"The Handmaid’s Tale" by Margaret Atwood as a postmodern novel: dystopian genre transgression in postmodern era

PhD in Philology, Associate Professor, English Language Department, Kruty Heroes Military Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology (Kyiv)

Роман Маргарет Етвуд «Розповідь Служниці», на перший погляд, досліджений всебічно й фундаментально. Науковцями глибоко проаналізовані аспекти жанру антиутопії, його феміністська та антирелігійна спрямованість, зв'язок роману з філософськими концепціями ХХ ст. Поетика роману викликає інтерес дослідників до питань інтертекстуальності, специфіки композиції тощо.

Проте не зважаючи на широке коло проблем, які мають місце як у дослідженнях 1980-2000х, так і в сучасних напрацюваннях, поза увагою науковців залишилося, на наш погляд, дуже важливе питання щодо значення роману Маргарет Етвуд для подальшого розвитку як традиції жанру антиутопії, так і жанра постмодерністського роману. У той же час «Розповідь Служниці» можна розглядати і як програмний твір, у якому чітко виокремлено й опрацьовано ключові жанрові засади постмодерністського роману-антиутопії, які ще не були обґрунтовані.

Сучасні дослідження особливостей постмодерністської антиутопії на матеріалі різних творів 1990-2000-х рр. акцентують увагу саме на ті жанрові візії, що були закладені в романі М. Етвуд. Дослідники переважно зосереджують свою увагу на трансформації змісту антиутопії в епоху постмодернізму

Водночас зрозуміло, що зміни, яких зазнала антиутопія в останній третині ХХ ст., пов'язані з оформленням естетики жанру постмодерного роману, про що свідчить поява роману «Розповідь Служниці». У зв'язку з цим метою статті вважаємо дослідження вищезазначеного твору М. Етвуд у контексті поетики жанру постмодерністського роману-антиутопії через призму тісного зв'язку змістовних ознак антиутопії та форми постмодерністського роману.

Досягнення поставленої мети передбачає звернення до історико-літературного, філософсько- естетичного, герменевтичного методів.

У контексті постмодерністської антиутопічної парадигми жанр антиутопії суттєво трансформується. Переорієнтація змістовних аспектів жанру пов'язана зі скороченням пробілів між антиутопічним і реальним часом, появою відносно оптимістичної тональності, лабільністю антиутопічного світу (що зумовлює умовно-метафоричний характер хронотопу, аморфність просторових і дискретність часових меж), зміщенням акценту на внутрішній світ персонажа.

Вищий рівень антропоцентризму, характерний для постмодерністської антиутопії, зумовлює модифікацію характеру бунту головного героя проти тоталітарного режиму - фокус з соціального бунту зміщується на особистий екзистенційний (боротьба за збереження власної ідентичності), де важливим стає не результат, а його філософський зміст.

Водночас антиутопія вбирає в себе й риси постмодерністської романної форми і постмодерністської наративної стратегії, оперуючи прийомами інтертекстуальності та переосмислюючи традиції минулого, іронії та пародії, гри з часом і авторської гри з читачем. Зауважимо, що функція

ігрової стратегії автора полягає не лише в тому, щоб зробити читача співавтором тексту, спонукаючи його до безлічі інтерпретацій. Багатоплановість гри втягує його в дійство й змушує поміркувати про діапазон можливостей, які мають місце в сучасній цивілізації, тобто сприймати розповідь про Гілеад не просто як захопливий сторітеллінг. В ігровому модусі прослідковується ідейно-змістовна авторська стратегія оповіді - через інтертекст (як поєднання різнорівневих хронотопів і культурних текстів), з одного боку, так і через залучення в переживання Offred - з іншого, спонукати/примусити читача пізнати всю історію християнської цивілізації, репрезентовану в антиутопічному наративі героїні.

Ключові слова: постмодерністський роман-антиутопія, інтертекст, іронія, гра, наратив- на стратегія, трансгресія жанру.

“THE HANDMAID'S TALE” BY MARGARET ATWOOD AS A POSTMODERN NOVEL: DYSTOPIAN GENRE TRANSGRESSION IN POSTMODERN ERA

Anna A. Stepanova, Alfred Nobel University (Ukraine)

Inna I. Zhukovych, Kruty Heroes Military Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology (Ukraine)

Key words: postmodern dystopian novel, intertext, irony, play, narrative strategy, genre transgression.

