Atwood suggests that relationships between men and women in The Handmaid’s Tale are structured by significant inequalities of power. One way this inequality is maintained is through control of language which allows men to occupy a position of intellectual authority within relationships, while women are kept deliberately subordinate. Offred’s relationships with Luke, the Commander and Professor Pieixoto each illustrate this dynamic: all three men manipulate language and relish their esoteric knowledge of a words and Latin that has traditionally belonged to a classically educated male elite and has excluded women.
Despite presenting as supportive and benign, Luke is nevertheless fascinated by ‘old things’ and Latin etymology, preoccupations Atwood invites us to interrogate. He seems to relish the fact that Latin contains words describing male behaviour stating bluntly that there was “no corresponding word that meant to behave like a sister.” Luke’s casual observation not only insinuates that women are linguistically absent and therefore unimportant, it also positions him as intellectually authoritative within the relationship, while Offred merely listens. This portrayal of women as linguistically marginalised echoes psychoanalytic ideas associated with Freud and Lacan, which conceptualise woman as the “other”, defined through absence or lack, ideas which Atwood perhaps satirises in the novel. By allowing Luke to treat this linguistic imbalance as an amusing curiosity rather than a problem, Atwood suggests that even seemingly affectionate relationships between men and women are underpinned by structures of patriarchal power.
Like Luke, Pieixoto also wields the power of words using an extensive range of Latinate vocabulary to both obscure vulgarity and convey his educated status. Also, like Luke, he uses his prowess with etymology to mock and humiliate a woman. His pun on “chair” and “char”, with its additionally obscene emphasis on the verb “enjoying” in the line “and now we are enjoying an equally charming Arctic chair”, trivialises Professor Crescent Moon’s professional status and reveals the sexism underpinning a professional relationship where, ostensibly, Professor Crescent Moon has more authority. In this way, Atwood presents linguistic knowledge as an effective tool through which men can undermine women even within supposedly equal environments. Like Luke before him, Pieixoto dominates a relationship with a woman through language, and both men use language in deceitful ways, maneuvering for power whilst ensuring that within both personal and professional relationships, women are kept disempowered.
The novel creates structural parallels between not only Luke and Pieixoto, but also the Commander. All three men share similar sexist characteristics, privileged attitudes and play games with language to subtly undermine women. The Commander has been educated in a patriarchal system that views women as jokes and insults, ensuring that women cannot achieve parity in relationships. When Offred asks the commander to translate ‘Nolite te bastardes carborundum’, she hopes it might contain a message of resistance. Instead, the Commander casually dismisses her, saying ‘that's just a joke’, going on to show her the Venus de Milo in his Latin text book horribly defaced with bawdy graffiti. The dog Latin and the crude drawing are both examples of male behaviour that is predicated on exploiting women for amusement; either their ignorance or their bodies. This exploitation contributes to the continuation of a culture that sees women as inferior to men in relationships. In this moment, the Commander’s privileged access to knowledge reinforces the imbalance within his relationship with Offred: he possesses linguistic authority, while again she must rely on the man for interpretation.
Atwood uses the recurring motif of Latinate language connecting Luke, the Commander and Pieixoto to offer a broader commentary on relational dynamics between men and women. In the same way as these three men leverage language to dominate women, so Gilead denies women access to language, thought and expression in order to maintain control. When Offred says of the commander: ‘he has the word’, she draws attention to the link between language and male authority. Atwood, perhaps drawing on her reading of Orwell's 1984 in which a totalitarian dictatorship manipulates language in order to control its citizens, invites us to recognise that the Commander operates as a microcosm of the wider patriarchal state in Gilead, demonstrating how the control of language underpins inequality within personal relationships as well as political systems.
Importantly, patriarchal structures were already creating inequalities in relationships before the regime of Gilead as Luke shows us. Gilead did not appear suddenly; it evolved from assumptions already embedded in everyday relationships. Even after Gilead, male scholars still exploit academic language to control women’s voices, and their status in professional relationships. Across these three figures, Atwood implies that male control over language repeatedly marginalises women’s voices, ensuring that relationships between men and women remain fundamentally unequal.