Love: Women's Bane

In this excerpt, Offred talks about the ups and downs of love. Talking with the Commander, Offred has already accepted her position as a handmaid, before the Commander's wife has found her out. Atwood describes the love that women feel, and how obsessive they get that has lead to their position in society. Using diction, irony, and tone, Atwood reveals that love is the cause of women's downfall.

Using diction, Atwood has shown that women have now lost all of their love, and are in that we vs. them position. For instance, she uses "we" a lot, and never mentions who "they" are- although with the context, the reader can assume that Offred is talking about men. Also, at the end of the excerpt, Offred asks questions, one after another, repeating: "Who knows what they do, on their own or with other men? Who knows what they say or where they are likely to go? Who can tell what they really are?" Here, throwing questions out like gunfire, Atwood illustrates that there is a deep fear that women will lose men, and because of this, they are in a lower position in society. Men are surrounded by words like "who"- and even if women love them, they still don't trust them. Also, Atwood even more specifically describes the downfall women take because of their love for men: "Falling in love, we said; I fell for him. We were falling women... this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely". Here, Atwood uses the word flying to give both a fantastic and terrible feeling- much like flying itself. This compares love to a drug- it can feel wonderful and lovely, but in the end they know it is extreme. (I'm not saying this is true, but) Women in this society have fallen for men- not in the traditional sense, but a literal one. All of these words, repeating and stressed, have shown the reader that the fallen position they have- that "we vs. them" has been because of the almost obsessive love that women have for men.

The irony used also contrasts the love that women feel with the reality of their situation. Many similes are used to do this- at first comparing love "like heaven", then "like pain", and showing that women would feel "like a mutant" if they were not married. This contrast of heaven and pain further enhances the idea that women's love is their happiness and their bane. Because of love, women are degraded- but because of their lack of love, women are unhappy. Love made women stop fighting, since they love men, and do not want to fight their love- but in doing this, they have lost men. They do not have any love anymore- from men, friends, or parents. Like in the real world, love is a mystery.

Tone throughout the passage also reveals the emotions that women have on love. At first happy and full of praises with love, the excerpt gradually becomes panicked, hateful, and hard. Offred strongly supports love- "It was the central thing; it was the way you understood yourself". Women's entire being exists for love- "so lovely, like flying". Yet later on, Offred's voice becomes harder and gritted: "You'd wake up in the middle of the night, when the moonlight was coming through the window onto his sleeping face, making the shadows in the sockets of his eyes darker and more cavernous than in daytime". Women have found that love brings them nowhere- and have begun to hate men. Much like their history, women at first trusted men, and thought the fight was over- but now, as they begin to realize, their love and trust is misplaced. Like love, the women at first trusted their new role in society- but now know that their place is not as safe and happy as they thought it was.

Just to add some further thoughts on this, looking at people's opinion of love, it varies, just like Offred does. On this website, blurtit.com, people have literally blurted out what they think. Some love love, and some hate love. However, reading all of the comments, of which there are many, I can conclude (although one is never sure) that love is both good and bad- beautiful, but can cause pain and suffering, as Offred says in the passage. Several of the rather good quotes from the website are:

"It's evil. RUN !!!!" by Mrpiggy

"Love is blind its not good thing it destroys our studies  and etc............... And not good too bad................and destroys all things and it makes that he and she alone in this world is no t nice and all knowlege of ours will go off .............." by Anonymous

"Love is so.......good" by Tejeswar

So we can see that love is both good and bad- but I think it's interesting that all these people who commented seemed to have experienced love. Despite the somewhat lack of good communication from many of the commentators, love is a rather interesting question- and is both good and bad. This is the central idea of what Offred is saying in this passage- it feels wonderful, but once it is gone, life is horrible. This could be contrasting the past and the present, with love being Offred's love for Luke, and the present her lack of love from anyone.