Margaret Atwood's novel “The Handmaid's Tale” seems to have been studied comprehensively and fundamentally. Aspects of the dystopian genre, its feminist and anti-religious orientation, and the novel's connection with philosophical concepts of the 20th century have been studied in depth. In the poetics of the novel, researchers' interest in the problems of intertextuality, the specifics of composition, etc., has never ceased. However, despite the variety of problems covered in these studies, in our opinion, a fundamental question about the significance of Margaret Atwood's novel for the further development of the tradition of the dystopian genre has remained on the periphery of scholarly attention. Meanwhile, “The Handmaid's Tale” can be regarded as a programmatic work that clearly identifies and elaborates the key genre principles of the postmodern dystopian novel, which have not yet been substantiated. Modern studies of the features of postmodern dystopia based on the material of various works of the 1990-2000s, as well as in modern findings, capture exactly those genre strategies that were embedded in M. Atwood's novel. At the same time, researchers focus on the transformation of the mainly predominant aspects of dystopia in the era of postmodernism. Meanwhile, the changes that dystopia underwent in the last third of the 20th century are associated with the formation of the aesthetics of the genre of the postmodern novel, as evidenced by the publication of the novel “The Handmaid's Tale”. In this regard, we consider it appropriate to study M. Atwood's novel as a postmodern dystopian novel in the relationship between the content features of dystopia and the genre of the postmodern novel.

The work aims to investigate the dystopian narrative presented in “The Handmaid's Tale” in the context of the poetics of the postmodern novel genre. Achieving the stated goal involves the use of historical- literary, philosophical-aesthetic, and hermeneutical research methods.

In the context of the postmodern dystopian paradigm, the genre of dystopia is transformed significantly. Changes in the substantive aspects of the genre are associated with a reduction in the gap between dystopian and real time, the affirmation of a relatively optimistic tone, the lability of the dystopian world (which predetermines the conditionally metaphorical nature of the chronotope, the amorphousness of spatial and discrete time boundaries), and a shift in emphasis to the inner world of the character. The increased degree of anthropocentrism, which is characteristic of postmodern dystopia, determines the change in the nature of the protagonist's rebellion against the totalitarian regime - the focus of social rebellion shifts to personal existential (the struggle to preserve one's own identity), where it is not the result that is important, but its philosophical content.

At the same time, dystopia also absorbs the features of the postmodern novel form and postmodern narrative strategy, mastering the techniques of intertextuality and rethinking the traditions of the past, irony and parody, playing with time and the author's game with the reader. Moreover, the function of the author's game strategy is not only to make the reader a co-author of the text but also to encourage him to make multiple interpretations. The multifaceted nature of the game draws the reader into the action and forces one to reflect on the windows of opportunity opening up in modern civilization, that is, to perceive the story of Gilead as more than just exciting storytelling. The game mode reveals the author's ideological and content-based storytelling strategy - through intertext (as a combination of multi-level chronotopes and cultural texts), on the one hand, and through involvement in the experiences of Offred, on the other, to encourage/force the reader to experience the entire history of Christian civilization, presented in the dystopian heroine's narrative.

Introduction

atwood's novel the handmaid's tale

Margaret Atwood's novel “The Handmaid's Tale” (1985) has a long history of research, which began immediately after its publication. From the second half of the 1980s to the present day, the science bibliography devoted to the novel has been plentiful and is represented by in-depth studies that touch on many artistic aspects of the work. In the thematic diversity of scientific works, we can conditionally distinguish several clusters uniting studies on certain problems. The most popular and numerous studies consider The Handmaid's Tale in the context of dystopian traditions. Thus, Roberta Rubenstein [2001], Luci M. Freibert [1988], Diane S. Wood [1992], and N. Ovcharenko [2006] pay attention to the problem of individual freedom and the fate of women in a totalitarian society, linking the novels of J. Orwell, R. Bradbury and M. Atwood into a single dystopian tradition. Coral Ann Howells [2001] and Inna Podhurska and My- roslava Seniuk [2022] focus on the anti-religious orientation of The Handmaid's Tale as an antiutopian novel.

