque, strong, ugly, brutal, abrasive femininity that is exhibited along the planes of Dog-Woman’s feminine body. She is enormous, she is ugly, she is looming, she is filthy, she is a monster. None of these characteristics fit into the mold of a traditional performance of femininity, and it is by this nature that Dog-Woman possesses that Winterson creates a powerful subversion of the traditional characteristics and behaviors of traditional femininity.
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Margaret Atwood’s writing of the body through the protagonist in The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred, works to take on expectations of feminine embodiment and to revise that femininity; she does this through small acts of rebellion and reclamation of the body, the mind, and the self. In Sexing the Cherry, Dog-Woman takes the traditional notions of feminine embodiment and flips them entirely on their head. She disturbs, subverts, and deconstructs traditional notions of femininity through her appearance, behavior, and physical embodiment. This analysis aims to take Offred’s revision of feminine embodiment and Dog-Woman’s complete subversion of feminine embodiment and compare the two across the plane of writing the body.
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In understanding the ways in which feminine embodiment not only exists, but operates within the framework of writing and fiction, establishing an understanding of the conditions under which the feminine body exists in fiction, is imperative. This leads into the imperativeness of reclaiming—or claiming in the first place—the feminine body and the writing of it, thereby deconstructing, subverting, and/or destroying the notions of femininity and the feminine body that have been constructed through male writing or women, and replacing it with a truer, more intrinsic notion of feminine embodiment. It’s important to establish this foundation around the importance of women writing women in order to analyze the ways in which the deconstruction and subversion of femininity and feminine embodiment is achieved in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry.
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Hélène Cixous’s essay titled “Laugh of the Medusa” works along these lines. As she writes, “Woman must put herself into the text—as into the world and into history—by her own movement” (Cixous, 875). Woman must be conscious of herself, active within herself, and willing to state the nature of herself blatantly. The refusal to allow men to write women is a critical part of this notion, as well. As a part of the longstanding tradition of men writing women, there is an ‘anti-narcissism,’ as Cixous puts it, instilled within women.
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Men have committed the greatest crime against women. Insidiously, violently, they have led them to hate women, to be their own enemies, to mobilize their immense strength against themselves, to be the executants of their virile needs. They have made for women an antinarcissism! A narcissism which loves itself only to be loved for what women haven't got! (Cixous, 878)
Women feel an inability, or an aversion, to writing themselves because of the way in which femininity, feminine embodiment, and the nature of the feminine-masculine dichotomy itself operates. The ways in which these factors of feminine existence operate in our own world pertain distinctly to the ways in which both Atwood and Winterson utilize them in emphasizing the revision and subversion of traditional femininity and feminine embodiment.
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In Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale, the subject of feminine embodiment is a central focal point. The new nation of Gilead, a society in which women have been stolen from their previous lives and imprisoned in a system of sexual and reproductive slavery, has risen quickly to power. In this new culture, women have become nonautonomous, dependent, bodiless, and without identity. They exist now as vessels of the state, commodities, national resources. Over the course of this dystopian novel, Atwood portrays a revision and reclamation of the feminine body in the face of totalitarian Gilead. Through her memory of the time before Gilead and the language that she uses to talk about her own body and the bodies of those around her, Offred works to retain small inklings of possession over her own body and revises the notions of feminine embodiment that are being forced upon her under the Gileadean regime.
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A primary means by which Offred achieves this revision of her own body and of the expectations of feminine embodiment that are placed onto her, is through her name.
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I have another name, which nobody uses now because it’s forbidden. I tell myself it doesn’t matter, your name is like your phone number, useful only to others; but what I tell myself is wrong, it does matter. I keep the knowledge of this name like something hidden, some treasure I’ll come back to dig up, one day (Atwood, 84).
In holding onto her name, she holds onto herself. She keeps the woman of her past alive within her, keeps Gilead from robbing her entirely of herself. Through such small actions, she is able to retain her own identity, autonomy, some semblance of her own former embodiment. Moreover, it implies that there will come an end to the imprisoning, dehumanizing nature of existing as a woman, more specifically as a Handmaid, in Gilead. She will return to the sight at which her name, a treasure, has been hidden, kept for her. In retaining her name, in keeping it for herself, she maintains that Gilead will end, as will the nature of the embodiment that has been onto her. While Gilead is seemingly unending, in these small revisions, she maintains the opposite. She is able to work against their agenda.
