What is the role of performance and performativity in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood?
In The Handmaid’s Tale, performance and performativity function as central mechanisms by which identity, gender, power, and resistance are constructed and contested within the dystopian society of Gilead. The novel illustrates how characters are compelled to enact roles—handmaids, wives, marthas—that define their bodies, behaviours, and subjectivities. At the same time, performativity (in the sense developed by Judith Butler) underlines how repeated acts, gestures, and practices consolidate those roles into seemingly natural identities (Butler 1988). Amherst College+2openaccess.bilgi.edu.tr+2 Offred’s narration reveals that her “self” must be composed, presented, and performed, rather than simply “being” (Atwood). The compulsory performance of gender and role in Gilead is both oppressive and productive: oppressive because it limits autonomy and defines subject-position, but productive because it offers openings for subversion through the very same vehicle of performance. Thus the role of performance and performativity in the novel is to expose how identities are fabricated through repetition, how power is exercised through role-performance, and how resistance can emerge from adapting, manipulating or rejecting those performances.
2.1 Performance as Role Enactment in Gilead
From the outset of The Handmaid’s Tale, the society of Gilead imposes clearly defined roles upon women: handmaids wear red, wives wear blue, marthas wear green. These uniforms themselves are a kind of ritualised costume signalling socially mandated roles (Atwood). The handmaid’s role is the performance of fertility, the wife’s role is the performance of domesticity and status, and the martha’s role is the performance of servitude in the household. Offred comments that “My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born.” (Atwood). This explicit reflexivity highlights that the role is something to be performed. In this way, the novel shows that performance in Gilead is not optional; it is compulsory if one is to survive within the regime’s logic. The enactment of these roles becomes everyday drama: the Ceremony, the ritual greetings, the spoken prayers. By highlighting performance as role enactment, Atwood draws attention to how social institutions demand and shape human behaviour.
Within the novel, characters vary in how consciously they perform. Some accept their roles without apparent internal resistance; others like Offred maintain an inner voice that monitors the performance and keeps alive memory of prior selfhood. The point is that performance here is not mere theatricality or surface dress but integrates into the character’s identity and survival. Indeed, as one study argues, in The Handmaid’s Tale “performance is also tied, literally, with survival, as whoever falls outside of the gender norms or heteronormativity are sent to” the Colonies. munin.uit.no Therefore performance as role enactment is a mechanism of the regime to control, and simultaneously a site at which identity is produced and contested.
2.2 Performativity of Gender and Identity
While performance concerns the enactment of a role, performativity emphasises how identities themselves are constituted through repeated performance. Judith Butler’s argument in Performative Acts and Gender Constitution is that gender is not a stable essence, but an identity continuously constituted through stylised repetition of acts. Amherst College In the novel, Atwood exploits this concept: the women of Gilead are not simply given feminine identities—they perform them, and in performing them they become what the regime defines as feminine. For example, the handmaids must bow, greet, walk in order, and speak in constrained ways; over time, these repeated acts co-constitute their identity as handmaids.
Scholarly analysis shows how The Handmaid’s Tale illustrates this: one study observes that “the constant repetition … reveals the imitative structure of both gender and sexuality.” munin.uit.no Another notes that by applying Butler’s theory, the novel “shows how the modification of gender … is effected through compulsory or internalised performance.” ResearchGate Thus performativity in Atwood’s narrative is not only about overt performance but also about how the body, the habitus, behaviours, and gestures become naturalised as identity. The regime demands that Offred perform as a handmaid, but in doing so, Offred’s self is remodelled—her body becomes the site of gendered performativity, her subjectivity reconfigured through enforced repetition. In that sense, performativity reveals how power shapes identity at the most intimate level.
2.3 The Body as Site of Performance
In The Handmaid’s Tale the body occupies a central role: it is visible, disciplined, surveilled, and instrumented. The performance of role and gender takes place on the body: the uniforms, the speech, the sexual ceremony, the biblical rituals. The body becomes a stage. Atwood writes about how Offred’s body is simultaneously her own and yet not her own: she is reductionised to her reproductive capacity, becoming a vessel. The handmaid’s body is the regime’s performance site. The body must enact its role: menstruate or not, bear children or not, stand in line, obey. The regime’s control of bodies is mediated through performance—of posture, of language, of dress.
Scholarly commentary supports this: “In The Handmaid’s Tale the performance is also tied, literally, with survival …” munin.uit.no Another article argues that uniforms, rituals, and language in the novel function to de-humanise, marginalise and regulate women as bodies marked for performance. the-criterion.com By placing the body at the centre of performance, Atwood underscores how power regulates not only what women do but what they become. The body thus becomes the site where identity is both enforced and contested. The handmaid’s body is a publicised performance, constantly under surveillance—thus the movement, stillness, speech are all performances that are forced, constrained, and deeply meaningful.
2.4 Resistance and Subversion through Performance
Though performance in Gilead is designed to control, the very mechanisms of performance open up possibilities for resistance and subversion. Offred’s internal voice, her memories, her silent acts of refusal show that performance can be manipulated. In fact, one scholar asserts that Offred both performs Gilead’s idea of womanhood and uses that performance consciously “as a defence to preserve her own life”. millersville.tind.io The performative dimension thus becomes a site of struggle: to what extent can the performance be modified, interrupted or redirected to preserve subjectivity?