Referring to the genre complexity of the novel, which incorporates features of feminist, political, and environmental novels based on an antiutopian novel [Ovcharenko, 2006, p. 46], researchers almost immediately defined the genre of “The Handmaid's Tale” as “feminist dystopia” [Malak, 1987] (today, M. Atwood's novel is called the main feminist dystopia in the history of literature [Soldatov, 2020]). This led to the emergence of the most extensive cluster of studies of M. Atwood's novel as a feminist dystopia. Margaret Atwood, notes Lucy Freibert, “demonstrates the absurdity of Western patriarchal teleology that views woman's biology as destiny and exposes the complicity of women in perpetuating that view” [Freibert, 1988, p. 280]. In the context of feminist dystopia, scientists focus on studying the problems of positive (based on the radical ideas of Christianity) and negative (the right to choose) freedom of women in a totalitarian society [Tolan, 2005]. The problem of the real embodiment of feminist dystopia in modern society is considered by Shirley S. Neuman, noting that there is a relationship between the society that M. Atwood creates in her novel and the real society [Neuman, 2006, p. 866]. This idea remains relevant today: almost 15 years later, Edita Bratanovic notes, “Many readers feel that the society described in the novel is unrealistic and far-fetched, but the truth is that women are still being discriminated against and feminism as the movement still has a long way to go before all of its goals are achieved” [Bratanovic, 2020, p. 356].

An attempt to explain “The Handmaid's Tale” as a feminist dystopia focusing on the prevailing issues of infertility, power politics, ruthlessness of the theocratic idea, suppression of women in a male chauvinistic society, exploitation of women as a toy used for absolute sexual pleasure are undertaken in the works of Astra S. Mouda [2012], V. Vinoth and M. Vijayakumar [2022], Rafea M. Alwan [2023], etc.

Aspects of the novel's poetics are no less deeply researched. In this cluster of studies, scholars have focused on the study of narrative structure, stylistic features, the author's image and authorial modality, the motif of the play, the specificity of the plot, etc. Thus, the change of discursive forms, how the first-person narrator handles the narrative material, and the composition of the narrative text become the subject of Hilde Staels' [1995] study. Inna Podhurska [2020] traces the influence of the author's choice of narrative form in a literary text as one of the best tools for establishing contact with the reader and representing the author's position. Yulia Chernova [2019] focuses on the stylistics and peculiarities of the psychology of storylines. The ambivalence of the love theme, the motif of love as a game in the focus of Madonne Miner's [Miner, 1991] attention, etc.

Comparative studies also join the study of the poetics of M. Atwood's novel. These studies comprehend the problems of intertextuality, the comprehension of as a category of historical analysis, the peculiarities of comparing “The Handmaid's Tale” with the feminist issues of modern works, etc. Thus, Karen F. Stein [1994] traces thematic and stylistic parallels between M. Atwood's novel and J. Swift's “Modest Proposal”. The problem of nation-state formation and the limited prospects for the development of middle-class women is considered by Marie Lovrod [2006] as common to M. Atwood's “The Handmaid's Tale” and Sidhwa's “Cracking India”. Luz Angelica Kirschner [2006] brings together the images of the protagonists of M. Atwood's novels “The Handmaid's Tale” and Julia Alvarez's “In the Time of the Butterflies” as marginalised women trying to survive in totalitarian oppressive regimes controlled by men. The researcher notes that both novels, “exemplify the need to consider gender 'a useful category of historical analysis' to overturn the monological and well-organised version of official history that, in the process of history writing, has tended to obliterate 'insignificant' narratives and voices” [Kirschner, 2006, p. 2].

