Criticism of Christian Extremism in The Handmaid’s Tale, The Gate to Women’s Country, and The Fifth Sacred Thing
by Whitney Scott
(Download the .docx file at the hyperlink above for the word document with acknowledgements and vita)
Sections:
Introduction
Social and Historical Context
Extremism
Sex and Reproduction
The Handmaid’s Tale
The Gate to Women’s Country
The Fifth Sacred Thing
Not Just Women
Three Predictions
Conclusion
INTRODUCTION
In the introduction to her essay “Rockers of the Cradle, Rockers of the Boat,” Lois Wilson states that “we live simultaneously (emphasis mine) in two worlds: the presumed world and the proposed world” (77). This analogy, taken from Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman, suggests that the presumed world is the present and the proposed world is a hopeful future. The presumed world, the world we experience, contains malady and grief, but in the proposed world, or the future, these ailments are addressed in such a way that ensures progress. In feminist science fiction novels published in the last third of the 20th century, authors assert that the presumed world is one in which freedoms gained by women’s rights activists are in danger of subversion by anti-feminists, especially groups with a propensity toward combining religious values with a political agenda. Most of these authors, however, do not create proposed worlds. Instead of forming fictional worlds where certain problems do not exist, these authors choose to highlight the problems of the present as they might appear in the future if progress is not made. These “worst of all possible worlds,” or dystopian societies, are useful for reflecting the aspects of present day society that obstruct gender equality, most notably the attempt to control a society through placing rigid constraints on matters that are intensely personal, such as sex and reproduction.
Through study of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1986), Sherri S. Tepper’s The Gate to Women’s Country (1988), and The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk (1993), readers may ascertain that feminist authors writing in the 1980s and early 1990s considered the joining of political agendas with religious values to be a great threat to women’s rights. Through the creation of futuristic dystopian societies, Atwood, Tepper, and Starhawk suggest that the involvement of religious values with a political agenda is a perversion of morality. This perversion of something pious is best mirrored in the way leaders of these dystopian societies value sexual purity but institute sexual practices that may be considered perverse. This paradox reveals the extent to which the blend of the religious with the political serves to oppress not only those in subordinate positions (e.g. women), but also those in power.
SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT
It is important to gain an understanding of the greater trends from which these novels arose before delving into the works themselves. A study of the opposition that allegedly exists between feminism and conservative Christianity is particularly valuable. It is commonly perceived that feminists and conservative Christians are at odds with one another. The dichotomy of the fiercely liberal women’s rights activist and the staunchly conservative Bible-thumper are the subjects of jokes and all sorts of public opinions. An example of such a stereotype is the use of the term “feminazi” by Rush Limbaugh in his book The Way Things Ought to Be that has become a slur used against feminists by those who disagree with them (193). Are these labels thoughtless products of simplemindedness, or do these stereotypes reflect an actual polarization of interests?
Recent studies have revealed that a gap exists between feminists and evangelical Protestants, largely due to the association of anti-feminism with that particular denomination of conservative Christianity. In a 2004 study funded by Pew Charitable Funds, researchers found that 64.8 percent of evangelical Protestants considered feminism hostile toward their moral and spiritual values and were four times more likely to have this perception than theologically liberal Protestants. This group consistently reported attitudes that were extreme, such as thinking that abortion should be “legal in no cases” (Gallagher). Other studies have assessed feminists’ perceptions of Christianity and found similar disconnect. Research conducted in 1996 and published in The Review of Religious Research showed that women who were regular church attendees and did not report having feminist beliefs were most likely to feel close to God. These women were also least likely to report that they did not feel any closeness with God. By contrast, Non-regular church attendees who reported feminist views were least likely to feel close to God and most likely to report that they felt no closeness with God (Steiner-Aeschliman and Mauss).
Social research reveals that there is a detachment of feminism from conservative Christianity, but according to women who classify themselves as Christian feminists, Christianity and feminism are not mutually exclusive concepts. Authors such as Denise Carmody and Virginia Mollenkott assert that the Bible does not promote inequality of the sexes. Rather, any assertion that women must be inferior or submissive to men is a perversion of true Christian ideals. That these two women wrote this way in the 1980s, the time when anti-feminism was gathering influence in the United States, is significant. Other remarks on the nature of spiritual liberation and spiritual oppression come from authors such as Leah Gcabashe, who was writing in South Africa at the end of the Apartheid movement. Gcabashe, who wrote in a context that was concerned with oppression as a political system, extends the milieu of social oppression to religion and asserts that repression often stems from perversions of faith.
The main perversion of the Christian faith that Gcabashe highlights exists in the verses of the Bible that many Christians choose to highlight and the selective interpretations of these verses that are advocated. The New International Version of 1 Timothy verses 11-12, for instance, states: “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent” (The Holy Bible). These verses are often quoted when someone is trying to make the argument that women should remain subservient to men; however, other translations and interpretations of this verse suggest that all Christians, men and women alike, should be subservient to the teachings of Christ and not dominate one another (“The Mistranslation”). The way that women of the Bible are interpreted also lends itself to sexism. Mary, for instance, is not portrayed in sermons and Bible studies as a strong and dedicated individual as often as she is praised as the meek and mild mother figure whose example women are expected to emulate (Gcabashe).
Until the social revolutions of the 1960s and the rise of the Women’s Movement in the 1970s, the most dominant hegemony in the United States was based on the very mindset that authors such as Carmody, Mollenkott, and Gcabashe criticize. Questions regarding the validity of strictly divided gender roles came from a small group of radicals; however, by the 1970s, women’s experiences with pay disparity and sex stereotyping in jobs were beginning to coalesce to create a new consciousness regarding women’s place in the home and in the work force. These questions were asked by a much larger portion of society. The new awareness of the unequal experience of work and the perception that this was neither biologically nor morally inherent in the nature of being a woman reignited the push for an Equal Rights Amendment among certain groups like the Women’s Bureau in the early 1950s (Harris 306). These questions and forms of activism continued to gain momentum through the 1960s until they reached a climax in the early 1970s.
As legislative victories of the feminist movement mounted in the 1970s, equal force came from social conservatives who resisted this type of change. The formation of groups such as the New Right and the Silent Majority through the 1970s led to Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority in the 1980s as well as other groups that desired a return to what they called traditional values (Chafe 216). One issue that came to epitomize the feminist movement in the eyes of its opponents was abortion. The way reproductive freedom through abortion climaxed as a cause célèbre in the early 1970s only to meet resistance at its peak also represents the way social perceptions of feminism began to change at this time. Though advocates for abortion rights saw a victory in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, limits that were placed on this decision made it so that federal money could not go toward financial aid for women when they sought an abortion (Chafe 219). Such strictures represent the opposition that women from the various strains of feminism were encountering as backlash to the feminist movement gained momentum.
Social perceptions of feminism also underwent dramatic change in the 1970s and 1980s. While feminism had many followers during the 1960s and 1970s, by the 1980s the negative stereotype of feminism emerged to change the influence of the movement. In her book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, Susan Faludi interprets unflattering media portrayals of working women and asserts that these negative public perceptions of feminism slowed the rate of progress made toward diminishing gender roles and other forms of oppression. The prevailing lack of continued progress toward women’s liberation from gender roles contributed to feelings of discontent among American women. According to Faludi, those who were opposed to feminism reinforced their own cause by creating a frustrating environment for women who were eager to experience greater freedoms and then using these feelings of frustration to gather support for their mindset of counterassault and backlash. The growth and prevalence of conservative groups that resisted the change feminists sought continued vehemently throughout the 1980s and 1990s along with the association of feminism with irrationality and negativity (Chafe 214; Faludi).
Even though there was resistance to the changes wrought by the women’s movement during the 1970s, backlash tends to have a cyclical nature and often incites a countercurrent of backlash, creating a push-and-pull effect in the way change occurs (Wilcox). As anti-feminists responded to changes in the political and social arenas, feminists also responded to the growth of resistance, in particular the formation of radical anti-feminist groups throughout the 1980s and onward. One major way in which feminists responded to this backlash was to write fiction, in particular science fiction that made use of dystopias to criticize the kinds of society that anti-feminists seemed to desire. Canadian writer Margret Atwood, for instance, has cited the trend of conservativism in the United States during the 1980s as her reason for setting the dystopia of Gilead in the United States as opposed to Canada, as she originally intended (“The Handmaid’s Tale” 124-125). Her choice suggests that novels containing dystopian societies are not created arbitrarily; rather, authors form them intentionally in order to remark on social trends they find troublesome. As Frances Bartowski asserts in the introduction to her book Feminist Utopias, utopian and dystopian fiction comes about in periods of anticipation and anxiety. For feminists, this anxiety takes the form of women being able to see their empowerment undermined by the resistance and countermovement put forth by anti-feminism.
