Murray ENG102 Final Portfolio: December 2010

       This English 102 class has been very interesting this semester. I was able to expand my reading into books that I may not have read otherwise and yet were very interesting material to cover. I was pleasantly suprised when I could incorporate my field of study into the essays that I was instructed to write. I have not only been able to research things that I will be able to use as a psychology major but also to expand my knowledge and understanding of the things that I was researching.

        I have learned a variety of things in this class that I hope to be able to incorporate into my future papers in college. At the begining of this class I stuggled with MLA format and using approproate citation tecniques. I also struggled with the starting of my papers and the process in which i write. Over the course of the four essays that I have written in Englidh 102, I have found that I am more comfortable in both starting papers and citing them appropriately. I also hope that I have expanded my area of writing to be able to continue in my degree pursuit as writing is a large part of my major.

        At the end of English 101 I figured that this class would be mundane and repetitive. I assumed that it would be the same boring material that i had to cover in high school and the same boring essays that I had to write and rewrite over and over again. I was impressed when i actually learned something. I'm sure that sounds harsh, however it is the way my classes have been. The only issue that I found to have with this class was that we wrote three essays on the same two books. After about the second one I became slightly annoyed and was worried about my papers all sounding like an extension of the other. I hope that they were not. I also hope that I was successful in making them their own entities and following the guidlines that were set on them.

        I am glad that I took this class the way that I did and chose not to start at English 103 where I was placed. Not that I think that 103 would have been difficult, i am just glad that i got to review the basics and expand on what I already knew. Thank you for being an excellent teacher and I am glad that I chose to take your course.

The Psychological Effects of the Enslavement of Women

and the Role that it Plays in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

Margaret Atwood is the author of several books that all seemingly have similar trends. In several she writes about dystopian lives and the forced enslavement of women. In her novel “The Handmaid’s Tale”, she writes from the perspective of a woman who is enslaved for the strict reason of procreation. Although the novel is fiction, there are many similarities between the women portrayed and those who are enslaved in the reality of everyday life. For women who are forcibly enslaved the psychological consequences for each individual can be dire and yet unseen. Margaret Atwood’s novel shows us many different instances where the effects of trauma can be different for each person’s experience of the same event.

The picture that Atwood portrays of the women in her novel can be compared to the women kidnapped for sexual slavery. Also known as victims of sex trafficking, these women, like the women in Atwood’s novel, are placed against their will in inconceivable environments. For people trying to help and understand the effects that this act has, like Andrea Parrot and Nina Cummings, it has been claimed that, “in a just world slavery in any form is untenable; sexual slavery is a particularly heinous type as it continues to violate people in the most fundamental and intimate ways” (Parrot 89). These women are like Offred. They are taken from the lives that they live and forced to be used as an object for someone else’s purpose. These abused women suffer greatly from symptoms of mental health trauma. Farley was quoted in the book, Sexual Enslavement of Girls and Women Worldwide, stating that, “Mental health trauma among women, including depression and anxiety, is often the consequence of being trafficked or enslaved. Depression, personality disorders, hopelessness, dissociative disorders, anger, rage, drug dependence, and post-traumatic stress disorder are common; two-thirds of rescued women have contemplated suicide” (qtd in. Parrot 94). This mental health trauma is also known in the field as psychological trauma and is defined by “the unique individual experience of an event or enduring conditions, in which: The individual’s ability to integrate his/her emotional experience is overwhelmed, or the individual experiences (subjectively) a threat to life, bodily integrity, or sanity” (Pearlman & Saakvitne, 60). This trauma can be caused by several different events including the forced conception and the control of women that is portrayed in Atwood’s novel. Any of the symptoms presented can be different in each individual experiencing psychological trauma.

