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(Atwood 186). The Latin sentence, meaning, “don’t let the bastards grind you down,”
represents the short period of former Offred’s history (Atwood 187). Offred sees the past and inherits the past memory from the words “on the wall of the cupboard”
hidden in her limited space in the house (187). Collected and reorganized by Gileadean historical scholars, Offred’s record is “not the first […] discovery” of historical documents in comparison with early documents discovered around the same
“Early Gilead Period,” such as “The A.B. Memoir” and “The Diary of P.” (Atwood 301). The posthumous materials constitute the Gilead’s society that produces Gilead’s spatial practice. The visual state of Gilead is reconstructed in Offred’s recorded tape, serving as historical documents to spot in the Early Gilead Era.
2.3 Representations of Gilead’s Public Urban Space
Gilead’s society, considered as a social product, is interpreted as conceptualized codes and signs in accordance with the second elements of Lefebvre’s spatial triad. To offer representations of Gilead’s public urban, I shift my focus from physical space to spatial codes that are represented in Gileadean society. The Gilead’s regime constructs a theocratic social network restores “the capacity of powerful agents to realize their will over the will of powerless people” (Somacarrera 291). The formation of power politics and spatial practice of Gilead are further explained in “representations of space.”
On the basis of second state of Lefebvre’s spatial triad, “representations of space” shows “conceptualized space, the space of scientists, planners, urbanists, technocratic subdividers and social engineers” (Lefebvre 38). The designers of the
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urban space identify “what is lived and what is perceived with what is conceived”
(Lefebvre 38). The space conceived is tied to the relations of production and to the order. The authorities, including Gileadean officials, politicians, and doctors dominate the conceptualized abstraction by enacting laws in the conceived phase of space.
Governed by Gilead’s law, Offred is not only the tenant but also the “ward” under Gilead’s law that specifies her handmaid identity (Myrsiades 232). As Mario Klarar argues “The Handmaid's Tale is clearly in the tradition of American dystopia,” the Republic of Gilead exercises totalitarian control and uses “military and secret police, manipulation through organized use of media, re-writing of history, re-education and terror” (Klarar 131). The regime constructs totalitarian theocracy, the conceived social codes, on the basis of the Bible. Nevertheless, the Bible is limitedly available to “the initiated,” the initial authorities and founder of the Republic of Gilead. Dorota Filipczak argues “the role of Bible depicted in the state is […] ambiguous;” it provides the “echo of cultural origins” that haunts Atwood’s Tale and demonstrates the “insidious presence of biblical images in the text” (171). The male aristocrats set the theocratic orders of naming system of the city and the functions of urban buildings so as to exercise power to determine the space of social practices.
Offred reveals the orders of society in her introductions to the “names” of the locations and “functions” of these sites. The names are the terms of everyday
discourse that serve to “distinguish, but to isolate particular spaces, and in general, to describe a social space” (Lefebvre 16). On the basis of Lefebvre’s spatial triad, the urban space incorporates social practice that shows the uses of spatial terms in
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Gileadean everyday life are political. To detect what the “syntax” governs the organization of naming system, Lefebvre determines that “reflection will enable us”
to decode and read space “on the basis of the words themselves and the operations that are performed upon them, to construct a spatial code” (16). The application of naming these sites of Gilead represents the space of Gilead’s society that is dominated and overwhelmed by political armed forces within the social space. The success of Gilead’s conquest not only lies in the armed forces and wars but also the “production”
of the space of the land that used to be called as “North America.”
Gilead’s theocracy dominates the “names” of buildings, public space, and squares in the urban space. Offred’s record discloses training back to The Rachel and Leah Center. Named after the biblical story of Rachel, Leah, and Jacob, the Center implies the other woman in an official marriage—the Handmaids, who serve as breeding vessels. Used to function as a gymnasium of the university, Red Center accommodates women prepared to be handmaids that are guarded by Aunts, the lecturers and mentors of the Handmaids. The gymnasium is nicknamed as Red Center by the handmaids who are required to dress in red gowns. The color red symbolizes blood denotes that Red Center functions as the public execution field in the public urban space. In Red Center, the handmaids develop a clandestine “whistle” language to communicate under the surveillance of Aunts and the armed guards, the Angels.