An example of this narrative style may be found as early in the United States feminist movement as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1915) which portrays a society in which problems often associated with men, such as violence and overbearing oppression, have been eliminated. Though Gilman was considered a radical of her time, the installments of her work were republished in novel format during the 1970s, the time when this genre gained popularity in order to remark on the growing trends of right-wing anti-feminism in the United States. The advent of the undesired place, or “dystopia,” also ignited a trend in feminist literature in works such as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale in 1986. Other feminist science fiction novels such as Sheri S. Tepper’s The Gate to Women’s Country (1988) and The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk (1993) make use of both utopias and dystopias to criticize the values that anti-feminists held which these authors perceived as in danger of becoming extreme.
EXTREMISM
One of the most notable aspects that The Handmaid’s Tale, The Gate to Women’s Country, and The Fifth Sacred Thing have in common is their presentation of a male-dominated extremist society as the key agent of oppression for the women of their plots. In The Handmaid’s Tale, a group of men called The Sons of Jacob have taken over and placed society into a rigid caste system so that women are always subject to the decisions and wills of men. The Gate to Women’s Country provides examples of societies in which men act oppressively toward women through the implementation of warrior castes and religious elders, and The Fifth Sacred Thing presents an example of evil government leadership via the Stewards and Millennialists who have taken away all of women’s rights to be educated or to work, among others. The male-dominated societies portrayed in feminist utopian and dystopian literature have in common not only the oppression of women, but also a conservative and religious background that bears resemblance to the vast majority of anti-feminist groups that were active in the 1980s and after.
Even though the societies presented as dystopias in the novels reflect the anti-feminist bias of the 1980s, there is an important distinction to be made between the reality of history and the nightmare portrayed in fiction. In the works created by Atwood, Tepper, and Starhawk, the male-dominated societies are truly dystopian, the worst of all possible worlds. These societies are founded on extremist religious and political views. But how do extremists differ from those who simply do not agree with a particular group? In order to get a clear look at these male-dominated dystopian societies, an important distinction must be made between extremism and a difference of opinion. In their book The Politics of Unreason, Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab define extremism as “an impulse which is inimical to a pluralism of interests and groups, inimical to a system of many nonsubmissive centers of power and areas of privacy” (5). In other words, extremists are absolutists. Any group, individual, or idea that does not comply with the extremist group’s narrow perception or opinion is considered “the other.” There are various other characteristics that are associated with extremist groups and the climate in which they exist. Extremist groups arise in times of incipient change, or change that is beginning to take hold (Lipset and Raab 428). These groups are also moralistic and absolutist and their members tend to engage in concrete thinking (Lipset and Raab 11). These concrete thinkers are unable to generalize or understand abstractions and perceive the world according to the experiences of the “here and now,” processing these experiences according to a rigid and elementary sort of logic. According to the authors, moralism and absolutism are often associated with Christianity, a religion in which good and evil are naturally dichotomized. All things are either good or evil, never neither or both (Lipset and Raab 11). Another common trait of extremist groups is that they often subscribe to evil conspiracies. Derived from the moralistic and absolutist mindset, extremists perceive that any group or opinion base that does not agree with their own is evil and actively attempting to subvert the good, or the extremists themselves (Lipset and Raab 7).
Though the aspects of extremism that Lipset and Raab articulate may be applied to many different types of public or political groups, Charles Kimball pays particular attention to religious extremism in When Religion Becomes Evil: Five Warning Signs. According to Kimball, any group or individual that asserts absolute truth claims, advocates blind obedience, establishes an ideal time, claims that the end justifies any means, and/or declares holy war in the name of a religious belief must be regarded carefully because it is from these sorts of mindsets that violent or oppressive acts often stem. Even so, it is necessary to realize that religion itself is not to blame for the way it is abused by some people. Rather, religion is often used to justify malevolence or an extremist stance. Just as Mollenkott, Carmody, and Gcabashe assert, it is the perverse interpretation of religious creeds or texts that mark extremism, not the existence of the religion itself. The literal interpretation of religious texts and the use of religion to enforce an extremist agenda are prevalent in science fiction novels published between 1970 and 2000 as feminist authors critique groups or belief systems that they believe to be in danger of enacting oppression.
Religious extremism does not stand alone. Instead, it often exists concurrently with political extremism, and the two forms act as catalysts for one another. Together, political and religious extremism operate as fueling forces behind the dystopian societies in feminist science fiction. First, the religious texts and creeds are abused by their inclusion in radical political movements. These radical or extreme political movements differ from traditional backlash in several ways. In his article “Countermovements and Conservative Movements in the Contemporary United States,” Clarence Lo suggests that a major distinction between extremists and non-extremists may be found in the way the movements regard change. While non-extremists tend to oppose change and prefer to focus on a continuity of the way things have traditionally been, extremists advocate drastic changes that enact right-wing principles (Lo).This article also isolates several ideologies that associated with extremist and non-extremist conservative groups such as status preservation and status symbolism. Status preservation occurs among groups that link themselves with past movements in order to compensate for their eroding statuses. This may lead to anti-modernism, or blatant opposition to any progress or change, which is a particular tendency of extremists. Status symbolism, on the other hand, occurs when a group that values certain lifestyles or traits attaches itself to a particular movement in order to express fear and loathing or to restore “moral order” (Lo). While non-extremist groups may exhibit tendencies to status preservation and status symbolism, extremist groups often extend these ideologies so that they actively suppress other groups.
Trends of political and religious extremism go hand in hand. Blind obedience and absolute truth claims, though depicted as traits of dangerous religious groups, fit the non-pluralism that Lipset and Raab attribute to extremist groups. Status preservation and anti-modernism as political ideologies match the tendency of religious extremists to establish an ideal time, especially if that ideal time is based in nostalgia or the perception that people were closer to God during a past time. The presence of incipient change would incite the desire to undo these changes and recreate the conditions of a past time. Kimball also describes the tendency of religious groups to become literalistic regarding sacred texts, relying on the letter of documents as opposed to the spirit of them; this is a form of concrete thinking (Kimball 67). The manner of concrete thinking discussed in regard to political extremism combines with literalistic interpretation of sacred texts to form evil conspiracy. If A is absolute truth according to a person’s interpretation of the Bible, anything that does not match A perfectly is absolute untruth. Similarly, if A is absolutely good, anything that deviates from A in the slightest is evil and actively subverting the good. These connections bring the research about political extremism together with scholarly thinking about religious extremism.
GENRE
These conditions of political and religious extremism coalesce in the societies that Atwood, Tepper, and Starhawk create as agents of oppression for women in their novels. They were all published within a span of seven years, between 1986 and 1993, and all include the circumstances that anti-feminist groups would have considered dangerous to their ideals: the presence of incipient change that advocates the liberation of women from traditional roles and values. These authors’ choice of genre, science fiction, is also notable. Daniel D. Adams, speculative fiction reviewer for Publishers Weekly, describes science fiction in this way: “Science fiction… can encompass any speculation or imaginative plot, but [it] contains some science-based element–even if that science is ‘a nuclear war happened five hundred years ago and now we’re living in the aftermath.’” The genre of science fiction, in particular the apocalyptic science fiction that Adams mentions in his definition, gives these writers the freedom necessary to create this social landscape. In an examination of fiction published between 1974 and 1976, scholar Raymond Olderman asserts that a commonality in works of the time is the “new place” that allows the author a way to create a world that is realistic yet drastically different from the one the reader knows. This is certainly true in feminist science fiction that fits a slightly later timeframe than Olderman studied. The destruction of modern society in these works allows for the creation of an entirely different environment in which nostalgic perceptions of the past may be juxtaposed with the struggle of actually living in conditions that resemble those of pre-modern times. By creating a world in which men and women must reform civilization after life-as-we-know-it has been destroyed, the authors can foreground notions they perceive as malevolent and archaic, such as the mindset that women are valuable only as reproductive vessels.
Since Atwood, Tepper, and Starhawk all write about worlds that have been recreated in a not-too-distant future, the presence of oppressive societies in this future may be seen as a prediction. If extremist anti-feminists succeed in reestablishing their values, then women’s experiences will resemble the unfavorable conditions of the past. By featuring worlds that consist of pre-modern conditions and setting these worlds in the time frame of a not-too-distant future, authors such as Atwood, Tepper, and Starhawk factor in a cautionary tale. As Olderman asserts in his article, authors take oppression they have witnessed or predict will happen, and expand it to a universal oppression which highlights the scope of social ills in a way that other forms of fiction could not. Even though these dystopian societies are exaggerated, they are based on factors of the present. Since the anti-feminist societies of the novels exist in a world that seems farfetched or inaccessible, the reader feels safe and at a distance from the horrors presented in the plots; however, through submersing the reader in a society in which current issues have been neglected and exacerbated to nightmarish proportions, the author creates a climate in which the reader must criticize his or her society once he or she recognizes the conditions of present society exaggerated in the fictional future.
