How does Atwood present the nature and power of the Gileadean regime?

Chapter five of Margaret Atwood’s novel The HandMaid’s Tale, is vital in introducing the nature and power dynamics of the Gileadean regime. Specifically in Atwood’s presentation of the past, through both the narrative perspective of Offred, and the eyes of the regime. The chapter firstly exhibits the physical ways in which Gilead functions to enforce its rules, but it is the ways in which Offred expresses and interacts with the world around her that reveals the powers at word to suppress and manipulate the individual.  

Firstly, details in this chapter exacerbate the controlled nature of this new world through descriptions of the environment in which Offred finds herself. Atwood distinctly mentions the removal of “the university and lawyers,” that once lived here. These two jobs in particular are centered around individual ideas and development, as can be implied by education and professors, and freedom of opinion or perhaps arguing against a state as a lawyer would. The removal of these jobs specifically emphasises the control Gilead seeks over all individualism or freedom, in this world one must function purely for the purposes of the regime and the role that they are designated. This is continually highlighted in the removal of all words or written texts. The HandMaids are forbidden to read or write, with even simple shop signs being replaced with images of what the shop sells. This may be seen as an attempt of the regime to return to the almost medieval times, where many were unable to read or write. This return to the past suggests the regimes disapproval of more modern feministic characteristics, and it’s desire to return to religious fundamentalism. Furthermore this stripping of all reading and writing functions to suppress individual thought, and acts largely to censor and control every single aspect of these women’s lives. 

An essential aspect in the nature of the regime, as can be understood in the line said by Aunt Lydia “Gilead is within you.” Aunt Lydia functions in the novel as the voice or representative of the regime itself, here we can understand that the regime first and furthermost aims to completely consume and control the individual, manipulating it largely to a point human bodies function purely for the purposes the regime provides them; fertile women are reduced the “walking wombs”, while others are striped of any humanity entirely. One of the fundamental ways this is done is through the manipulation of the past. In chapter five, this can be seen in Offred’s memories of both her freedoms in the past, as well as the dangers she faced as women “were not protected then.” Atwood lists Offred’s personal belongings, her shoes, her clothes, her money, emphasising the sense of ownership and self that has now been stripped of her. However the language used that then contrast’s this is presented to us in the rhetoric and tones of the regime, particularly in the words of Aunt Lydia, describing the “days of anarchy” and how the regime now provides protection and “freedom from” those dangers, that should not be underrated. This psychological flip of the past, presenting the idea that choice was a form of imprisonment, is the regime using their language to structure and create a new world that vilifies the past.

However it is the separation between the words of Offred and Aunt Lydia that suggests the regime will always have one fatal flaw. You cannot have complete control over someone without fully erasing their past. And you cannot erase one’s past if there is even a small connection to their identity. If one can maintain their individual identity then there will always be some amount of power the regime will never obtain.