Discussion Topic
The symbolism and significance of the red tulips in The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Summary:
In The Handmaid's Tale, the red tulips symbolize fertility and the hope of new life in a repressive society. They also represent the blood and violence underlying the regime's control over women. The tulips' vibrant color contrasts with the bleakness of the handmaids' existence, highlighting the tension between natural beauty and the oppressive environment.
What do the red tulips symbolize in The Handmaid's Tale?
In The Handmaid's Tale, the ladies in red have but one purpose: to provide children. Fertility is a problem in their society, and the women chosen to be handmaids are chosen because they are thought to be fertile. Early in the book, Offred describes her clothing as "the color of blood." Everything is red with the exception of her white bonnet and wings. The blood-red color of the handmaids' attire symbolizes fertility, while the white around their faces serves to show their purity.
In the third chapter, Offred describes walking through Serena Joy 's garden where there are red tulips. Offred notices that these tulips are "opening their cups, spilling out color." The red tulips are symbolic of the handmaids that must be open to their commanders in order to bring forth children. The tulips are a darker color near the stem giving the appearance that "they had been...
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cut and are beginning to heal." This statement is symbolic of the process the handmaids have been through. They arrived as unworthy, but through their purpose now, can heal and become worthy members of their society. Caring for their gardens provides an opportunity for the commanders' wives to care for something in the absence of their ability to have children. In addition, just as there is order in a flower garden, the handmaids are given strict orders in how they must move and socialize.
The red tulips that Serena Joy is trying to grow in her garden represent life and fertility -- the key theme of the novel. Serena Joy is a wife, but she can't bear her own child. Because she can't "grow" her own children she tends her garden. The red of the tulips is certainly suggestive of blood and life. What is notable about her garden though is that even that is failing. Serena works diligently, but the garden never flourishes, just as her womb can't flourish. The flowers themselves look like receptacles, and that is another connection of them as symbols of the women, specifically the handmaids that are the "wombs" of the society -- bearing the children for the wives and the commanders. Serena Joy is subjected to the "ceremony" in a similar, and yet very different way from Offred. Everything in her life depends on Offred's success in getting pregnant, and Serena Joy has little to no control over that, so she takes control of her garden and does what she can there, event though it appears that the garden will fail as well.
What is the significance of the tulip description in The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood?
"The tulips are red, a darker crimson towards the stem; as if they had been cut and are beginning to heal there”
As the tulips are red in colour, Atwood seems to be making a deliberate comparison between the tulips and the handmaids, specifically Offred, the narrator, as the handmaids always wear red clothes. This is a very rich and suggestive image as Atwood is drawing on the connotations of growth, flowering, fertility, youth, feminity, menstruation, pain, victimhood, survival and beauty in one vivid symbol.
By drawing attention to the redness of the tulips which are not only "red" but "a darker crimson towards the stem", Atwood emphasises their vitality, which connects them to the handmaids who are fertile women who are forcibly put to use as baby-makers for the state of Gilead. Perhaps the fact that the tulips are in a garden is a reference to the ways the handmaids have been cultivated for a purpose against their natural inclinations.
As Offred closely observes the tulips, she personifies them, imagining that they have blood and that they are so red towards the stem because they have been cut and are now healing. This sensitivity to the flowers' colour shows her pained and vulnerable state of mind, as she manages to see suffering and damage even in a simple flower. Offred is a traumatised woman, having been repeatedly raped and subjugated, and having lost her own child, and this is clear in the way she observes the superficially calm world of the Commander's house where she lives.
However, perhaps this image, which comes early on in the novel at the start of Chapter 3, suggests that Offred is beginning to find a way out of her terrible situation, as the cut she imagines at each flower's stem is at least "beginning to heal".
This quotation is also reminiscent of Sylvia Plath's poem, 'Tulips', which would make an interesting comparison as Plath also uses tulips to represent vitality in her poem.