The Handmaid's Tale Through Songs

Playlist: hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have- but I have it by Lana Del Rey Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve by Taylor Swift Asking For It by Hole O Children by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Femme Fatale by The Velvet Underground, Nico

hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have- but I have it by Lana Del Rey I connected this song to The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood because the song talks about the desperation a woman has for hope in her life, even knowing that it’s not a logical thing to have in her life. “Smiling for miles in pink dresses and high heels on white yachts,” from Lana Del Ray’s song reminded me of when the Japanese tourists visited Gilead, and the way she felt about how they were dressed. Offred talks about how she remembered what it was like to not have to worry about how she was dressed, and envied the female tourists for their freedom to dress however they wished. We also see a part of her that was consumed by the ideals of Gilead, and how she judged those women for the recklessness in their apparel. As she and Ofglen see the tourist they are “Fascinated, but also repelled.” (28) Gilead’s ideals come into play as she now sees them as “Underdressed. It has taken so little time to change our minds about things like this.” (28)

Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve by Taylor Swift I connected this song to The Handmaid’s Tale because this song is about a past relationship that is highly regretted, calling him a “ghost” from her past. Offred often refers to her daughter as a ghost as a way to cope with the fact that she is no longer with her. She describes the way she thinks about her daughter as “this contradictory way of believing seems to me, right now, the only way I can believe anything. (106)” This quote reminds me of the lyrics “All I used to do was pray, Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve. If you’d never looked my way, I would’ve stayed on my knees, and I damn sure never would’ve danced with the devil.” This scene and these lyrics are comparable because it shows Offred’s way of believing her daughter was either safe or dead, and how she wishes she could’ve protected her.

Asking For It by Hole I connected this song to The Handmaid’s Tale because this song is about society’s norm of always placing the blame on women whenever they are the victim of something. There is quite a clear side by side similarity between this song and the book, the song’s chorus being “Was she asking for it? Was she asking nice? If she was asking for it, did she ask you twice?”, and in chapter 13 when Janine is testifying in the Red Center about how she was gang raped at fourteen and the Aunts made all the girls chant at her “Her fault. Her fault. Her fault.”(72) These lyrics and this scene in the book are comparable because they show how society is very quick to judge a woman for what she could have done to “deserve” her assault, and the deep rooted misogyny in these beliefs.

O Children by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds I connected this song to The Handmaid’s Tale because it reminded me of Offred’s description of the beginning of Gilead, and how she tried to leave the country with her family. The lyrics, “They are knocking now upon your door. They measure the room, they know the score.”, reminds me of the security checkpoints Gilead had in place at the borders of the country. The lyrics “We’re all weeping now, weeping because, there ain’t nothing we can do to protect you,” reminds of the scene in chapter 12 where Offred is having flashbacks of her daughter, and later describes how she sees her. “She fades. I can’t keep her here with me, she’s gone now. Maybe I do think of her as a ghost, the ghost of a dead girl, a little girl who died when she was five.”(64) These lyrics and this scene are comparable because it shows how Offred likes to think of her daughter as dead to help her cope with the fact that she doesn’t know where she is and she is unable to protect her.

Femme Fatale by The Velvet Underground, Nico I connected this song to The Handmaid’s Tale because this song is about the stereotype society has created for a “seductive woman” that will use her sexuality to “torment” men. The lyrics “It’s not hard to realize, just look into her false colored eyes. She builds you up to just put you down, what a clown.” reminded me of the scene in chapter 10 where Offed is recalling the way Aunt Lydia talked about the way women dressed during the summer. She describes them as “spectacles.” She says, “Oiling themselves like roast meat on a spit, and bare backs and shoulders, on the street, in public, and legs, not even stockings on them, no wonder these things used to happen.” These lyrics and this scene are comparable because it shows how society viewed women as objects, and everything they did was in effort to get attention or to gain sexual attraction from others.