Any novel’s historical, political and social background is of great importance when attempting to analyse and interpret the messages contained within its pages. Novels such as Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea delve into the social and political depths of the worlds they create in the hope that they will communicate an understanding of the reader’s real world. It can be difficult to become emotionally involved in the political technicalities of some novels, but it is less difficult to involve ourselves in the progress and development of a character. These two aspects of these two novels are not mutually exclusive, however, they require each other to exist successfully, but it is perhaps the life, strife and development of the characters which remains with us. Perhaps therefore, it is best to view the societies presented by both novelist, by examining them in relation to the characters, who tell the stories.

Offred is allowed, by Atwood, the role of narrator in The Handmaid’s Tale, where she may offer the reader an insight into her secluded ‘centre’. She speaks mainly at night, particularly when “illegally” thinking back to how her life used to be, providing an element of secrecy. It is the only time she has to herself. “The night is mine”, she tells us, “...my own time, to do with as I will, as long as I am quiet” (THT, Page 47).  

Abbot explains that Offred was intentionally written to be passive so that she would be out of danger – she barely shows any signs of life, nothing interesting has happened to her (unlike Janine, who was raped) and she is a typical, normal every-day woman. She is a complete contrast to Moira, who was full of life and had battled the social norms of being a lesbian, but is then taken away by the Eyes and never seen again[1]. Atwood stresses heavily that Offred was not designed to be a hero, but to be ordinary. “It was”, she says, “OK for Moira to be a hero, but for the central character to be a hero would have made it into a different story.”[2]

The Handmaid’s Tale appeals to an audience of 1960s and 70s feminist activists, much in the way that Wide Sargasso Sea did in the 1960s. Jean Rhys give a Post-Colonialist re-reading of Jane Eyre, but many critics have subsequently, as Priya Gobal observes, criticised the ‘foregrounding’ of the black character for the sake of a 1960’s feminist discourse.[3] Atwood’s novel scrutinises feminism of the period principally through characters such as Moira and Offred’s mother: “I admired my mother in some ways … I said to her once” (THT Page 132). In her ‘flashbacks’, Offred shows how she disagrees with several of and wants to break free from her mother’s absolutist activist opinions.

Jean Rhys focuses more on her characters than on any political or social background: Thomas F. Staley explains how Rhys deals with the aspects of personality and human relationships which have always engaged her and how she fully fleshes out all of her characters, particularly Rochester and Antoinette, who also spends a lot of the time in novel “re-examining the nature of male and female understanding”[4].

Written as an answer to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Rhys gives Antoinette a voice that was denied her in Jane Eyre so that she has a life and a story to tell, and not simply ‘the mad woman locked away in the attic’ – Rhys explores the character of Antoinette and explains the reason why she burnt the house down, which to Jane Eyre readers is presented as a rash act of insanity. It is difficult to read Bronte’s novel now, without being rather horrified at the treatment meted out to ‘Bertha’. Rhys rejuvenates her name colonial name ‘Antoinette’ and with it an identity, from, so to speak, the ashes. “Names” Antoinette tells Rochester, “are important”.

The social backgrounds of the characters in Wide Sargasso Sea provide the main reason for the divide between Antoinette and Rochester and in between we have the character of Christophine, although it might better be argued that it is Antoinette who is stuck in the middle; she is the ‘white cockroach’ and her downfall begins through the suspicion and rumours spread through the community, which her husband is all too happy to accept. It is through these suspicions and rumours that Rhys makes abundantly clear that “it is in the exposure of our individual ‘doubts’ and ‘hesitations’, our private needs and motivations, our exposure to each other, that we discover the malice of the universe”[5]. We learn much about the attitudes to the colonialists and the colonisers from the characters. Many of the locals (and Antoinette) believe in the power of Obeah, a type of voodoo magic practised by Christophine; for example, when Coco the Parrot burns to death in the burning down of the Coulibri Estate, those witnessing the event gasp and whisper how it is bad luck to see a parrot burn and die in such a way. The imagery is startling: “I opened my eyes, everybody was looking up and pointing at Coco on the glacis railings with his feathers alight. He made an effort to fly down but his clipped wings failed him and he fell screeching. He was all on fire.” (WSS Pages 100-120) The flaming bird may represent many things, like the immobilisation of individuals (clipped wings) and destruction of a way of life. It also foreshadows ‘Bertha’s’ death in Jane Eyre.  It is significant that Rochester and Antoinette do not talk to each other about their concerns; they go and speak to other people: Antoinette talks to Christophine whilst Rochester talks to Amelie.

