Essay On Oppression Of Women In The Handmaid's Tale

The Tale of Obsession and Oppression Hungry for power. Metaphorically querulous. Weak. The Commander is the representation of male insecurity. This character is derived from Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood’s novel reveals that hunger for control can lead to the oppression of women, this is demonstrated through the Commander’s characterization, the Aunts attitudes, and some of the Gileadean rules/laws. Having the world at the tip of their fingers, and having men still feeling as if that is not enough, is the reason for the oppression of women in this novel, this is shown through the Commander’s characterization. In this scene, the Commander is explaining to the protagonist, Offred, that men felt as if everything were too easy to take hold of. Creating this new society was more for the pleasure of men than women. They wanted a new challenge and they did not take into consideration the people whose lives they would damage.“You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, is what he says. We thought we could do better. … Better never means better for

he said again, still with that smile, as if he knew some private joke he wasn’t going to tell me” (Atwood 176). The private joke was the new society that was to come, the change of rules. These new roles that oppressed women. “Women can’t hold property anymore, she said. It’s a new law. … They’ll transfer your number to him, or that’s what they say. Husband or male next of kin” (Atwood 178, 179). The protagonist had over two thousand dollars in her bank account that was going to be transferred to her husband because men wanted to be in control. They didn’t want women to have any sense of power. Men wanted to drain power out of women so bad that they didn’t allow them to read. “Still, it was a message, and it was in writing, forbidden by that very fact, and it hadn’t yet been discovered” (Atwood 52). The protagonist was content in finding any form of writing, even if it was one