5. Night and waiting room

• Engels
• Upper Secondary (Key Stage 4)
• GCSE

Lesson objectives 

We will consider references to the second wave feminism 

We will consider the topic of storytelling 

We will learn about modernism and postmodernism 

We will discuss an allusion in the novel 

The night is mine, my own time, to do with as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I don’t move. As long as I lie still. The difference between lie and lay. Lay is always passive. Even men used to say, I’d like to get laid. Though sometimes they said, I’d like to lay her. All this is pure speculation. I don’t really know what men used to say. I had only their words for it.​

​     I lie, then, inside the room, under the plaster eye in the ceiling, behind the white curtains, between the sheets, neatly as they, and step sideways out of my own time. Out of time. Though this is time, nor am I out of it.​

​     But the night is my time out. Where should I go?​

​

Somewhere good.​

     Moira, sitting on the edge of my bed, legs crossed, ankle on knee, in her purple overalls, one dangly earring, the gold fingernail she wore to be eccentric, a cigarette between her stubby yellow-ended fingers. Let’s go for a beer.

How does the start of Chapter 7 explore the concepts  of:​

​

Repression or restriction?​

Language and storytelling?​

Confinement vs freedom?​

Write a one paragraph response 

Faustus

Faustus: How comes it then that thou art out of hell? ​

Mephistopheles: Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.

Now, said Moira. You don’t need to paint your face, it’s only me. What’s your paper on? I just did one on date rape.​..parts of women’s bodies, turning to black ash, in the air, before my eyes.​

(pgs 38 -39) 

 

How does Atwood present some key feminist issues of the feminist revival of the late ‘60s (‘second wave feminism’)? ​Research what these issues were. 

​Why are these issues important to the narrative and themes of the novel?​

The topic of storytelling – why do we need to tell stories?​ What do you think? 

I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance.​

​If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.​

​It isn’t a story I’m telling.​

​It’s also a story I’m telling, in my head, as I go along.​

​Tell, rather than write, because I have nothing to write with and writing is in any case forbidden. But if it’s a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don’t tell a story only to yourself. There’s always someone else.​

​Even when there is no one.​

​A story is like a letter. Dear You, I’ll say. Just you, without a name. Attaching a name attaches you to the world of fact, which is riskier, more hazardous: who knows what the chances are out there, of survival, yours? I will say you, you, like an old love song. You can mean more than one.​

​You can mean thousands.​

​I’m not in any immediate danger, I’ll say to you.​

​I’ll pretend you can hear me.​

​But it’s no good, because I know you can’t.

pg 39 -40

Discuss, on your table, what is Atwood conveying about the act of storytelling in novels? 

• Emerged as a way of thinking in the 1900s, especially after the First World War
  
• Also influenced by the Industrial Revolution and impact of modernisation on daily living. 
• Writers consciously broke away from the traditional, Romantic way of describing things. 
• Focus was on First Person Narrative Style, self-reflection, questioning authority. 
• Rejecting traditional, rigid forms of literature, especially in poetry: rise of free verse and stream of consciousness 
  

Modernism 

• As the name suggests, a follower of the Modernist tradition
  
• Both a successor as well as a break-away from Modernism
  
• Emerged during the late 20th century
  
• Driving Principle: Truth is Relative
  
• Ideas trigged by the Second World War and other continuing conflicts around the world
  
•  The feeling was that everything that has to be said, written or created had already been done.

Post-modernism 

Features of postmodernist text

• Metafiction - writing about imaginary characters and events in which the process of writing is discussed or described 
• Intertextuality - the connections between different works of literature and art, and the meanings that are created by them 
• Blurring the lines between fiction and truth
  
• Fragmented narratives
  
• Unreliable narrators 
  
• No definitive truth - reject the idea of absolute meaning and instead embrace randomness and disorder.
• Use of pastiche and satire - pastiche = a piece of art, music, literature, etc. that intentionally copies the style of someone else's work or is intentionally in various styles. Satire = a way of criticising people or ideas in a humorous way, especially in order to make a political point, or a piece of writing that uses this style

Which postmodernist features do you see in this extract from Fight Club? (1999) Note down what you notice. 

Padlet postmodernism collection 

1. Go to the Padlet link in discussions MB
   
2. Follow the instructions
   
3. Make sure your post adheres to the requirements 
   
4. Do not use a quote or extract that has already been used by a peer 
   

To what extent is this novel a postmodern novel? 

" A Room of One’s Own" – Virginia Woolf​

​

"A Room of One’s Own" is a long essay by the modernist writer, Virginia Woolf. It is an important piece of feminist non-fiction.​ It was published in 1929. 

​

The title of the essay comes from Woolf's conception that, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction". Woolf notes that women have been kept from writing because of their relative poverty, and financial freedom will bring women the freedom to write.

“My room, then. There has to be some space, finally, that I claim as mine, even in this time.​

​     I’m waiting, in my room, which right now is a waiting room. When I go to bed it’s a bedroom. The curtains are still wavering in the small wind, the sun outside is still shining, though not in through the window directly. It has moved west. I am trying not to tell stories, or at any rate not this one.” chapter 9 (pg 50) 

Answer in your exercise book

Where is the allusion to Virginia Woolf’s famous essay?​

What is the significance of the way Offred refers to the room?​

What do you think Offred means by the last sentence? 

Sanne 

Viola 

Kristof 

Simar 

Annefleur 

Eliza 

Vera 

Eva 

Anton 

Mitch 

Luuk

Juul 

Guusje 

Tilly 

Emma 

Rate the word 1 to 4

1. I do not know the word, and I have never seen it before. 

2. I've heard or seen the word before, but I'm not sure what it means. 

3. I know the word and can recognise and understand it while reading, but I probably wouldn't feel comfortable using it in writing or speech. 