An example of the way the novels have featured actual oppression in their fictional contexts may be seen in the interpretations of The Handmaid’s Tale that draw parallels between the experiences of women in the novels and women in certain sects of Islam. Jillian Swale, for instance, reflects on the women of Iran as any social freedoms they might have experienced prior to 1979 were rescinded when political turmoil led to the succession of Ayatollah Khomeini, an Islamic fundamentalist, to power. As Swale asserts, something similar happened when political backlash against feminism occurred in the context of The Handmaid’s Tale. In the same manner as the Islamic Fundamentalists in Iran, a small group of Christian fundamentalists has taken over the United States government in the fictional world of The Handmaid’s Tale and these people have forced women to give up careers, abandon bank accounts, don head-to-toe coverings, and become entirely dependent on men.
Swale extends this connection between fictional and real life events to the Promise Keepers of the late 20th century who advocated a return to what they called “family values.” In addition to these groups, Swale also connects the novel to extremist groups that bomb abortion clinics and kill doctors who perform abortions. To highlight the novel’s manner of collecting anti-feminist pursuits and recreating them in a fictional context, Swale quotes the Historical Notes section of the novel as it remarks on Gilead, the dystopian society of The Handmaid’s Tale: “There was little that was truly original with or indigenous to Gilead: its genius was synthesis” (Atwood 307). Just as the oppression that lives in these novels is synthesized from reality, political and religious extremism intertwined is also a form of synthesis, the evil genius of which is recreated in the dystopian societies of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Gate to Women’s Country, and The Fifth Sacred Thing.
SEX AND REPRODUCTION
Feminist science fiction published between 1970 and 2000 tends to criticize anti-feminism, particularly Christian-based anti-feminism, and it does so through the creation of dystopian societies that resemble Christian-based anti-feminist groups with extremist tendencies; however, this broad connection may be narrowed down to specific threads of criticism. Analysis of the two groups reveals that the items on which feminists and anti-feminists disagree most involve sex and reproduction because these two areas have epitomized the difference between maintenance of the traditional nuclear family and social change in the United States. They also represent the difference between personal choice and submission to authority. Anti-feminists often advocate traditional values such as strictly divided gender roles and woman’s role as the moral paragon in the family, both of which demand that women practice sexual restraint unless they intend for the sex act to culminate in childbirth. Feminists, by contrast, seek sexual and reproductive freedom that subverts the traditional notions of what it means to be a woman. It comes as no surprise that sex and reproduction are topics heavily featured in The Handmaid’s Tale, The Gate to Women’s Country, and The Fifth Sacred Thing. In the novels, a value on sexual purity and a practice of sexual perversion represent the nature of extremism. In these dystopian societies, sexual purity as a religious value becomes distorted by political agendas so that sexual perversion emerges in the form of eugenics.
To a group whose primary concern is the maintenance of “family values” (i.e. what has been traditionally regarded as the family in Western culture: a male breadwinner, a mother in the house, and children), sex becomes an act that must be controlled. Adultery, pregnancy outside of marriage, and sexual behaviors that do not occur for the purpose of having children are considered taboo or sinful. Many of these taboos directly involve women because the wife and mother has been the traditional paragon of family virtue. It is her body that shows the tell-tale signs of pregnancy, and in traditional mindsets, she is expected to enter the marriage bed a virgin because there are physical attributes to indicate if she has not. Feminists, by contrast, seek liberation from sexual constraints and from the direct association of sex with reproduction. When their polarized views on sex and the family are considered, the disparity between the two groups becomes understandable. To feminists, Christian-based anti-feminists are oppressors. To anti-feminists, feminists become agents of warped morality who threaten the sanctity of the nuclear family.
Political and religious extremists in the novels take the disparate views on sex and reproduction a step farther. Instead of looking at the issues from a stance of morality and freedom, power comes into play. Lipset and Raab’s definition states that extremism is “inimical to a system of many nonsubmissive centers of power” (5). Those who already have power are invested in preventing others from gaining any. Whether the group is in control of a small community or an entire society, the group will seek to maintain the social climate that enables it to govern. Any change to the population they control is a threat; therefore, the group will seek to preserve its status by promoting the continuity of that population. This is where eugenics comes into play as a part of extremist control. By controlling the members of the population who have children or by controlling which children are allowed to be born into the society, groups will seek to preserve their status and maintain continuity of the population they rule so that their power is not threatened. This form of eugenics can take the form of controlling who is allowed to copulate and therefore reproduce, forced sterilizations, and the picking and choosing of which babies are allowed to live after they are born. Anyone with a defect or a tendency not to comply with the rules that those in power advocate is prevented from contributing to the gene pool. To extremists, the “perfect society” is comprised of people who seem predisposed to letting them rule.
These eugenic tactics are present in feminist dystopian novels not only as a way for groups in power to remain in control; they exist also as a way for groups that seek to attain power to increase their chances of taking over. The need to control a population leads to a need to control sexual practices. From this, we get the value of sexual purity, which is already associated with many religious beliefs. The practical value of aligning religious and political stances to attain a goal is reemphasized, particularly the alliance of religious extremist practices with a political agenda. This is a form of status symbolism, the concept introduced by Clarence Lo, who also asserts that religious groups contribute to the strength of political groups because “their members are active, few quit, and the children of members participate” (Lo 122). This establishes a dependable group of followers or voters that will continue to raise children with those same political alliances and viewpoints, thus increasing the size of the group and ensuring its continuity. All in all, political extremism and religious extremism are two sides of the same coin.
In The Handmaid’s Tale, The Gate to Women’s Country, and The Fifth Sacred Thing, the connections of the religious to the political become obvious due to the way that gender, sex, and reproduction are regarded. Each of the dystopian societies boasts a nostalgic value of sexual purity. Traditional gender roles are emphasized and any changes promoting social equality for men and women that have been made in the fictional past are subverted by the way these values are enforced. Often, the emphasis on roles places particular constraints on what is sexually acceptable for members of each gender. In addition to supplementing traditional values, these constraints also take on a eugenic purpose. Eugenics is a double-edged sword; even though groups in power need to put constraints on sexual practices of the general populace to maintain values or control the population, members with desirable genetic input must have some freedom from these constraints in order to reproduce at a higher rate. Even though sexual purity is a value in these dystopian societies, sexual behaviors that have been traditionally regarded as perverse are practiced in order to promote those in power. Extremist tendencies for both political and religious groups, such as blind obedience, reaction to incipient change, concrete thinking, “the ends justify the means” mentality, literalism, and status preservation all contribute to the way in which sexual purity becomes the paradox of pious perversion.
THE HANDMAID’S TALE
In the dystopia of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Sons of Jacob is a religious political group that has taken over the United States and established a society they call Gilead with rulers called Commanders of the Faith. These men and their followers are responding to recent changes, such as the emergence of feminism and the dangerous drop in birth rate due to toxins and diseases that have made people infertile (Atwood 112). The Commanders place the blame for infertility on the deviance of women from traditional roles and choose to institute a caste system that places all people into jobs considered appropriate for their gender or socio-economic status. Unless they are married to Commanders, women who are not fertile generally take on housekeeping duties and are called Marthas, which is a reference to the Luke chapter 10 anecdote about Martha and Mary. The caste of Handmaiden exists for the few women who have given birth to healthy children and they are given to the Commanders for the purpose of having their children and handing those children over to the Wives to bring up. Men who are not in the ruling class are put into various servant and warrior castes that emphasize traditional gender roles of the male as the brawny protector of the female, the servile reproductive vessel.
These roles are emphasized to the extent that women and men of lower statuses are not called by their names, but by caste titles or the names of men on whom they depend. All women who serve the Martha role from Luke chapter 10 are called Martha, for instance. Handmaidens are called by the preposition “of” plus their Commander’s name which reveals that in addition to the fact that women in Gilead have no independence without men, they also have no identity without men. Poor men and outsiders are treated little better. Money, sex, and adherence to the religious and political views of those in power are prerequisites for individual freedom and power. Only men of the ruling class, the Commanders of the Faith, have first names that are used, and this is synonymous with personal identity.
The views to which the citizens of dystopian societies are forced to subscribe include a strict and conservative view of sex, which may be determined by assessing the behaviors that are considered crimes and the extent to which rule-breakers are punished. Behaviors in Gilead that incur the harshest penalties are crimes of sex, and these are punished not only violently, but visibly as well. The Commanders have outlawed divorce and consider any pre-existing divorces illegitimate. Adultery is regarded as evil to the extent that remarried people are considered adulterers and any child born from such a union is taken from that family and transplanted into a home deemed more acceptable. Casual sex is also considered a crime, and any member of Gilead who engages in or is accused of engaging in such an act that openly questions the value of sexual purity is in danger of disappearing or being killed violently in public ceremonies (Atwood 275).
