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Sarah Cooper
Honors 394 A, Speculative Fiction

Analysis of the Roles of Clothing in Speculative Fiction

“I get up out of the chair, advance my feet into the sunlight, in their red shoes, flat-heeled to save

the spine and not for dancing. The red gloves are lying on the bed. I pick them up, pull them onto

my hands, finger by finger. Everything except the wings around my face is red: the color of blood,

which defines us. The skirt is ankle-length, full, gathered to a flat yoke that extends over the

breasts, the sleeves are full. The white wings too are prescribed issue; they are to keep us from

seeing, but also from being seen. I never looked good in red, it’s not my color.”

-Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, Page 8

This is how Margaret Atwood first introduces us to Offred, the heroine of The Handmaid’s

Tale. We don’t know who she is, we don’t know what she is, but we know what she is wearing.

Just as in The Handmaid’s Tale, clothing in real life often acts as the first form of

communication between an individual and their audience. Before even a single word is exchanged,

each party has made decisions about how to present themselves to their audience through the

manner of their dress, and each party can form opinions and make assumptions about the other’s

character, values, class, and upbringing – to name a few. As Diana Crane states in her book,

Crane’s Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothing, “One of the most

visible markers of social status and gender and therefore useful in maintaining or subverting

symbolic boundaries, clothing is an indication of how people in different eras have perceived their

positions in social structures and negotiated status boundaries. In previous centuries, clothing was

the principal means for identifying oneself in public space” (Crane 1). Clothing has had a long

partnership with social movements and political hierarchies throughout history, from the sans
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culottes in the French Revolution where the lower class rallied under their differing styles of dress

from the bourgeoisie, to the discarding of skirts and embracing of pants by women as part of the

second-wave feminism movement of the 1960s and 70s as a way to protest the traditional and

constricting female roles in society. Not only does clothing have historical importance, with

changes in fashion often acting as a mirror to reflect the social and political changes of the time,

but there are also larger implications for how it can be used in modern times.

With its ability to contain vast reservoirs of symbolic meaning, clothing can be an

informative lens through which to analyze the broader conversations currently being held about

various social issues. In tandem, the genre of speculative fiction is an invaluable resource through

which to conduct a similar analysis of current concerns in a population. Works of speculative

fiction are not written in a vacuum; rather they are the product of an author’s reflection on the

issues that are at the forefront of society. And, according to Arthur Frank in his book Letting

Stories Breathe: A Socio-narratology, just as stories can act as a reflection of the real world, so too

can they “breathe life not only into individuals, but also into groups that assemble around telling

and believing certain stories. After stories animate, they instigate” (Frank 3). These stories have

the ability to interpellate, or “call on a person to acknowledge and act on a particular identity”

(Frank 49). This interpellation, while present as a whole in the entirety of a work of speculative

fiction, can also be done just through the very clothing present in the story. Another key idea that

Arthur Frank puts forth in his novel is that “stories not only work with objects; stories take the

form of objects. […] There is no important difference between stories and materials” (Frank 43).

Thus, the clothing that the authors choose to dress their characters in within their works of

speculative fiction take on all of the meaning of the stories themselves. The clothing can act as

“material semiotic companions,” taking on a true storytelling force within a narrative and creating
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real-world impacts because of how they affect the readers and influence people’s actions and

interactions. Works of speculative fiction and the ways in which clothing is used as a narrative tool

and a force for interpellation within these works can affect the types of narratives that get

promoted in the world, determining which issues stay relevant and important in the minds of the

general population. By examining how an author uses clothing to shine a spotlight on specific

issues that they feel are important in our world, we can gain a better understanding of the nature

of the many issues that saturate our political, social, and cultural stage.

It is with all of this in mind that I return to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which

contains a story whose world is established from the very beginning on the foundation of a

speculation closely tied to clothing: What if fertile women were treated as a valuable resource and

were passed around in the hands of the wealthy and powerful, wearing distinctive clothing to label

them and enforce their new roles? The current resurgence of interest surrounding The Handmaid’s

Tale with the release of the popular Hulu television adaptation, signals that something about this

story – which has been around since 1985 – resonates more than ever within the population

amongst today’s political and social issues. With Atwood’s dystopian novel currently so present in

the minds of the people and popular culture, discussing relevant and timely themes such as

women’s reproductive rights, gender inequality, gay rights, and the power of government, there is

merit in taking a closer look at how Atwood chooses to utilize clothing in her novel to enhance her

world and further her narrative ends, as well as compare Atwood’s use of clothing to the classic

roles that clothing assume in our world.