In modern studies of M. Atwood's novel, the attention of scholars is focused on considering “The Handmaid's Tale” in the context of various philosophical theories. Thus, V. Vinoth and M. Vijayakumar [2023] and Sunshine C. Angcos Malit [2023] represent the protagonist of the novel through Simone de Beauvoir's concept of women as the “second sex” concerning feminist concepts such as the loss of female identity, subordination in a patriarchal society, and exploitation in a consumer culture where the female body is seen only as an object. Through the prism of Michel Foucault's concept of power, H. Ismael and H. Saleh examine the discursive strategies of M. Atwood's novel [Ismael, Saleh, 2023]. Harith Ismael Turki and Dulfqar M. Abdulrazzaq examine Marxist feminism as a theoretical framework for reading the novel [Turki, Abdulrazzaq, 2023], etc.

However, despite the variety of problems covered in these studies, in our opinion, a fundamental question about the significance of Margaret Atwood's novel for the further development of the tradition of the dystopian genre has remained on the periphery of scholarly attention. Meanwhile, “The Handmaid's Tale” can be regarded as a programmatic work that clearly identifies and elaborates the key genre principles of the postmodern dystopian novel, which have not yet been substantiated. Modern studies of the features of postmodern dystopia based on the material of various works of the 1990-2000s ([Fedukh, 2015], [Hicks, 2014], [Sarrimo, 2020], [Tashchenko, 2020], [Canli, 2022], etc.) capture exactly those genre strategies that were embedded in M. Atwood's novel. As noted by Tom Moylan, Margaret Atwood has nevertheless taken the traditional dystopia to a historical limit, and in doing so, she anticipates the moment of the critical dystopias that will soon occur in the popular realm of sf in the late 1980s [Moylan, 2000, p. 166]. At the same time, researchers focus on the transformation of the mainly predominant aspects of dystopia in the era of postmodernism. Meanwhile, the changes that dystopia underwent in the last third of the 20th century are associated with the formation of the aesthetics of the genre of the postmodern novel, as evidenced by the publication of the novel “The Handmaid's Tale”. In this regard, we consider it appropriate to study M. Atwood's novel as a postmodern dystopian novel in the relationship between the content features of dystopia and the form of the postmodern novel.

This work aims to investigate the dystopian narrative presented in “The Handmaid's Tale” in the context of the poetics of the postmodern novel genre. Achieving the stated goal involves the use of historical-literary, philosophical-aesthetic, and hermeneutical methods of investigation.

As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes...

Margaret Atwood, “The Handmaid's Tale"

J.-F. Lyotard stated that in the postmodern era, the grand narrative has lost its right to truth, regardless of what mode of unification it uses, regardless of whether it is a speculative narrative or a narrative of emancipation [Lyotard, 1984, p. 37]. In postmodern literature, the loss of plausibility of grand narratives took the form of intertextual inclusions, through which past cultural epochs were resurrected and reinterpreted in an ironic and parodic way. The further back in time a literary text was, the stronger the link established through intertext with the great narratives that had lost their verisimilitude. The more history became a possibility in a world where everything is text, the richer and more diverse intertext became. In discussing the relationship between postmodernist texts and history, Richard Lehan noted that the texts that we often see as destroying historicism are themselves deeply connected to the historical moment. In this context, “intertextuality takes on deeply historical significance when one text talks to another in contexts that are inseparable from the cultural/historical moment” [Lehan, 1990, pp. 552, 551].

In M. Atwood's novel “The Handmaid's Tale”, intertextual connections are diverse. Researchers have deeply comprehended the mythological and fairy-tale (the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood by Ch. Perrault, Alice Through the Looking Glass by L. Carroll [D'Antonio, 2021]), biblical ([Filipczak, 1993], [Christou, 2016], [Kachhwaha, 2018], [D'Antonio, 2021], etc.) literary (J. Chaucer, J. Swift, Ch. Dickens, J. Orwell ([Ingersoll, 1993], [Stein, 1994], [Thomas, 2008], [Clements, 2011], etc.), cultural-historical (onomasticon of the novel, allusions to the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century [Filipczak, 1993], [Templin, 1993], [Pawlak, 2019], etc.) intertexts. Each of the types is assigned certain functions: mythological and fairy-tale intertext deepens the characteristics of the image of the main character, literary intertext emphasises the plot and compositional originality of the novel; cultural-historical - provides the effect of proximity of the novel's dystopian world with the real world; biblical - is the basis of the image of a theocratic totalitarian state.