4. I know the word well and can use it correctly in writing or speech. 

Irrupt

Word of the day

Irrupt (v) - to enter a place suddenly or with force. 

(of a plant or animal population) to enter a region suddenly and in very large numbers

 (of a population) to increase suddenly and greatly

It is exciting to see snowy owls and winter finches irrupting from the north, as well as southern species expanding their winter ranges northward.

Not to be confused with erupt = to force out or release usually suddenly and violently (volcano erruption) 

How does Atwood create tension and a sense of hope through Offred’s narration and through the way the doctor speaks?​ Find quotes to discuss. 

• "'Any pain, Honey?'  He calls me Honey."
  
• "It's genuine, genuine sympathy; and yet he's enjoying this sympathy and all."
  
• "Give me children or else I die."
  
• "women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that's the law."
  
• "He's said a forbidden word. Sterile. There is no such thing as a sterile man any more, not officially."
  

Chapter 11 - The doctor pgs 59 -61

You will be given either past or present 

Scan through Chapter 10 (p. 54 - 58). You will either look at the parts describing the present, or you will concentrate on moments of analepsis (flashback). 

In your exercise book, bullet point list the information you find. 

Feedback to the class one point at a time.

Present:

Songs and censorship 

Rita humming

Warmth, summer weather/dresses

The cushion with “Faith” written on it (see Corinthians 13:13 “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”)

Views of Nick and the Commander

Final reflection on the Commander

Past: 

Singing and music 

Aunt Lydia  - women’s clothing, showing bodies, “things”

Memory of living with Luke/family

Moira, (underwhore party), sexualised clothing, smoking

Reflection on the normality of their former lives.For example, cat killing mice

Moira dropping water bombs; co-ed dormitory

Then discuss: 

 

What is the effect of this non-linear narrative? 

What details are remembered by the narrator? Why might they be significant? 

Lesson objectives 

Looking more closely at an extract

Considering chapter 12 

Considering a paper 2 comparative question and planning to answer that question 

 

Rate the word 1 to 4

1. I do not know the word, and I have never seen it before. 

2. I've heard or seen the word before, but I'm not sure what it means. 

3. I know the word and can recognise and understand it while reading, but I probably wouldn't feel comfortable using it in writing or speech. 

4. I know the word well and can use it correctly in writing or speech. 

Abrupt 

Word of the day

Abrupt (adj) - sudden and unexpected, and often unpleasant

Unscramble this synonym OUOSRTSUEICD

OUOSRTSUEICD

As you step into the air-conditioned office, there is an abrupt change in temperature.

Discourteous

     Is that how we lived then? But we lived as usual. Everyone does, most of the time. Whatever is going on is as usual. Even this is as usual, now. 

     We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

     Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it. There were stories in the newspapers, of course, corpses in ditches or the woods, bludgeoned to death or mutilated, interfered with as they used to say, but they were about other women, and the men who did such things were other men. None of them were the men we knew. The newspaper stories were like dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others. How awful, we would say, and they were, but they were awful without being believable. They were too melodramatic, they had a dimension that was not the dimension of our lives.

     We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom.

     We lived in the gaps between the stories.

Annotate this extract. 

Consider the main message in the context in which it appears in the novel. Think about where it appears, what precedes it and what follows it.

How is this purpose conveyed through authorial choices? 

Moira, in Offred's room at college, talking about making money by selling sexy underwear to suburban women. Laughing and considering beating the 'pornomarts'. 

Purpose: meditation on how repression is a gradual process which we accept while it does not affect us 

Offred listening to the sound of the Commander's car being started. Sitting on the window seat, she considers the little cushion with the word FAITH on it. She considers that reading is banned for women

 Ignoring

Ignoring 

Ignorance 

usual 

usual 

usual 

usual 

lived 

lived 

lived 

lived 

other 

other 

dreams 

dreams 

dreamt 

dimension 

dimension 

In a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it.

We lived in the blank white spaces at the edge of print. 

We lived in the gaps between the stories. 

they were ...they were awful ...They were too melodramatic.

We were ...who were ...We lived... We lived. 

Repetition 

Diction choice 

Consideration of diction choice 

Anaphora 

Past tense 

Simile 

Metaphor 

Pronoun usage - them and us 

Symbolism - blank white spaces 

Visual & tactile imagery 

Juxtaposition & contrast 

Write a well-construced academic paragraph discussing how the purpose of the extract is supported by authorial choices. 

Chapter 12 pgs 62 - 66 Babies, beauty and butter 

What home comforts does the narrator yearn for in this chapter?

How does she describe her own body on pages ?(p.62 -63)

What happened to her daughter when she was young? (p. 63-64) Why may this be significant?

List three other details showing what we learn about her daughter. 

The Handmaid’s Tale is often called a “feminist” novel. Yet in what ways does the narrator fulfil stereotypical female roles? What might Atwood be suggesting about compliance to those roles?

The regime in the Commander’s household and in Gilead

as a whole can be linked. Both could be described as

patriarchal regimes. Consider what features the two regimes

have in common. 

In your groups make a Venn diagram illustrating the similarities and differences between the two regimes. 

• Look up the term’s microcosm and macrocosm; could they be relevant here? How? Discuss
• Microcosm: a small place, society, or situation that has the same characteristics as something much larger. 
  
• Macrocosm: any large organised system considered as a whole, rather than as a group of smaller systems

The struggle agains injustice is a theme that speaks to readers. Compare the ways in which the authors of two literary works have depicted unjust worlds. 

Consider The Handmaid's Tale and If this is a Man

Make a mind map in your groups with unjust worlds in the centre of your paper What branches will you add? What similarities and differences do you see? Brainstorm ideas.