Rather than arguing that the characters are more important than theme and context it might also be argued, that the characters are designed by the authors as vehicles for specific themes and to give the reader an insight into the world in which the character is living; for example, Rhys’ novel reflects the societies of a hot, stifling Caribbean and Atwood reveals the hidden horrors of being trapped in a radioactive America (rather than her more relaxed homeland of Canada), using her main character, Offred, to express the thoughts and feelings (if she has any) of a woman’s mind, bound in slavery. Atwood’s Handmaid says, ‘My room, then. There has to be some space, finally, that I claim as mine, even in this time’. Carol Ann Howard suggests that these words could be “taken as emblematic of a woman’s survival narrative told within the confines of a patriarchal system” [6]. We become interested in the characters first, but a recognisable social reality becomes “represented by the dystopia known as Gilead”[7].

Antoinette, Rhys’ main character, also portrays slavery – though in a different sense, because since the Emancipation Act of 1834, the whole status chain has been turned on its head: “Emancipation troubles killed old Cosway” (WSS, Page 13) - but Antoinette is also a vehicle for its consequences, such as ‘madness’ (inherited or created by her treatment of superiors) and racism. We read in Part One of the novel how Antoinette’s mother, Annette, neglects her child as she succumbs to madness and one day, Antoinette is followed home by a young girl who is the first to call her a “white cockroach and “we are made aware of the violence, disruption and tragedy...and the radical social and emotional upheaval in the West Indies contained in this section provides a kind of psycho-historical background for Antoinette’s life[8]”. From a reader’s point of view, we feel great sympathy for the young Antoinette, as she is clearly a child deprived of the love that a young child requires, from friends and family. As she grows up and becomes a woman, the audience are still sympathetic towards her – as we are still aware of the awful upbringing that she has had – but in parts two and three, we see its effects and consequences.

 Wide Sargasso Sea, then, highlights the abolition of slavery and the clashes between races and classes in society. The character of Antoinette places us in the middle of this massive social upheaval, as she grows up in a community tangled in the racism caused by these clashes. It is this kind of upbringing and these kinds of events (such as the ‘white cockroach’ incident) that begin the deterioration of her mental state and influence her occasional hysteria and despair. She falls between two stools, and here begins the fragmentation of her identity as she is “dependant upon both worlds but is accepted in neither”[9].

Both Offred and Antoinette are also vehicles for sexual expression as they struggle to live in a patriarchal society where there is little or no sexual identity and expression: in The Handmaid’s Tale, ‘Offred’ is her patronymic name – a name derived from the male original – and sex has only one purpose in Gilead: procreation for the Commanders and their Wives, from which there is no form of pleasure. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette’s marriage is arranged entirely by men. If “It is an axiom of most dictatorships that they try to control sexuality”, as Howard proposes, where they “suppress most men, but all women”, then we have perfect example in both these novels, whether they be totalitarian states of far flung colonies of the British Empire.

There are similar situations in the other dystopian novels. There are no women at all in Animal Farm; in 1984, all those in charge are men and the only principal female character, Julia, is handed over by the principal male character, Winston; there is the same situation in V for Vendetta and it is illegal to be openly homosexual. However, there are moments when they feel a sort of sexual power: “I enjoy the power … watching our retreating shapes (THT Page 32). Antoinette too has the heightened sense of sexual energy and of its power – when she is sleeping with Rochester, for example, in the brief period where there is any kind of feeling that one could call ‘love’ between them, she begs for him to make her “die now”.

Readers often find that they can identify principal ‘good’ and ‘bad’ characters in the novels they read. In these such novels, the moral question of who (or what) is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is debatable and by no means clear – all the characters are subject to their unique situations – but some could argue that some characters could be defined as heroes – Offred and Moira in The Handmaid’s Tale, Winston in 1984 and Old Major and Boxer in Animal Farm are just some examples. Carol Ann Howard explains how Offred breaks free: “…her treasonable act of speaking out in a society where women are forbidden to read or write or to speak freely affects a significant shift from ‘history’ and ‘herstory’[10]. We admire characters that speak against an oppressive regime and stand up for what is right – we have great respect for them, because in a sense, we would like to be like them: we aspire to exhibit great courage, intelligence, charisma and leadership.

In ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, we have a certain admiration for Offred because she puts her life on the line so that she – and in doing so, the audience as well - may attempt to learn the truth. Through our original respect for Antoinette in ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’, the reader imagines that she could become a sort of heroine if she was able to live happily ever after with a man she deserved and in a place she loved. However, Antoinette’s mentality becomes so clouded and destroyed as she struggles on with life that she eventually does the terrible deed of burning the house down; Old Major dies at the beginning of Animal Farm, Boxer is killed through being overworked and by the end, the animals looking through the window into the meeting cannot tell who are the pigs and who are the humans; Winston in 1984 hands over the woman he loves to be tortured so that he may go free and accepts the system that he has been fighting against all of his life: “And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick … All you care about is yourself”[11]. In these dystopias, those who could have been heroes turn in some way and their morality or ‘heroicness’ becomes questionable.

Novels such as 1984, Animal Farm and V for Vendetta share similar themes, characters and plotlines to The Handmaid’s Tale and Wide Sargasso Sea that link to the novels’ historical, political and social backgrounds: Offred and 1984’s main character, Winston, are both trapped in societies under governments they cannot escape; both Offred and Coco the Parrot from Wide Sargasso Sea have had their “wings clipped”, which links to their enslavement and to the higher power controlling them; The Handmaid’s Tale, V for Vendetta, and to an extent, 1984, show an inside view of the reality of governments; V for Vendetta and 1984 have similar government mottos: in 1984, the government proclaims ‘War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength’, whereas Adam Sutler’s government have put up posters everywhere, saying ‘Strength through Unity, Unity through Faith’; the plotlines and eventual outcomes of 1984, Animal Farm, The Handmaid’s Tale and Wide Sargasso Sea show how people can be corrupted and changed – V for Vendetta also shows this, but (arguably) in a more positive way, as people across the UK stand up to their oppressive government and fight for their rights back.

All of the novels previously mentioned are dystopias, novels which portray a corrupted, darker and generally worse view of our world, often set in the future. They are all also linked to periods of our history – Wide Sargasso Sea shows life after the influence of the slave trade and the bigotry of the previous White masters, The Handmaid’s Tale is similar to the World War period – rationing, too dangerous to go outside, barriers, secret services, etc – 1984 has a ‘Big Brother’ style government (even now, we have news reports asking whether we are being watched too much), Animal Farm is based on communism – “Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others” - and V for Vendetta is, basically, Hitler’s Nazi regime (a regime which is also briefly mentioned in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, chapter twenty-four).

The Handmaid’s Tale is written almost as a historical document – in the historical notes at the end, Professor James Darcy Pieixoto reveals how approximately thirty tapes cassette tapes telling the story we have just read. Whilst writing The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood based the events that take place in her novel on actual events that she found in newspapers and kept clippings of – articles on Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, atrocities in foreign countries, birth control in Nazi Germany, etc. One of Atwood’s tasks whilst writing The Handmaid’s Tale was to avoid involving practices that had not already happened at some point in history, “but it is critical to understand that every single one of the practices described in the novel is drawn from the historical record”.[12]

The Handmaid’s Tale shows a lack of freedom for the characters and the workings of a “hidden” government. Lower class characters lack all individuality, whereas the rich and those in power are almost above and beyond the law: Carol Ann Howard says how individual freedom of choice has been outlawed in her novel, how everyone has been classified and labelled[13]. The Commander, for example, in The Handmaid’s Tale is able to access the black market and possess forbidden goods whereas the Handmaids aren’t even allowed to read.

The Commanders in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ represent the male authoritarian leaders that we have encountered throughout history – extremist religious leaders in the Middle-east, for example, directing their vast groups of people under their absolutist rule. He also linked to a Nazi guard in chapter twenty-four, as Offred remembers a documentary she saw many years ago (THT, pages 154-155). Offred’s commander is the main agent of her oppression, so we are then placed in a dilemma when the Commander invites Offred into his study for innocent games of Scrabble and brief periods of respite, and becomes the character that offers her the most sympathy and kindness. Through his position and his unhappiness, he is as much a prisoner as the Handmaids are. However, Offred does point out “How easy it is to invent a humanity…” (THT Page 155), depending on the circumstances and whose view point you’re looking from.

Characters in novels like The Handmaid’s Tale and Wide Sargasso Sea give readers an insight into worlds we do not see and never knew could possibly exist. Whether we love them or hate them, our sympathy with them and our links of understanding with them arouse moral questions and truly make us think. But it is by studying and researching the character’s historical, political and social backgrounds that we truly understand their place in the situations they find themselves in, and by seeing the mistakes that were made in their time, perhaps we can even draw parallels to the governments of our time and avoid the same mistakes. It is with the characters that we empathise – they are the doorways into their societies – and it is the characters that keep our interest, otherwise it would be nothing more than a history book.