In addition, references to specific works and cultural realities clearly illustrate Lyotard's thesis about the collapse of grand narratives and their consequences. The image of the Republic of Gilead shows a cross-section of history, starting from early Christianity and ending with the 20th century, and the result of erroneous, sometimes perverted (imperfect) interpretation and implementation of ideas/ideologies of humankind significant for history, as well as a prognostic view of the 21st century. Among such great narratives and corresponding intertexts, we will single out Christianity (Puritanism as a branch of Protestantism - biblical intertext), Enlightenment (J. Swift), Victorianism (Ch. Dickens, image of Queen Victoria), Nazism (allusions to concentration camps), Communism (K. Marx's theses), Liberalism (ironic understanding of tolerance). Let us look at them in more detail.

The biblical intertext is a parody of Protestant fundamentalism, based on which, in fact, the social model of the Republic of Gilead is built. We note immediately the ironic implication in the name of the state - a republic implies a democratic form of government, where power is elected by the people, while in Gilead, democracy becomes a form of dictatorship. The lack of choice among the citizens of Gilead, and especially among women, is ironically emphasised already at the beginning of the novel, “We seemed to be able to choose, the. We were a society dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice" [Atwood, 2002, p. 37].

Already in the dedication to Perry Miller (a professor at Harvard University, a researcher of Puritanism, under whose guidance M. Atwood studied US history) and at the beginning of the narrative in the text of the novel, there are hints that the ancestors of Gilead were the Puritan founding fathers who sailed to the shores of America (New England) on the ship Mayflower, "... you can see paintings, of women in long sombre dresses, their hair covered by white caps, and of upright men, darkly clothed and unsmiling. Our ancestors" [Atwood, 2002, p. 44]. These hints simultaneously reveal both the place of action in the novel (the USA) and genetic connections with English culture and mentality.

As is well known, the cornerstone of the doctrine of Protestant fundamentalism, based on biblical literalism, is the question of Bible interpretation. The parodic interpretation of biblical literalism opens with one of the epigraphs to the novel, which presents a quotation from the Old Testament Book of Genesis about the birth of a child in the family of Jacob and Rachel by the maid Bilhah - a situation that, in fact, formed the basis of the existence of the Gilead state and formed the basis of its politics. The need to follow the letter of the Bible in everyday life and the laws of Gilead, (“They can hit us, there's Scriptural precedent" [Atwood, 2002, p. 26] - “Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid [is] in thy hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee. And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face" [KJV KJV - King James Version Bible, edited by D. Cogliano [Cogliano, 2004]., Genesis 16:6] (only in Gilead one cannot escape); “Hair must be long but covered. Aunt Lydia said: Saint Paul said it's either that or a close shave" [Atwood, 2002, p. 75] - “For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered" [KJV, 1 Corinthians 11:6]; “The penalty for rape, as you know, is death. Deuteronomy 22:23-29" [Atwood, 2002, p. 293], etc.), was combined with the free interpretation, periphrasis or supplementation of the Bible in the interests of the ruling circles, (“Gilead is within you"; “Blessed be this, blessed be that. They played it from a disc, the voice was a man's. Blessed be the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the silent. I knew they made that up, I knew it was wrong, and they left things out too, but there was no way of checking" [Atwood, 2002, pp. 35, 101]). It is impossible to verify since the residents of Gilead are prohibited from reading the Bible, they can only hear the interpretation of its text (which, in fact, is a return to what Martin Luther protested against, calling for the Bible to be translated into national languages, and thus undermining the foundations of Protestantism). This interpretation of biblical literalism leads to the desacralisation of the Bible, which is just a text, in a postmodern world where “everything is a text" (J. Derrida). This text can be added to or rewritten according to the political situation, with the result that the Bible becomes a propaganda tool. At the same time, it is not surprising that the church itself is disappearing as a social institution, becoming either a museum or a cemetery, “The church is a small one, one of the first erected here, hundreds of years ago. It isn't used anymore, except as a museum... The old gravestones are still there, weathered, eroding, with their skulls and crossed bones, memento mori" [Atwood, 2002, p. 44]. Let us note that with fairly harsh criticism of biblical literalism, the author does not touch upon the concept of faith - only that which is directly or indirectly connected with human deeds is subject to criticism. The faith implanted in Gilead is equivalent to ideology and becomes an element of politics; it is false. Genuine faith remains sacred. Offred's appeal to God is not ritualised, it is arbitrary and heartfelt: “My God. Who Art in the Kingdom of Heaven, which is within. I wish you would tell me Your Name, the real one I mean. But You will do as well as anything. I wish I knew what You were up to. But whatever it is, help me to get through it, please. Though maybe it's not Your doing; I don't believe for an instant that what's going on out there is what You meant" [Atwood, 2002, p. 207]. God is explicitly excluded from the creation of the world of Gilead.

