Perverse Piety:

Criticism of Christian Extremism in The

Handmaid’s Tale, The Gate to Women’s
Country, and The Fifth Sacred Thing

Whitney Scott
Honors Thesis
April 28, 2011
Roadmap
• Project
• Thesis
• Disparity between feminism and Christianity
• Historical context
• Extremism
• Extremism in novels
 Presumed World vs. Proposed World

(Wilson 77)
Perverse Piety: the Thesis
• Religious values and political agendas

• Perversion of something intended to be pious

• Oppression of subordinates

• Oppression of leaders
Disparity between feminism and Christianity

(Gallagher 458)
Disparity between feminism and Christianity

(Gallagher 459)
Disparity between feminism and Christianity

(Steiner-Aeschliman and Mauss 254)

Are feminism and Christianity mutually
exclusive?

Denise Carmody
Virginia Mollenkott
Leah Gcabashe

Time frame
Historical Context: Backlash
Women’s movement, 1960s
Feminist legislate victories, 1970s
Rise of anti-feminism, 1970s
By 1980s:
New Right
Silent Majority
Moral Majority
(Chafe) (Harris) (Wilcox)

“periods of anticipation and anxiety” (Bartowski)

Tendencies of Political Extremism
“An impulse which is inimical to a pluralism of
interests and groups, inimical to a system of many
nonsubmissive centers of power and areas of privacy”

Incipient change
Moralistic and absolutistic
Evil conspiracies
(Lipset and Raab 5)
Concrete thinking
Status symbolism
Status preservation
(Lo)
Tendencies of Religious Extremism
Tendencies of religious extremism
Five warning signs:
Absolute truth claims
Blind obedience
Ideal time
Ends justify the means
Holy war

Literalism

(Kimball)
Synthesis of political and religious
extremism

Political Religious

Moralistic/absolutistic Absolute truth claims

Concrete thinking Literalism
Incipient change Blind obedience
Status symbolism Ends justify the means
Status preservation Ideal time
Evil conspiracies Holy war
How to express in fiction?

“There was little that was truly original or

indigenous to Gilead: its genius was synthesis”
(Atwood 307)

Based on reality
Reality vs. fiction; non-extreme vs. extreme
Setting
Climate (convenience)
Time (prediction)

(Olderman) (Swale)
Gilead
Gender roles
Women as servants
Women as reproductive vessels

Sexual purity
Punish deviant behavior
The Wall
Salvagings
Particutions
Gilead cont.
Manifestations of extremism Why?

Gender roles Incipient change

Women as servants Concrete thinking
Women as Anti-modernism
reproductive vessels Literalism
Moralism
Sexual purity
Punish deviant Status preservation
behavior (eugenics)
And when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob
no children, Rachel envied her sister; and
said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I
die.

And Jacob’s anger was kindled against

Rachel, and he said, Am I in God’s stead,
who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the
womb?

And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in

unto her, and she shall bear upon my knees,
that I may also have children by her.

-Genesis 30:1-3
The Perverse Justified
Ends justify the means
Literalism
Blind obedience

Perverse piety
Handmaiden demeanor
Sex as ritual
Holyland
Gender roles
Women as servants
Women as reproductive vessels
Women as “virtuous”

Sexual purity
Punish deviant behavior
Infanticide
Beatings
Holyland
Manifestations of extremism Why?
Gender roles Incipient change
Women as servants Concrete thinking
Women as reproductive Anti-modernism
vessels Moralism
Women as “virtuous”
Status preservation (eugenics)
Sexual purity
Punish deviant behavior
Infanticide
Beatings
“He counted on his fingers. Seven from
Rejoice, all grown but one. Four from
Cheerfulness, the oldest was only nine,
and two from Plentitude. Six from
Susannah, not including the ones he’d
disposed of. Nineteen, all together,
fourteen of them boys. Could be that was
just enough…”

-Elder Resolution Brome, 205

The Perverse Justified
Ends justify the means
Blind obedience
Evil conspiracy

Perverse piety
Feminine demeanor
Sex as ritual
The Millennialist Society
Gender roles
Women as reproductive vessels
Women as “virtuous”

Sexual purity
Punish deviant behavior
Military
“Pens”

Why?
The Millennialist Society
Manifestations of extremism Why?
Gender roles Incipient change
Women as reproductive Concrete thinking
vessels Anti-modernism
Women as “virtuous” Moralism

Sexual purity Status preservation (eugenics)

Punish deviant behavior
Military
“Pens”
“I thought fornication was the biggest Millennialist
sin,” Madrone said.

