Frankenstein & the Handmaid’s Tale

Introduction:

• Both novels employ the themes of loneliness and isolation as the centre of the issues in them [arguably]

• In Frankenstein, Shelley demonstrates the effect loneliness and isolation can have mentally, can cause a serious decline in mental stability, thus resulting in catastrophic consequences

• The Handmaid’s Tale links isolation with passivity, by establishing that the passivity of the handmaids means they are isolated in their duty as ‘two-legged wombs.’

Initial ideas and examples:

Frankenstein:

• Frankenstein attempts to play God, and in doing so, isolates himself from the human realm [ignoring his family]. Victor remains drawn to the supernatural/metaphysical realm, but in rejecting the monster, is alone in this one too. Victor isolates himself by choice.

• The Monster is lonely and isolated by force. From the moment of creation, he is unwanted, and becomes even more isolated when the De Lacey family reject him.

• Walton is isolated on the ship, despite the fact members of his crew surround him. He reaches out to his sister, Margaret, via letter.

• Shelley emphasises the idea of isolation through setting – Walton is lost at sea, the De Lacey family’s cottage is in the middle of the woods, and Frankenstein and the Monster exchange words in the Swiss Alps.

The Handmaid’s Tale:

• The Handmaid’s are in institutionalised isolation. They are a collective, living the same lives and experiencing the same things, but the only time they can be themselves is in the comfort of their own rooms, when they are alone.

• Isolation enables control, it is unlikely that the Handmaids will rebel against the state when they are a minority force [despite there being more of them]

• Being stripped of their identity through their handmaid names further isolates them, this time for their true selves, and they are consumed in living lives that do not reflect who they really are in any way.

Quotes:

Frankenstein:

• ‘I desire the company of a man who could sympathise with me, whose eyes would reply to mine […] I have no one near me […] whose tastes are like my own.’ – Walton

• ‘I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none that participate in my joy: if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection.’ – Walton

• ‘God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.' – The Monster

• ‘And the same feelings which made me neglect the scenes around me caused me also to forget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had not seen for so long a time.’ – Victor

• When I looked around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned? – The Monster

• ‘I am alone, and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species, and have the same defects. This being you must create.’  - The Monster

The Handmaid’s Tale

• ‘I want her back. […] But there was no point in this wanting.’ – Offred [speaking about her daughter]

• ‘By telling you anything at all I’m at least believing in you, I believe you’re there, I believe you into being. Because I’m telling you this story I will your existence. Itell, therefore you are.’ – Offred

• ‘Being here with him is safety, it’s a cave, where we huddle together while the storm goes on outside.’ – Offred

• ‘I want to reach up, taste his skin, he makes me hungry... It's so good to be touched by someone, to be felt so greedily, to feel so greedy. Luke, you'd know, you'd understand. It's you here, in another body.’ – Offred

• ‘Now we walk along the same street, in red pairs, and no man shouts obscenities at us, speaks to us, touches. No one whistles.’ – Offred

• ‘The fact is that I no longer want to leave, escape, cross the border to freedom. I want to be here, with Nick, where I can get at him.’ – Offred

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