The control of the state to keep everyone silent is embodied in the image of The Eyes of God, (“For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth" [KJV, 2 Chronicles 16:9]). The allusion to the image of Big Brother from G. Orwell's novel (“Big Brother is watching you") is evident here. An interesting parallel is drawn with the image of the all-seeing and punishing Eyes, the symbolism of which is widespread in Gilead, and the image of the eye on the back of the old dollar bill, “Pieces of paper, thickish, greasy to the touch, green-coloured, with pictures on each side, some old man in a wig and on the other side a pyramid with an eye above it. It said In God We Trust. My mother said people used to have signs beside their cash registers, for a joke: In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. That would be blasphemy now" [Atwood, 2002, p. 185]. This fragment of the protagonist's memories shows that the preconditions for the atrocities taking place in Gilead are embedded in the past that Offred is so nostalgic about. The comment, “That would be blasphemy now", reveals an ironic subtext, as religion in Gilead is monetised to the maximum extent possible, and for the believer, it becomes a kind of compensation for all the trials and tribulations of earthly existence. At the same time, it becomes a means of obtaining material rewards: it is enough to order a prayer in the Soul Scrolls for the benefit of one's career, and money will be withdrawn from the card. Researchers note that the preached Puritan concept of “diligence in worldly business, and yet deadness to the world" [Cotton, 2001, p. 113] was neglected by subsequent generations and confused with simple success in this world [D'Antonio, 2021, p. 158], probably because the founding fathers, “were seeking economic opportunity rather than religious liberty in the new world" [Gaskill, 2021, p. 22]. In this regard, let us certainly agree with the opinion of Carla S. D'Antonio that Offred's narrative exposes the notion of Puritan “purity" [D'Antonio, 2021, p. 158]. In Gilead, religion and the Bible take on an entrepreneurial spirit, as indicated by the novelist's choice of names for the Aunts - women close to power in Gilead who train maids and administer important social procedures in the state (registration of marriages, birth of children, executions, etc.). According to Charlotte Templin, the names of the Aunts - Sarah, Elizabeth, Lydia, and Helena - originally go back to the names of prominent biblical women (Sarah - wife of Abraham; Elizabeth - mother of John the Baptist; Lydia - Paul's first convert in Europe. Helen - mother of Constantine and pioneer of the True Cross of the Lord) [Templin, 1993, p. 150]. At the same time, the chapter “Historical Notes" contains a hint of their commercial semantics, since the names of the aunts “derived from commercial products available to women in the immediate pre-Gilead period, and thus familiar and reassuring to them - the names of cosmetic lines, cake mixes, frozen desserts, and even medicinal remedies" [Atwood, 2002, p. 322]. Charlotte Templin specifies that it is about, “Helena Rubenstein and Elizabeth Arden cosmetics, Betty Crocker foods, Sara Lee frozen desserts, and Lydia Pinkham's medicine for female complaints. The association of the 'Aunts' with advertising and consumer products suggests their function of manipulating other women in the interests of the dominant powers" [Templin, 1993, p. 150]. Taking into account the fact that the Aunts ensure life in Gilead by the essentially transformed (or inverted) letter of the Bible, and the fact that Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden were called “icons of style", a parodic analogy emerges in which the Aunts appear as “icons of the totalitarian regime". At the same time, it is not the names of Helena Rubinstein, Elizabeth Arden and others that are elevated to the images of biblical women, but the biblical names Sarah, Elizabeth, Lydia, and Helen are relegated to the level of fashion brand names.

