Body Politics In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood is a famous novelist,poet and literary critic in contemporary Canada.In her novel The Handmaid's Tale,Atwood depicted a religious totalitarian society in the context of ecological apocalypse,and she also explored some possibilities of human beings' future life with literary conjecture.After 33 years,Atwood wrote a sequel named The Testaments,which was not only the continuation of the story of the next generation in Gilead,but also echoed many plots in The Handmaid's Tale.In a word,the publication of this books provides lots of new materials and ideas for study of Margaret Atwood and The Handmaid's Tale.As a writer with a strong sense of social responsibility,Atwood has always paid great attention to the political nature in literary creation,especially novels.The core intention of such political thinking is to deeply discuss and reflect on the relationship between people and power politics.In order to understand the political nature in the novels,focusing on body writing in these two novels is undoubtedly one of the most effective way.Through the handmaid named Offred's body,Atwood revealed the operating logic of the power politics social networking.As we can say,the connection with human and power is done via the body political writing in these two novels.With the theoretical support of Michel Foucault and George Agamben's theory of body,power and biopolitics,on the basis of the text,this paper is aimed at diving deeper into the body politics in The handmaid's Tale and The Testaments,and explore the profound connotation of Margaret Atwood's political thinking as well as deep concern for human destiny in her novels.This paper has three chapters.The first chapter focuses on the body politics in the religious totalitarian society,and illustrates how original sin and salvation whichare two key concepts in Christian doctrine are transformed and utilized in Gilead.It makes body become the object of power and politics.Original sin is no longer pointed to the judgment of soul,but complete negation of body's desire and subjectivity.The body becomes synonymous with evil itself,through which power politics can freely get into it.Otherwise,in the name of God,a set of salvation plans are essentially comprehensive discipline systems for the body.God and Holy Bible are everywhere in the novel,which is a metaphor of power politics in people's daily life.The body is not only in the prison constructed by power politics,but also becomes a silent and horrible prison of itself.From the perspective of Biopolitics,the second chapter concentrates on the survival and destruction of the body in ecological crisis.Gilead is faced with serious environmental problems.Under such circumstances,bio-power has become the supreme existence of the whole society,which is also the driving mechanism of body politics in text.In order to survive and reproduce,the population policy plays a significant role in management of society and economy in Gilead.Some people judged as useless are ruthlessly abandoned and reformed.Meanwhile,the others whose bodies are still fertile become important national resources under the control and supervision of medical technology.The divine insemination ceremony is a intersection of bio-power and discipline on the basis of sex.All mentioned above demonstrate that human life are selected,calculated and controlled by power politics in utopia,and their bodies have thoroughly become reproduction tools in Gilead.The third chapter pays attention to the anti-political nature of the body.Through body writing,Atwood uncovered the truth of power politics in Gilead,which is totally a lie.The blasphemy of the sacred body reflects a sense of escape.Besides,the deception and incompetence of biopolitics system in Gilead reveal the necessity and inevitability of escape.Eventually,Nichole sisters' escape is a successful revenge to the politics as well as a victory of subjectivity.The strength against power politics is hidden inside of body,and people need to reconstruct the connection with it in order to breakthrough the power network and be truly free at last.