The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale is another example of how stripping name acts as a removal of power. After a radical coup occurs in the distant future of America, men seize control over women, and force them into hyper-submissive social roles. 

June, the main protagonist, is renamed Offred, or “of Fred,’ as a display of her new husband’s authority in all parts of her life; over time, she is forced to bear his child and act as a slave in his household. When first addressing it, she says that her name “isn't Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it's forbidden. I tell myself it doesn't matter, your name is like your telephone number, useful only to others; but what I tell myself is wrong, it does matter” (14.37). While she wants to believe that a name only has outward value, it is meaningful that she inwardly disagrees. A name acts as a form of self-governance in this dystopian environment, and the control of her body is in direct accordance to the control of name. Again, the symbolic removal of a given name acts as the lynchpin to which her husband gains supreme identity control. 

When with other handmaids, women reclassified to be servants and surrogate mothers, she recounts that “[they] learned to lip-read, our heads flat on the beds, turned sideways, watching each other's mouths. In this way we exchanged names from bed to bed: Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June.” (1.5-6). It is subversive to share their true names with each other, but the rebellion gives them power if just for a moment. 

Still, in the public sphere, they are objects of property and must interact with others accordingly. On her daily walk, Offred is accompanied by a mysterious woman named Ofglen. Though they can never reveal their true names and become genuinely familiar with each other, they eventually become good friends. However, “on a certain day she simply wasn't there anymore, and this one was there in her place…"I am Ofglen," the woman says. Word perfect. And of course she is, the new one, and Ofglen, wherever she is, is no longer Ofglen. I never did know her real name. That is how you can get lost, in a sea of names. It wouldn't be easy to find her, now” (44.15). Ofglen as she was once known is quickly replaced by a new Ofglen, suggesting that in this society, name is merely an attribute of ownership, rather than an innate personal identifier. Notably, her loss is impossible to trace without knowing her original name. 

In the end, Offred makes a bid to escape the humiliating society by aligning with a compassionate chauffeur named Nick. Right before the book ends, she “tell[s] him [her] real name, and feel that therefore [she is] known” (41.19). Beyond a connection to the public world, Offred reaffirms that her name is a direct way to know her true self.