For example, Offred’s nostalgic recollections of the past, her internal commentary, her small acts of non-compliance (holding the Commander’s hand when she should not, telling herself “I will survive”) are forms of subversive performance. They do not necessarily dismantle the regime openly, but they indicate that performance can be used to maintain a selfhood behind the required identity. By performing different angles—the outward compliance and the inward refusal—Offred retains agency. The performative repetition demanded by Gilead becomes unstable because Offred adds her internal layer of performance: remembering, narrating, resisting. Thus performativity offers a way to critique the normative role and to envision alternative possibilities of selfhood.
2.5 Power, Surveillance, and the Performance of Compliance
In The Handmaid’s Tale power is exercised through the orchestration of performance and surveillance. The regime of Gilead monitors behaviour, speech, dress, and body, ensuring that the required performances are executed. Women’s bodies are visible, uniformed, their names changed, their speech constrained. Compliance becomes a performance. The watchers are ever present: Eyes, Angels, Wives. The requirement to “walk in two’s”, the greetings, the ceremonies, the spoken prayers—each is performance under watch. The performance of compliance legitimises power: by performing the role, the subject becomes the role.
A key dimension is that the performance of compliance also reinforces the regime’s legitimacy: the more the handmaids bow, say prayers, dress correctly, the more natural the regime appears. The regime turns performance into the mark of identity, and by normalising performance, it normalises the system. The theoretical underpinning of performativity shows how repetition of acts gives rise to the illusion of stable identity and hence the illusion of natural order. Butler writes that gender identity is instituted through stylised repetition of acts. Amherst College Atwood’s dystopia makes the connection transparent: repetition of rituals, the Ceremony, the uniforms, the speech—all build the illusion of order, identity and legitimacy. Resistance, then, threatens this order because it disrupts the performance of compliance.
2.6 Memory, Narrative and the Performance of Selfhood
Finally, the performance of selfhood in The Handmaid’s Tale is mediated through memory and narrative. Offred’s narration is itself a performance: she addresses an unknown listener, reconstructs her past, questions her present, imagines her future. Her story is an act of performing identity: she must compose herself, present herself. Atwood writes: “My self is a thing I must now compose …” (Atwood). This reflexivity highlights that identity is not fixed but performed in narrative. The act of remembering becomes part of the performance of self.
Academic commentary emphasises how Offred uses narrative to subvert the performance of compliance. One study notes that Offred’s voice “regains agency through narrative power” despite being situated in a culture where women are told to be seen and not heard. millersville.tind.io Through remembering her past, imagining alternatives, telling her story, Offred resists the regime’s performance of identity over her. Memory and narrative become performative acts that preserve a self behind the assigned role. The performance of selfhood emerges as both survival strategy and site of resistance. Thus Atwood uses the motif of performance not only at the level of enacted behaviour but also at the level of narration and subjectivity.
3. Conclusion
In conclusion, performance and performativity form a critical axis in The Handmaid’s Tale. Performance—understood as role-enactment—is the mechanism by which the dystopian regime imposes identities and controls bodies. Performativity—understood as the repetition of acts that constitute identity—shows how those identities are fabricated, naturalised, and potentially subverted. The body becomes the site of performance, exposed to surveillance and discipline. Yet inside that structure of control, characters like Offred manipulate performance for survival and subversion; memory and narrative become tools of resistance; compliance itself becomes a delicate performance with spaces for refusal.
For undergraduate readers and scholars alike, the novel provides a compelling illustration of how identity is both performed and imposed, how power operates through staged ritual, and how resistance emerges in the cracks of performance. Through roles, uniforms, rituals, narration, Atwood crafts a world in which identity is not innate but made—and hence can be remade. In your analysis of The Handmaid’s Tale, focusing on the interplay between performance, performativity, and power will deepen your understanding of how Atwood critiques the construction of gender, identity and authority.
References
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. (Year of edition used).
Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal, vol. 40, no. 4, 1988, pp. 519–531. Amherst College
Kirkvik, Anette. Gender Performativity in The Handmaid’s Tale and The Hunger Games. Master’s thesis, Dept. of Culture and Literature, University of Tromsø, 2015. munin.uit.no
Yang, Rui. “Gender Role Subversion and Self-Liberation in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’.” Proceedings of the 2023 5th International Conference on Literature, Art and Human, Atlantis Press, 2023. Atlantis Press
Hamid, Sumaira, and Khursheed Ahmad Qazi. “Othering in The Handmaid’s Tale: Dehumanization, Marginalization, and Resistance.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 15, no. 1, Feb. 2024. the-criterion.com
Šarlija, Klementina. Gender Inequality and the Role of Religion in Dystopian Society: The Handmaid’s Tale. Master’s thesis, University of Zadar, 2024. repozitorij.unizd.hr
Landis, Courtney. “A Woman’s Place Is in the Resistance: Self, Narrative, and Performative Femininity as Subversion and Weapon in The Handmaid’s Tale.” Master’s thesis, Millersville University, 2018. millersville.tind.io