Exploring Oppression in 'Disgrace' and 'The Handmaid’s Tale'

Introduction

'The Handmaid's Tale' and 'Disgrace' focus on oppression’s grip on the human mind and spirit and how this affects hope. In Disgrace, Coetzee’s characters are more successful in suppressing the individuality and identity of women as he explicitly uses the female body to express male frustrations (and oppressions) of ageing and race and filters their voices through David, whilst Atwood presents a more hopeful picture in The Handmaid’s Tale, allowing Offred to share her thoughts and possibly escape her oppression as a handmaid, maintaining her individuality and a sense of freedom. Atwood may create this sense of hope as she herself is female and a Gilead-like society seemed increasingly likely from real events happening around her at the time. Today, this message of hope in The Handmaid’s Tale is even stronger in light of Trump’s, a Pieixoto or Commander-like figure, election and other events as highlighted by her writing a more positive sequel, The Testaments, where Offred’s escape is confirmed. On the other hand, as a white male in post-apartheid South Africa like David Lurie, Coetzee may use Disgrace to release a sense of guilt, making the book bleaker and less hopeful. Both also suggest that the most dangerous oppression is of the mind, not physical, and explore how this can be resisted.

The Power of Narrative and Voice

In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood crafts a story that is Offred’s own. This gives her a voice and a sense of freedom that Melanie and Lucy in Disgrace do not have, whilst also acting as a coping mechanism for trauma and mental oppression like David’s dogs and opera. However, this sense of freedom is somewhat undermined by the fact that the male academics reorder her story, and her thoughts, almost invading her mind, ‘it was up to Professor Wade and myself to arrange the blocks of speech in the order in which they appeared to go... all such arrangements are based on guesswork,’ Tolan suggests. ‘If Offred’s narrative is reassembled and appropriated by the chauvinistic Pieixoto... then Offred’s development into a social agent through speaking out is drawn into question.’ However, as Staels directly counters, ‘Offred’s tale is the personal expression of insights that move beyond... the identity of handmaid-slave that the colonizing power imposed on her,’ as Offred’s voice and narrative can still be heard and these words are not only discovered and wondered about by readers today, but even centuries in the future in the Historical Notes, ‘did our narrator reach the outside world safely and build a new life for herself?’

As Atwood says herself, ‘Offred records her story as best as she can; then she hides it, trusting that it may be discovered later, by someone who is free to understand and share it. This is an act of hope: every recorded story implies a future reader,’ in 2017 when this message of hope is perhaps even more important. This gives Offred a sense of immortality, and the power and freedom inherent in this, that overpowers the male academics’ attempt to suppress her (ironically while trying to do the opposite) in their detached historical interpretation of her after her death, as Staels emphasises. Maybe move here Further, in The Testaments, the far-reaching impact of Offred’s tapes is seen as they are shared among the Mayday and used as a means of helping and inspiring women, making the ending of The Handmaid’s Tale more positive and so, hopeful. In Disgrace, Azoulay also reflects on how women are buried and oppressed in the physical text, stating that ‘one must recover and retransmit the two heroines' [Melanie and Lucy’s] testimony, beyond the language of the narrator.’ Yet, the voice and narrative of women is buried further in Disgrace than in The Handmaid’s Tale, with the narration ‘so close to that of Lurie that it is sometimes difficult to know when Lurie is speaking, and when the narrator.’ Through Lucy’s, his daughter who is more important to him, voice being clearer, and the Historical Notes, both Coetzee and Atwood suggest any power or voice women have and how they can overcome oppression in the texts is through men, though this effect is greater in Disgrace.

Furthermore, though Offred’s individuality is maintained by the very writing of her story, this freedom is limited by the fact that her story is not written but spoken, reminding the readers that women in Gilead are not allowed to read or write, oppressing the mind. In fact, it initially (as The Handmaid’s Tale is ultimately hopeful) seems Gilead and the Commander almost cause women to regress. This is shown through Offred and the Commander’s illicit games of Scrabble, a children’s word game. Though in a society where words are used to oppress and expressing them is forbidden, playing with them is also thrilling, both for Offred and the Commander, giving them moments of freedom missing in Disgrace. The words Offred plays give an insight into her situation and again show Offred’s sensitivity to language, ‘lay is always passive. Even men used to say, I’d like to get laid.