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The Handmaid’s Tale presents its audience with a structure of traditional feminine embodiment that leaves women without autonomy, without self-possession, or the ability for self-creation. It portrays an existence of women as bodies operating solely for the purposes of this patriarchal society. “He looks at us as if taking inventory…As if we are something he inherited, like a Victorian pump organ, and he hasn’t figured out what to do with us. What we are worth” (Atwood, 87). In this particular moment in the novel, the members of the Waterford household are preparing for the Ceremony, a monthly practice in which the Commander is intended to impregnate the Handmaid between the Wife’s legs. Each woman a belonging, an object under the Commander’s possession, operating solely for the purpose of perpetuating the patriarchal systems that Gilead has in place.
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The novel brings to the reader Offred, a woman who has been stolen into sexual slavery by a totalitarian religious regime that seeks to use women as childbearing vessels. Offred, as a Handmaid, has lost possession of herself, her identity, and any morsel of autonomy that she once possessed. Feminine embodiment has been reimagined entirely to form expectations of deep submissiveness, docility, and a complete lack of autonomy or choice. Of femininity, feminine embodiment, and the state of womanhood, Aunt Lydia says, “A thing is valued…only if it is rare and hard to get” (Atwood, 114). Here, the audience gains an understanding of the expectations for a woman to remain utterly chaste, hidden, locked away within herself, unable to be known or touched by others—particularly by men. Of Offred’s own narration, the audience gains perspective on the ways in which women, as Handmaids, exist.
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We are for breeding purposes: we aren’t concubines, geisha girls, courtesans. On the contrary: everything possible has been done to remove us from that category. There is supposed to be nothing entertaining about us, no room is to be permitted for the flowering of secret lusts; no special favors are to be wheedled, by them or us, there are to be no toeholds for love. We are two-legged wombs, that’s all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices (Atwood, 136).
The nature of a Handmaid’s embodiment is intended to place them in an existence outside of the confines of true humanity. They are women, yes, and so they must remain chaste, however, they are also Handmaids, and are therefore intended as an object, a vestibule, a container in which a child can be grown for others. These expectations and natures of feminine embodiment, particularly for Handmaids, leave these women utterly and entirely without autonomy or choice.
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Through her own personal narrative, Offred presents her experience as a Handmaid. Over the course of this story, the audience begins to ingest the expectations and standards of feminine embodiment that Offred has become expected to perform.
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In order to assess the ways in which Offred works to revise the notions of traditional feminine embodiment that surround her, it is imperative to first gain an understanding of what such feminine embodiment looks like. In Gilead, expectations of feminine embodiment tend to vary depending on socioeconomic status. For example, the position of a Wife varies greatly from the position of a Martha, which varies from the position of a Handmaid, and so on. The Gileadean construct of feminine embodiment takes on a variety of shapes depending on the level at which it exists. As a Handmaid, the expectations of feminine embodiment that are placed onto Offred are performed through the physicality, voice, and autonomy of a child, or of a piece of meat, or of an object. Upon the event of her first illicit, illegal summoning to the Commander’s office at night, Offred expresses her own feelings upon arriving. “I stand outside it, feeling like a child who’s been summoned, at school, to the principal’s office” (Atwood, 136). Like a child, she does not own herself entirely. She exists subject to the whims, requests, demands, and interests of others above her. She is not autonomous; she remains an individual owned by others who possess power over her.
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In Offred’s first meeting with her new mistress, Serena Joy, we gain a perspective on the ways in which Gileadean feminine embodiment seems to operate within the Handmaid.
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They used to have dolls, for little girls, that would talk if you pulled a string at the back; I thought I was sounding like that, voice of a monotone, voice of a doll (Atwood, 16).
To be a Handmaid is to be a doll made out of flesh. It is expected to speak only when commanded, move only as directed, and to be without heart or mind. The expectations of feminine embodiment that have been placed onto Offred in mind and body expect for her to embody a malleable child, a toy, but one that can still produce; one that continues to exist as one of human flesh, with the human capability for reproduction.