Offred shows many symptoms of psychological trauma that is also present in the experiences of the women enslaved in sex-trafficking: her need to rebel, her need for information, and the hiding of writings and simple amenities. The experience of these symptoms can even be attributed to the suicide of the former handmaid. Desperation is also a key element in a slavery situation. In the first chapter Offred says, “The Angels stood outside [the building] with their backs to us. They were objects of fear to us, but of something else as well. If only they would look. If only we could talk to them. Something could be exchanged, we thought, some deal made, some tradeoff, we still had our bodies. That was our fantasy” (Atwood 4). She is speaking about the guards posted by the slavers and about how one would be willing to trade themselves for their freedom by any self demeaning way possible. This is attributed to the enslavement that they were in. The trauma that they faced was horrific enough to warrant the sale of themselves in a type of voluntary prostitution or slavery. The consequences of psychological trauma on a person can explain the issues that women in those situations face.

In Atwood’s novel she shows the way that traumatic events can affect each person differently. Offred had a life before this new community was developed. She had freedom and a family. She was forced into a type of slavery and deprived of all her prior freedoms and possessions. Being forced into a lifestyle that she did not choose, Offred faced a trauma that can go unnoticed when first reading the book. By understanding the effects that enforced slavery can have, the reader has a better understanding of the little things in the book. Even the wife’s garden is an example the acts that enslavement can have by showing the need of something to have control over. The wife was an independent woman who endured the same loss of life and freedom as Offred. The flowers and the garden in the story are a system of control; this control being the life, death and presentation of her little life-force. The need of the handmaid’s to hide small amenities like butter for their face is also a system of control. They are trying to get back something in their life, some sort of normalcy.

Moira had a different kind of enslavement. She volunteered to be used as a prostitute. Her decision to sell herself was, to her, the less of the two evils that she was offered. Her options were the colonies or Jezebel’s. As Moira is talking Offred becomes concerned when she says “what I hear in her voice is indifference, a lack of volition. Have they really done it to her then, taken away something – what? – that used to be so central to her?” (Atwood 249). Moira has resigned to her new life and is attempting to make something livable out of it. Yet this is another trait of trauma. The resignation that she is showing is a defense mechanism to hide the fact that she was feeling the same way as Offred. Cecile Hoigard, author of “Backstreets”, claims, “Feelings are an illusion…To sell oneself “voluntarily” – that is the worst, most offensive thing a woman can do” (Hoigard 115). She talks about the trauma that someone faces from prostitution and how no matter what they are never the same as they once were. Once we understand the implications of Moira’s decision we can see how hard of a choice that was. And yet her other option was something that was unbearable to her, to be put in the colonies with the elders and the cast-offs.

Atwood’s novel is all about choices, decisions that are made that affect the characters in different ways. Moira resigned to self-imprisonment. She decided that making her own choice was better than having it made for her. The former handmaid Offred could not handle the hand she was dealt. She committed suicide as she saw this as her last and only option to deal with the abuse she was experiencing. Offred never gave up though. She was almost optimistic in the story with how she was always questioning the things around her, looking for answers, and holding out hope for all of those around her. Even her rebellious affair with Nick can be attributed to her trauma and her search for normalcy and a controllable situation. It seems as if all of the women mentioned in this book suffered from some symptom of psychological trauma.

As we understand trauma and the effects that it causes, we are able to better understand the characters that Atwood has shown. This understanding allows us a connection to the characters that we may not have found beforehand. The reader is now able to feel the emotions that run rapidly and feel sympathy, or even empathy, for what the women were forced to endure. In a review done by a reporter from the Arizona Republic about sex trafficking it was stated that, “There is no end to the audacity of human cruelty, and no political boundaries contain its gluttony” (Rothstein). Atwood’s book is proof that as a whole people can do cruel things and impose severe cruelties upon others for what they consider to be the greater good. The greater good in Atwood’s book is the procreation for the expansion of the higher families. No matter what the greater good may seem to be there always seems to be someone hurt in the process. This hurt as we know can be more than physical, it can be emotional, or psychological also. The lasting effects of a community like the one portrayed could end up showing all women what trafficked or enslaved women currently endure today. Even though in the book the enslavement is government or church forced, that does not make this forced slavery any different or easier to endure. Hopefully there will never come a time in our futures to see such an event take place. The consequences that could stem from it are likely to be horrific and countless to many.