Red Center, regarded as a “shelter” of the handmaids, educates previous American women to become handmaid. At Red Center, the handmaids are required to study the
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Old Testament to become qualified handmaids as Bilhah, Rachel’s maid.6 Red stands for the color of handmaids. On the one hand, red symbolizes sex, blood, and sins; on the other hand, the color represents fertility, the rare but precious ability to Gilead’s people.
The public square at Red Center serves for “Particicution.” Particicution means participation in execution. The sentence refers to the ceremony of public execution carried out by the handmaids. The types of sentences vary from the genders, determined by the crimes of the sinners. As a handmaid, Offred once attends the Particicution, where a male criminal is accused of rape. The handmaids surge forward to the man “like a crowd at a rock concert” (Atwood 279). Offred feels “permitted anything” at the moment, “reeling” while “red spreads everywhere” (279). Besides the sentences punishing men, mostly political criminals, Women’s Salvaging is conducted in public so as to penalize women from upper class, the Wives, and the Handmaids from lower class. Women are dragged “on the stage” waiting “to be salvages” with “white [bags] placed over the head” (273-276). Women show “unity with the Salvagers” with both hands on the rope in order to “salvage” the women from the crimes they commit (276). The “names” of punishments and places in the social space address theocratic meaning and symbols under the regime’s dominance;
thus, Red Center “describes” spatial space of Gilead as well as Offred’s everyday life.
6 Quoting Genesis 30, Atwood introduces The Handmaid’s Tale with the scriptural story of Rachael’s handmaid, Bilhah. Being unfertile, Rachel desires to bear children for her husband. She offers her handmaid’s womb and persuades Jacob to “behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her, and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her” (Atwood x). The prophecy is adapted in Gilead’s laws to solve the crisis of low birth rate. Based on the reference from Genesis, Gilead practices the
“ceremony” of the intercourse between Handmaids, the Commanders, and their wives.
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Offred’s tape reveals the naming system that carries biblical meanings; her record also shows how political controls function over the stores, buildings, public spots, and private houses—the urban space. The two supply stores, All Flesh and Milk and Honey, are the only stores that Offred does daily purchases, a part of her duty, after the fall of the United States, democracy, and economic freedom. All Flesh refers to biblical allusion, means all human and animals in the Christian tradition. In the Old Testament, the phrase, “the way of all flesh,” firstly appeared in that translation: “And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth” (Genesis 6:13). “The way of all flesh” signifies human life is fragile and transitory. The
religious phrase denotes the determined death and the fate of all humans and animals.
In The Republic of Gilead, All Flesh functions literally the retail meat store selling fleshy parts of animals. Honey and Milk provides dairy supplies as its
“wooden sign: three eggs, a bee, a cow” introduces (25). However, Offred exposes the shortage of the goods during her visits to the stores rather than signify biblical
doctrines. She notices that rare and attractive oranges are occasionally available in Milk and Honey since “Central America was lost to the Libertheos” (25). Offred sees having these oranges make “a small achievement” for bringing appetence and desire to her handmaid’s life. Nevertheless, she is not allowed to buy the oranges and beef without enough coupons while her “companion,” Ofglen, “gets steak, though, and that's the second time this week” in All Flesh because of a superior rank of her master (27). Gileadean government controls supply chain of the goods due to the lack of
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food. Gilead’s totalitarian measures not only dominate the naming system and the public space of Gileadean everyday life but also constrain the availability of everyday supply. The authorities of Gilead control the demand and supply, the production of space through everyday life. The totalitarian regime reconstructs new social orders and formations so as to ensure the social stability. By means of political constraints over daily life in necessary supply stores—All Flesh and Milk and Honey, Gileadean government builds “spatial practice” of the new country.