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The physicality of the Handmaid is a significant aspect of the expectations for feminine embodiment in Gilead. In memory of a moment from her indoctrination into the position of a Handmaid in Gileadean society, Offred recalls a moment in which Aunt Lydia encourages an objectification of the self. “She said, Think of yourselves as seeds…Arms up in the air now; let’s pretend we’re trees. I stand on the corner, pretending I am a tree” (Atwood, 19). The knack for self-objectification instilled in Handmaids is a core aspect of the expectations of feminine embodiment in Gilead’s totalitarian culture. Offred exists as a tree; a still body, a nonautonomous organism, existent to serve the world that surrounds her. A woman captured in Gilead is, as a seed, an object by which the world around it may prosper. Unlike a seed, however, a Handmaid is made aware of her objectification.
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The ways in which Offred works to revise Gileadean feminine embodiment over the course of her narrative are consistently small. One such revision is accomplished through Offred’s use of language and perspective to direct attention to the grotesque, abused, manipulated nature of the Handmaid’s body to illuminate the ways in which this form of Gileadean feminine embodiment seems unnatural and inhuman. In the scene in which Ofwarren—also known as Janine—gives birth, Offred draws the reader’s eyes to Janine’s body; her physicality, her movement, and the collective perception of her body in this moment. “Crouching like that, she’s like a doll, an old one that’s been pillaged and discarded, in some corner, akimbo” (Atwood, 124). There is no humanity or autonomy or identity in such a portrayal of the feminine body. It is written—or in this case, narrated—in such a way that it becomes unreal. She is purely an object, and a rejected and discarded object at that. During the act of giving birth, the nature of Gileadean feminine embodiment comes more alive. Janine is simply an object that exists as an extension of Mrs. Warren’s body; a means of giving her an illusion of having the ability to birth her own child.
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She scrambles onto the Birthing Stool, sits on the seat behind and above Janine, so that Janine is framed by her: her skinny legs come down on either side, like the arms of an eccentric chair (Atwood, 125).
In this moment, the reader gains clear insight into the extent to which the Handmaid’s body has been made a tool by which the more human, more fortunate women may birth their children. Her body is an object by which a Wife may, in illusion, birth her child.
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Another means by which Offred revises the feminine embodiment of the Handmaid is through the ways in which she recalls the time before Gilead. Through distinct memories and recollections, that place and time continues to live on. By retaining that old world, even if only in her mind, Offred retains the notions of feminine embodiment that existed for her then. The small sense of autonomy that she used to possess and that body of hers that she used to own. One particular instance of this comes along in Offred’s first illicit and forbidden meeting with the Commander in his office.
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As Offred prepares to part from the Commander’s office, trying to piece together that strange, illegal game of Scrabble that they had both just shared, the audience gains insight into a part of her mind that continues to grasp onto memories of the time before Gilead. “This is like being on a date. This is like sneaking into the dorm after hours” (Atwood, 139). In this moment, the audience witnesses a failure of Gilead’s attempt to indoctrinate its citizens and erase the world that existed before Gilead seized power. Offred remembers the world she lived in before Gilead and, more than that, feels it presently. She experiences that world within her still, living on. By keeping her old world and her old life anchored in her mind, Offred keeps alive the society in which she had a sense of autonomy, independence, and self-possession.
It is through these small actions in both memory and language that Offred works to revise and reclaim her own body from the notions of feminine embodiment that have been forced upon her by Gileadean society and culture. The woman that she was in the time before Gilead continues to exist, even if only in minute ways. Through Offred, the audience is allowed a unique perspective of both Offred’s own body as well as the collective feminine embodiment of women in Gilead. Atwood’s writing of the body in The Handmaid’s Tale works, through Offred’s narrative, to retain small pieces of bodily possession and revise the notions of feminine embodiment that are being forced upon women under the Gileadean regime.
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In contrast to the Offred’s revision of traditional femininity and feminine embodiment, Jeanette Winterson’s novel titled Sexing the Cherry writes into existence the character Dog-Woman . . .