Behaviors that undermine the belief that sex exists solely for the purpose of reproduction are particularly heinous. Any doctor who is discovered to have performed an abortion over the course of his life, even before the Sons of Jacob took over, is publicly executed on The Wall (Atwood 32). Many other people are punished publicly, but their crimes are never made known to the audience. At a women’s salvaging, a public event in which criminals are publicly hanged with the consent of the audience, Offred reveals how shocked she feels when a Wife, a woman of the highest class available for females, is executed (Atwood 273). After the female criminals are hanged, it is announced that a particicution will take place. This is a ritual in which accused culprits of particularly offensive crimes, such as rape, are given over to the handmaidens to kill with their own hands. It is insinuated through the actions of a known rebel, Ofglen, that the accused rapist has committed an altogether different crime: attempting to subvert the authority of those in power by helping handmaidens escape (Atwood 280). While it is clear that sexual purity is a value in Gilead, this incident reveals that in many ways issues of sex represent the larger view of morality: obedience to authority. The punishment for any behavior that jeopardizes the dominant view lends itself to absolutism and shows not only the extent to which sexual purity is emphasized in Gilead, but also how instrumental the victimized can be in enforcing the very practices that oppress them. A closer look at the crimes considered to be the worst by the dystopian societies can provide insight into why sexual purity is valued so highly.
One interpretation of the vehemence with which sex crimes are punished may be the reaction of the Commanders to the low birth rate. When children are scarce, the willing termination of a pregnancy becomes inexcusable. Added to this, superstition and a belief that all disasters in the world are God’s way of punishing deviant behavior invokes several tendencies to which extremists are particularly prone, such as moralism, concrete thinking, and the literal interpretation of Biblical texts that suggest women are to be subservient and modest. It also provides an excellent reason to punish the group of people who were deemed responsible for the “sin” that God punished, such as women who deviate from prescribed gender roles. By attempting to restore the conditions of a past time that was considered ideal or moral, Commanders could be responding to incipient change which is often cited as a causal factor for extremism. But there is another motive for the emphasis on sexual purity in Gilead aside from a reaction to change. When other tendencies of extremists such as status preservation and status symbolism are considered, it becomes clear that these strategies used by the Commanders are mired in eugenics.
The Commanders of the Faith, the ruling class of men, must have heirs in order to ensure the continuity of the society. Here lies the problem: most of these men are married, and the birthrate is so poor that there is little hope for procreation within these pre-existing families. Letting fertile women remain in the family situations they have been in previously does not seem to be a viable option for this society because the Commanders need to reproduce, and they need these heirs to possess the same values as they in order to preserve the values instilled in Gilead. Here is where the notion of eugenics comes into play. The few women who have given birth to healthy babies are indoctrinated and reintroduced to society as handmaidens. These handmaidens are not given to single men or young men with whom chances of conception would be higher. Instead, fertile women become the property of the Commanders, even though these men are older and often sterile. Why would the Commanders favor counterintuitive sexual strategies when they desperately need children? These men need to have as much genetic and environmental impact as possible on the children born in Gilead in order to promote the continuity of their ideals and social norms. If the few children who are born into Gilead are born into castes other than the privileged one, then those who have the power to carry on Gilead or destroy it have all the more reason to rebel against the system. But how can the Commanders justify sexual acts with women who are not their wives when the social rules they have established prohibit such practices?
Tendencies of extremism make this particular incongruity possible. The most obvious of these is the use of the “ends justify the means” mentality often adopted by religious extremist groups, according to Charles Kimball. The oppressors in The Handmaid’s Tale could ostensibly rescind the caste and use of handmaidens in such an event that more women become capable of reproducing in their world. The Commanders could justify copulating with women to whom they are not married by asserting it is done to enact God’s will. They advocate sin for a greater purpose. Once a social structure exists in which traditional gender roles are strictly observed and God has no further cause to punish the world with toxins and low birthrates, then the caste of handmaidens will no longer be necessary. The problem with this logic is that by the time the population stabilized, if it could ever do so, the perverse practices would have become social norms and unlikely to disappear.
The use of handmaidens may also be justified by picking and choosing Biblical texts that suggest the act has been morally reconcilable in the past. In the flyleaf of the novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood places the text of Genesis 30: 1-3, which is the story of Jacob and Rachel that resurfaces in the plot of the novel. When Rachel could not conceive, she implored Jacob, “Behold my maid Bilhah, go in onto her, and she shall bear upon my knees that I may also have children by her” (qtd. Atwood). By drawing a parallel between the low birth rate of their time and Rachel’s barrenness, rulers in Gilead use simple logic to presume that what worked for Jacob must also work for them. Furthermore, if it was morally acceptable for Jacob to have sex with Bilhah with the intent of giving the child born of such a union to Rachel to raise, then it must also be morally acceptable to force fertile women into the caste of handmaidens and give them to powerful men with the intent of giving the children born from these unions to the Wives so that the prevailing hegemony may continue. This logic requires not only literalism as a tendency of religious extremism, but also concrete thinking, which has been associated with political extremism.
Literalism and concrete thinking are exacerbated by blind obedience, which may in itself be spurred on by evil conspiracy. All of these stem from absolutism. The extent to which the leaders in Gilead are absolutists is shocking. Any denomination of Christianity that is not precisely theirs is a target for military suppression. To Gileadeans, any group that does not align itself perfectly with the strictures put forth by the Commanders is a threat. In war-like climates in which people feel endangered by foreign groups, unity under an unchallenged authority becomes more common. If evil is out to destroy good, and Gilead is absolutely good, then anything not upholding the values of Gilead is evil and out to destroy it. Similarly, if the Commanders created Gilead and Gilead is good, then they must be trusted and followed in order to preserve the good. The premise that must be called into question is the nature of Gilead and its leaders. Because it is an extremist dystopian society that is inimical to pluralism, Gilead’s members have no other choice but to assume the benevolence and superiority of the society and its creator-leaders.
Another way to justify sexual activity that deviates from the overall moral code is to place pious wrapping on acts that are explicitly sexual. On the surface, handmaidens are demure. These women are allowed no cosmetics, no luxury, nor any sort of convenience that could be used to make themselves sexually attractive. Not even hand lotion is allowed. Should a handmaiden desire to moisturize her skin, she must steal butter and make do with that (Atwood 96). The uniform for these women is head-to-toe and shapeless, including wimple-like head coverings. Modesty is so emphasized that if a tourist stops to take photographs, the handmaiden must turn away so that only a portion of her profile is seen. Offred, the protagonist, responds to such a situation by repeating this mantra: “modesty is invisibility” (Atwood 28). These women are expected to conduct themselves with submission and piety, never enticing men but always ready to do their bidding.
Handmaidens are also expected to behave in a way that observes piety. Biblical terms and set phrases like “praise be” or “in His eye” comprise the vast majority of the handmaiden lexicon. At large scale events, handmaidens must kneel as if in prayer while Wives sit in chairs. These are acts of humility, piety, and modesty. Even though the handmaidens are fully covered and conduct themselves demurely, the sexual nature of their caste cannot be ignored, much like the scarlet red of their garments (Atwood 62). Since red is most often associated with anger, lust, or sinfulness, its wearer is also regarded as sinful. This reveals that conservative strictures on appearance are not enough to make the role of the handmaiden congruent with piety. To subvert the sexual appeal of the caste, the act of sex itself must also become pragmatic and ritualistic. Handmaidens are forced to practice body movements and positioning for sex as if training for a routine duty (Atwood 70). These practices are meant to increases chances of conception, but do not seem a viable way to do so; therefore, the purpose that they serve is to make sex something that must be learned and practiced in a ritualistic way. As the handmaiden lies between the Wife’s legs and the Commander fulfills his duty, the allure of what might be perceived as exotic and forbidden becomes routine instead. The act becomes both pious and perverse.
THE GATE TO WOMEN’S COUNTRY
In The Gate to Women’s Country, Sheri S. Tepper also features a society that promotes the ideals of a past time because its long-term leadership refuses to change or be challenged. Similar to The Handmaid’s Tale, the setting of The Gate to Women’s Country is a post-apocalyptic climate in which environmental damage and toxins are everywhere. There has been a considerable reshaping of civilization. In this world, two main forms of society have come about. Women’s Country, the focus of the novel, is a recreation of ancient Sparta. Men comprise a warrior caste that is charged with protecting each “town” from the warriors of other towns. Women live in a walled city and undertake most of the governmental tasks and engage in practical arts, such as gardening, and leisurely ones, such as acting. The dystopia of the novel that is based on religious extremism is an outlier society called Holyland that has refused to acknowledge Women’s Country as an acceptable way of life. This group lives isolated from all of Women’s Country and seems to have formed around or regressed to a system of archaic religious beliefs and strong, illogical superstitions. It is an agricultural society in a world with toxic soil, and it is diminishing rapidly. Holyland is governed by a group of older men called the Elders who strive to enforce the will of All Father by placing women into complete submission. Women’s heads are shaved, and women are considered sinful, unclean, and worthless unless they produce plenty of male children, perform a considerable amount of hard labor, and bring with them a couple of cows as a dowry.
