SOURCE: “Unwriting the Quest: Margaret Atwood's Fiction and The Handmaid's Tale,” in Women and the Journey: The Female Travel Experience, edited by Bonnie Frederick and Susan H. McLeod, Washington State University Press, 1993, pp. 199-215.

In the following essay, Finnell examines Atwood's subversion of traditional quest themes and narrative structures in The Handmaid's Tale. “Atwood's strategy,” writes Finnell, “challenges the notion of the quest based on the conquest of identity achievable through mastery of speech, language, and subject.”

I want to break these bones … … … … … erase all maps, crack the protecting eggshell of your turning singing children: 

I want the circle broken. 

Margaret Atwood, The Circle Game

If they were conscious that the narrative dynamics and the erotics of reading they were expounding were specifically tied to an ideology of representation derivable only from the dynamics of male sexuality, would they not at least feel uncomfortable making general statements about...