The Handmaids are the class of women in Atwood’s novel who are singled out because of

their rare reproductive abilities within a world being torn apart by a plague of rampant infertility.

Within the newly established theocratic totalitarian nation of Gilead, these women are made to
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wear distinctive clothing that signifies their position. High-necked, covering the handmaids

practically head to toe in heavy fabric, the clothing is very draped and completely removes any

semblance of a feminine figure that lies underneath (Atwood 8). The headdress has two parts that

can be seen especially well in the television adaptation. The lower layer is a white bonnet that the

handmaids must wear at all times except for when bathing. This clothing piece covers their hair,

which they must have tied back in a bun. This hides their femininity and sexuality, because a

woman’s unbound hair has long been a symbol of promiscuity. The bonnet is evocative of

traditional women’s clothing from the times of patriarchal, nuclear families when women existed

solely in the domestic sphere, and promotes the idea that the nation of Gilead wants to return to

traditional values and return women to traditional subservient roles.

The second layer of the headdress is described as having large white wings, used to keep

the handmaids from seeing, as well as from being seen (Atwood 8). The clothing acts as the literal

divide between these women and the outside world, disengaging them from their surroundings

and taking away their agency. It emphasizes how the women are shut off from outside help and

are being effectively trained to look straight ahead and not question orders. In addition, the wings

remove a person’s individuality. When people see a handmaid, they see the figure in the red robe

and cap, not the individual wearing it. The clothing subsumes these women into the collective

group. Their clothing is chosen for them and is an extreme example of the end of the spectrum

where society uses clothing as a method of control, as a way to dictate what someone wears and

how people see them, and thus begin to affect how they see themselves. The clothing strongly

interpellates the women into the role of handmaids, leaving no room for individuality, self-

expression, or resistance.
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Another aspect of the handmaid outfit that Atwood utilizes as a means of delivering

addition layers of symbolism and meaning to her text is the red color of the fabric. This color

enhances the visibility of the wearer, making it impossible for them to hide when out in society,

and thus furthering the oppressive and controlling aims of the Gilead government. This color,

described as “the color of blood, which defines us” (Atwood 8), alludes to a woman’s monthly

bleeding. This serves as a way for Atwood to further emphasize how the government in her novel

categorize women solely by their reproductive abilities, reducing them down to the one main

function they continue to be valued for and essentially objectifying them into walking wombs. It

plays into the original speculation in the novel about a hypothetical world where fertility is a

limited resource and reproduction is a sacred duty rather than a right.

The combination of a double-layered headdress and a draped robe strongly evokes

comparison to traditional outfits worn by nuns. This enhances the already very strong religious

undertones present in Atwood’s novel, seen even in the biblical naming of Gilead, the country that

overthrew the United States. Atwood establishes what the handmaids are doing as a religious

activity, invoking classic imagery of piousness and chastity. However, because of the hermeneutic

nature of clothing, Atwood is able to layer multiple meanings within the clothes. With the

addition of the red color, which is in stark contrast to the traditional black and white of nun habits,

she twists the imagery, distorting the vision of a chaste woman and harkening back to The Scarlet

Letter and the red of adultery. Thus, the handmaids of Gilead are simultaneously treated as

madonna and whore, sanctified for their reproductive abilities and vilified for their sexual capacity.

This contradictory and misogynistic view, emphasized to a greater degree in Atwood’s novel

through her use of clothing, highlights and criticizes the similar double standard that women are

held to in our own society.

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The imagery and depth of meaning created in Atwood’s story is the work of a novel, taking

hundreds of pages to fully flesh out the nuances of the speculative world Atwood has imagined.

However, this endeavor is heavily aided using clothing as a tool of symbolism and political

commentary. From the first moment that Offred describes putting on her uniform, it is possible to

imagine what it would be like to walk in her shoes, and it is through this lens that the reader is

then introduced to the rest of her world. By imagining wearing her clothes, the readers take their

first steps toward empathy. The clothing not only interpellates the characters into their roles in

the novel, but also reaches through the pages to touch the readers, hailing them to imagine - if

just for a short while - what it would be like to wear these clothes as well.