The way that women are treated in Holyland refers to the extremist practices of striving to recreate the conditions of a past time, which may be a reaction to the drastic changes that have culminated in this post-apocalyptic world. The way names are given in this society illustrates the concept of archaic gender roles which represent tendencies to anti-modernism. Girls are called Chastity, Charity, Perseverance, Faith, and Hope, while boys are given names such as Resolution, Dutiful, Retribution, Vengeance, and Determination (Tepper 207). These names resemble the Puritan tradition of naming children after gender-specific virtues, and they also attempt to create self-fulfilling prophecies. Wouldn’t Chastity be expected to remain chaste and Perseverance to endure? These feminine virtues contrast with their male counterparts. A girl would not be called Vengeance because such a trait would not reinforce the subversion of women and the meekness desired from them. Just so, a male child would not be called Chastity because men have been traditionally regarded as the more virile of the sexes. The importance of names and the concept of earning them in religious texts such as the Bible are also inherent in this tradition. This, along with a keen focus on the gender divide, suggests the depth of absolutism in Holyland. Women and men must always conform to the distinct roles allotted them or face physical harm and ostracism from society, which would probably mean death in the harsh climate of the post-apocalyptic world.
Even though both women and men are expected to conform to rigid gender roles, men are not subject to the same norms. In Holyland, there is a grotesque practice of polygyny, or the specific form of polygamy in which men have multiple wives. The Elders have as many as nine or ten wives, and some of those have barely hit puberty. There is some logic behind the way these practices became norms, but the presence of blind obedience, anti-modernism, concrete thinking, and status preservation serves to exacerbate them to the extent of becoming perversions. In a post-apocalyptic environment in which the population has been decimated, polygyny becomes somewhat necessary. If men have multiple wives, then the birth rate has a greater potential to increase; therefore, the practices implemented may have begun as a means of survival. The way that polygyny is enacted by the Elders of Holyland, however, does not seem to serve the purpose of increasing the population. Instead, when the Elders select all of the healthy young women for themselves and deny younger, more virile men the opportunity to have wives, the purpose is obviously power play. This brings the act into the realm of the perverse.
Not only do the Elders hoard all desirable women for themselves; they also take the adolescents of their society who are too young to reproduce. The perversity of the Elders is made clear when it becomes known that their actions have culminated in the severe inbreeding of their society because the male gene pool is so limited. Babies born in Holyland often have serious defects due to the toxic state of the environment and a lack of variety in genetic makeup. Instead of understanding these causal factors, Holylanders respond to the effects of inbreeding by adhering even more strictly to the strictures put forth by the Elders. If the bad in the world is a product of All Father’s wrath, and children being born with serious defects is a bad thing, then All Father must be punishing Holyland for some sin. The superstitious nature of the Holylanders combined with the power-hungry nature of its leaders leads to an emphasis on blind obedience and pious adherence to practices that seem perverse to the reader.
In Holyland, the multiplicity of wives per Elder leads to the conclusion that there is plenty of sex going on in these households between the Elder and his wives, but many parameters are placed on sexuality and the sex act. Even though women are most highly prized for their ability to produce sons, and, to produce these sons, the women would experience sex, they are expressly forbidden from any behavior or style of dress that would make them attractive. Women’s heads are shaved and covered by scarves, and any act that would draw attention to the female form, such as a woman’s garment coming into contact with liquids or water, earns her the title of “slut” (202). Affection toward any being, male or female, is taboo and punishable (200). Sex and biological processes pertaining to reproduction are regulated to the extent that it is not permissible to enjoy the act. This is particularly true for women. Anything to do with female sexuality or the biology required for a woman to reproduce is abhorred. Menstruating, for instance, is considered unclean, and while women menstruate, they are considered unfit to be in the presence of men and must indicate this with a handkerchief (199). This mindset also reveals the complete revulsion of female sexuality. A woman’s vagina is referred to as her “duty place,” and the entire sex act between husband and wife is to be regarded as a religious necessity; in Holyland, sex is referred to as a “divine duty” ( 202). Affection toward any being, male or female, is also taboo and punishable (200). Sex and biological processes pertaining to reproduction are regulated to the extent that it is not permissible to enjoy the act. This is particularly true for women.
The sort of thinking that defies the logic of biological processes is not only concrete, but also serves the purpose of elevating the male, in particular the powerful male, and subverting the female. Since only women menstruate, the act is slovenly and not fit for the morally superior, the male, to encounter. Any woman who does not conform to the position of submission and obedience is hobbled and maimed in addition to the regular humiliations of her life in Holyland (268). Females who accept the treatment docilely and do nothing to incur the wrath of men in Holyland are highly desirable as wives, especially if they are not horribly deformed by the effects of inbreeding. Piety is valued in Holyland, but it applies mostly to the women, which is in itself perverse.
Another way in which the eugenic practices of Holyland enforce piety in a perverse way is the high occurrence of infanticide. While the text of The Gate to Women’s Country alludes to the practice of willfully allowing infants to die as a way to prevent overuse of resources, it is made clear that the vast majority of infants allowed to die are female because sons are a sign of status in Holyland (203). At one point in the novel, Elder Resolution Brome ponders his choice of sex partners for the night. He quantifies his children as he makes up his mind in this manner: “He counted on his fingers. Seven from Rejoice, all grown but one. Four from Cheerfulness, the oldest was only nine, and two from Plentitude. Six from Susannah, not including the ones he’d disposed of. Nineteen, all together, fourteen of them boys. Could be that was just enough…” (205).
Since the number of sons a man has determines his status, limiting the number of women available for the future generations of men to use for reproduction ensures that the power the Elders hold will not be threatened by younger, more virile men. But though these men are older, they are not exempt from lust. For women, the “divine duty” is an act of submission and impending pregnancy. For men, it is an act of domination and the potential to increase one’s status. Of course the act brings some pleasure, provided the wife with whom the Elder copulates is not repulsive. Even though people are not supposed to find pleasure in the sex act according to religious strictures of Holyland, certain Elders are portrayed as lecherous. They not only enjoy the sex act with their mature wives who are obviously repulsed by the act, but they also enjoy having sex with their adolescent wives who experience pain and fear (205).
The uncertainty associated with infanticide in Holyland is also a way to control women. Through Susannah, the protagonist in Holyland, we learn that a woman never knows when one of her girl infants will disappear in the night. Besides controlling the population, this use of infanticide can be used to keep wives in line. If women do not behave in an acceptable way, they can reasonably expect to find their infant daughters missing. After a passage in which Elder Resolution Brome reflects on the mass infanticide of female babies during a time of drought, he reveals that he had an ulterior motive in killing off some of his daughters. “Of course, he’d laid out a few infant girls himself… but he’d had good enough reason. Susannah hadn’t seemed to be able to produce anything but girls for a while” (203-204). This reveals that factors beyond a woman’s control, such as the sex of her children, are interpreted as deliberate acts of defiance and the woman may be punished for them. Elder Brome wants sons to ensure his position as a leader, and the birth of daughters means that sons are not being born. This combined with the misconception that Susannah has control over the sex of her children leads to the assumption that killing off daughters will deter Susannah from conceiving more of them. This becomes a sanctioned act under the guise of protecting the population from fewer resources due to drought. Clearly the Elders are wrapping perverse practices in a pious exterior for the purpose of status preservation.
But men are not the only people in The Gate to Women’s Country who practice eugenics. Women’s Country is a society that resembles ancient Sparta and it is broken down into several towns that all seem to function in the same way. Martha Town, the hometown of the protagonist, Stavia, is a walled city. Women and a few men, called servitors, live inside the walls while the warrior class is banned from entering the city except during the carnival. The carnival is the only real contact that women have with warriors throughout the year, and it is during this time that babies are supposedly conceived. When the male children from such unions are five years old, they are taken to the garrison where they enter warrior training. At age 25, these men must choose whether to be “honorable” and remain in the garrison with their violent and masculine peers or endure torment as they choose to become servitors within the walls. This process is seen as a way to keep only those men with the dispositions suitable for war in the militia, but it takes on a new role when certain secrets are made known regarding the way reproduction happens in Women’s Country.