The controls of everyday life over Gileadean civilian are also epitomized by human legacy in public space. The political measures that Gileadean administration takes on architecture and public space pervade into everyday life of Gilead. The churches function as museums and preserve “paintings” of “ancestors,” exhibiting
“women in long somber dresses, their hair covered by white caps, and of upright men, darkly clothed” (Atwood 31). The regime celebrates Gileadean Christianity and enacts laws to establish theocracy while the new administration diminishes
“traditional” Christianity that previous “Americans” used to believe in. The football stadium is reserved for the purpose to hold the “Salvaging,” the ceremony to salvage male criminals from sins including adultery, rape, or desecration. The priority of hospitals is to take charges of the female bodies and birth rate, albeit the doctors are excluded from bedroom for childbirth but staying in the Birthmobiles. The
constructions of city sites carry biblical symbols, function specific political purposes, and imply social practices of Gileadean everyday life.
The Walls outside of the stadium hang the dead bodies of the prisoned criminals
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for days “until there’s a new batch, so as many people as possible will have the chance to see them” (Atwood 32). Within limited choices, Offred is allowed to take the route toward the Walls. Offred and her companion, Ofglen stops “as if on signal, and stands and looks” (32). Offred and her handmaid companion routinely stop by the Walls with proper and “official reason” in their small journey.7 As a handmaid, she is
“supposed to look” at the displaying corpses so as to fear, but she checks out every time if her “previous” husband is one of hanged criminals. Instead of feeling “hatred and scorn,” Offred sees these dead bodies of the criminals as “time travelers,
anachronisms” for bringing her back to her life as an American woman (33), for the executed prisoners are sentenced of violating Gilead’ theocratic doctrines. Gileadean government poses threats by the armed forced censorship, rebuilds naming system and reorders the public construction. On the one hand, the hanged bodies arouse the public panic and anxiety of totalitarian forces; on the other hand, the civilians dwelling the urban space incorporate the theocratic and totalitarian social order and develop into conceptualized codes of the urban space.
Offred shops across the “heart of Gilead,” where “doctors lived once, lawyers, university professors,” but now “the university is closed” (Atwood 23). Located inside of the Walls, the universities used to preserve cultural heritage and human legacy, the place where Offred “used to walk freely,” but now they are banished for the purposes of Women’s Salvaging (166). The Library is preserved in honor of the
7 Offred is allowed to stop by the Walls with the official reason but forbidden from riding public transportation. “There’s no official reason” for Gileadean women, especially handmaids to “go down those steps, ride on the trans under the river, into the city” (31).
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victory of Gilead instead of providing written paper and publication to Gileadean civilians. “There are angels” statues decorated on the walls to the either side of the Library; the sculpture of “Victory is on one side of the inner doorway, leading them on and Death is on the other” (Atwood 166). To celebrate devout Gileadean
administration, the Library is painted in white and decorated with a mural painting of
“men fighting, or about to fight, looking clean and noble, not dirty and bloodstained and smelly the way they must have looked” (166). The Library function “like a temple,” signifies nobility of Gilead’s government, and deprives availability of published materials from all civilians (166). Offred reconstructs the visual state of the church, embodying divinity while ironizing the “mural in honor of” the wars (166).
She tries to create narratives in her tape despite inconsistent thinking and inability of writing; nevertheless, her attempts to transcribe the building represent holly symbols created by the Gileadean authorities.
Gilead regime controls freedom of the press and publication industry. Soul Scrolls, a printing store Offred routinely passes by that used to be a lingerie shop with
“pink color,” publishes political franchise, the prayers, for the upper class women (Atwood 167); the prayers, ordered by the Wives of the Commanders, signify “piety and faithfulness to the regimes” and help “their husband’s career” (167). The printout machines in Soul Scrolls “talk” with a “toneless metallic voices repeating the same thing” while printing out the prayers on the paper rolls (Atwood 167). The officials wives can “go inside to listen” the doctrines (167). Offred, as one of the pedestrians,
“can’t hear the voice from outside” since the consistent broadcasting serve women
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from upper class; Nevertheless, Offred constantly pauses at the store and listens to “a murmur, a hum” of the unheard rhythm “like a devout crowd” while “watching the prayers well out from the machines and disappear again” (167). The repeated texts printed on the roll paper fade out with the voices. The publication of prayers brings
“conceptions of space” that tends towards “a system of verbal (and therefore
intellectually worked out) signs” (Lefebvre 39). The conceptions of space epitomize
“representations of space” with the prayers published without readers. The purpose to publish is to maintain the totality of theocracy. The specific location, Soul Scrolls serves as a part of publication industry for the government.