http://www.ada.com/ada.html>. The author addresses the rape culture and victim blaming that some of the girls face while fulfilling their roles in Gilead. When one of the Handmaids, Janine, is telling her backstory of her being gang raped as a young girl, Aunt Lydia has all of the Handmaids telling her it was her fault. She enunciates the victim, blaming Janine, making everyone chant repeatedly, “Her fault, her
How the government runs its citizens shapes the human condition. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a novel about how women are treated after a group of religious rebels overthrow the government and established a new government. This government takes charge of everything and change the rules, and some foundations that people base their lives on are broken by this government. Through that, we are able to see the main character breaking down as well. The Handmaid’s Tale is a novel that is written in fragments, it does not give a full retailing of the handmaid narrator’s life.
Additionally, gileadean women don't have the right to literacy, prompting signs to be purely photos and reading and writing to be strictly prohibited. By robbing this basic right from the women of Gilead, the Commanders can further their manipulation and control of their subordinates as it is substantially easier to indoctrinate
(274). While the Commander is aware of the horrifying situation the Handmaids are placed under, he glosses over their lack of freedom because he knows his power will continue to grow. Similarly, Aunt Lydia overlooks the women’s struggles because their pain allows her to succeed at her job. Men in Gilead believe that they are shielding women because they assume that women are clueless and naive. As a woman, Aunt Lydia should be understanding of the immense pressure the Handmaids are put under.
Gilead was formed due to the decrease in birthrates, and the fact that the structure of the government wasn’t liked. The end result made women a political instrument to be used to carry children and to control the reproduction
(Bronte 170). She no longer fights any notion that Gilead’s practices are barbaric and unfair, but feels
In Margaret Atwood’s novel, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, Moira is depicted as the symbol for resistance to authority and represents hope to the Handmaids. Atwood presents her as a polar opposite to Offred. She is independent, strong-willed, and outspoken. Conversely, the pair can be argued to be doubles in the fact that they both ‘resist’ to the oppressive Republic in Gilead.
Introduction “The Handmaid’s Tale” is a dystopian fiction novel written in 1985 by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, who used this novel to express her views on the Second-Wave Feminism movement and the changes in America that were occurring at the time she wrote this novel. Set in the futuristic society of Gilead, “The Handmaid’s Tale” follows the life of the protagonist and narrator Offred, a Handmaid whose only function in this totalitarian patriarchy is to act as a surrogate mother for those ranked higher than her in the social hierarchy. Through Offred and the other characters around her, Atwood depicts the consequences of the reversal of female rights, as well as exploring the power dynamics that existed between men and women of different class within this dystopia through the characterization and juxtaposition of behaviour between Offred, Serena Joy and Aunt Lydia. Atwood herself has described her novel as “an extrapolation of real and present dangers in today’s society”, so many have seen this novel as a cautionary tale, warning against the consequences of the conservative revival in the West after the election of Ronald Reagan in the United States in 1984. Today, “The Handmaid’s Tale” has resurfaced due to similar issues, and is still one of the only novels in the world to thoroughly explore the overlap between power, politics and
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.”
These texts demonstrate the societal issues involving oppression of women, women’s sexual role and their status. The Handmaid’s Tale depicts the rigid societal structure whereby women are forced to serve in various aspects and functions in the society. The boundaries of the context set are in Gilead, a totalitarian state dominated by Christian fundamentalists, indicating that Gilead enforces conformity among its citizens. In a simply put manner, one’s social position is fixed. The permanent social statuses are clearly evident from the colour-coding of the women wherein “some [are] in red, some in dull green of
According to Alanna A. Callaway, Gilead’s entire power structure relies on the disunity of women. Although Gilead’s system oppresses women, it is the few women in power that make the caste system dangerous for Handmaids. The patriarchal power structure of Gilead needs women to regulate each other, suggesting that gynocentric misogyny, or women hating women, is far more dangerous than traditional misogyny (Callaway 2008). This being said, the genuine threat in Gilead is not from the men in power, but the
In A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, Offred is unable to effectively deal with her oppressed condition. Rather than fight the notions that people have of Handmaids, Offred starts to believe the things that everyone says about her. Offred emphasizes that she was given the choice of becoming a Handmaid; however, her only other options were death or getting shipped off to the Colonies, where she would eventually meet her death due to large amounts of radiation. The society of Gilead believes that the Handmaids choose to become property, but in actuality, the Handmaids simply resolve to live. Their government uses their own choice to live against them.
The law stated, “therefore, in a free people it ought to be observed that the religion of my times in no way suffers that a woman once possessed of liberty should be reduced to servitude by such infamy” (Codex Justinianus,Vll.24.i.). This secured the future for many women so that they were able to marry the men that they wanted to. Before this law, women whom married servile men were stripped of their previous freedom. This law was another addition to the civil rights that were afforded to women. Similarly to the edict about actresses, this law allowed women to sustain higher ranking.
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
Secrets Held in The Handmaid’s Tale Essay In a utopian world in which the main character has to do what they are told, there would have to be secrets among the people around them. The Handmaid’s Tale is a novel by Margaret Atwood in which a Handmaid by the name of Offred lives in the home of her Commander and his wife and she, along with other Handmaids, have specific roles to play and are forced to do those roles. As a Handmaid, Offred has to lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, due to the fact that the story takes place at a time in which births are declining, the Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are fully functional. Secrets lead to guilt or mistrust in oneself as shown through Offred’s interactions with other characters, behavior changes of characters throughout the story, and by the significance of “Mayday” as used by Atwood. Secrets lead to guilt or mistrust in oneself as shown through Offred’s interactions with other characters because in the novel, Atwood writes “Perhaps it was a test, to see what I would do.