Women’s Country is governed by a small, elite group of women and by the end of the novel it is revealed that due to the decree of these councilwomen, all female citizens are implanted with contraceptive devices that are active during the carnivals in which warriors and the women have sex. Unbeknownst to the population, every child born in Women’s Country is conceived through artificial insemination during a doctor’s visit that is supposedly a routine check-up. The servitors are actually sperm donors and are carefully selected with strong emphasis placed on the percentage of children each has fathered that have chosen to come back through the wall as servitors (Tepper 293). While the warrior men think themselves in control of Women’s Country, it is actually the women and “dishonorable” servitors who are actively weeding out these dominant masculine traits by eliminating these men from the gene pool and occasionally killing them off in staged wars.
The point at which these eugenic strategies become questionable occurs when the reader learns that they are performed without the knowledge or consent of the masses. The women in Women’s Country do not know that their children come from artificial insemination. Even more, women who are considered genetically unfit are sterilized without their knowledge (290). There are several tendencies of extremism inherent in these practices. The tendency of religious extremism to use the logic of “the ends justify the means” is apparent; to prevent patriarchal oppression from occurring in the post-apocalyptic world, certain genetic dispositions to violent or oppressive behaviors must be eliminated. In this process, warrior men and the women who grieve for them are hurt. Anti-modernism seems to rear its head in the way that Women’s Country resembles ancient Sparta, but newer innovations in medicine seem to prevent Women’s Country from becoming fully anti-modernistic. Citizens of Women’s Country do not question the councilwomen; therefore, blind obedience comes into play.
Do such practices of manipulation and eugenics place the councilwomen on the same level as the Elders? To answer this question, Tepper draws some interesting parallels between the way eugenics is used in Holyland and its practice in Women’s Country. She also allows for important distinctions to be made in the ways that eugenic tactics manifest in these contrasting societies. In Holyland, eugenic tactics emerge as a way to keep the powerful in control while the intent of eugenic tactics in Women’s Country is to prevent women from being forced into subordination and men from having to conform to archaic roles of physical strength, bravado, and violence. The Elders of Holyland oppress the weak. The councilwomen of Women’s Country insidiously purge their society of domineering and oppressive attitudes. Only men who are so predisposed to abhor violence that they are willing to undergo physical torture to avoid it are allowed to reproduce. These tactics may or may not be unethical, but they differ from the perverse piety of Holyland because they are not based on status preservation, anti-modernism, concrete thinking, and religious extremism. They do not hold a double standard for men and women regarding sexual practices and do not force women into servile gender roles. This is an important contrast that must be made between the eugenic tactics that become perverted by piety and those that do not. Similarly, there is a contrast between dystopias that come about as a result of insidious perversion of pious ideals and those that use piety to excuse blatant perversions. The dystopian societies of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Gate to Women’s Country, for instance, both practice eugenics in such a way that an underlying political agenda is exercised through the attachment of piety to the sex act. The dystopian society of the third novel, The Fifth Sacred Thing, differs in that its use of eugenics to further a political agenda is obvious instead of underlying.
THE FIFTH SACRED THING
The Fifth Sacred Thing is similar to the other two novels in many ways. It also takes place in a post-apocalyptic world with considerable environmental damage. The apocalyptic conditions have sparked a frenzy of political activism. The government of the United States has become increasingly conservative, and religion is no longer separate from politics, an indicator of extremism. To understand how the country got to this point, readers learn that the political extremists called the Stewards were seeking economic gain and combined with a group of religious fanatics to form the Millennialists. Together, the groups created a social system in which only those who spearheaded the two movements enjoyed power or well-being, and they did so by combining a political agenda with religious extremism. As this happened, a group of dissenters broke free and created a Utopian society in California. This society, referred to by its inhabitants as “the City,” exists in the novel’s present as the ultimate contrast to the way political and religious extremism emerged in the fictional United States. The present day context of the novel is a world in which the Millennialists are trying to conquer those who broke free from the United States in order to have access to the resources they have cultivated, e.g., non-toxic land for food growth and water. As in The Handmaid’s Tale, those under government control are oppressed, and women in particular have been stripped of social liberties, such as their right to be educated, hold jobs, or possess their own money.
A key difference between the Millennialist society of The Fifth Sacred Thing and the dystopian societies of The Gate to Women’s Country and The Handmaid’s Tale exists in the way the reader learns about these societies. When the reader is introduced to Gilead and Holyland, he or she sees these worlds through the narrative of a protagonist who is immersed in that society. In The Fifth Sacred Thing, Madrone, the protagonist, never functions as a part of the Millennialist society except during brief snatches in which she pretends to be a servant in the households of upper class women. Even in The Gate to Women’s Country when Stavia is abducted and taken to Holyland, she is treated the way a female citizen of Holyland would be instead of as an alien to that society. Due to the portrayal in Starhawk’s novel of the dystopian Millennialist society as a foreign place, there is less emphasis on understanding the motives behind the creation of the society. Instead, the reader gets the general impression that the society exists as a way to bring grotesque economic gain to those in power at the direct expense of the greater population.
The portrayal of the Millennialist society as a dystopian “other” makes it easy to assign extremist tendencies to it. The anti-pluralism of interests, or absolutism, is obvious in the moral code that Millennialists enforce. This code consists of four purities: Moral Purity, Family Purity, Racial Purity, and Spiritual Purity (Starhawk 272). These purities take on a sense of nostalgia. The value of the white, Christian, nuclear-based family smacks of a past time that the Millennialists seek to recreate. There is a particular logic to this. The Millennialist group consists of white males with high economic status who also belong to the dominant, accepted religion, usually some form of Christianity. This is precisely the group that has maintained prominence for a large portion of Western history. By resisting any changes that would threaten their status as the most powerful members of society, Millennialists are engaging in status preservation.
The general society over which the Millennialists govern is staunchly capitalistic. The dollar is the unit of power. When the dollar is extended to represent purity, religious ideologies merge with the political and economic. It becomes ethical to take control over vital resources such as medical care and water and only give these things to people who comply with Millennialist creed. This could also be a reaction to incipient change, mirroring the Elders of Holyland and the Commanders of Gilead who enforced harsh moral strictures as a way to prevent God or a fictional character representing God from taking out his wrath on society. The difference lies in the way the Millennialists are portrayed. While the Elders of Holyland seem ignorant and superstitious, the Millennialists as a whole are characterized as greedy, opportunistic, and completely aware of their own evil. Instead of acting out of dedication to God’s will or fear of being punished by a deity, the Millennialists seem to fear the people they seek to control. To prevent anyone not of the desirable class from gaining any power, the Millennialists make it morally irreconcilable to deviate from the ideal demographic. Evil conspiracy and holy war are parts of the Millennialist society which makes it morally reconcilable and convenient to eliminate anyone who does not fit the Millennialist ideal.
The Millennialist ideal is a form of piety, but this ideal is determined according to the political agenda of the group in power. The fact that only those who conform to the four “purities” are allowed access to drinkable water, and these “purities” were established in order to preserve the status of the privileged, means that this piety is inherently perverse. Other extremist societies, such as Holyland from The Gate to Women’s Country, may have been founded on a true intent to live piously. Those initial good intentions get distorted due to time and circumstance, and the piety becomes perverse. The sincerity of the Commanders in The Handmaid’s Tale is also ambiguous. The reader does not know whether these leaders genuinely believe that the sort of piety they advocate will solve any of the problems that exist in that society or if these practices are instituted with a political agenda in mind. In contrast, it is painfully obvious in The Fifth Sacred Thing that the Millennialists have created a system in which piety is only a way to justify perverse practices and intentions. The evil they advocate takes the form of moral strictures; this differs from the desire to adhere to morals that become perverse in their manifestation. This distinction is particularly obvious in the way that sexual activities are simultaneously regulated and exploited for the economic gain of the Millennialists.
The rigidity of moral codes in the Millennialist society seems to be contrived so that people will not be able to follow them. Those who deviate become sources of profit or resources for the Millennialists to use in protecting their own interests. Young men who are not of the “right” race or economic status are forcibly enlisted in the military so that the lives of the “right” demographic are not wasted in battle. The same goes for anyone who breaks a law. The poor and marginalized that are not killed outright are put into the military and trained to fight for the Millennialists’ interests. Strictures on sex also work out in the Millennialists’ favor. While outlawing divorce, abortion, and adultery seems to be fairly common for religious groups that take stances on sex, the Millennialists also assert that any woman who has sex with a man not her husband at the time of coital interaction loses her mortal soul. Not only adulteresses, divorcees, and prostitutes are considered soulless by Millennialists. Women who have been raped are also found guilty of sexual sin unless they can pay for a dispensation (Starhawk 276).
