摘 要

被誉为“加拿大文学皇后”的玛格丽特·阿特伍德，是享誉世界的加拿大女作家，曾多次获得欧美最高文学奖。受父亲职业的影响，阿特伍德有很多机会亲近自然，以此了解大自然的奥秘，这也使她始终热爱大自然，关注生态问题。同时，作为一名女性作家，她用女性特有的细腻和敏感，聚焦男性主导的社会对女性的压迫，以至于她一段时间以来一直用自己的作品，深切地呼唤大众对自然和女性给予关爱和帮助。生态思想与女性意识的结合，使她的作品具有鲜明的生态女性意识。

《使女的故事》发表于1985年。作者阿特伍德采用第一人称的叙事模式，细致地叙述了一个名叫奥弗雷德的使女在男性主导的极权统治的基列共和国的经历，并详细地描写了有关女性地位、生态环境恶化、经济危机等问题。她以自己无与伦比的想象力、巧妙的文体结构和优美的写作风格，在深刻批判父权压迫的同时，赞扬了女性与自然的抗争。

本文试图从生态女性主义的角度切入对《使女的故事》进行详细分析，挖掘小说中蕴含的深层生态思想和女性意识。同时，本论文也呼吁人们建立一种人与自然、人与女人平等和谐发展的新型关系。

关键词：玛格丽特·阿特伍德；《使女的故事》； 生态女性主义

Abstract

Margaret Atwood,Queen of Canadian Literature, is a world-renowned woman writer who has won many of the highest literary awards in Europe and the United States. Influenced by her father's profession, Atwood has got many opportunities to get close to nature and understand the mystery of it, which makes her always love nature and pay attention to ecological issues. At the same time, as a female writer with female-specific delicacy and sensitivity, she has always concerned about the oppression of women in a male-dominated society so that she uses her works to call for care and help for nature and women time over time. The combination of ecological thought and feminism consciousness makes her works have distinct Ecofeminism awareness.

Since the publication of The Handmaid’s Tale in 1985, Atwood adopts the first person narrative pattern to carefully depict Offred, a handmaid’s experience in the male-dominated totalitarian Republic of Gilead and describe in detail the status of women, ecological deterioration, economic crisis, etc. Along with her unparalleled imagination, ingenious style structure and beautiful writing style, she praise the resistance between women and nature while criticizing profoundly the patriarchal oppression.

The paper attempts to analyze The Handmaid’s Tale from the perspective of Ecofeminism and excavates the deep ecological thoughts and feminism awareness contained in the novel. At the same time, It calls for people to build an equal and harmonious relationship between human and nature, men and women.

Key Words: Margaret Atwood; The Handmaid’s Tale; Ecofeminism

Contents

摘要 I

Abstract II

1. Introduction 1

1.1. The introduction of Margaret Atwood 1

1.2. The introduction of The Handmaid’s Tale 2

1.3. The introduction of the Ecofeminism Theory 3

2. Literature Review 5

2.1. The research on The Handmaid’s Tale 5

2.2. The research on Ecofeminism 6

3. The predicament of nature and women 8

3.1. The destruction of nature 8

3.2. The dilemma of women 8

4. The rebellions of nature and women 12

4.1. The revenge from nature 12

4.2. The rebellion of women 12

5. Conclusion 14

References 15

Acknowledgements 17

The Interpretation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale from the perspective of Ecofeminism

Introduction

The introduction of Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood, regarded as the queen of Canadian Literature, is one of the well-renowned contemporary female writers, poets and literature critics. As a popular candidate for the Nobel Prize, she has already won more than 55 highest literary awards around the world. By now, she has published more than 40 books that have been translated in 20 languages.

Margaret Atwood produced The Edible Woman to start her writing career in 1969. In 1985, she published The Handmaid's Tale, which is selected as one of the most classic fantasy novels of the 20th century. Due to this masterpiece, she was nominated for the Prometheus Award, the Nebula Award and the highest honor in British literature—the Booker Award. This huge success made her instantly spring into fame. So far, she was nominated for the Booker prize four times with Cat’s Eye, Alias Grace as well as The Handmaid’s Tale and finally won the title in 2000 with the novel The Blind Assassin. She also won the prince of Asturias award in 2008 and Franz Kafka Prize in 2017.

As a female writer, Atwood has the female-specific delicacy and sensitivity so that she always finds representative problems and obstacles faced by women in modern society. Exploring from the unique perspective and portraying with exquisite techniques, she can bitterly satirize the sense of loss to environment and the strangeness to language in the male-dominated society that women experienced. Therefore, by depicting the terrible future of women and nature, readers can accept a high level of hardship awareness.

Moreover, Atwood is good at capturing woman's psychology, reflecting their life, growth process and fate. Through her description, every individual shall appreciate it as a count favour. It will be helpful for her to criticize the society for forming the culture that turns women into commodities and believe that women are threatened by consumption.

The growing female consciousness is the main line in Atwood's works. She hopes to use her works to appeal to human beings to protect nature and save downtrodden women so that she always focuses on the relationship between women, women and society as well as the oppressed nature and women in patriarchal society. Gender politics, which is crucial to woman's survival, is an important content that she repeatedly discusses in her novels and poems. Through the state of women doing nothing in society, she summarizes that women do not play any role in the world’s political arena and they are in the marginalized position.

The introduction of The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale, the first best-selling novel written by Margaret Atwood, brings her fame and reputation. According to the data, It wasn't until July 2, 1987, the third year of its publication, that The Handmaid's Tale faded from the bestseller list of New York Times and it had been on the list for 23 weeks. Owing to the popularity of the public, it has been already adapted into films, TV dramas and plays with great success.

Atwood uses the first narrative pattern to depict every character’s psychology and behavior. The dominating figure Offred, was a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She is one of the few women in the country who can have children. They are assigned to commander families who have no offspring, and help them have children. Like other women in the country, she has no freedom of movement and is denied the right to property, work and reading. Except for some special days, the handmaids are allowed to go out shopping together only once a day, their every act and every move is monitored by the eyes. What's worse, in this crazy world, human beings not only have to face ecological deterioration, economic crisis and other problems, but also fall into a chaotic situation of mutual hostility, hierarchical differentiation and wanton killing.

The fictional story is set in America, but it reflects the cultural tradition of the whole western world. It can be said that this novel not only inherits the negative anti-Utopian tradition contained in Aldous Leonard Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and other literary works, but also describes the gloomy and horrible future social picture with rich imagination. In this extreme way, the author raises people's concern and precaution against the current hidden dangers such as the opposition between the two sexes, environmental pollution, moral deterioration of autocratic politics and fearful religious forces. Because of its powerful function of concealing reality, the novel is called Nineteen Eighty-Four of feminism by critics.