Comparing and contrasting two characters from The Handmaids Tale

Sexual slavery and feminism are two of the main themes in Atwood’s dystopian book The Handmaid’s Tale (1986), in which she portrays a society called Gilead in which women are deprived of their civil liberties. In Atwood’s dystopian society most women have become infertile and the few ones who can still bear children are turned into handmaids, i. e. sexual servants who are brainwashed for the mere purpose of breeding healthy children for the elite. This novel is an account of Offred’s musings and her fragmented perception of reality.

It is Offred who introduces two antithetical characters: rebellious Moira and submissive Janine. Although these characters employ different strategies to either escape or accommodate respectively, they end up being subdued by Gilead’s regime, metaphorically losing control over their own body. I will outline both characters’ personalities, their subjugation to Gilead and the loss of connection with their own bodies. Moira is a rebellious lesbian who is admired by the Handmaids, but as the story unfolds, she subdues to Gilead.

Moira’s boisterous behavior is displayed by her actions and speech, which is highly colloquial, as when she states, “I’m borrowing five bucks off you, okay? ” (Atwood, THT, p. 32) and when she refers to the Red Center[1] as a “Loony Bin” (THT, p. 61). She constantly defies the Gilead system and even tries to escape twice succeeding on her second attempt and as a result of this Moira never becomes a proper handmaid. Even when Moira has disappeared from the scene, she makes a dramatic impact on the Handmaids, who admire her: “Moira was our fantasy (…) she was with us in secret, a giggle” (THT p. 17). But her power over Offred seems to cease when Moira appears in scene at Jezebel’s, a place in which improper Handmaids such as Moira are forced into prostitution: “I am shocked by them (the women in Jezebel’s) I recognize them as truant. The official creed denies them, denies their very existence, yet they are here” (THT p. 213).

There, Moira lets herself be used by men once and again in order to accommodate to this new reality, even minimizing the gravity of the situation: “it’s not so bad, there’s lots of women around. Butch paradise, you might call it” (THT p. 28). Thus, her once rebellious identity fades as she loses control of her body. In this way, it can be deduced that even the most rebellious personality subdues to Gilead. Unlike Moira, Janine is seen as a straight-laced, submissive character who is constantly trying to accommodate to Gilead, but in the end, she gets subdued as well. Her submissive behaviour is clearly displayed when, at the Red Center, she blames herself for having been gang-raped in the pre-Gilead society, as a strategy for accommodation: “It was my fault, she says. It was my own fault.

I led them on. I deserved the pain” (THT p. 62). Soon, the aunts consider Janine an “example” (THT p. 62) for the rest of the Handmaids. But whereas Moira is admired for her courage, Janine is depicted by the handmaids in a derogatory sense, calling her a “whiny bitch” (THT p. 98), and even “sucky” (THT p. 98). Their hatred for Janine grows when she becomes a spy for the Aunts: “We (the handmaids) avoided her when we could (…) She was a danger to us”. Similar to Moira, Janine ends up working for Gilead, although Janine does it legally.

She is able to bear a child for her Commander’s wife, but soon after the birth the baby dies: “(The baby) was a shredded after all (…) My God, (…) to go through all that, for nothing. Worse than nothing” (THT p. 192). As a result, Janine becomes insane as she cannot tolerate the loss: “she’s (Janine) let go, totally now, she’s in free fall, she’s in withdrawal” (THT p. 252). But her insanity is also due to the loss of connection with her body she gets “legally” raped, which comes as a revival of her pre-Gilead’s traumatic experience.

For her, losing the relationship with her body implies losing her mind as well. In conclusion, Janine had done everything to accommodate to this society: she pleased the Aunts, she became a spy, and she even bore a child; but she never accomplished her purpose of becoming accepted and, as compared to Moira, she is subjugated to Gilead, metaphorically losing both mind and body. As I have already stated, Moira and Janine present both differences and similarities. The boldest differences between them are their personalities and their strategies to either escape or accommodate to Gilead.

But even these antithetical characters have a similar destiny: their subjugation to the society and the metaphorical loss of connection with their own bodies. The implication that arises from this comparison is that were a society like this be established, women would not only be morally affected, but they would also lose their own identity. Another line of research worth pursuing further is to study the effect that a society like this could have on today’s world.