Women who are perceived as soulless are candidates for all sorts of uses by the Millennialists. Women who are not genetically desirable may be used as prostitutes for the upper class. This sort of sexual act seems as though it would be counterintuitive for Millennialists to advocate, but it is justified by use of concrete thinking. One victim of the Millennialist society explains the logic to Madrone, the protagonist, in this way: “How immoral can it be if there’s money in it? And technically it’s not fornication if one party has no immortal soul” (Starhawk 186). The same mindset that allows for the use of “soulless” women as prostitutes is also adapted to allow for eugenics in The Fifth Sacred Thing. Women who have lost their souls and are also desirable as genetic donors are placed in breeding pens. From various genetic contributors arise groups such as the Runners that are bred for physical qualities like stamina, speed, and strength. Since these people are born of “soulless” women, they are not regarded as fully human, and it is acceptable for men of the Millennialist class to use them for sex in addition to their born purposes (Starhawk 186). All people are resources if literalism and concrete thinking are used to justify their exploitation.
Perhaps the most perverse act that is considered morally acceptable due to the absolutist logic of the extremists is the creation of “the Angels.” In The Fifth Sacred Thing, prostitution is not a profession that one enters only as a result of becoming misaligned from Millennialist interests, and eugenics is not only manipulated to create classes of people fit for practical uses such as running. Women who have particularly pleasing physical attributes are selected to give rise to a race of children who are also physically appealing. These children become a lucrative product for the Millennialists to use for profit and pleasure. Madrone, the protagonist, cannot comprehend the child sex trade when it is first described to her, and it is reduced to the very simplest terms in this explanation: “The blonds. They were toys for rich men. Bred for it. Raised and trained from birth. For sex and pain” (Starkhawk 303). This is perversion justified by the “letter” of pious laws that state these children do not have souls; therefore, it is not a sin to use them in this way. Piety is blatantly used to excuse the perverse.
NOT JUST WOMEN
Even though extremist attitudes regarding sex, reproduction, and the preservation of status via eugenics most directly involve women, it is important to realize that the men of Gilead, Holyland, and the Millennialist society also suffer as a result of the strictures that are enforced. While the laws in each dystopian society disdain a large number of sexual practices, individuals enforcing those laws never seem to abide by them which leads to the conclusion that these laws are overly restrictive. Placing restrictions on sexual practices does not eliminate sexual urges. In fact, the insistence that people refrain from certain sexual activities combined with the emphasis that they reproduce makes breaking the sexual rules enforced by the dystopian societies even more desirable. The high incidence of rule-breaking that occurs in Gilead, Holyland, and the Millennialist society shows that even those who serve to benefit from the social strictures are oppressed by them as well.
In the plot of The Handmaid’s Tale, the first member of the privileged class to break the sexual rules of Gilead is Serena Joy, Commander Fred’s wife. Serena Joy is a member of the wealthy and powerful class, and she stands to benefit from the Ceremony because it allows her to have a child of her own despite the fact that she cannot conceive. Even so, Serena Joy does not observe the Ceremony to the letter but instead forces Offred from the bed much sooner than is acceptable according to protocol, thus knowingly limiting the chances of conception (Atwood 93). Later in the novel, Serena Joy also suggests that Offred directly disobey sexual propriety and have sex with a servant in the household in order to conceive (Atwood 259). It seems as though Serena Joy, as a beneficiary of the strictures imposed, would want to raise a child that would have the genetic input of her husband and obey the strictures that exist because of him. This is not the case. The use of handmaidens instead repulses Serena Joy and encroaches on her monogamous relationship with Commander Fred. There is another, younger woman in the picture, and it is dictated by law that her husband must have sex with this younger woman in the same bed in which she lies. It is no wonder that this situation becomes uncomfortable and embarrassing for Wives even though they tangibly benefit from it.
Fred, the Commander to whom Offred belongs, has the ultimate position of authority in The Handmaid’s Tale. He possesses wealth and power, and his status is ensured by the preservation tactics his society enforces such as the caste system and emphasis on divided gender roles. Even so, Commander Fred betrays these strictures in serious ways. In Gilead, a way to make the use of handmaidens acceptable is the image of piety contrived through distance from other people. Fred completely subverts this practice of piety by having Offred get to know him on a personal level. First, this relationship consists of private meetings in Fred’s office playing Scrabble and talking. Eventually this turns into a trip to Jezebels, a club-like place where rich men may enjoy prostitutes and other taboos. Offred wears a bunny suit and is aware of the severity with which she will be punished if caught. She is also aware that the Commander Fred is in no such danger. Many men of his status are making use of the relaxed atmosphere without paranoia, lending to the interpretation that breaking rules of piety is a norm among the privileged class. In a conversation with her friend Ofglen before the Jezebels incident, Offred is shocked to hear that deviance from sexual rules is commonplace. “You’d be surprised how many of them do” Ofglen says (Atwood 223).
Even though Commander Fred and Serena Joy both break the rules that put them into positions of luxury, there are differences in their experiences. Serena Joy is a woman and therefore also oppressed by sexual strictures put into place by system dominated by the patriarchy. That is not to say that the Commander does not experience oppression. As a part of a system that places a taboo on human affection and contact beyond the roles of parenthood, both men and women suffer. A system that insists upon sex as a pious act for the purpose of reproduction and not an expression human affection makes the perverse even more desirable. It is the nature of human kind to seek contact and affection. When affection becomes taboo, human nature itself is considered depraved. Piety is a value, and when eugenics is thrown into the mix, perverse piety is a practice. Unnatural restrictions on human nature lead to the prevalence of the perverse.
Rules are also broken in The Gate to Women’s Country. In Holyland, the Elders have taken most of the desirable women for themselves, leaving their sons without mates. The emphasis on sons as an indicator of status means that the Elders’ sons will resort to despicable behaviors in order to reproduce and increase their own statuses. Firstborn, one of the Elder’s sons, reveals the extent to which he will go to have children when he comes to Rejoice, his wife’s mother, to ask about problems Humility is having during the sex act. Rejoice tries to explain the problem to him in this way: “You see, Humility’s only fourteen years old. She’s not quite grown yet. She’s not… she’s not really big enough yet.” Firstborn responds callously with “Well that could be, but she’s the only one I got” (Tepper 209).
Even though this behavior seems deplorable and remarks on the extent to which women and younger men in Holyland are oppressed, it does not break the rules of Holyland. By contrast, three of Elder Brome’s sons, Capable, Dutiful, and Reliable, expressly break an edict by leaving Holyland in pursuit of women to kidnap and bring back as wives (224). There is no supply of prospective wives for them in Holyland, and they realize that even women they abduct are subject to being taken by the Elders for themselves (207). Even so, as the Elders age, these sons will eventually benefit from the social norms they enforce. Soon the fathers will die and the subsequent generations of men will have the authority to take as many wives as they choose. This logic is not recognized by the sons, however, in the heat of the injustice they face.
The extent to which any non-Elder is oppressed in Holyland is obvious, but the Elders themselves engage in behavior that contrasts with the rules they have put into place. Even though sex is considered a duty, the Elders still experience lust. Furthermore, they act on their lust. Unmarried girl children become objects of excitement to the Elders and these older men are known to peek at them through slots in a privy in order to evaluate their bodies. Since gender roles regarding women’s dress mean that the female form must be concealed, and sex is a ritual in which contact and enjoyment are not allowed, the Elders may only engage in lusty behaviors via “peeping tom” games. Even sex with wives is an act subject to confining strictures. Even though Elder Brome enjoys sex with his wife, Susannah, he is aware that he is not supposed to and that undue attention to her would be sinful (Tepper 205). Again, by making human nature something that is restricted, all people become oppressed. Rule-breaking is inevitable.
There is similar deviance from imposed sexual strictures in Women’s Country. Even though women are only supposed to have sex with warriors during the carnivals and open relationships with warriors are taboo, young Stavia seeks to have companionship with Chernon, a young warrior. This is expressly forbidden. Even though Stavia stands to benefit from the elimination of men like Chernon from society, men that would oppress her because of her sex, she develops an attachment to him. This attachment remains until adulthood when she lies and meets him outside of the carnival. This meeting leads to Stavia’s abduction. Afterward, she learns the truth about Women’s Country, including the mass slaughter of warriors in staged wars and the secret sterilization of women who are not desirable contributors to the gene pool. This implies that it is not simply men who have tendencies to behave questionably regarding those that are considered their subordinates. In fact, the tendency of the group in control is to act in ways that promote the continuity of its ideals, regardless of who must be hurt along the way. It is when these ideals necessitate the oppression of others, like the younger sons and women in Holyland, that they are problematic.
In the Millennialist society of The Fifth Sacred Thing, women of the upper class reveal discontent with their lives. Some have been doctors or held high status jobs previously only to forcibly give them up once the value of the traditional family and its implied gender roles were enforced by their Millennialist husbands, relatives, and peers (Starhawk 325). Some have even set up an underground gynecological practice to help women in need of abortions and reproductive health care (324). Even though these women experience the material luxury that the Millennialists ensure goes to members of the demographic that they favor, they are not allowed to exercise personal freedom. To use their skills or help other women, they must break the code of the four purities and risk severe punishment. The fact that they do risk their lives by breaking strictures on sex and sex-related medical practices is telling of the extent to which they are oppressed by the system in place.
