‘They look around, bright-eyed, cocking their heads to one
side like robins, their very cheerfulness aggressive, and I can’t help staring.’
This shows that the tourists physical behaviour shares a synchronicity that poses a threat to the Handmaid’s, particularly their ‘cheerfulness’. The juxtaposition made between cheerful and aggression proposes a despondent jealousy that the tourists have evoked within the Handmaid, it implies that cheerfulness to her is nothing but a distant and an almost untouchable memory.
The Handmaid observes the length of the Japanese women’s skirts which are preposterously short:
‘The skirts reach just below the knee.....nearly naked in their thin
stockings, blatant,..’
Focusing on the word ‘blatant’ and the way in which it has been incorporated within this particular sentence powerfully accentuates the fact that this would be a shameless spectacle for a woman to be so impudently exposed. Also, the exuding sexuality from the female tourists is also commented on from the way their bodies are positioned; ‘their backs arch at the waist, thrusting the buttocks out’ and the seductive power that is unleashed from their red lipstick to their hair which is ‘exposed in all its darkness and sexuality’. The author wants to illustrate the fact that it is all too easy for a woman to take the simple things that embrace our femininity for granted and this is what the Handmaid’s have been forced to sacrifice. Consequently the Handmaid’s have forgotten what it is like as a woman to be free and to be sexually liberated. The Handmaid’s continue to express their fascination, though this is also combined with repulsion until they remember that was once them:
‘Then I used to think:I used to dress like that. That was freedom.’
This is what the Handmaid’s have been deprived of and that is why they are resistant to accept that what they are witnessing was once in fact reality and nothing unordinary. The Japanese tourists are an agonising reminder of what the Handmaid’s have lost. We get the impression that Handmaids are like a foreign breed of human and that are an attraction to the tourists; armed with cameras as they prepare to ambush. This makes a suggestion to the reader that even though these women may have their own Guards they remain defenceless as they cannot be protected from the stares of speculation and pity, wondering how they could possibly be happy being imprisoned like an animal, held captive in an institutionalised environment such as this one.
What can be concluded from this section in the novel is that the Handmaid’s know they are a figure of mystery and curiosity, Handmaid’s are trained into maintaining their obscurity as a way of conforming to their paradoxical community: ‘What you must be, girls, is impenetrable.’ This rule obviously contradicts the fact that the Handmaid’s are nothing but impenetrable especially in their peculiar uniforms they are in this case a tourist attraction. There is a tone of melancholy that is instigated when the Handmaid’s senses are reawakened when she is presented with a nostalgic reminder of the smell of nail polish.
The short sentence ‘I can feel her shoes, on my own feet’ poignantly highlights the Handmaid’s yearning for the satisfaction that owning a pair of beautiful shoes once brought. The Japanese tourists are free, they are able to leave Gilead and this is what the Handmaid’s resent more than anything, they are not even granted the right to speak their mind or truthfully for that matter, as they are obligated to give the answer that is suitable rather than honest:
‘ “Yes, we are very happy,” I murmur. I have to say something. What else can I say?”
It becomes obvious to the reader that these are women who have no choice other than to correspond to the society’s legislation consequently, the tourists importantly highlight the contrast between freedom and the loss of it which is ultimately the Handmaids fate.
