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.​

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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.​

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

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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:​

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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 43 - 44) 

 

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

​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.

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

Lesson objectives 

We will learn about modernism and postmodernism 

We will discuss an allusion in the novel 

• 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 

• Meta-fiction - 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
  
• 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

Features of post-modernist text

To what extent is this novel a post-modern novel? 

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

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"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. 

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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.​

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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 56) 

Answer in your class notebook or 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? 

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