Though sometimes they said, I’d like to lay her.’ This sensitivity makes Offred aware of the inequalities in language, ‘fraternise means to behave like a brother. Luke told me that. He said there was no corresponding word that meant to behave like a sister. Sororise, it would have to be, he said,’ and even able to silently defy the Commander by playing words like ‘zygote’ (symbolising Gilead’s obsession with fertilisation and how the handmaids are at the brunt of this) and ‘quince’ (linking to Eve’s rebellion or transgression) against him, assuming a sense of power and so, sending out a message of hope. Interestingly, Professor Maryann Crescent Moon ‘sororises,’ or rather fraternises, with the male academics, physically handing the microphone and stage over to Pieixoto rather than identifying with Offred. This reveals how deeply entrenched the oppression of women is even after the end of Gilead and how this has almost become internalised by women themselves. This drives Atwood’s need to create a sense of hope, highlighted in The Testaments, as even today, women are oppressed by misogyny, ‘in the wake of the recent American election, fears and anxieties proliferate. Basic civil liberties are seen as endangered, along with many of the rights for women won over the past decades and indeed past centuries,’ (Atwood). This entrenchment of women is established even further in Disgrace, which has distinctly less hope as Lucy verbally makes herself almost complicit with her rapists, ‘they see me as owing something. They see themselves as debt collectors, tax collectors. Why should I be allowed to live here without paying?’

Darkly, Lucy speaks of paying with herself and her body and in this self-dehumanisation and stripping away of her own identity, she almost accepts the ‘subjugation’ and oppression of post-apartheid South Africa on a mental level. This is more oppressive and damaging than the physical rape as now, she is not only ‘disgraced’ in their society but in her own eyes. Through this, Coetzee suggests that it is the acceptance of oppression in the mind that truly oppresses and harms individuals. In contrast, this realisation is less bleak in The Handmaid’s Tale as Crescent Moon’s very position as a female professor and even the pun on the name of the university city, ‘deny none of it,’ regardless of whether she has ‘sororised’ with the male academics (which ensures her personal freedom anyway), highlights there has been some change and women now have more freedom, overcoming oppression, as Staels found Offred did in her tale, unlike in Disgrace.

Language and Oppression in Novels

Atwood and Coetzee also explore the oppression inherent in language, limiting individuality and freedom. Through the distinctions of ‘lay’ and ‘laid’ and ‘sororise’ and ‘fraternise,’ Offred realises that the language available to them, and all English-speakers and the readers themselves, almost does not recognise women, silencing and oppressing them further as even if Offred could speak, read and write openly in Gilead, (as her story is told in English in her head and tapes, Offred is still oppressed by this, highlighted by Wade’s mocking pun on ‘tale’ and ‘tail,’ ‘all puns were intentional, particularly that having to do with the archaic vulgar signification of the word tail; that being, in some extent, the bone, as it were, of contention, in that phase of Gileadean society of which our saga treats,’ which belittles her) the tools she would have to do this with would already limit this freedom to an extent. However, in Disgrace, Lucy has no medium to tell her story and realises she cannot speak to her father, a male and the narrator, about the rape, limiting her freedom further. She feels he would not understand, ‘I wish I could explain. But I can’t. Because of who you are and who I am, I can’t.’ This describes a mental and emotional block, and oppression, that puts her in a similar, but more pronounced position than Offred as her father and Petrus, the men who in this society have to protect her, are themselves the perpetrators of this problem: her father sexually harassed a young female student, which he feels Lucy suggests mirrors the rape (‘you are a man, you ought to know,’ David echoes these words after Lucy suggesting a guilt that may mirror Coetzee’s in the climate of post-apartheid South Africa), and Petrus capitalises on this rape, trapping her in a marriage that will oppress her both emotionally and mentally to get to her land. While Offred possibly escapes this oppressive environment, making The Handmaid’s Tale ultimately hopeful, at the end of Disgrace, Lucy and David are forced to live on in the same situation, remaining oppressed.

