“I tell, therefore you are”: Identity in The Handmaid’s Tale. A comparison between the novel and the series

Abstract

This article compares the narrative representation, and more specifically the identity (de-) construction, of the main character in the novel The Handmaid's Tale and in the first season of the eponymous series. To do so, I draw on the concepts of transmedial narratology as elaborated by Thon (2015, 2016) and Ryan (2014), that stresses that some narratological concepts originally applied to literary texts (as for example storyworlds, characters, the distinction story/discourse) are useful to analyze narrative representations in other media as well. One of the principal means in literature to represent the inner world of a character is the interior monologue. How is the interior monologue used in both the novel and the series? How does this use influence the plot in both media? And does the medium in any way determine the use of the interior monologue? Furthermore, I connect the narrative representation of the main character to the principle of remediation and demonstrate that her portrayal is inextricably linked to the medium in both series and novel.