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Examples Of Patriarchy In The Handmaid's Tale

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In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Gilead's theocratic control of a woman's fertility serves to reinforce patriarchy. With this reinforcement, men uphold their positions of power through the maintenance of the ideal family unit which implicitly controls female sexuality. Denying women the freedom to make their own choices reduces them to the simple function of procreating. Atwood thus critiques patriarchal modes specifically in relation to ostensibly authorizing religious edicts. Offred is forced to live under an oppressed totalitarian regime, where she is a slave, being raped for procreation purposes. Though Offred herself does not think of it that way. She describes her situation using the words “reduced circumstances”, “That is …show more content…

One of the commanders uses the story of Adam and Eve to preach that women should be submissive and obedient, “‘I will that women adorn themselves in modest apparel,’ he says, ‘with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works. Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.’ Here he looks us over. ‘All,’ he repeats. ‘But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved by childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.’’’ (Atwood, page 170). This is yet another example of how the bible is used to brainwash women into believing that they should be submissive and silent about their oppression. The story of Adam and Eve, and Eve’s transgressions for eating the apple is used to justify the oppression and control of women. Because Eve sinned, so all women must pay for her mistake by enduring oppression. Men in Gilead justify their authority over women using specific biblical passages such as this. Atwood thus critiques how patriarchy is often justified through the Conservative Christian

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She then gave some of that fruit to Adam, and they were banend from the garden. For this reason, women were seen as dangerous temptresses. This story showed that women were morally weaker, and were likely to lead their spouses into sin. They became known as the “weaker” sex, for

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Religions like Judeo-Christianity and Islam believe that Eve is the sole reason Adam ate the fruit and this cannot be changed, even if it views women as being the source of seduction and evil. The historical context acknowledges that this could have happened, but the negative views of women cannot continue to oppress women in our current society. This viewpoint understands that these beliefs were appropriate at that time period but no longer are in current society. They promote change and adapting to our current state of the

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ThroNoah Arbesfeld Professor Jani EL6540 May 13, 2024 Forms of Resistance in The Handmaid’s Tale In Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, the captive women in the repressive, patriarchal society of Gilead are stripped of their humanity in an attempt to remove a sense of agency and autonomy over their individual lives. In response, the women utilize small forms of resistance in order to regain the humanity that the government seeks to remove from the fertile women that are forced to repopulate the country against their will. Throughout the novel, the Handmaids, particularly the protagonists Offred, utilize various forms of resistance within the confines of their repression, regaining humanity while avoiding the violent consequences for

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Religion was core in American values in the early 1900s following the first and second Great Awakenings which strengthened Protestantism, so when religion was used to justify silencing women, it reached a wide audience. For example, Orestes A. Brownson defined a “Woman’s Sphere” in 1873 by using a variety of divine laws to justify how women are too incompetent to be progressive workers, or anything outside of being “a wife and a mother”, for that matter. Brownson further uses religious justification to oppress women in stating that it was women who brought mankind down in the Garden of Eden by eating the poison apple which caused humans to eternally be sinful and imperfect. He uses this old parable to illustrate how women are the root of sin and deceit. He also explains that God blessed women with “patience, endurance, passive courage… [and] great administrative ability” which qualifies a woman only “to take care of children”.

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Throughout the novel The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood portrays a world built upon the ideals of male leaders through the lens of a woman subject to the terrors that this world inflicts. In response to falling fertility rates and progressive ideologies, a group of powerful men are motivated to concoct a society based entirely upon their religious ideals to further both their reign over the female population and their success as leaders. Through the experience of a woman living at the expense of these ideas, Atwood communicates the negative consequences of idealism in the hands of a man, and the consequences of a religion-based idealistic world. Throughout the Handmaid's Tale, Atwood portrays a dystopian world by the name of Gilead, where

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Picture your whole world is turned around into a dehumanizing and corrupt disaster. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a dystopian story narrated by Offred, a handmaid who had her life and her rights ripped away from her. The story is set in Gilead, a city with a totalitarian government that took over the United States to restore and control their citizens for reproduction purposes. Everything was constructed on fertility and health, Handmaids were selected based on how fertile they were. They would be assigned to a Commander and his wife, to produce children through ceremonies.

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The Religion Influences in The Handmaid’s Tale Word Count: 1563 This purpose of this essay is to establish and explain connections between the Christian Religion and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. It is not attempting to point out flaws or discriminate against the religion. Margret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is a dystopian novel, that centres around the themes of corruption, oppression, and theocracy. Told in the first person, the novel follows the female ‘Offred’ in her daily life/activities and past experiences in the newly founded “Republic of Gilead”.

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Throughout history, women have often been subjected to prejudice and an inferior status to men. Due to sexist ideologies of men believing that women are not capable of controlling their own lives, women have often been reduced to the status of property. This concept is prominent in many pieces of literature to demonstrate the struggles women have to go through in a predominantly, male structured world. In the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, the author illustrates a woman’s battle in an extreme society ruled by men to express the misogyny occurring in the time period when it was written, 1894. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia summarizes Atwood’s story as one that “depicts one woman’s chilling struggle to survive in a society ruled by misogynistic fascism, by which women are reduced to the condition of property.”

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The novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a story about a society set in a future world where women’s rights have been revoked. Many values change with this new regime of controlled women and strict laws. Despite the changes in the world it maintains many conservative, religious beliefs while also containing liberal, feminist beliefs simultaneously. Society in the futuristic world of Gilead is structured heavily off of readings from the Bible and traditional views of gender that have been in place for a long time. An example of the Bible being an important part of society is the idea of the Handmaids came from a passage in the Bible about two women, Rachel and Leah.

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Throughout the novel, aphorisms play a large role in depicting the role of women as subservient to their male counterparts. By altering distinct aphorisms from the Bible and then locking it away from women, the male leaders of Gilead use the Bible to impose their rules and views. These modified sayings are instrumental in the effort of the subjugation and indoctrination of Handmaid’s. Although Offred resists conforming to such brainwashing, her constant references to Aunt Lydia's precepts are indication of the success of such tactics. One saying in particular, “Modesty is invisibility” (Atwood 28), is so indoctrinated in Offred that she conforms to the doctrines and rules of Gilead without hesitation.

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