The Handmaid’s Tale

Joan Taylor reflects on the television series of Margaret Atwood’s acclaimed novel

The series The Handmaid’s Tale, broadcast on Channel 4, has been one of the television drama successes of 2017. Now it has been shown, we can reflect on the series as a whole. It is ‘based on’ Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, and is not a simple adaptation. It has developed the storylines in places quite considerably.

Importantly, I noticed one absence. In the book Quakers appear several times as members of the resistance; in the television series there are no Quakers. The series does, nevertheless, provide a model for a society in which we might ask: how would Quakers resist? In the book Quakers resist by providing safe houses, and by undertaking activities (sharing information, educating, getting people out) that are simply defined as criminal by the ruling authorities of Gilead. They are among those strung up on the Wall, after being brutally executed.

Blessed are the meek

One of my favourite parts of the television series is the dialogue between Aunt Lydia – the commandant of the handmaids – and Offred. It takes place during Offred’s interrogation to see whether Offred knew of the apparent misdoings of her handmaid partner Ofglen.

Aunt Lydia, noting Offred’s rising indignation at the line of questioning, states: ‘As it is written, “Blessed are the meek,” dear.’ Offred replies: ‘As it is also written, “Blessed are those who suffer for the sake of righteousness”.’

At this point, seeing this as an unacceptable lack of meekness, if not heresy and incipient insurrection, Aunt Lydia fiercely strikes Offred on the face with an electric cattle prodder and beats her to the ground.

While different from the book, this sequence sums up the complex take on religion that has made Atwood’s novel a classic. It asks those who identify with Offred to think of what they would do when faced with a brutal regime that remakes a cherished religious tradition into an oppressive force.

While some lines of response on social media have talked of this television series as anti-religious, what Atwood and the series team have actually done so well is to differentiate between religion – here the heritage of Jesus’ teachings – and an ideology that warps and twists it, simultaneously claiming it and undermining its heart.

In this one scene between Aunt Lydia and Offred, both women are quoting the Beatitudes, which encapsulate the teaching of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, and both are reading them completely differently. Aunt Lydia’s use of ‘Blessed are the meek’ misses out the remainder of the verse, ‘for they will inherit the earth’. She cannot complete the sentence, because Jesus’ teaching inconveniently (for her) indicates that God is on the side of those who are downtrodden in unjust world orders, and in the transformation of the world they will no longer be powerless.

The use of language

Offred is the one who gets it, and she quotes Jesus’ teaching right back at her persecutor, though interestingly she does not get to complete the sentence either: ‘for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven’. Those who are on the side of ‘righteousness’ (social justice, right ways of living) are persecuted and suffer in the current unjust world order, but they too will be vindicated when the world transforms to the way God truly wants it to be.

This dialogue of The Handmaid’s Tale expertly recalls a conversation in the same Gospel between Jesus and Satan, during Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. Satan takes Jesus to the top of the Temple sanctuary, and tempts him to throw himself off to his death, quoting Psalm 91 in support of the idea that surely God would protect him, if he were truly God’s son.

‘Even the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose’, as Shakespeare has it. The fact is that you can find a neat biblical verse to justify any kind of harm, bigotry, injustice, hatred or abuse, and people have done so countless times over the course of history.

Certain types of ideology can dangerously reach into the past and the religious heritage of communities and grab hold of what serves it, so that the language is warped, the whole is lost in the fragments used as barriers and weapons. The claim can be made that it is the ideologues alone who return a religion to its correctness, at the beginning, but the language of the old is frequently intertwined with the new, and arranged differently, with a totally different agenda. Often they have no idea about the ancient cultural and social worlds that created the texts they use for authority, or the issues of those worlds that are reflected in the texts.

Ideology and religion

Ideology is not to be equated with religion. In my own view, truly healthy religions are organic in the cultures and communities they embrace, moving and adapting through time, influenced by enlightened individuals and social factors. They are complex entities founded on experience, practice and heritage. Religions are often most alive when they embrace those who are seeking for meaning and comfort, and it is noteworthy how many of the flower tributes to the Grenfell Tower fire disaster, or the Manchester Arena bombing, have been linked with churches.

This, ultimately, is what makes Quakers particularly strong in terms of the future, even though it may not seem that way in terms of widespread popular support right now, because Quakers have focused on core values but have adapted over time.

In terms of the Christian heritage, the Greek word often translated as ‘believe’, pisteuō, really means ‘trust’ or ‘have faith’. In these times, I would reinterpret this to mean a kind of assertion: trust that life has meaning, have faith that there is the Light that is in you and beyond you, uniting us all, urging us to love, and feeling our pain. You might very well not want to use the term claimed by the perpetrators of barriers: God. But for me that term still matters.

Healthy religions

Healthy religions always need to be refreshed, and critiqued, especially if they become irrelevant to the cultures and societies that they have embraced, and a ‘back to basics’ refreshment can be enormously healthy – for example, when Quakers began in the seventeenth century. The basics that are restored cannot be fragments and slogans; they need to be holistic and deep. We know them as true by their fruits. Sages and prophets of all religions tend to sing from the same song sheet, pointing out the need for compassion and care, mercy, and genuine spirituality.

I was sorry not to see a Quaker in the television series of The Handmaid’s Tale, as it would have been interesting to see how our faith is shown playing out in this dystopian future. But, anywhere we are today in our own societies, the series challenges us to think about how we can stand up for what our way is really about. It has always been about resistance against unmerciful and unjust power.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be sated.

Joan is professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King’s College London.

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