Rooms of Their Own
Space and Security in Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper"
Keywords:
Space, Ontological SecurityAbstract
What is space made out of? From buildings and rooms. Additionally, space is made out of social constructs, build by concepts such as security and feeling secure. At times, in order to provide security for a community, individual space must be restricted. This action often has catastrophical consequences.
Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid¨'s Tale (1985) and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) are both stories about how individual space is limited in the name of communal security. Atwood's and Gilman's protagonists have been closed into refined spaces, their own rooms, where they produce and record their experiences. Virginia Woolf expressed women's need for rooms of their own; for their own space in society. Atwood's and Gilman's rooms do not completely correspond to the space described by Woolf, nevertheless, in these spaces the protagonists reflect on society.
Ontological security is a concept created by R.D. Laing and further defined by Anthony Giddens. Laing and Giddens discuss ontological security as it relates to an individual. In my research, I expand the term to refer also to communal security. In defining communal security, which I call collective ontological security, I rely on the work of Maurice Halbwachs and his theory on collective memory. Thus, in this article I refer and research both individual and collective ontological security and the processes through which they are formed. In general, ontological security is built, for instance, from experiences of continuity and meaning. When the building blocks of ontological security are threatened, the ontological security of an individual or community can become challenged.
Atwood's and Gilman's texts depict how community's collective ontological security is strenghtened by capturing and isolating individuals who threaten the collective security. At the same time, personal security of these individuals is challenged by restricting and controlling their personal space. Finally, the conflict between the communal and individual ontological security demands drives the protagonists to espace from their designated spaces, one way or another.
