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Essay: How do Atwood and Shelley convey the theme of responsibility in Frankenstein and The Handmaid's Tale?
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A* graded practice essay for Unit-2, prose of the Edexcel Pearson English literature A-level.
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COMPARE THE WAYS IN WHICH THE AUTHORS OF YOUR TWO CHOSEN TEXTSEXPLORE THE IMPORTANCE OF RESPONSIBILITY
Both Atwood and Shelley explore the consequences of neglecting social responsibility,
looking at the issues of characters Victor and Offred who neglect their personal
responsibility towards. Both authors also suggest the consequences of scientific neglect
which has can then have adverse consequences upon society.
Indeed, Atwood’s construction of the central female narrator Offred in ‘The Handmaid’s
tale’ , through use of the metanarrative form, allows her to construct a character who
appears wholly realistic in her human selfishness. In doing so, the author suggests the
consequences of a society which represses women in such a way that they do not rebel
out of fear, the issues experienced during the sexual liberation of the 60’s in which the
second wave feminists of this period successfully fought for better reproductive rights;
the contraceptive pill, despite worries over its possible side effects, was being taken by
1, 187, 000 women by 1962. This success however was met by backlash from a group
called ‘The New Right movement’, whose principles included that of being anti-abortion,
anti-feminist, and in support of traditionalist gender roles, with Phyllis Shafty publicly
saying that the liberation of women was a threat to family values. In this sense, Atwood
is able to establish, from her own society, the society of Gilead which hyperbolizes the
ideals of The New Right movement and thus oppressing women such as Offred into a
state of fear which forces them to become selfish. Furthermore, Offred’s personal
selfishness becomes increasingly prevalent towards the end of the novel as she begins to
spend more time with Nick, confessing ‘The fact is I no longer want to leave, escape,
across the border to freedom’ in which Atwood’s use of synonymic verbs ‘leave’ and
‘escape’ conveys a sense of passivity which prevents Offred from embracing the active
nature of such verbs; instead she remains stagnant through the use of the negative
adverb ‘no’. What is also particularly interesting is the use of the verb ‘want’ which
connotes the fact that Offred would now prefer to remain in Gilead than attempt to
escape, because she prioritizes any love that she is able to grasp on to; she is distinctly
human in her fear and emotional attachment to Nick, hence why she rejects her
responsibility to others who are repressed within society by rejecting rebellion. In this
sense Atwood draws on the notion that no regime can be overthrown without the power
of many individuals rebelling against those in power; this could link to the context of the
French revolution in the case of ‘Frankenstein’ as, unlike Offred, the creature rebels
against those who repress him.
In another sense, Offred can be directly paralleled to Shelley’s central narrator Victor as
both authors construct narrators who are ultimately selfish in their attitude towards other
people. However, whilst Offred rejects her responsibility towards numerous unknown
repressed men and women, Victor rejects the domestic responsibility he has towards his
friends and family which has a negative effect on his wellbeing whilst affecting the lives
of others such as Elizabeth and Alphonse. In a different way to ‘The Handmaid’s tale’, it is
not through narration that the reader is made aware of Victor’s selfishness, but through
the words of his father Alphonse who suggests that Victor’s rejection of the domestic
affection available to him means that he therefore rejects his domestic responsibility.
Indeed, this is evident in the notion of his friends ‘who centre all their hopes in you’ in
which the verb ‘centre’ places Victor as structurally responsible for the happiness of his
friends and family; this is also particularly poignant as it links to the novel’s structure in
which Victor’s narration is framed by Walton’s, placing him at the centre of the Chinese
box narrative and thus emphasizing the structural weight of responsibility that Victor has
on the other characters. Equally, the use of the interrogative in the question ‘Have we
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