The Power Discourse In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale

This dissertation attempts analyze Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale with Foucault’s power discourse theory,which aims to analyze the power discourse of the nation and individuals in the text with multiple appearances such as founders,conspirators,and defenders.The construction and operation of power discourse at the national level,the construction of individual subjectivity,the writer’s speculative meaning and the enlightenment to modern society are examined from the microscopic point of view.The dissertation is composed of five parts.Chapter 1 is introduction which collates domestic and foreign literature on The Handmaid’s Tale,summarizes the rheological process of the fiction in domestic research and points out the innovation of this dissertation.Meanwhile it introduces Foucault’s power discourse theory.Chapter 2 makes a thorough analysis of Gilead’s power discourse,trying to grasp the pivotal role of power discourse in the transition from a country where gender equality and natural childbirth to a country where the human being is divided and the birth is fully institutionalized after environment was destroyed.In the beginning,Gilead took tough measures to separate the discourse from its original discourse,making its meaning divested in its original context.But at this time,language does not break away from the world,it is still a place of revelation in another form and is included in the space where truth is declared and stated.After separating the original meaning of the discourse and constructing a new way of presentation,the society is shaped into a panoramic prison through the institutions of the Probation Center and the isolation camp to supervise the individual,making the nation’s power discourse socialized.At the same time,the human body is used as a training place,and the individual is tamed with the continuous differential power in a disciplined manner to be the gentle appearance Gilead wants.Chapter 3 investigates the way in which different kinds of subjectivity constructs power discourse.According to Foucault’s power discourse theory,discourse can not only reveal the symbiotic relationship between power and knowledge,but also construct the individual’s subjectivity.Offred,as a model of the alien resistance who successfully escaped and left a recording,boycotted and resisted country’s power discourse in the form of counter discourseand reverse discourse.She established a connection with knowledge in words at the first,so as to obtain an opportunity to express her subjectivity.At the same time,she constantly uses the memory of the past to give different meanings to the living space of the present,and she is wary of the architectural significance under the nation’s power discourse.In addition,she analyzes the religious discourse in daily language to restore it to a belief rather than an absolute code of conduct.After establishing her own power discourse system,she used pleasure as a means to confront the state power discourse on the battlefield of the body and break the haze of nation’s power discourse abstinence through pleasure.And after the self-discourse reconstruction and confrontation,it is finally possible to build a subjective world that is detached from the power discourse of the state and escape from Gilead.Chapter 4 examines the subversive power discourse in the Historical Materials part and speculates the intention of Margaret Atwood in the light of the author’s creative tendencies.Historical Materials which is fictional uses the tone of Kelisen·Muen and Aisuotuo to express the verdict on the recording after Offred’s escaped at the 12 th Gilead Research Symposium in January 2195.With a humorous tone,Aisuotuo discussed the authenticity of "The Handmaid’s Tale" and tried to query the different subjectivity constructed by Offred.There is no doubt that this kind of questioning uses modern academic power discourse to subvert the personal discourse which against nation’s power discourse,so that the dual identity of the rebels and women represented by Offred loss its voice.It can be glimpsed that Atwood speculates on the fluidity and uncentrality of the power discourse itself from this,and also highlights her new speculation about the feminist movement and ecological issues.Chapter 5 is the conclusion,it tries to explain the reason why the novel maintains the vitality of interpretation under the new era while summing up the above discussion.