Abstract
'Tu crois que c'est l'oiseau qui est libre. Tu te trompes; c'est la fleur...'1 says Jacques Derrida in one of his essays. Freedom is asserted in the cycle of defying and accepting one's roots. The Handmaid's Tale is haunted by the echo of cultural origins, as manifest via the insiduous presence of biblical images in the text. Rooted in the English language legacy of the 'Great Code', Atwood's book attempts to destroy these roots via the demonic misrepresentation of Judaic-Christian religion. In the dystopic world con jured up in The Handmaid's Tale, the author uses the possibilities of distortion to the full, thereby pointing to the dangers lurking in the process of institutionalization of the sacred text. The role of the Bible in the state depicted in The Handmaid's Tale is ambiguous. Locked in a special wooden box, it becomes a totem of the totalitarian system in every house. At the same time, it is 'an incendiary device', available only to the initiated; others are forbidden to read it. Oflred, the main character comments on this situation in a revealing way: 'who knows what we'd make of it, if we ever got our hands on it?'2 The Bible is a trapped text turned into a lethal instrument because the regime makes it generate oppressive laws. Everyday life in the state is based on principles whose authors claim that they follow the biblical model. The society fosters male domination and female object status, which is sanctioned by the patriarchal history of Jacob/Israel and by Paul's First Letter to Timothy. 'Let the woman learn her subjection' marks the crucial moment in the wedding ceremony. The long list of injunctions is rounded off with: 'she shall be saved by child-bearing', which points to the only acceptable vocation of women in Atwood's Gilead. The institution of surrogate motherhood is the state's main concern because of the plummeting birth rate in the families of the elite. The relationships within apparent triangles are to imitate the Jacob, Rachel, Bilhah arrangement, triggered off by Rachel's infertility crisis. In fact, this model is often displaced by the Sarah/Hagar conflict, when a handmaid happens to incur her mistress's displeasure. She may be sent off to the colonies, the equivalent of inhospitable wilderness with no merciful Yahvist
Published Version
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