“Fornication is what you do with another person. We’re

not people. Our mamas did something to lose their
immortal souls, like getting raped, maybe, or selling
their bodies to put some food on the table. And our
holy genes have been tampered with. That makes us a
sort of higher animal.”

“That’s insane.”

“Nobody ever rated the Millennialists high in sanity.”

-Madrone and Isis
(Starhawk 186)
“The blonds. They were toys for rich men. Bred
for it. Raised and trained from birth. For sex
and pain”
-Katy

(Starhawk 303)
The Perverse Justified
Ends justify the means
Literalism
Concrete thinking
Blind obedience

Perverse piety
“Letter” of morality
Rule Breaking
• Serena Joy, Commander Fred

• Sons, Elders

• Wives, General Ohnine

“Like feminism, utopias are intended to
bring about shifts in consciousness
through engagement with political
debates and critiques of the status quo.”

(Eichler 9)
Questions?
Check out
http://hervillage.blogspot.com
for more info and a digital copy of the
paper!
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1986. Print.

Bartowski, Frances. Introduction.  Feminist Utopias. Ed. Frances Bartowski. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1989.  Print.

Carmody, Denise Lardner. Feminism and Christianity: A Two-Way Reflection. Nashville: Abingdon, 1982. Print.

Chafe, William H. The Paradox of Change: American Women in the 20th Century.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Print.

Eichler, Margrit, June Larkin, and Sheila Neysmith. Introduction.Feminist Utopias : Re-Visioning Our
Futures. Eds. Margrit Eichler, June Larkin, and Sheila Neysmith. Toronto: Inanna Publications and Education,
2002. 77-86. Print.

Gallagher, Sally K. “Where Are the Antifeminist Evangelicals? Evangelical Identity, Subcultural Location and
Attitudes Toward Feminism.” Gender and Society 18.4 (August 2004): 451-472. Web. JSTOR. 11 November
2010.

Gcabashe, Leah. “Spiritual Liberation or Spiritual Oppression?” Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender
Equity 25 (1995): 7-15.JSTOR. Web. 11 November 2010.

Kimball, Charles. When Religion Becomes Evil: Five Warning Signs. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.
Print.
Lipset, Seymour Martin and Earl Raab. The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790-
1970. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.

Lo, Clarence Y. H. “Countermovements and Conservative Movements in the Contemporary United

-States.” Annual Review of Sociology 8 (1982): 107-134. Web. JSTOR. 11 November 2010.

Mollenkott, Virginia Ramey. Women, Men, and The Bible. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company,
1989. Print.

Olderman, Raymond M. “American Fiction 1974-1976: The People Who Fell to Earth.” Contemporary
Literature 19.4 (Autumn 1978): 497-530. Web. JSTOR. 11 November 2010.

Starhawk. The Fifth Sacred Thing. New York: Bantam Books, 1993. Print.

Steiner-Aeschliman, Sherrie and Armand L. Mauss. “The Impact of Feminism and Religious Involvement on
Sentiment toward God.”Review of Religious Research 37.3 (March 1996): 248-259. Web.JSTOR. 11 November
2010.

Swale, Jill. “Feminism and Politics in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’: Jill Swale Examines the Social and Historical
Context of the Novel.”The English Review 13.1 (September 2002): 37. Web. Literature Resource Center. 11
November 2010.

Tepper, Sheri S. The Gate to Women’s Country. New York: Bantam Books, 1988. Print.

Wilcox, Clyde. “Pre-millennialists at the Millennium: Some Reflections on the Christian Right in the Twenty-
First Century.”Sociology of Religion 55.3 (Autumn 1994): 243-201. Web. JSTOR. 11 November 2010.