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When US vice-president Mike Pence visited Philadelphia on 23 July, he was greeted by a now familiar sight: a wall of women dressed in scarlet cloaks, with oversize white bonnets obscuring their faces.

The outfit worn by Margaret Atwood's handmaids in her 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale and its recent TV adaptation has been in evidence from Argentina to the US, the UK and Ireland, and has emerged as one of the most powerful current feminist symbols of protest, in a subversive inversion of its association with the oppression of women.

Why are protesters dressing like The Handmaid's Tale in Argentina? - explainer

It has been donned by pro-choice protesters during Ireland's successful referendum to revoke the eighth amendment of its constitution and by abortion rights campaigners in Buenos Aires.

In London, protesters put on the cloak and bonnet to protest against Donald Trump's visit to the UK and the policies of his administration.

Why the handmaid's uniform has come to represent a constellation of issues affecting women is as telling as the phenomenon itself, with Atwood among those reflecting on why the costume she imagined as the most visible articulation of the subjugation of women by the imaginary state of Gilead has become such a potent medium for dissent.

The Canadian author believes the use of the handmaid's uniform is both flexible and powerful, allowing women to protest in locations where they do not have a right of audience.

What the costume is really asking viewers is: do we want to live in a slave state?

Margaret Atwood

"The handmaid's costume has been adopted by women in many countries as a symbol of protest about various issues having to do with the requisitioning of women's bodies by the state," she told the Guardian.

"It has even been used on posters in the context of the Trump-Putin relationship, with Trump as the handmaid. Because it's a visual symbol, women can use it without fear of being arrested for causing a disturbance, as they would be for shouting in places like legislatures.

"No one can accuse them of being immodest: they are well covered up. But everyone seeing these groups of women know what they mean in the context of the individual protest, whether it be Ireland, Argentina, or Arizona."

She added: "In countries that prohibit birth control and reproductive health information, the state claims ownership of women's bodies through enforced childbearing. What the costume is really asking viewers is: do we want to live in a slave state?"

First introduced in her novel in the form of "some fairytale figure in a red cloak", it is a uniform - as Atwood's heroine Offred explains - designed to be understood in terms of violent oppression and the fertility of the handmaids in a largely infertile world.

The version adopted by protesters is the one made concrete by designer Ane Crabtree for the television series of the book.

She told the Guardian: "I came at it from a very masculine, white male, 1% of the population design-mind. It was really twisted. It really did a number on my head."

Crabtree was returning to the US, when she first saw pictures of demonstrators in Handmaid's Tale costumes on social media, she said.

"It was a nanosecond of: 'Oh my god.' I had to sit down. It didn't really occur to me it would speak to people in such a highly personal and political way, as a group. It was a beautiful re-entry into the United States, because I was struggling to understand what I thought to be a new world in the US."

Keishia Taylor is among those who first started wearing the handmaid's uniform about a year ago during the campaign to overturn Northern Ireland's abortion law.

"In Ireland, it was used in context of the ban on abortion, because women had a sense that the state thinks of us like vessels and incubators," said Taylor.

"The image used in The Handmaid's Tale cuts right to heart of the toxic relationship between church and state.

"When we started using these costumes ... we thought, we can't sit back. So we put out a call to people who could help make the costumes, and there was a huge response. It shows this symbol strikes a chord."

She described the physical experience of wearing the outfit, the feeling of being transformed into an object. "The bonnet makes you feel very vulnerable, because your hearing is cut off," she said.

But it is in the US, perhaps, where the costume has been most visible, not least because the April 2017 premiere of The Handmaid's Tale on television collided with efforts by US Republicans, emboldened by Trump's election, to roll back reproductive rights and health protections for the poor.

In state capitols across the country, silent women wore the cloaks and stark white bonnets to protest against decisions being made by the majority-male representatives.

One of the women who helped organise the demonstration against Pence, Samantha Goldman, an activist with the group Refuse Fascism, said the moment the activists took off their costumes was an essential part of the protest.

"A lot of times these protests, as beautiful as they've been, they've been in the handmaid's costume the whole time," Goldman said.

