Last week, we discussed in class about how Shirley Neuman suggests in her article that various female characters in The Handmaid’s Tale such as Offred, her mother, and Moira serve as representations of three different attitudes that women in 1980s America had towards feminism. During our discussion, thoughts came to my mind about an article that I studied last year titled, “Thinking As a Hobby”, which serves as a great continuum to Neuman’s analysis. The author of this article is William Golding, who also wrote the famous novel, Lord of the Flies. Here, Golding classifies people according to three different categories of thinking. Interestingly enough, Offred, her mother, and Moira each epitomize one of the three distinctive categories that Golding describes.

The first category of thinking that Golding establishes in his article is third-grade thinking, which entails conformist attitudes towards social norms and values that contain elements of “unconscious prejudice, ignorance, and hypocrisy”. As such, Golding describes how third-grade thinkers typically do not appreciate contradictions in their beliefs. This is generally an accurate representation of Offred’s character, for Offred is passive and lacks the courage to stand up against the oppressive state of Gilead. Although she has the inner desire to resist, she makes no actual independent decision to take part in any form of rebellion. Moreover, Offred shows contempt towards her mother’s fervent efforts in the feminist movement.

While third-grade thinkers tend to follow social norms regardless of their flaws, the next level of thinkers, the grade-two thinker, actively seeks to find contradictions to social values, albeit in a manner that “destroys without the power to create”. Moira is a character who embodies these characteristics for unlike Offred, she willingly rebels against the oppressive State of Gilead through her open challenges against the state’s policy on homosexuality as well as her two attempted escapes from Red Center. However, Moira lacks the charisma to initiate any form of change for the overall betterment of Gilead’s society. In the end, she succumbs to the fate of having to work a Jezebel for the Commanders, which reflects Golding’s claim that grade-two thinkers ultimately “fall into another fault and lag behind”.

Finally, there is the first-grade thinker, who exhibits a sense of adventure on the basis of promoting a moral cause. In contrast to second-grade thinking, which demonstrates courage but results in destruction, a first-grade thinker strives to achieve moral consequences. Offred’s mother would exemplify a grade-one thinker for she spearheaded the struggle for women’s rights, which she claims involved participants confronting armored tanks. However, unlike Moira, the actions of Offred’s mother radically elevate the status of women in the next generation of her society. As Golding notes in the final paragraph of his article, an illustration of grade-one thinking involves the statue of the Thinker inside the shadow of an incoming leopard while Venus’ statue is off to the side as an object admiration.

In conclusion, The Handmaid’s Tale is a novel that reinforces the arguments that Golding presents in “Thinking As a Hobby”, which I strongly recommend all of you to check out. Here is the link to the article:

http://faculty.weber.edu/dkrantz/en2500/Thinking%20as%20a%20Hobby%20-%20Golding.htm