What's in a name?

Your name is the most basic part of your identity, something (and perhaps one of the only things) that you possess from the time you are born until the time you die. Your name accompanies you all day every day, regardless of your location, profession, relationship status. The concept of going nameless is foreign to any of us.

That being said, the protagonists in two of the texts we have and are studying are essentially stripped of their names. In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, the narrator is no longer known by her name, but instead she goes by Offred. "I too am a missing person," she ponders about her lack of identity. She recalls the time when she used to have a name, and the freedom that she took for granted, and then realizes, "I must forget about my secret name and all ways back. My name is Offred now, and here is where I live," (Atwood, 153).

Likewise, when Janine is giving birth in the Birth Day scene, Offred thinks that Janine looks, "inflated but reduced, shorn of her former name," (Atwood, 126). Her role in society is no longer dependent upon being an individual, but solely upon her fertility. Having her own name would be viewed as superfluous.

Jasmine, in Bharati Mukherjee's novel Jasmine has had her name changed in each separate stage of her life. Note that this is passive. Her name was changed on behalf of her, and, with the exception of Lillian Gordon, always changed by a man. Her input in her shifting identities was always minimal if any at all.

Born Jyoti, Jasmine grows up as a relatively poor girl in an Indian village. Like any other girl, her family has aspirations to marry her off. After marrying Prakash, her first husband, he changes her name to Jasmine. In New York she becomes "Jase," a bolder and more colorful woman. She describes herself, Jase, as "a women who bought herself spangled heels and silk chartreuse pants," (Mukherjee, 176).

After fleeing New York in favor of the Iowan plains and beginning a relationship with Bud Ripplemeyer, she is transformed into Jane, a suburban American housewife in Iowa with an adopted son.

"Bud calls me Jane. Me Bud, you Jane. I didn't get it at first. He kids. Calamity Jane. Jane as in Jane Russell, not Jane is in Plain Jane. But Plain Jane is all I want to be. Plain Jane is a role, like any other. My genuine foreignness frightens him. I don't hold that against him. It frightens me, too," (Mukherjee, 26). 

However, the best stage of her life and the stage remembered with the most fondness is her life in New York with Taylor, Wylie, and Duff. While living a life in Iowa filled with economic hardship, very few friendships, and Bud's disability, she reminisces about New York, Taylor, and being Jase, "I whisper the name, Jase, Jase, Jase, as if I am calling someone I once knew," (Mukherjee, 215).

Like Offred, Jasmine experiences some confusion and almost a level of being disoriented with her lack of identity. She says, "In the white lamplight, ghosts float toward me. Jane, Jasmine, Jyoti," (Mukherjee, 21). Nonetheless, her multiple names and identities aid her and she believes, "My grandmother may have named me Jyoti, Light, but in surviving I was already Jane, a fighter and adapter," (Mukherjee, 40).

To put it simply, Jyoti, Jasmine, Jassy, Jase, and Jane all represent the different stages of this woman's life, the challenges she overcomes, and the relationships she builds.

Power and Control

The easy assumption to make with regards to the characters in The Handmaid's Tale is that the men have the power in society, and use said power to control the women. After all, it is only men who are allowed to hold property, and women are not even supposed to look men in the eye. Women are there purely for their fertility and gift of childbirth, some might argue. However, after finishing the novel I have begun to see it differently. There is not one superior gender, and women are viewed to be just as important as men, since without them the population of Gilead would suffer.

It can be argued that Gilead is actually a very matriarchal society. Women fall into neatly organized ranks, ranging from the Aunts, to Wives, to Marthas to Handmaids. Every woman knows her place and no woman is "serving" a man, so to speak. Instead, women report to to and work for other women. If a handmaid acts in an inappropriate manner, it is the Wife's job to punish her, not the Commander's.

Although they have almost no say in their own lives (meals are monitored, their clothes are chosen for them, their socializing is minimal), handmaids play a crucial role in Gilead and therefore enjoy a taste of power in their own way. When the commander requests that Offred joins him for nightly Scrabble games, Offred remarks, "It's difficult for me to believe I have power over him, of any sort, but I do; although it's of an equivocal kind...there are things he wants to prove to me, gifts he wants to bestow, services he wants to render, tendernesses he wants to inspire," (Atwood, 221).

However, it does appear as though men enjoy the taste of dominance that they appear to have. Luke doesn't understand Offred's anger and frustration when she is stripped of her possessions and legally becomes reliant and subservient to him. Likewise, the Commander takes advantage of his position and privileges. "Perhaps he's reached that state of intoxication which power is said to inspire, the state in which you believe you are indispensable and can therefore do anything, absolutely anything you feel like, anything at all," Offred says (Atwood, 248). Another example of men having power over women is at Jezebels, a sort of brothel-type establishment not so dissimilar to a modern day strip club. Moira states that men "like to see you all painted up. Just another crummy power trip," (Atwood, 255).