"So there has been this permanent submission, even though people are doing it as an act of protest. We really wanted it to be like throwing the cloaks off of the white supremacy and patriarchy of this regime."

M'Evie Mead, director of policy and organising for the reproductive rights group Planned Parenthood Advocates in Missouri, helped organise one of the first Handmaid's Tale demonstrations last summer, when the state legislature was trying to stop people with Medicaid, the federal health insurance for low-income people, from accessing Planned Parenthood health centres.

"The Handmaid's tale was being really lived out in Missouri, with those legislatures trying to take the agency of those Medicaid patients away," Mead said.

"We really wanted to jolt some attention to it and the handmaids were really effective in generating attention and press coverage."

Helen Lewis, the associate editor of the New Statesman, who is currently working on a book on the history of feminism, argues that the handmaid's outfit is effective in part because of the aesthetic impact of the scarlet cloaks in the locations where they have been employed.

"I think the reason that the costumes work so well is because where the protests are happening is places like courts, places dominated by men in black or navy suits, or parliament. They are pretty drab places, where the slash of lipstick red stands out and gives a group identity in the same way the suffragettes did 100 years ago with their purple, white and green sashes."

It has been in Argentina, however, where the journey from Atwood's imagination to the author's own intervention in the debate about abortion has come full circle.

When dozens of demonstrators wearing the handmaid's uniform converged on the country's congress to protest, Atwood supplied a letter to be read out.

"Nobody likes abortion, even when safe and legal. It's not what any woman would choose for a happy time on Saturday night. But nobody likes women bleeding to death on the bathroom floor from illegal abortions, either. What to do?"

The answer, for many, is to put on Atwood's red cloak.

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In the early 19th century, critics often dismissed the work of women writers as light entertainment. Much of it (Jane Austen's work being a notable exception) was, in fact, sentimental, romantic, and trivial, written for popular consumption. Women writers who wanted to create more literary works often found that their work would be taken more seriously if they used a male pseudonym. Charlotte Brontë published her first two novels, Jane Eyre and Shirley, under the name Currer Bell. Her sisters Emily and Anne published under the names Ellis and Acton Bell, respectively. In an 1850 preface to Emily's novel Wuthering Heights, Charlotte explained why they decided to use pseudonyms: "without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called 'feminine'-we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise."

Critical Response

Critics enthusiastically recommended Jane Eyre at the time of its publication. One London critic, reviewing the book in 1847, said that the author showed "fertile invention, great power of description, and a happy faculty for conceiving and sketching character." He called it a "remarkable novel, very far indeed above the average." Some reviewers detected that the author of Jane Eyre was a woman, but despite Charlotte's concern that female authors are judged differently than male authors, this didn't dampen their praise. George Henry Lewes wrote in the Westminster Review in 1848: "Whoever may be the author, we hope to see more such books from her pen."

Jane Eyre has enjoyed enduring popularity due to its emotional power and strong female voice. Brontë has been celebrated for her effective use of natural descriptions to establish mood, her clear depiction of the obstacles women faced in male-dominated society, and her probing of the protagonist's psyche. Like many other rich and memorable works, the novel has inspired other writers to explore its world, chief among them Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, something of a prequel that focuses on the character of Bertha Mason.

Victorian Britain

Jane Eyre was written during the Victorian era, named for the queen who ruled the United Kingdom from 1837 to 1901. It was a time of economic growth through the Industrial Revolution, expansion of the British empire, and increasing democratization. During this period British society had sharp divisions between the classes. At the top were the aristocrats, the wealthiest class. They had ties to royalty and didn't need to work because their income came from land and wealth passed down through the generations. Their children were mostly educated at home by tutors or governesses. University education was open only to males; females were expected to marry. Noble parents often arranged marriages for their children to bring increased wealth, land, or prestige to the family. The presence of a new class of wealthy entrepreneurs, enriched by the Industrial Revolution, posed something of a challenge to the aristocrats. That class nevertheless remained at the top of the social ladder. Some wealthy industrialists hoped to gain status by marrying a child into a noble family. Some nobles, their estates grown less lucrative, seized the opportunity to improve their financial position through such a match.

