The Handmaid’s Tale: A Prophetic or Confused Jeremiad?

“I think one of the things that happened in the last 34 years is that…too many people stopped taking religion seriously. And they stopped following the conversation, and that left a vacuum for other people to come in and kidnap that space, as it were. And [they] put in a number of ideas that are actually not very Christian.” 

– Margaret Atwood, Sojourners

What if America became a Puritan theocracy? What if America became Iran of 1979? What if the bubbling up of the Christian Right, the backlash to the Equal Rights Amendment, and the crusade against pornography in the 80s, weren’t just isolated events in America’s recent history, but manifestations of a suppressed deeper memory? Could America, like Adam, fall? Margaret Atwood invites readers to ponder these kinds of questions in her novel The Handmaid’s Tale (“Age of Trump”). 

Atwood dedicates her novel to her ancestor Mary Webster, who curiously survived her hanging on suspicions of witchcraft, and her mentor, renowned Puritan scholar Perry Miller, with whom she studied such Puritan ancestry (Stein). As a student of Miller, Atwood would have no doubt been familiar with the jeremiad sermons of early New England that Miller categorized as “a response to some present tragedy and a greater warning of tribulations to come” (Miller 33). Derived from Jeremiah’s prophecy, the jeremiad sermon thrived on creating a sense of anguish in a chosen people about their current suffering to instigate a conversion back to God (Moses). The sermons “could make sense out of existence as long as adversity was to be overcome, but in the moment of victory it was confused…it flourished in the dread of success.” (Miller 33). 

Tale has often defied categorization: dystopian or ustopian; science fiction or speculative fiction? (Atwood, “The Road”). Is it a satirical warning of America’s misogynistic theocratic future, or an appropriation of black slaves’ experience (Berlatsky)? These questions seek to discern the ultimate meaning of Atwood’s warning, but compelling responses remain elusive. However, viewing Tale as a kind of satirical jeremiad cracks open a new lens on the novel, and perhaps illuminates the very confusion at the heart of Atwood’s work: what is the root of the present—or here, speculated—tribulations and to what should we convert to avert it? 

In Tale, Atwood uses particularly excised and somewhat Puritanical interpretations of Judeo-Christian themes to warn against a future dominated by the Christian Right and patriarchy. Narrated by an escaped handmaid, Offred, Taletells the story of her life in the tyrannous Puritan-inspired theocracy, the Gilead Republic. A quasi-Christian cult has overthrown the United States government, supplanting the Constitution with an opaque, biblically-inspired canon that enshrines overt patriarchy, curbs all rights for women, and authorizes the murder of dissidents and minorities, even Christian ones. Rampant infertility, caused mostly by environmental degradation, provides cover for the regime to enslave and provide fertile women as handmaids to barren households, just as Bilhah was offered by Laban to Rachel, then to Jacob. It is here that Atwood establishes the bounds of her satirical jeremiad. Focusing on a terrifying, exaggerated, perhaps ridiculous future of the U.S., Atwood creates a sense of anguish and impugns patriarchy as the root cause. Yet that anguish, as we shall see, is often provoked by distorted religious imagery that so successfully creates a nominally Christian religious wasteland, it impugns Christianity, and religion too. Atwood’s warnings are felt, but the tepid spiritual proclamation muddles her warning, leaving readers without a correct diagnosis or path forward.

The literal wasteland of the new nation, the Gilead Republic, sits juxtaposed to the biblical land of Gilead. Where biblical Gilead is a spiritually resplendent and restorative region whose balm and spices cure many, the Gilead Republic sits atop a toxic wasteland partially responsible for the infertility beleaguering the Republic, thus requiring the handmaids. Ironically, just as Jeremiah himself pleads “is there no balm in Gilead?...why then has not the health of the daughter of my people been restored?” the Gilead Republic suffers in a resplendent land devoid of health and fertility (New American Standard Bible, Jer. 8:21-22). 

What else does the land lack? Food, it seems. Handmaids shop at Loaves & Fish fishmonger, Daily Bread bakery, and the Milk & Honey market, which are often empty and barren in contrast to the bounty their names suggest. Taken in context of Offred’s sardonic comments in her Lord’s Prayer we see the problem is not merely bounty, but nourishment: “I have enough daily bread, so I won’t waste time on that. It isn’t the main problem. The problem is getting it down without choking on it” (Atwood, Tale, 194). When taken with the enigmatic third epigraph to the book, “In the desert there is no sign that says, Thou shalt not eat stones. —Sufi proverb” (Atwood, Tale) Tale suggests a barren Christianity that offers only literal and metaphorical stones to its adherents wandering in the desert (Workman).  