As discussed previously, works of speculative fiction are not created in a vacuum. Neither

are works of speculative fiction read in a vacuum. Novels can have a ripple effect, breaking free of

bindings of their pages to become forces for change in their own right. This has been the case with

Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. The themes in her work published in 1985 have

transcended the bonds of time and remain extremely relevant in conversations being held today

about women’s rights. The religious justifications for the oppression of women as well as the idea

that bearing children - whether one wants to or not – is a duty and not a choice all have deep

connections to the contentious debates currently being voiced about abortion. Atwood’s novel is

becoming part of a larger conversation about women’s rights, using speculative storytelling to

provide a narrative of an extreme possible future if we continue down certain paths to their

eventual conclusions. Most significantly, the clothing of the handmaids has gained foothold

beyond the pages of Atwood’s novel within this narrative of women’s reproductive rights, with

some women recently donning the garments in the Texas Senate to protest several anti-abortion

measures (Huffington Post). The red robes that symbolized female oppression in Atwood’s novel
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now take center stage in representing the story of The Handmaid’s Tale to the public, taking on an

entirely new layer of meaning and becoming a method of activism and wordless protest.

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is by no means the only work of speculative

fiction to utilize clothing as a tool of storytelling, nor is it the only example set in a dystopian

future. Another useful example can be found in Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy. This series is set

in the post-apocalyptic city of Chicago, and the story speculates on what a society that is artificially

separated into five factions (Candor, Abnegation, Amity, Erudite, and Dauntless) based on sets of

values in order to create a peaceful and balanced society would be like and how it would function.

Similar to The Handmaid’s Tale, a certain amount of individuality and loyalty to familial bonds is

sacrificed in order to promote the unity of the group. Existing under the motto of “faction before

blood” (Roth 43), the citizens of this society work to embody the ideals and pursue the goals of

their faction above all else.

This assertion of the importance of group identity over the autonomy of the individual is

aided by the use of clothing. Each faction has a different color scheme and style of dress that they

adhere to that is reflective of their ideals, such as black and white for Candor who believe in the

immutability of truth, and grey for Abnegation who believe in selflessness. These color schemes

have twofold purpose. On one level, they dictate societal roles and interactions, allowing for

unspoken communication and categorization to occur between individuals before they even speak

to each other. People are identified first by their faction, then by their character. This ordering

enforces the divisions between groups. A person’s clothing can say a lot about them, and what is

communicated by this clothing to another person is especially important in establishing first

impressions, and by extension, their entire future relationship and working assumptions about

each other. Clothing taps directly into a person’s “inner library of stories” (Frank 55), allowing
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people to classify and sort others into preconceived archetypes. And, if all of the available

archetypes have been predetermined by society, as they have in Divergent, the clothing can feed

into a loop of enforced behavior that becomes institutionalized and difficult to break free from.

On another, more introspective level, the color schemes and styles of clothing worn by the

different factions in Roth’s series can influence the individual wearing the clothing. When a

character chooses to put on her faction’s outfit, she implicitly accepts all of the values that are

represented in the uniform. As Triss, the protagonist of the series and a girl born into Abnegation

states, “The gray clothes, the plain hairstyle, and the unassuming demeanor of my faction are

supposed to make it easier for me to forget myself, and easier for everyone else to forget me too”

(Roth 6). This description bears some interesting similarities to the description of the handmaid

outfits in The Handmaid’s Tale, with both sets of clothing being long and loose and conservative to

discourage others from sexually objectifying them, as well as causing the wearer to become

invisible as an individual, indistinguishable from the group. The Abnegation hold selflessness up as

the highest virtue, and their clothing reflects and enhances their aversion to vanity. The clothing

has the ability to make abstract concepts such as bravery and honesty more tangible, thus

improving the communication of the values of the factions, both between characters in the novel

as well as to the readers. This transparency in communication that clothing lends to the story is

valuable in its ability to aid Roth in getting the message of her novel across to a wider audience.

There is a subtle yet significant difference between the role of clothing in the Divergent

series and The Handmaid’s Tale. Within the world of Gilead and the handmaids, clothing is an

explicit tool of subjugation and identity manipulation. The conservative outfits the women are

forced to wear are used to suppress women’s sexuality and freedom. While the women do gain an

identity in their clothing, it is an identity that they did not choose for themselves nor want. In
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contrast, the characters in Divergent, while bound to the values of their faction, are also liberated

by their ability to choose which faction to swear fealty to. While it could be argued that getting to

choose between five preexisting sets of values is only the illusion of choice, each individual decides

which ideals they want to uphold, and thus the uniform that they wear takes on a different

meaning. Rather than being a label assigned to them by society, their clothes become a form of

self-expression and an extension of the values that they identify with and choose to live by. It is, in

essence, the difference between being branded and getting a tattoo; both leave a person with a

mark, but that mark can either say something about the nature of society or about the nature of a

person’s soul.

