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Cruelty In 'Blindness And The Handmaid'

1935 Words8 Pages

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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