In a parodic and ironic rethinking of the biblical intertext, the Protestant metanarrative is desacralised, losing its right to truth. Moreover, the idea, implemented in a work of fiction in the mid-1980s, was developed and approved in scientific and political science works of the 1990s. In 1991, James Moore published his article “Creationist Cosmos of Protestant Fundamentalism", in which the researcher noted that during this period, the movement of Protestant fundamentalism was experiencing a rise and consolidation with political power [Moore, 1991].

In this regard, it is significant that the biblical intertext in the novel “frames" allusions to Nazism and Communism - two metanarratives that were realised and exhausted in the 20th century, and the echoes of these metanarratives are also evident in today's global picture of the world.

The associations of the Gilead political system with Nazism and Communism have been investigated in detail by scholars. Dorota Filipczak points out the identity of the structure and ideology of Gilead and Nazi Germany [Filipczak, 1993, p. 176], which is manifested both in the affirmation of racial ideology in Gilead, and in allusions to the torchlight procession (“the same slogans, the same phrases: the torch of the future, the cradle of the race, the task before us" [Atwood, 2002, p. 290]), and in the presence of colonies that evoke an association with concentration camps, where dissidents and maids who were unable to bear children to the Commanders were sent, and in tattooed numbers on the legs of maids, and the racial division into full-fledged and inferior discarded women (Unwomen), who “burn up with the garbage" [Atwood, 2002, p. 230] and children (Unbabies), destroyed in “shredders" (which caused an association with the racist term of Nazi Germany “Untermenschen" - representatives of lower races, “subhumans", which were considered Jews, Gypsies, Slavs) [Pawlak, 2019, p. 6]. The motif of sacrifice for the common good, which is a cross-cuffing theme in the novel, evokes an association with biblical sacrifice, denoted in the Latin Bible by the word “holocaustosis" (burnt offering). Maria Christou draws attention to this, “Though the controversial term 'Holocaust' is not used at any point in Atwood's novel, the implicit parallel between the Jewish people and the Handmaids-as-sacrificial- offerings carries the same troubling connotations" [Christou, 2016, p. 418].

Continuing the theme of “totalitarian intertext", Maria Christou points out the associations with Communism that arise from the fact that maids wear red uniforms, that their function is to work, and that they undergo indoctrination in the so-called “Red Center", where they consistently repeat a phrase, “From each according to her ability; to each according to his needs" [Atwood, 2002, p. 127], that they are told is taken from the Bible (they said. St. Paul again, in Acts), but is a modified version of the principle of communism borrowed from Karl Marx [Christou, 2016, p. 412]. To this, we should add the motif of “purges", which is evocative in the novel; the images of long black cars - Whirlwind, reminiscent of “black funnels" - NKVD official cars for transporting arrested persons, referring to the Stalinist era; and the inscription of the name of God in his economic hypostasis on a banner (“God is a national resource" [Atwood, 2002, p. 226]). In this absurd pseudo-biblical world, where Marx's atheistic communist doctrine has become the Bible, only the literal-biblical interpretation of the Republic's regime is authentic, “Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity, and is polluted with blood" [KJV, Hosea 6:8].

Thus, the biblical intertext in the novel acts as a palimpsest through which the totalitarian intertext, represented by the Nazi and Communist narratives, shines through and reveals the true face of the theocratic state of Gilead.