By comparing the functions that clothing take on in The Handmaid’s Tale and Divergent,

the dual nature of clothing can be better observed. Clothing acts as the bridge between the self

and society, and can be influenced and take on meanings from either end. On one hand, the

clothing we wear is often dictated by society and is thus a form of control, where standards,

expectations, and values get placed on our shoulders. School uniforms are one such example of

this, bringing with them the liberation from being judged based on appearance, but at the cost of

self-expression and choice. Sometimes there can be the illusion of choice, such as in year to year

fashion trends, in that the clothing we choose to wear is sometimes a reflection of our desire to fit

in to the existing mold of society, and one’s options are essentially made for them by the fashion

industry. On the other hand, clothing is a form of self-expression, the means through which

internal thoughts and values of an individual can be made visible to the world and can be

expressed.

This dichotomy of meanings can have some important and potentially dangerous

consequences when extended to the real world, especially when what the individual is trying to
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express with their clothing choices is different from what is perceived outwardly by society. A

specific example of this can be seen in the controversy surrounding the hijab. It is a credit to the

power of clothing that so much debate, xenophobia, and hatred can be invoked by a simple head

piece. Much of the conflict stems from the conflicting interpretations of the meaning of the hijab.

As Liz Conor states in her article for The Age:

Public presence and the visibility that goes with it means an awful lot to Western women. It

represents our economic independence, sexual agency and political participation. […] But

after a century of struggle for freedom of expression that included discarding the bra,

Western women have called for banning the hijab in schools. They have developed, it

would seem, a rather limited view of what public visibility might mean to different women.

The hijab is a challenge to the view of liberated visibility and freedom of self-expression

unfettered by "the male gaze". The possibility that covering up is not necessarily a

backward step almost fails to compute. (Conor, The Age, “Hijab means different things to

Westerners and Muslims”)

Thus, at least part of the reason for the contention around the hijab seems to be due to the

incompatibility of what the wearer intends versus what is interpreted by society. Westerners have

a different inner library to draw from, and The Handmaid’s Tale is just one example of many

stories which highlight the theme of conservative women’s clothing being a sign of outward

influence, oppression, and a loss of agency in one’s own life. By understanding that clothing can

take on a diverse range of meanings, becoming exposed to different stories that put into focus

these different uses for clothing, and understanding that one’s own interpretation of a person’s

identity may be significantly different from the identity that individual is attempting to put forth, it

may be possible to facilitate more thoughtful and informed communication between groups.
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Clothing has a remarkably important part to play within society. Being more aware of the

ways clothing enters the discussion both explicitly and implicitly can make people more informed

and able to perceive the nuances of the various sides of debates. This will be especially important

moving forward in our currently charged political climate with many issues like women’s

reproductive rights and the dangers of dual-party democracy and party loyalty taking center stage.

Speculative fiction is a powerful force. Because it is speculative, anything can be explored

within its pages, giving an author absolute freedom to make commentary about our world and

imagine a potential future. Speculative fiction, because of its hypothetical nature, inherently

creates a critical distance between the readers and the world the author is putting forth. This

enables actual reflection to occur. It is often difficult to see the world for what it is when one is

constantly living in it; speculative fiction creates just enough of a gap that things one takes for

granted can be called into question and critiqued. Thus, this art form is uniquely equipped to incite

global discussion, and when paired with clothing – with all of its inherent symbolism and

interpellative power – becomes a truly unstoppable force for social change. Approaching these

stories with an awareness of all the subtle ways meaning can be presented, interpreted, and

translated from a speculative world to our own is a skill that will be crucial in the times to come as

the ongoing narratives that surround us and interpellate us march on and evolve into an unknown

future that we can only speculate about.

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Bibliography

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. New York: Anchor Books, 1998. Print.

Conor, Liz. “Hijab means different things to Westerners and Muslims.” The Age, 20 Sept. 2005.

Crane, Diana. Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothing, Chicago: U of

Chicago Press, 2000. Print.

Frank, Arthur W. Letting stories breathe: a socio-narratology. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 2010.

Print.

Roth, Veronica. Divergent (Divergent Trilogy, Book 1). HarperCollins, 2011. Print.