Elaine McNally on (Edited )
Second Epigraph: A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift
“But as to myself, having been wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal....”
Jonathan Swift: A Modest Proposal (1729)
The second epigraph in The Handmaid’s Tale is taken from Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, a satirical essay which through its absurd and brutal suggestions highlights the rapacity and destructiveness of the British in Ireland. In this work, Swift suggests that poverty and starvation in Ireland could be tackled if the poor Irish were used to breed babies for the marketplace, and then forced to sell their children as food for the rich. Though grotesque, the proposal serves as a savage critique of government neglect and the consequent exploitation and dehumanisation of the Irish people.
Atwood’s inclusion of this epigraph signals that the novel should also be read, at least in part, as a satire. By drawing on A Modest Proposal, Atwood situates The Handmaid’s Tale within a tradition of satire that uses exaggeration and irony to expose systemic cruelty. Just as Swift’s target was the cruelty of British policies, Atwood exaggerates elements of real-world oppression to highlight the dangers of totalitarian control.
There are clear thematic connections between A Modest Proposal and The Handmaid’s Tale, particularly regarding the treatment of reproduction as a state-controlled resource. Swift’s essay describes a system in which men and women are allocated to forced breeding programmes, noting that “one male will be sufficient to serve four females.” This mirrors the organisation of Gilead, where Handmaids are assigned to Commanders for the sole purpose of reproduction (again reminding us of the Biblical story of Rachel, Bilhah and Jacob). Women in Atwood’s novel are similarly reduced to their biological function, described as a “national resource” rather than individuals with autonomy. The comparison to livestock is made explicit from the opening chapter, where the Aunts wield ‘electric cattle prods’ to enforce obedience, and there are many other references to the Handmaids as breeding animals in the novel.
Both Swift and Atwood link reproduction and state power. Just as Swift’s narrator proposes a ruthless economic solution to famine through breeding programmes, Gilead presents itself as solving the problem of a low birth rate through extreme reproductive control. The epigraph also raises intriguing questions about voice and authorship which is important in a novel that is so multivocal, and that raises questions about who has the power to write and claim ownership of a narrative. In the excerpt Atwood selects, Swift’s narrator states, “I fortunately fell upon this proposal.” Who, in The Handmaid’s Tale, might claim authorship of such a system? Is it a reflection of the Commander’s rationalisations, Professor Pieixoto’s detached academic analysis, or even Atwood herself, inviting us to interrogate the novel’s satirical elements?
In Karen Stein’s essay: ‘Margaret Atwood’s Modest proposal: The Handmaid’s Tale’, there is an extended consideration of the links between A Modest Proposal and The Handmaid’s Tale that develops the motif of cannibalism. The cannibalism in A Modest Proposal serves as a powerful metaphor for the way the British exploit the Irish poor. Swift isn’t literally suggesting that babies be eaten; instead, he uses this grotesque image to highlight how the British ruling class are already draining the poor of resources, labour, and dignity. If the poor are treated as less than human, why not use them as food?
The cannibal theme is carried out in several ways in Tale. On some level, the foods the handmaids eat, symbolic representations of wombs and fertility (pears, eggs, chickens, bread described as baking in the oven), are analogues for their bodies. Additionally, one of Offred's flashback memories recounts her childhood fear of cannibalism. When her mother described the deaths of victims in Nazi concentration camps, she talked about people being killed in ovens. As a young child, not comprehending, Offred believed that these people had been baked and eaten. “There is something especially terrifying to a child in that idea. Ovens mean cooking, and cooking comes before eating. I thought these people had been eaten. Which in a way I suppose they had been”. By means of this digression, Offred makes explicit the analogies between Gilead and Nazi Germany, and between her tale and "A Modest Proposal." In all cases, we have dystopian societies that are devouring their children.
https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=eng_facpubs