Men of power are also oppressed by the Millennialists in The Fifth Sacred Thing. The clearest example of this occurs with Ohnine, a soldier in the Millennialist military, at the end of the novel. As an example of a particularly good soldier, Ohnine vehemently defends the Millennialist society and seeks to enforce its ideals by taking control of the City and brutally slaughtering anyone who gets in his way. Ohnine is aggressive to his peers and subordinates but obedient to his elders, easily conforming to the strictly divided gender roles and caving into the pressures put on him by those sorts of expectations. Because he is a military person who experiences a sense of power due to his station, Ohnine is invested in keeping the status quo as it is. In reality, Ohnine has no identity, not even a name, of his own and excuses the oppression he enforces via an “ends justify the means” mentality. He stops only when he suffers psychological collapse after killing a whole family of children. As Ohnine recovers, his eyes are opened to oppression he has faced, and he joins the City in its agenda to enable everyone to live the best life possible (Starhawk 448). According to the Millennialist mindset, this is the ultimate form of rule-breaking. Ohnine is a traitor.
THREE PREDICTIONS
Since each of these dystopian societies exists in a futuristic setting, Gilead, Holyland, and the Millennialist society may be interpreted as feminist predictions of what the world could resemble if anti-feminist groups got their way. A closer look at the experiences of the female protagonist in each of these societies reveals the various ways in which the dystopian conditions could manifest in the reader’s not-too-distant future if action is not taken. First, it is important to realize that the women in each of these dystopian societies are not there by choice; each has been abducted or transplanted in some way. Offred of The Handmaid’s Tale is a member of a society in which leadership has forcefully enacted drastic changes that victimize her. Her freedoms are lost and her identity has become her use as a reproductive vessel. Stavia of The Gate to Women’s Country is physically abducted by sons of Holyland and taken there to be a wife, or more specifically, a person whom a man uses to increase his status by creating sons. In The Fifth Sacred Thing, Madrone is never fully immersed in the Millennialist society, but the leaders are striving to conquer her home and extend their power there. They are a real and constant threat to the freedoms she has as a citizen of the City. Madrone’s mission as a healer also leads her into Millennialist territory where she must fight for survival as she strives to help those who are forced to abide by their strictures or suffer because they have not been able to conform. The experiences of Offred, Stavia, and Madrone represent three fictional visions of how the presumed world of the reader could evolve into a politico-religious dystopia: the change of leadership within one’s own society, the transplantation of the individual into another society, or the threat of being conquered by a distant society.
In The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred experiences a change in the political leadership of her own society. These leaders are responding to a series of changes in the world around them such as environmental melt down and feminism. This prediction is frighteningly close to the trends of the 1970s and 1980s as groups reacted to the Women’s Movement by striving to reemphasize “family values” and strictly divided gender roles. The women who live in a society in which drastic political change occurs are affected and the rights they previously enjoyed, such as right to independence and the freedom to exercise personal choice, are rescinded. There has already been at least one example in history of this: the political change of Iran in 1979 that reinstituted fundamental Islam and its oppressive strictures for women. Atwood seems to predict that should groups resembling the anti-feminists of the 1970s and 1980s get their way, something similar could happen in the United States and women who have a tendency toward apathy in regards to these issues will find themselves like Offred, imbued in nightmarish conditions.
Stavia, on the other hand, is native to a world in which there is active change to reduce the power of the patriarchy. Women’s Country is a place where women and men who are not predisposed to patronizing behavior enjoy the freedom to learn, work, and live apart from the warrior class. When Stavia is away from Women’s Country, however, she is abducted by men from Holyland who are desperate for wives. She is forcibly taken to Holyland, and only the clever insinuation that she is already married and pregnant prevents her from being married off right away. Since this book is told from Stavia’s point of view and she is abducted and brought into this society, Tepper suggests that extreme anti-feminist ideals could manifest in a place that is distant from the reader, but still poses a threat from afar.
Madrone in The Fifth Sacred Thing faces another problem. Even though the Millennialist society is distant from her home at the beginning of the novel, it is known that the City broke free from its control only a couple of generations earlier. Now, the Millennialists are actively attempting to reclaim the City and will do so even at the cost of human life. This seems to suggest that even in a world in which social ills are alleviated, oppression is still a serious threat. Ignorance is just as dangerous as apathy. Just as the reader must beware the oppressive tendencies of his or her own society and those of distant societies that exist in the presumed world, he or she must remain alert for future developments in the world that would oppress. In a world in which religious dogma is constantly coming attached to political aims, this awareness can never be too keen.
CONCLUSION
The genre of feminist science fiction is particularly useful for highlighting problems that exist in the presumed world and providing a fictional context in which solutions to these problems may be presented. Some feminists, however, assert that there are inherent problems in using such a genre as a form of social criticism. Sally Kitch, for instance, asserts in her essay “Feminist Future Thought: The Dangers of Utopia” that the solutions feminists advocate in the fictional text fail to take into account the experiences of those who have been instrumental in creating or ensuring the continuity of the problems. Sometimes, the worlds that these works propose ameliorate problems women face only to blame or shift the oppression to another group. Perhaps the greatest strength that The Handmaid’s Tale, The Gate to Women’s Country, and The Fifth Sacred Thing all embody is that each portrays oppression as something that negatively impacts not only its intended audience, but those who enact it as well. By revealing that groups who employ religious values to further a political agenda pervert their own interests, Atwood, Tepper, and Starhawk emphasize that even though there is a perceived disparity between feminism and Christian-based anti-feminism, what oppresses women also oppresses the whole society. By revealing the strains of tyranny that exist in the presumed world through the use of dystopias, feminist authors attempt to preserve the freedom of all people.
In a way, the character of Ohnine in The Fifth Sacred Thing represents the way in which these novels are meant to affect the reader. As a soldier, Ohnine simply followed the path of the life he was given. He did not ponder the morality of his actions and instead followed orders from the-powers-that-be, the social norms of the greater society, without questioning them. He engaged in concrete thinking and blind obedience. Once he gains a new consciousness regarding the injustices he suffered as a member of that dystopian society, Ohnine becomes united with a movement toward equality and well-being for all. Likewise, readers should be concerned about traits in their world that match those of dystopian societies, such as the blending of a political agenda with religious values. Recognizing this parallel is meant to startle these readers into a new consciousness. Without an examination of one’s own society and effective criticism of the flaws that are inherent in that society, dystopian conditions are more likely to occur.
Even though the sort of anti-feminism that Atwood, Tepper, and Starhawk criticize gained popularity in the 1980s and 1990s, groups recently formed in the United States political system are startlingly similar to earlier groups. Perhaps the best example of this is the rise of the Tea Party movement following the 2008 presidential election. In September 2010, the Public Religion Research Institute polled members of the Tea Party movement and found that not only do Tea Party members share a demographic with the conservative Christian movement, but 47 percent of those polled said that they are part of the conservative Christian movement or the religious right (Jones and Cox 9). Many of these members also reported that they become concerned when public officials do not pay enough attention to religion, a concept that seems odd when the Tea Party value of small government is considered. The research done by the Public Religion Research Institute reports the tendency for those of a specific religious belief to align with a similarly narrow political view. Even so, not every member of the Tea Party movement is a conservative Christian. What seems to be happening is what Clarence Lo described as status symbolism. Christian conservatives who become dissatisfied with the Republican Party’s stance on certain issues join the Tea Party movement as a way to express fear and loathing. As Lo said, Tea Party members desire to restore moral order as they perceive it. Clearly the trend of conservative Christians taking their religious beliefs into the realm of the political was not isolated to the 1980s and 1990s. The pendulum of backlash has swung from left to right again.
Gilead, Holyland, and the Millennialist society are not “proposed worlds”; they are possible worlds, postulates Lois Wilson. Because these societies are featured in works that function as social criticism, the reader must judge not only Gilead, Holyland, and the Millennialist society, but also the world in which he or she presently lives. When consciousness of flaws is bolstered, progress may be made to address these flaws. In this way, progress is linear. History, however, makes it clear that change rarely moves in straight lines. Backlash is an invariable part of political and social movements. When groups such as feminists and anti-feminists stand in opposition to one another, the tension that exists between them will mean a constant doing and undoing by each side. In this way, change is cyclical and advocates of social progress must be continuously vigilant to overcome the roadblocks that prevent society from moving forward. Even though the dystopian societies of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Gate to Women’s Country, and The Fifth Sacred Thing are not “proposed worlds,” they reveal the traits of the present that must be remedied in order to progress toward a proposed world.
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Perverse Piety 
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