Highbrow stuff to compare with Handmaid's Tale

[kelby_lake]

We have to study it for A-Level and are allowed to pick our own titles. I really want to study something wacky with it, not the usual 'feminist' stuff.

Preferably a Shakespeare play (I love Julius Caeser and that sort of Shakespeare) and/or another play. Avoid suggesting long Russian novels.

[stlukesguild]

A Shakespeare play? I would suggest something with a like theme might allow for greater comparison. Another distopian novel, perhaps... but avoiding the usual 1984 and Brave New World I would suggest Yevgeny Zamyatin's We... which is certain better than any them.

[Barbarous]

perhaps Timon of Athens would suffice.

[kelby_lake]

I just don't want to do the overdone stuff.

Possible topic might be something to do with power- how the ruled actually have more power than the ruler...i dunno...

[Petrarch's Love]

Hi Kelby-Lake--I'm not sure about a Shakespeare play as a piece for comparison with The Handmaid's Tale. It's certainly not a natural choice of texts for comparison, though if you were inspired and willing to put a fair deal of extra thought and work into it there are probably ways it could work. If I were to attempt such a comparison the play I would think of first would be Taming of the Shrew, since he's directly engaging with the play between power and gender dynamics in the relationship between Kate and Petruchio and there might be a lot of fruitful material to investigate in a comparison between Shakespeare's Elizabethan era account of taming women and Atwood's modern one. This could lead you to a discussion about what kind of agency do the heroines of each piece do or do not have; the connections between power and sexual relationships, or between power and gender; how personal relationships do or do not conform to public social expectations or regulations; etc.

Alternatively, you might think of contrasting Atwood's distopian novel with earlier utopian works, perhaps St./Sir Thomas More's Utopia itself, or even Plato's Republic (these are the first two works that come to mind, but there may be other suitable Utopias out there). If you took this direction then the focus of your study could be comparing and contrasting the distopian and utopian visions of the works you look at. This could open up a lot of questions: Does comparing the two suggest a picture of two different possible routes with the Utopia showing the actions and elements that will lead a society to bliss and the distopia showing how different choices lead societies in the opposite direction? What is the line between the utopian and the distopian society? Is the account of utopia actually an ideal one? Does the utopian vision have anything in common with the distopian one? Does the narrative point of view possibly affect whether the society described is seeing as utopian or distopian? That is, would a different type of person telling the story of the society in Atwood's story paint a rosier picture, or is there anything to suggest that there could potentially be a narrator for the utopian piece that might reveal a darker side to it? What role does satire play in each piece? In what ways do they or do they not serve as commentary on their contemporary societies?

Probably any one of those questions could keep you busy for awhile. These are just a couple of suggestions, but you may want to think of what it is that interests you most about Handmaid's Tale and what kinds of questions it raises for you and then pick a work for comparison that will help you to speak to those themes or questions. That way, rather than picking something because of what it's not (i.e. not expected or usual) and then finding that you really have nothing fruitful to say about it, you will be picking something based on what you are interested in. Just a piece of advice you may find helpful when trying to start most projects in future. :)

[JBI]

I don't know - my first thought on pairing was The Winter's Tale with The Handmaid's Tale, though, I'm not sure why - probably because of the mood.

[kelby_lake]

Does 'The Crucible' count as dystopian? I was thinking of maybe doing different views on America...

Ideally I don't want to do heavy dsytopian sci-fi thingies. Would quite like to do Oleanna but am not sure how I could fit it in or what I'd compare it with (we have to choose 2 books to compare with Handmaid's Tale).

[kiki1982]

I just did a review of Kasimir und Karoline by Ödön von Horváth, performed by the NTGent (Belgium) in Avignon. Bad it was. At the end some of the audience booed them off the stage.

It is about people who do not know that hey are indoctrinated and profess ideas they do not believe themselves. (typically German mindset, people hypnotised by the idea of climbing the social ladder but never succeeding, and being blind for the nasty things happening around them (Nazism)). It is a play from 1931, written when Hitler had just gained a lot of seats in parliament.

I was thnking just now how it cold be an onteresting futuristic piece of work...

I don't know A Handmaid's Tale really (I know what the plot is more or less, but not really how it is constructed), bt maybe you can do something with that?

I have some interesting material but it's in German:

http://www.kerber-net.de/literatur/deutsch/drama/horvath/kasimir.htm

[prendrelemick]

I thought of Troilus and Cressida. Woman as a chattel, a war going on. what she must do to survive.

[kelby_lake]

Sounds interesting.

Any suggestions of feminist or anti-feminist literature?