4.2.1

The Canterbury Tales & The Scarlet Letter

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Literary Context: The Canterbury Tales

According to the Historical Notes, the title of the novel - The Handmaid's Tale - is an intertextual allusion to Chaucer's work, The Canterbury Tales.

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Title: job of the narrator

  • "The superscription "The Handmaid's Tale" was appended to it by Professor Wade, partly in homage to the great Geoffrey Chaucer"
    • In the Canterbury Tales, the many stories are titled by the job of the narrator, like The Knight's Tale. So The Handmaid's Tale makes sense.
    • A "tale" is often fictional, which throws doubt on Offred's authenticity.
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The oral tradition

  • Atwood may be referencing the oral tradition of storytelling.
    • Women would share their experiences by speaking to family and friends because they were not educated enough to be able to write down their stories.
  • We are told that Offred records her voice on a series of cassette tapes. This gives the oral tradition of storytelling to legitimise women's experiences a more technological twist.

Literary Context: The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter in 1850. The novel is set in Puritanical Massachusetts in the 17th century and clearly influenced Atwood's novel.

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Hester Prynne

  • Hawthorne's protagonist, Hester Prynne, is an unmarried mother who refuses to say who the father of her child is.
  • As punishment, she is forced to stand on a stage in front of the townsfolk to be ridiculed and humiliated. She has to wear a red letter A (standing for Adultery) for the rest of her life.
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Significance of red

  • The colour red symbolises sin and links both of the texts together.
    • The Handmaids wear red habits. This links to the idea of shaming and humiliating women for their sexuality and bodies: “Everything except the wings around my face is red: the color of blood, which defines us.” (Offred)

Jump to other topics

1Author Background

1.1Margaret Atwood

2Chapter Summaries

3Dedications & Epigraph

3.1Dedications & Epigraph

4Context

5Narrative Structure & Literary Techniques

6Themes & Imagery

7Characters

8Readings

8.1Readings of The Handmaid's Tale

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