The Appropriation of Experience: Buried Racial Narratives in The Handmaid's Tale
Name:
Daphne Adamson
Major: English & Communication
Hometown: Franklin
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Type of research: Senior thesis
Abstract
In my essay, I investigate the ways in which Margaret Atwood appropriates tropes associated with African American slave narratives onto the main character Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale. In essence, I critique how Atwood whitewashes history, while acknowledging her success in capturing the split consciousness of the body as being both a personal and public entity. Throughout Offred’s narrative, Offred struggles for control of the self—she uses her thoughts, and later her body as a way to reclaim her autonomy.
I derive my analysis from Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Morrison critiques how blackness is used in relation to whiteness in the literary canon. In Morrison’s view, blackness is used to explain otherness, meaning that blackness was never its own entity, but rather a reflection, or the opposite of whiteness. Morrison’s goal is to alter the way in which both readers and writers think about binaries that affect actual people. I also focus on Lauren Berlant’s essay, “The Queen of America Goes to Washington City,” where she extrapolates upon socio-political conceptions of race. Berlant describes how the bodies of black women have been used as a marker for the sexual harassment of white women, a modern day issue that has roots in American slavery
