The Window of God's House

The Republic of Gilead from The Handmaid’s Tale is an incredibly religious state based on a Christian theocracy. Christianity, being the largest religion that has ever existed, has had a massive influence on artistic media since its dawn. Christian themes appear in ancient both and modern literature, it has inspired great painted works such as the Sistine Chapel Ceiling, The Last Supper, or Raphael’s Transfiguration, and it is hard to escape the ever prevalent grasp of Christian music. However, possibly the most foundational form of the religion’s art is the churches themselves. In olden times and even today, such buildings were always the tallest and most impressive structures in every town. For my piece of art, I have created a stained glass window, a prominent feature in many churches across the world. Often, stained glass windows depict a message or story, which made them the most interesting things to look at in the more boring churches I attended in my childhood. And this is actually the point of these windows, they are meant to educate people on the holy scriptures, even if they can’t read. That is why symbolism is very important for this form of art. Symbolism is also prominent in The Handmaid’s Tale, the most important example being the ever watchful eye of God. This is the highlight of my window, a winged eye looking down upon the rest of the piece, shrouded in brilliant light and encircled by a halo. A common greeting in Gilead is “Under His Eye” and heaven, where God resides, is most often pictured above us. This made the placement for the eye at the top of the window very obvious. The smaller ones’ placement are more of a personal choice. They are the Eyes of God, or just the Eyes for short. The reason I placed them above the cloud layer that separates the Heaven portion and the Earth portion of the window is because the official term in the book reminded me of Seraphs, the highest order of angels and thus the closest to God. Seraphs are most easily recognized by their numerous wings and eyes, while the symbol for the Eyes is a winged eye. Their alien nature, both the Seraphs and the Eyes, is very prevalent as the closer an angel is to God, the less human they look and the Eyes are simply inhumane in the most literal sense. This is why I pictured them in Heaven. Down on Earth however, you can see two wives and a newborn child. The scene being depicted is the Birth Day, in which a Handmaid gives birth to an infant that is claimed by her commanding wife. The child is surrounded by a radiance, similar to the one pictured around God, a good time to mention how important light is in Christian culture and why these windows are so symbolic. The similar lights here show the connection between the child and God, the child a gift from God. The infant is at the center due to the importance of its birth as fertility rates have plummeted in the Gileadean Era. Because fertility is so important, below it is a circular chapel window design, but depicting a uterus. The uterus is an important symbol in The Handmaid’s Tale since that’s the reason why there’s handmaids at all: fertility. Offred talks about the organ throughout the book, imagining herself as flesh packed around it. The Aunts cannot stress how important it is while also diminishing the women they belong to, setting a single piece of them as the core of their beings. All that remains is that procreative fragment. Around the Uterus is a variety of colors. Colors are a very important piece of symbolism in cathedral windows as well as The Handmaid’s Tale. For example, red represents fertility and so I feature it extensively throughout the window. There’s God’s eye, the cloth the infant is wrapped in, and of course the Uterus. The colors around the uterus represent the different classes of Gileadean society. Black for the Commanders and Angels who wear black and represent strength, blue for their wives as it is shown they can command the classes below them, green for Guardians and Marthas who both wear green uniforms, and the handmaids at the bottom. They are red because they are the most important, and the lowest because they possess the least power. In my window too, the handmaids are at the lowest point. Hidden by a dark curtain, they stand and kneel silently. They are not the focus. The child and God are. The red child stands out among the blue wives. It is not theirs. But the one it belongs to is not important enough.