Romantic love in The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret AtwoodIn her novel The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood addresses the concept of different expressions of romantic love through the eyes of Offred, a woman who has almost lost all her freedom in a repressive and dystopian society. Throughout her struggle with oppression and guilt, Offred's perspective evolves, and it is through this process that Atwood demonstrates the nature of love as it develops under the circumstances. the most austere. The first glimpses of romantic love we notice in this novel are the outbursts of love. Offred's memories of Luke, her estranged husband. Most of these are sensory memories - she remembers above all images of comfort: of lying in her husband's arms, of his smell and small details of his appearance - but also of a feeling connection which gives its identity. And that's what he misses the most. "I want Luke to be here so much. I want to be held and called my name. I want to be valued in a way that I'm not; I want to have more than just value” (125-126). And yet, already, the person as a whole begins to drift away. The life she now leads drives him from her reality – she says, “Day after day, night after night, he moves away and I become more unfaithful” (346). Her love for her husband is marked by guilt and regret from the start: she misses all the little characteristics of him that she never took the time to appreciate when she was with him. She even misses the arguments and wonders, “How could we know we were happy?” (67). The memory of her love for Luke, and her guilt at having betrayed him with other men, notably Nick, for whom she develops genuine affection, is an important psychological factor throughout the course...... middle paper..... .ing previous relationships. This is perhaps what can be considered the only remaining spark of a healthy bond between man and woman in the midst of a society that seems to have forgotten that such a thing could exist. They alone among the victims of this dystopian society have learned the truth that “we must love one another or die.” The student may wish to begin the essay with the quote below: “All I have is a voice / To undo the folded lie.” » / The romantic lie in the brain / Of the sensual man in the street / And the lie of authority / Whose buildings grope the sky / The State does not exist / And no one exists alone / Hunger leaves no choice / To the citizen or the police / We must love each other or die." --WH Auden, "September 1939" Works cited: Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. New York: Ballantine, Fawcett Crest, 1987.