Handmaids Tale and Frankenstein comparison

Created by: saffie2016
Created on: 06-02-18 10:06

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Handmaids tale and Frankenstein comparison
- Power
  - social engineering and social order and class
    - Totalitarianism (1930s) – Nazi Germany –the idea of social control – constant spying on each other – people defined on what their role was
    - Iranian revolution (1980s) – complete reappointment of role, women lost power over night – hierarchy according being male or female
  - class issues
    - Lots of class issues at the time, many poor people were seen as monstrous. The French Revolution happened and the English were unsettled and nervous.
- Science and Anxiety about progress and abuse
  - animal electricity - can you make a soul?
    - Animal electristity – Franklin, Galvinism, Aldini
  - nuclear war- cold war & fertility
    - 1986 (after book) Chernobyl
    - first test tube baby & court battle over surrogacy and abortion
    - "we are very good at letting the genie out of the bottle but not good at putting it back in" - Atwood
- gender - male/female - exclusion of the female
  - the battle of the male explorers and travellers vs the women stuck at home - men are the people who go forward
    - silent passive females
    - Mary Shelley eloped with a married man and ran away - not typical woman
    - Mary Wollstonecraft - feminist writer and authors mother
  - Women should be in the home - men be the ones to lead and work - same idea
    - anti-feminist backlash
      - Phyllis Schaffley = Serena Joy?
      - when they got what they wished for it wasn't good
    - taking it to the furthest extreme
      - satire - lets go back to basics and see what happens
    - speculative fiction
      - dystopian - society gone wrong
- Religion
  - Playing God - Modern Prometheus
    - Paradise lost - retelling Genesis (sometimes Satan has a point - not just evil)
  - making and taking life - moral repercussions - how do you put in a soul?
    - gets the best body parts - it all looks wrong
  - mono theocracy - religious law and regime
    - Sharia law
    - puritains ideas and laws
    - using biblical words wrongly
      - miss quoting and misusing the stories
      - naming officers as angles to give authority
    - going against God - not just the regime
    - Regan and the moral majority
      - TV evangelism
- Identity
  - loss of identity
    - education and social exclusion - without education you cannot define yourself
      - William Godwin (shelly's father) - Enlightenment movement
        human beings can achieve perfection if they are educated and nurtured - you can have the ideal human being
      - Rousseau
        noble savage
    - is Frankenstein homosexual?
      - attempts to by-pass the female and create life on his own
      - speaks romantically about Clerval
      - homosexuality was outlawed & Marriage was controlled
        Shelley eloped - right to chose who you spend the rest of your life with
        
        doesn't want to have sex with his "more than sister"
  - State takes your identity
    - no woman has a name "Offred"
    - rebellion - she does have a name and she attempts to keep these memories allive
- Language
  - use of the sublime as a language within itself
  - language is presented as a scientific tool
    - moster learns that language at the same time as Safie
  - monster believes that language can conquer aesthetic prejudice
    - even language cannot win out against looks
  - Civilisation vs Nature
  - How language controls
    - a scientific tool used to control
      - people have to use it in a certain way
      - used by regime and rebellion
  - "context is all"
    - historical notes - history is someone else interpretation
      - no such this as certain truth
- freedom and hope
  - master not being free / Frankenstein not being free (DOUBLE)
    - social exclusion - not being allowed in
    - when master has hope - Delaceys - master still denied hope
      - family
      - acceptance
  - sense of hope winning
    - Offred is broken
      - parellels with 1984 - Orwell
    - hope that Nick comes through for her - saves her
    - railroad that got the slaves out = Frail road - female rail road - gets the women out
  - freedom is subjective
    - freedom to / freedom from (Aunt Lydia)
- Justice
  - Justine / DeLaceys / Monster
    - class
    - aesthetics
  - slavagings / particucution/ Janine
    - totalitarianism
- child birth
  - Shelley's mother died giving birth to her - Shelley lost many of her children
  - Declining Caucasian birth rate in 1980s
- human nature
  - loss of humanity through the pioneering and progressing
    - shelly and friends = romantics
  - a voice for the marginalised
    - Offred is not a super hero - a normal person
      - shows us about the human spirt
- narrators
  - unreliable
    - multiple narrators - truth can be subjective
      - monster = horrible beast according to frankenstein - not the way the monster sees it
    - epistolary - makes it seem more real
      - Georgian realism
  - unreliable
    - one single narrator in tale - she is conscious of her own story and subjectivity
    - picked up upon in the historical notes
      - oral recording put together - maybe not in the right order
      - makes it seem more real
        speculative fiction
    - reconstruction
    - fichre autobiography - oral tradition
      - slave narratives
- epigraphs
  - subtitle - "The Modern Prometheus"- illusion to the prometheus myth
  - dedication to William Godwin - her father
    - man was born free and everywhere he is in chains
    - society corrupts man
  - paradise lost quotation
    - identifies the theme - tension between maker and made
  - dedication to Mary Webster
    - hanged as a witch in puritan time - ancestor to Atwood
      - first things puritans did was set up prison and executing facilities
      - she survived her hanging - so did Offred strive?
  - genesis reference - making clear the issues over birth
  - Johnatham Swift - idea of a satire
    - reductio abserbum
  - Sufi Proverb - rules
- genres
  - dystopian
  - dystopian
  - speculative fiction
  - gothic
  - science fiction
  - science fiction
  - gothic - modern style
- symbols, motifs, patterns of imagery
  - colours
    - red / blue
  - eggs
    - fertility
  - religious language
  - exploration
  - scrabble game
    - ideas of language
  - lightening
    - natural electricity
    - monster appears when there is lightening
    - "blasted" oak
  - moon
    - traditionally a feminine symbol
      - to do with cycles
    - associated with the monster
      - comes out when moon is out
  - eyes
    - symbol of their power - surveillance
    - mirror being like an eye
  - flowers
    - studies on victorian language of flowers
      - Atwood majored in Victorian literature
        novel as tool for social commentary
        
        architecture in the victorian style
    - tulips
      - metaphors for female private parts
      - red tulip
      - female sexuality
    - flowers on the wall a lot
  - Polysemy - symbols can mean different things at the same time
    - moon and fire
  - sublime
    - gothic
  - pastoral / nature
    - romanticism
  - light and dark
  - setting
    - harvard - loss of education
    - engalstat & Oxford university
  - doubles
    - frankenstein and Monster
    - Offred and Serina Joy
  - fire

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Handmaids Tale and Frankenstein comparison

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