Resisting Oppression in 'Disgrace' and 'Handmaid's Tale'

Both writers also explore the resistance of oppression through resorting to body language when verbal or effective communication is restricted. Atwood allows Offred to communicate and understand those around her through their body language, while Coetzee expresses David’s sense of body language more literally through his physical relationships. At times the communication this body language allows is humorous, like when Offred finds the Commander leaning pretentiously against a wall, ‘such a studied pose, something of the country squire, some old come-on from a glossy men's mag. He probably decided ahead of time that he'd be standing like that when I came in. When I knocked he probably rushed over to the fireplace and propped himself up.’ This description of the Commander’s body language paints him as wanting to appear casual and appealing almost for Offred (while also asserting his power), playing out the boundaries of their relationship that cannot be expressed verbally and crucially, allowing her to ridicule him internally. This gives her some sense of power over the Commander as she ridicules and makes him appear funny to the reader, siding them with her, which creates a sense of hope even while in this moment she is wary of the Commander’s true motive in meeting with her.

On the other hand, in Disgrace, David’s oppressions seem ever heavier and more bleak. David does not seem to be able to come to terms with ageing and becoming unattractive, one of his oppressions, instead acting destructively and defining his communication with women as sexual, ‘whores are for putting up with the ecstasies of the unlovely.’ David is oppressed by his sexual desires as he still feels this urge as he grows older and less attractive, causing him to hate and essentially oppress himself through seeking out these physical relationships. David eventually sees himself in the dogs who cannot control their desires, ‘something so ignoble in the spectacle that I despaired. One can punish a dog, it seems to me, for an offence like chewing a slipper... But desire is another story. No animal will accept the justice of being punished for following its instincts... the poor dog had begun to hate its own nature. It no longer needed to be beaten. It was ready to punish itself.’ The shame and lack of hope in this oppression associated with the dogs reaches its climax when David puts his favourite dog down, metaphorically supressing his sexual and emotional (as he grew close to the dog) desires, making the end of Disgrace stifling and bleak for the reader, though David himself might find some relief in letting go.

Concluding Thoughts

In The Handmaid’s Tale, the body itself is further used to communicate through Ofwarren’s pregnancy bump, which signals victory to the other handmaids, ‘she’s a flag on a hilltop, showing us what can still be done: we too can be saved.’15 Interestingly, Atwood also uses the imagery of a flag on a hilltop to describe going against the regime of Gilead, ‘there is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There’s something delightful about it, something naughty, secretive, forbidden, thrilling. It’s like a spell, of sorts. It deflates them, reduces them to the common denominator where they can be dealt with. In the paint of the washroom cubicle someone unknown had scratched: Aunt Lydia sucks. It was like a flag waved from a hilltop in rebellion.’16 This momentary freedom Offred experiences shows that the handmaids still have minds of their own and can still resist oppression. However, the reader reflects that this is perhaps not entirely true freedom as their joy at Ofwarren’s pregnancy in fact shows their conformity to Gilead and ‘Aunt Lydia sucks’ is almost juvenile, ‘deflating’ Offred as well as those in power and keeping her oppressed.

Yet, Disgrace is still more bleak as David remains emotionally and mentally shaken from the attack (with this mental and inner security and freedom the only thing that alleviates Offred’s oppression). This affects him to the degree that his identity is changed by developing a new empathy for animals, the sheep he takes to graze and the dogs. This is a marked contrast from his earlier arrogance, even at his trial, ‘he does not feel nervous. On the contrary, he feels quite sure of himself. His heart beats evenly, he has slept well. Vanity, he thinks, the dangerous vanity of the gambler; vanity and self- righteousness. He is going into this in the wrong spirit. But he does not care.’ (This arrogance, emulating Byron, his muse, makes David seem almost ridiculous to the reader and interestingly, here Coetzee mirrors Offred ridiculing the Commander, perhaps to overcome or silence aspects of David in his own personality as Makhaya suggests that ‘one cannot help being curious about the extent to which Lurie’s personal views are similar to