Another salvific figure seems curiously missing from the Christian theocracy: Jesus. Offred references Jesus only three times: once, quoting her husband Luke’s exclamation upon seeing their child: “Oh, he said, oh Jesus, breath coming out in wonder” (Atwood, Tale, 126). Once in her own voice, in frustration to her Commander and rapist: “Jesus Christ, you ought to know. My voice was angrier than I’d intended, but he didn’t even wince” (Atwood, Tale, 159). And once quoting Moira: “Jesus God, Moira said. That’s enough. She’ll be here in one minute, I promise you. So put your goddamn clothes on and shut up. Janine kept whimpering, but she also stood up and started to dress” (Atwood, Tale, 217). On its face, this Trinitarian display reduces Jesus to a linguistic tool: an adoration, an expletive, an invocation. But it goes even further to subtly reveal the true nature of the regime: a “religion as a front for tyranny” (“Age of Trump”). Luke marvels to a Jesus who gives life; Moira summons Jesus-God’s life-saving power. Yet Offred curses Jesus Christ, and this offends not the regime leader: he does not even wince.   

But, of course, it is the handmaids themselves who serve as the outsized religious motif in Tale. Introduced by way of the first epigraph, Genesis 30:1-3, the story of Bilhah, Rachel, and Jacob establishes the narrative frame of Tale. By referencing this story, Atwood has the foundation her readers need to believe the dystopian premise, just as Gilead Republic has the biblical carte blanche it needs for its “Rachel and Leah Red Center,” its monthly state-sanctioned rape ceremony, and its female caste system. However, Genesis 30:1-3 is not the full picture of Rachel, Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah, nor even of the troubling Scriptural trope of raped handmaids, barren favored wives, and fertile rival wives, when remembering Hagar, Sarah, Hannah, and Penninah. With each of them lies a unique story of female power, desire, and even abuse. The least among them, like Hagar, Hannah, and Leah, converse with angels, defy priests and entreat God directly, or even summon power to name their boys with tidings of hope. These powerful religious women’s stories would have surely been known by the elect of Gilead, and by Atwood too. In their absence our anguish is furthered, but without their powerful stories, our hope and conversion remain lost.

And it is here where Atwood’s jeremiad loses its punch: the U.S. had a very recent and very real history of enslaving black women and taking their children from them, yet this is erased from both the Gileadean society and perhaps even Atwood’s Canadian memory. This blindness is particularly striking when considering the jeremiad’s prevalence among black preachers in Antebellum America (Moses). These real women’s stories offer a lived counter-narrative to Atwood’s fiction, and by taking their lives seriously, black preachers offered a more hopeful, biblically grounded proclamation. Without the biblical stories of Hannah, Hagar, and Leah, and real memory of slavery, Atwood furthers, and unfortunately, confuses the overriding sense of despair her cautionary jeremiad seeks. She fails to offer hope, a way out, or a way to reconcile the past, only furthering biblical illiteracy and racial blindness. 

However, it should be noted that by giving us the story of Offred, the handmaid, in her own voice, Atwood does offer us a kind of hope. Atwood sought to create a story of women as they really are, without romanticism (“Age of Trump”). While Offred might lack the courage of some handmaids, like Moira, or of her biblical ancestors, like Hagar, her sardonic commentary and voice itself offer optimism that all is not lost. She knows deeply that there is something spiritually wrong in the place where she lives, and her prayers and unorthodoxy suggest a kind of internal spirituality counter to the regime that oppresses her. 

Offred ultimately escapes to freedom in the Underground Femaleroad, leaving behind this story on recorded tapes. Yet, in this moment of victory, it’s unclear what we celebrate, and what vision to heed. Atwood has excised Jesus, and perhaps God, from the Christian cult. Atwood has removed hope to create despair for Gileadites and readers alike. Atwood has warned of present dangers through a radical future vision. But her warning is much too complicated and delicate to decipher, leading to a confused result. Jeremiah was not heeded in his day but was seen as a prophet precisely for having dug deeper into his religion and his country’s history. By eschewing religion, and ignoring America’s real history of slavery, Atwood’s jeremiad does not make sense of existence or provide a way out. Even as we linger in the tumult of today, it seems her moment of victory remains confused.   

Bibliography

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