No less important is the novel's rethinking of the Victorian metanarrative, which asserted the power of men and the powerlessness of women. The actualisation of the Victorian narrative is represented in the novel by the reference to Dickens' novel “Hard Times". As Deborah Thomas notes, the allusion to Dickens' novel is already contained in the abbreviation of the titles of both novels, “HT". The researcher notes that both novels create the image of women - Louisa in “Hard Times" and Offred in “The Handmaid's Tale" - who are victims of a totalitarian system that controls even a woman's thoughts and denies her the right to be a human being [Thomas, 2008, p. 90]. Indeed, both novels depict a world in which women are sacrificed to material profit and theory of fact (Dickens) or to an ephemeral common good (Atwood), a world in which beauty and sensuality are absent and arranged marriages are approved. In this regard, the echo of scenes from “Hard Times" (Gradgrind forcing Louisa to marry Bounderby) and The Handmaid's Tale (dialogue between the Commander and Offred), in which both women ask the question of love, is indicative. In the responses of both men, there is a similarity between the images of Gradgrind and the Commander: both reject love as “anything fanciful, fantastic, or sentimental" [Dickens, 1957, p. 87] and “anomaly", fruitless dreams spoken of with disgust [Atwood, 2002, p. 233]. Both resort to statistics to prove the favour of arranged marriages (compare: “It is not unimportant to take into account the statistics of marriage, so far as they have yet been obtained, in England and Wales. I find, on reference to the figures, that a large proportion of these marriages are contracted between parties of very unequal ages, and that the elder of these contracting parties is, in rather more than three-fourths of these instances, the bridegroom" [Dickens, 1957, p. 87] and “But look at the stats, my dear. Was it really worth it, falling in love? Arranged marriages have always worked out just as well, if not better" [Atwood, 2002, p. 233]). The parody of the Victorian narrative is completed by the image of Queen Victoria present in “The Handmaid's Tale”, which presents Dickens' fiction with an almost documentary projection of the objective social morality of England, legitimised at the level of the royal family: “I remember Queen Victoria's advice to her daughter. Close your eyes and think of England" [Atwood, 2002, p. 106]. Arranged marriages and the ceremony of impregnation as “voluntary rape" to which the Handmaids are subjected in Atwood's novel are an echo of Victorian arranged marriages and the crowning achievement of the evolution of Victorian society into the image of the Republic of Gilead, in which women, like objects, are deprived of choice and the right to vote.

It seems to us that the mention of Dickens in the novel is connected not only with the problem of the oppression of women - the analogy is obvious, but also with the “children's” problem, which is not mentioned in “Hard Times", but which occupied an important place in the work of the writer who fiercely criticised in the novels labour exploitation of children, whom society, in fact, sacrificed to the interests of those in power, just as in Gilead, children who did not meet the standards ended up in “shredders” in the name of racial purity. However, the problem of ruthless treatment of children from poor families in England in the 19th century was not new. Much earlier, Jonathan Swift spoke extremely harshly about it at the dawn of the Enlightenment in his pamphlet “A Modest Proposal”, lines from which were taken as an epigraph to the novel.

The ideological and stylistic similarities between the works of J. Swift and M. Atwood were studied by Karen Stein in her work “Margaret Atwood's Modest Proposal: The Handmaid's Tale”. The researcher notes that both works offer a solution to the demographic problem - the overpopulation of Ireland in Swift and the sparse population of Gilead in Atwood. In both cases, draconian methods of solution are proposed: in “The Handmaid's Tale" - through sexual slavery, and in “A Modest Proposal” - through cannibalism (preparing gourmet dishes from babies from poor families). In both cases, we are talking about the transformation of children into goods and the dehumanization of women, with a series of animalistic metaphors accentuated in the creation of their images [Stein, 1994, p. 64] (compare: “mares in foal, their cows in calf, or sow when they are ready to farrow" [Swift, 2008, p. 10] and “fed, like a prize pig"; “caged rats"; “a trained pig"; “attentive pet" [Atwood, 2002, pp. 81, 30, 188, 196]). It is noteworthy that in both works, the process of childbirth is designated by the word “breeding,” emphasizing the connection with animals. The idea of cannibalism in Swift and the veiled motif of cannibalism in Atwood (which Karen Stein draws attention to [Stein, 1994, pp. 66-67]) involve going beyond the narrative space to a philosophical level, within the boundaries of which the problem of humanity devouring itself is comprehended. In “The Handmaid's Tale”, the scene in which the mother explains to little Offred how Jews were exterminated in the ovens, and the girl imagines this process as cooking Jews in the oven, again refers to the Nazi narrative. Swift's “A Modest Proposal” contains, besides the perversions of cannibalism, a piece of advice, two hundred years later adopted by the fascists, “Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may flay the carcass (it is about the skin of a baby! - A.S., I.Zh.); the skin of which artiflcially dressed will make admirable gloves for ladies..." [Swift, 2008, p. 8]. Just such products as evidence of Nazi crimes against humanity, as is known, were shown at the Nuremberg Trials in 1945.