Abstract/Summary

This chapter is a detailed analysis of Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid’s Tale, arguing that it problematizes identities by representing them in spatial terms. National identity, gender identity, and the identity of a particular temporal moment, are each represented by discourses about space and territory, insides, outsides, and the borders which mark off one identity from another. But in The Handmaid’s Tale the border between one identity and its other becomes a site of contamination, confusion and instability. The effect of these border disputes is to deconstruct the wholeness and self-sufficiency of identities.