Something that I liked about The Handmaid's Tale is that the reader never really is sure about who has the true supremacy. The men might hold the more authoritative roles, but handmaids have the ever-important job of having children. It is never clear who wins the power-struggle between the genders, but both men and women experience the thrill of having power and the misery of having none throughout the story.

It could never happen to us...

Part of what struck me from last night's reading was the ease at which society was completely transformed. America morphed from a modern, democratic society to a theocracy run by extremists, with puritanical views on religion, sex and politics. Whenever we view an event in the news regarding rebellion or genocide - a society totally overrun - we take comfort in the fact that we live in a wealthy, developed country. We have rights, we have a constitution, we have freedom, we have equality. We can feel the distance between us and the havoc being wreaked on opposite corners of the world. What's happening there could never happen to us, we say, shaking our heads at the TV screen and newspapers in front of us. But in Gilead (The Handmaid's Tale) it did.

Offred describes the events that led to the transition. The president was assassinated, congress slaughtered, and a new religious extremist regime took over. She remembers the way she was feeling:

"I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?" (Atwood, 183).

The events that Offred describes terrify me, as they seem so real. It's frightening to think that could happen the America that we know today. She recalls the green paper money that people used as a distant memory, a thing of the past, back when women held jobs.

After the new government takes over, women are stripped of all money and property rights. The equality that women fought so long and hard for vanished right before their eyes. This is also a frightening thought. Today, men and women are more or less considered equals, and if someone suggested to strip one gender of their rights, they would be scorned or even ostracized. In spite of that, Offred doesn't feel as though Luke (her husband back when she still had a normal life and real name) comprehends the gravity of her situation.

"We still have... he said. But he didn't go on to say what we still had. It occurred to me that he shouldn't be saying we since nothing that I knew of had been taken away from him,"(Atwood, 191).

It seems as though women are loosing their liberty, one step at a time. First, the freedom to hold jobs, then the freedom to hold property, then the freedom to travel as they pleased, and eventually even the freedom over their own bodies.

In fact, later, Moira describes using the restroom as the "one freedom" that women still possess, and Offred describes the process as being "democratic." It's disturbing that in Gilead, women have become so stripped of their rights the bathroom has become almost a symbol of independence.

Sticks and stones can break your bones, but can words really hurt you?

Women gossip. No matter the time or society they live in, all women at some point or another have been guilty of talking about another person, usually a women, behind her back.

Gossip starts in the playground. Middle school girls in matching ponytails and sneakers stand around in circles, running from group to group, sharing secrets, spreading scandal, and hearing rumors. "Lizzie likes Johnny!" might be the gossip of the day, or perhaps "Mary didn't invite Lucy to her birthday party!" Harmless enough, in theory.

But as women mature, their cattiness unfortunately grows with them. By the time girls reach high school, rumors are more vicious, deceit is more rampant, and manipulation and betrayal come to be reoccurring themes for many. Gossip progresses.
"Did you hear Catie slept with three guys over spring break!"
"Apparently Stephanie did ecstasy last weekend!"
"Nick is cheating on his girlfriend with her best friend!"
"Whore," some girls are labeled. "Loser," others.

Grown women are not exempt from the practice of gossip that their younger peers partake in. In fact, grown women are just as, if not more, prone to gossip and making judgements than their younger counterparts, as shown by both wives and handmaids in The Handmaid's Tale.

To begin, in Janine's birthing scene, the wives fawn over her, celebrating her fertility and rewarding her with kind words and gentle gestures. "More like a daughter to you, as you might say. One of the family," one Wife says (Atwood, 125). However, as soon as Janine is out of earshot, the whispers and judgmental remarks commence. "Little whores, all of them, but still, you can't be choosy. You take what they hand out, right girls?" (Atwood, 125). These women show no more maturity than your average high schooler, lowering themselves back to a teenage sort of pettiness. It also shows that this pious society has failed to stop one of the most traditional practices of women.

Later, after Janine's baby is proven to be unhealthy, the wives enjoy the opportunity to partake in another session of slurs aimed at handmaids. Offred wonders what Serena Joy is saying about her. She imagines:

"Agreed to it right away, really she didn't care, anything with two legs and a good you-know-what was fine with her. They aren't squeamish, they don't have the same feelings we do," (Atwood, 227). 

While in the Red Center, the handmaids rarely found the occasion to giggle together, let alone share secrets. Nonetheless, the bathroom wall serves as somewhat of an outlet for them to get out their womanly need to gossip. "Aunt Lydia sucks," someone has scrawled (Atwood, 234). Offred describes the feeling she receives while gossiping with Moira about the Aunts:

"There is something powerful in the whisperings 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," (Atwood, 234). 

In most ways, the way in which women behave in Gilead is so far from the behavior of the modern American woman. However, the way the women (of all classes - ranging from handmaids to wives) behave in this story makes one wonder if gossip is, unfortunately, an innate practice of all women.

(all images from Google Images)