Oppression In The Handmaid's Tale

The essay Opression in The handmaid’s Tale by Laura Tripp analyzes strategies used by Gilead to suppress it’s citizens, and their effect on the people’s psyche. She writes that in The Handmaid’s Tale, Artwood creates a dystopian society where she examines oppression in everyday culture. Her thoughtful writing techniques define the oppression within each character, Offred’s personal thoughts in particular, with their short phrases, forms the connection between the oppression of an individual in comparison to the oppression of a group. The ceremony that takes place between a handmaid and her two patrons shouldn’t be considered her own choice, since her only other option would be death; either through execution or the colonies. Claiming that the

The society Artwood created, Gilead, is an experiment of what happens when casually kept beliefs of today are brought to extremes. For example, Offred’s acceptance of the ceremony, as earlier stated, isn’t the personal decision the thinks it is. But a way that Gilead diminishes the handmaid’s willpower by twisting their own sense of self-preservation into a mental cage. Offred reasons her way out of a bad situation; by forcing herself to believe the ceremony was her own choice. However, this is just a survival tactic that she, and the other handmaids, use to cope with their surroundings. Gilead takes advantage of this, using the women’s own survival instincts against them in order to prevent the handmaids from unifying against them. Similarly, Ofwarren’s self-incrimination follows this line of thought; that Gilead cannot be blamed. This is learned mentality that the women are taught at the Center before they are ever allowed to serve as handmaids. The women are made to “Testify” about their lives before Gilead. This is where Ofwarren was taught to place all blame on herself. For she recounted the time she was gang-raped at fourteen at her testimony, and instead of comfort, at the signal of the Aunts, the handmaids began to chant “Her fault, her fault, her fault” and accused her of leading the gang on (Artwood, 72). This is one of the extreme versions of a horrible, but common enough belief among current society; that women who dress provocatively deserve to be taken advantage of. Furthermore, the color-coding of the different women’s station is a reflection of every society’s habit of using superficial outward appearances to form preconceived ideas about other people and their value. By establishing a uniform, the individuals are once again lost to create a large whole, allowing for others