Comparing Identity In Brave New World And The Handmaid's Tale

As well as exposing the similarities between the characters in their novels to reveal the paucity of identity, in both Brave New World and The Handmaid’s Tale, the idea of personal identity is presented as being an object that can be manipulated to suit particular circumstance or regulations. Throughout Huxley’s novel, the subject of conditioning is continuously referred to whether it be the “Neo-Pavlovian conditioning rooms” or the reflexes that have been “unalterably conditioned” and this shows how identity can be adapted. The term “Neo-Pavlovian” is used to describe a human that is conditioned to fit into a specific group or class of people. Huxley uses this term as it presents personal identity as being definable and easily controlled.

Due to the absence of the word ‘my’ when describing her torso, Atwood could be displaying how little authority Offred has over her body, and how due to this she barely perceives it as her own. In contrast, the lack of this first person pronoun could also be a product of the protagonist separating herself from her body to disconnect from the reality of the situation that surrounds her and is therefore of her own doing. Another reference to this is when the Handmaids are shown the film of a women being “cut into pieces”, and this is a direct description of women in the novel being valued as bodies and due to Atwood writing The Handmaid’s Tale as a satire, it is clear she is asking readers to consider current social attitudes and to reflect on the ways in which we view and treat other people. The growth of pornography, especially that which depicts violence against women, is a cause of great concern to many people and feminists such as Atwood view it as part of the ‘objectification’ of