Strict rules of behavior governed interactions between the lower classes and the aristocrats. The servants who did the work of keeping the aristocrats' manor houses and large estates in order were expected to show great deference to their employers. They were to do their work quietly and without drawing attention to themselves. Most servants had little or no education; they received very low pay and had few opportunities to better themselves. Governesses, who had some education and were entrusted with caring for the children, were treated somewhat better but nevertheless had an in-between status, both part of the family and not part of the family. Farmers, blacksmiths, and other working people were also considered lower class. The middle class included merchants, bankers, doctors, teachers, and members of the clergy.

Christianity was very important to people of all classes. The Bible was widely read and often quoted, and the village church was a central part of community life. During the 19th century, particularly during the reign of Queen Victoria, Britain was solidifying its empire, ruling over colonies in India, Australia, and the West Indies. The British generally viewed non-Europeans as having ways of life and beliefs inferior to their own, and this inspired many churchgoers to travel abroad as missionaries to convert them to Christianity.

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In the early 19th century, critics often dismissed the work of women writers as light entertainment. Much of it (Jane Austen's work being a notable exception) was, in fact, sentimental, romantic, and trivial, written for popular consumption. Women writers who wanted to create more literary works often found that their work would be taken more seriously if they used a male pseudonym.

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Cite This Study Guide

Bibliography

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(Course Hero)

Bibliography

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(Course Hero, 2017)

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Footnote

Genre

Adventure, Dystopian

At a Glance

After a series of ecological disasters and a great war, the nation of Panem has risen "out of the ashes" of what was once North America. Panem, composed of a decadent Capitol ringed by 12 impoverished districts, has evolved into a brutal dictatorship. The districts provide all necessary resources for the country, and the Capitol demonstrates its power over its citizens by forcing each district to send two children each year to compete in a televised death match called the Hunger Games. But when the defiant Katniss Everdeen volunteers as a "tribute" from District 12, she ferociously plays the Game on her own terms, defying the Capitol's plans for her, and sparking a rebellion that could destroy the corrupt government that wants her dead.

The Hunger Games spent more than 200 weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list after it was published in 2008, joined over the next two years by Catching Fire (2009) and Mockingjay (2014). The series's appeal was explained at the time by the president of the Young Adult Library Services Association, who said the books speak to "that outsider feeling [teenagers] have that the world is organized against them." But another reason for the books' continued popularity and importance in the young adult literary world is that Suzanne Collins dared to explore adult themes of corrupt politics, genocide, and the devastating effects of war in a graphic, realistic manner previously unheard of in books aimed at a younger audience. Collins also provided an important and needed addition to young adult literature with the strong, defiant character of Katniss Everdeen, whom critics have called "the most important female character in recent pop culture history," and "a role model for a new generation of young women."

Perspective and Narrator

The events of The Hunger Games are narrated in the first-person point of view, from the perspective of Katniss Everdeen, the main character.

Tense

The Hunger Games series is written in the present tense.

About the Title

The first book in Suzanne Collins's trilogy is called The Hunger Games. The title refers to an annual televised competition that pits youth from around the nation of Panem against one another in a fight to the death. The "Games" were devised by the government as a visible demonstration of the absolute power it holds over the 12 districts under its control. The title has also become synonymous with the entire series, and therefore represents the struggle for resources, freedom, and power-everything people "hunger" for-that is evident throughout all three books. As the story progresses, The Hunger Games also becomes an example of mise en abyme, a literary technique of embedding images, concepts, or stories within a text that mirror each other in some way, such as a play within a play, or a story within a story. In this series, games are embedded within games.

This study guide and infographic for Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games (Series) offer summary and analysis on themes, symbols, and other literary devices found in the text. Explore Course Hero's library of literature materials, including documents and Q&A pairs.

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This study guide and infographic for Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games (Series) offer summary and analysis on themes, symbols, and other literary devices found in the text. Explore Course Hero's library of literature materials, including documents and Q&A pairs.

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The Queen's Gambit Limited Series Trailer | Rotten Tomatoes TV

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Corrigé de la fiche de révisions donnée en cours hier. A vraiment bien relire avant les écrits.

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Corrigé de la fiche de révisions donnée en cours hier. A vraiment bien relire avant les écrits.