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Cruelty In 'Blindness And The Handmaid'

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History has shown that cruelty against women has been a long time fight that has grown over the years. The way men treat women has become a very pressing matter and is affecting women all around the world. Women have fought this fight for generations and generations to come will have the same fight until men change their ways. For example, women fought for their right to vote for years. Eventually women won the fight and life for women has become more equal. The fight against cruelty towards women is now the pressing issue. Jose Saramago’s Blindness and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale both present different causes of cruelty against women, but readers may debate whether or not they are the most prominent causes. However, they both show …show more content…

The women are treated as nothing more then incubators for the couples and not as human beings. The women have been stripped of their rights and have had everything taken from them, including their names. When Offred, the main character, speaks of what they call the ‘ceremony’ she says it is a time when the husband attempts to conceive a child within her and she speaks about the way that she is treated. She describes the ceremony as a time when her soul purpose is to be nothing more then an object that the Commander will attempt to conceive a child within. When the ceremony begins she is to lay on her back and Serena Joy …show more content…

The Handmaid’s are only seen as useful ‘asset’, the term ‘assets’ referring to their ability to still bare children, to the community and the couples. Offred describes what the Commander is doing to show the reader that she is not apart of what is going on, her body is being used, but her mind and soul is very far from what is happening. The Handmaid’s are all used in the same way, they are all being subjected to cruel treatment by the couples that they are being sent out to. The women are used as tools to repopulate society and the women are ignored as human beings. The only time the women are acknowledged by the couples is on the night of the ceremony when the women become ‘useful’. Furthermore, the women are also made to wear wing like blinders on their heads so that they could not look at any other men or be distracted by anything. They were to go straight to the shops they are told to, then straight home. They are also dressed in full red dresses so that everyone else would know what they were. The Handmaid’s are dressed in this way because they are processions of the men they are ‘working’ for. They are even named after the men they stay with; the Commander’s name is Fred; therefore, his Handmaid is named Offred to show that she is ‘Of Fred’. The women are given no choice in the matter, and their personal and emotional needs are over looked time and time again because the

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Both texts ‘The Handmaids Tale’ and ‘The Bloody Chamber’ were written during the second wave of feminism which centralised the issue of ownership over women’s sexuality and reproductive rights and as a result, the oral contraceptive was created. As powerfully stated by Ariel Levy, ‘If we are really going to be sexually liberated, we need to make room for a range of options as wide as the variety of human desire.’ Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter both celebrate female sexuality as empowering to challenge the constraints of social pressure on attitudes of women. Both writers aim to expose the impact of patriarchy as it represses female sexual desire and aim to control it thus challenge contemporary perspectives of women by revealing the oppression

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The handmaid’s tale is a book written by Margert Atwood. The story is narrated by the narrator’s protagonists. The narrator informs about the life in Gilead in which the commanders get a handmaid to breed for them since their wife’s cant breed and the society of Gilead needs reproduction. not only that, but there are different commanders and not every commander has a handmaid because some of them have wives that can breed children and have children of their own. There is different dress code for women in Gilead because the handmaids wear red, the wives of the commander wear blue, Martha’s wear green.

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The Handmaids must submit to their Commanders as they hold the dominant role. The Handmaids are also sacrificing their bodies and fertility to their Commander and his wife in order to give them a child. They have all been renamed with names that signify the Commanders they serve: Offred, Ofglen, Ofcharles, Ofwarren, etc. These names show the Commanders’ possession of the Handmaids. In The Handmaid’s Tale, sex symbolizes the Handmaid’s sacrifice and submission and the Commanders domination and control over the Handmaids in

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Works of literature often portray ideas relating to Marxist theory, this is why in a dystopian society, class distinctions dominate the social climate, using Marxist ideologies as a tool to define the lives of the narrator and those around her. In Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, ideologies from Marxist theory dominate the society in which Offred, the narrator, lives in, evidenced by the strict class systems and limited interaction between them. In writing the novel, Atwood makes a point to create a world that could exist using technology and ideas already accessible in today’s society, meaning the events that take place in The Handmaid’s Tale could happen in present day. Offred lives in a reality where class distinctions dominate society, and women, especially fertile women. These women are displaced downwards, although there are those women who attempt to resist the grip of society.

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The handmaids tale is a dystopian novel written by Margaret Atwood in 1985. Offred, the narrator, describes Gilead, as being a corrupt city where her rights were suppressed. Throughout the book we (the reader) are presented with many allusions, one of these being the bible. Atwood uses specific parts of the bible that glorifies marriage, convict women but absolve men of adultery for the purpose of childbirth to make the law’s in Gilead. Other Bible references that focus on meekness and humility has been used to dictate the handmaid’s behavior.

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Atwood’s dystopian novel is a warning about the consequences of misogynistic, authoritarian governments. Her message seems to be universal since the subjugation of women by religious extremists, remains a concern in the present

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Atwood is able to represent the injustices through a satirical stand point and comical protagonist to understand the journey of these women and how they are portrayed within a society that doesn’t consider them as thoughtful, soulful people. Through the use of biblical allusions the audience can see what the women represent in the novel from bible and how they are predispositioned to be silent because of their portrayal in the Bible. The use of specific word choice shows the deliberate words that spark a tone in each scene and leave a lasting impact towards the audience. Atwood comments on the issues of today by making fun of the thoughts and actions of the characters that represent the rest of the world. Through Offred’s eyes, audience is able to acknowledge and accept the extent to which gender roles are placed in society and how women are portrayed as silenced, domestic

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In this written text, the emphasis will be on Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale and as well as the way Atwood portrays women and how it can be argued to show the oppression of women. The main purpose is to analyze the way women are treated throughout this book and depict why they are represented this way in the society in Gilead. Then, comparatively, observe the men’s domination over women and how they govern this society. In The Handmaid’s Tale, women are stripped of their rights, suffer many inequalities and are objectified, controlled by men and only valued for their reproductive qualities. The Gilead society is divided in multiple social group.

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Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, argues that women are instruments of the patriarchy, that women know this, and that women allow the system of oppression to live on. Her fictions ask, “What stories do women tell about themselves? What happens when their stories run counter to literary conventions or society’s expectations?” (Lecker 1). The Handmaid’s Tale is told through the protagonist, Offred, and allows readers to follow through her life as a handmaid while looking back on how life used to be prior to the societal changes.

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This act demonstrates that the handmaids have no agency over their bodies as they are reduced to a role of only being a reproductive vessel and are forced to endure this dehumanizing act. While the “Ceremony” is a fictional creation in the novel, there are many examples throughout history of governments and societies using sexual coercion and control to maintain their power over women including the comfort women system during the Second World War.

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Offred feels the loss of her identity because she and the rest of the Handmaids are defined by the red outfits they are required to wear and by their healthy reproductive systems. Without their individual identity, the Handmaids are forced to obey the roles required of them simply because they don’t have any other identity to claim as their

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The subjugation of women is evident in the Gilead system as each Commander is given a handmaid whose name is “Of” the Commander’s name. Handmaids have no identity of their own and are similar to sex slaves at the mercy of

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