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Power In The Handmaid's Tale

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Margret Atwood’s, The Handmaids Tale is a dystopian novel set in a totalitarian theocracy. Many unpleasant circumstances lead towards making this regime extremely controlling and manipulative. The government uses its power to take away every citizen’s freedom and force them to conform to the dystopian political ideology. In an oppressive society like Gilead, there are people who rebel and fight against the government to attain their rights and freedoms back. The main goal for dystopian societies like Gilead is to maintain power over its citizens through different means of control and suppress anyone who speaks against the government. The regime is successful in maintaining power by practicing several different methods of control by limiting …show more content…

All relationships are monitored and there are certain boundaries set out which you can’t cross at any cost. Women are oppressed through the means of sex in Gilead. Handmaids are required to have sex with their Commanders at fixed times, called the ceremony. Sex is strictly meant for procreation purposes only. Women are basically considered to be vessels of the child. “Atwood’s Handmaids, then, are an extreme example of almost complete loss of personal leisure space. They have no choice regarding the treatment of their bodies; no permission to select the individuals with whom they pass time; no control of their lives.” (Nordström). The control over women's sexual life is all in the hands of the government. This power of freedom is not given to the women which makes them inferior to men. The concept of controlling sex doesn’t only control the Handmaids but also the other women in the regime, such as the Marthas and the Wives. Any woman who is not a Handmaid, especially the Wives, create this sense of jealousy towards the Handmaids which serve the purpose of destroying unity in the society. Other women wanting to be each other, stops them from having a real connection with other women. That results in getting rid of any incentive from them that would create an alliance to overthrow the …show more content…

They twist many of the biblical references to fit their ideology. This shows one of the ideologies that Gilead has to offer, selectivity. “Gileadean government uses the Bible in order to reinforce their beliefs. They want the handmaids to believe that childbearing is their sacred purpose” (Osijek). This leaves Handmaids no chance of questioning their role in the society. They simply follow what the government has set out for them. This idea of religion as a means of control has come up a lot more times. When the Handmaids listen to the tape from the Bible, Offred notices how so many things about the bible have been

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Throughout the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, the protagonist Offred expresses how exposed beliefs and practices by the Gilead government affect the lives of Handmaids, relaying

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By weaving ideas from the Marxist theory, Atwood uses intertextuality to effectively depict the eventual consequence of a dictatorial and theocratic society such as Gilead. Among one of the lowest classes were Handmaids, women who were starved of rights and freedoms. Karl Marx proposed the theory that when alienation occurs between classes and the lower class is restricted from the fruits of their labour, the lower class will rebel; they will repossess their earnings and the class division will cease to exist, ‘communism will replace capitalism’. As a result of this brutal oppression on the Handmaids, rose a ‘Women’s culture’ a unity of all the Handmaids. Despite the constraints forced onto them, they become ‘no longer single’ and even create a secret organisation; the ‘Grapevine’.

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1308 Words | 6 Pages

Power dynamics play into the oppression that leads citizens to make rebellious decisions. This is shown in the novel The Handmaid’s Tale throughout the text. The Aunts and the Handmaids are an interesting dynamic that influences so much of the story. The Handmaid’s first introduction to this new totalitarian world was through the Aunts at the Red Centre. The Aunts

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1199 Words | 5 Pages

In Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, the author introduces a dystopian future in which a second American Civil War has broken out due to declining birth rates and environmental disasters. Resulting in the rise of the Republic of Gilead, that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. In an effort to educate and warn those who listen to her story, the narrator tells of her experiences and thoughts during a time when she was deprived of all freedoms. Atwood conveys the theme, status defines worth within this totalitarian regime; this message is shown through the significance of the title, point of view, and symbolism throughout the novel.

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643 Words | 3 Pages

The Handmaids must submit to their Commanders as they hold the dominant role. The Handmaids are also sacrificing their bodies and fertility to their Commander and his wife in order to give them a child. They have all been renamed with names that signify the Commanders they serve: Offred, Ofglen, Ofcharles, Ofwarren, etc. These names show the Commanders’ possession of the Handmaids. In The Handmaid’s Tale, sex symbolizes the Handmaid’s sacrifice and submission and the Commanders domination and control over the Handmaids in

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510 Words | 3 Pages

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is about a strange new world called the Republic of Gilead, which was once the United States of America. The Republic of Gilead was formed by an army that assassinated the President and the members of Congress. They suspended the Constitution. Laws were passed that didn’t allow women to have their own money or jobs. There was a shrinking in birth rates in Gilead because of the environment.

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1126 Words | 5 Pages

Margaret Atwood's didactic novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985) serves as a cautionary "tale" to warn readers about the destructive nature of power and oppression. Atwood portrays a dystopian totalitarian regime, Gilead, with a firm hierarchy motif where gender separation is established to reveal how an abuse of political power results in the oppression of individuals. Atwood uses her novel as an artistic tool to encourage the need for heightened political and social awareness by examining the way individuals are controlled through oppressive means, giving rise to a frightening loss of individualism and freedom. Hence, Atwood's novel communicates the dangers of a passive acceptance of power and oppression within societal and political movements

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762 Words | 4 Pages

Women who had followed Gilead’s rigid rules and could still bear children were selected to become handmaids. Besides being classed based on a woman's ability to bear a child, women who did not qualify for either of the four roles, either due to their “economic status or perceived ungodliness,” were deemed as individuals who held no value and were sent to the Colonies, a vast wasteland. The women sent to the Colonies are powerless, and if their position were lowered, they were branded “Unwomen,” and banished from all societies. The status of “Unwomen” were granted to women who defied the rules of the society; their reluctance in marriage or their refusal and

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Some of these methods include destroying identity through classification, objectification, and indoctrination. Most women of Gilead are sufficiently repressed that they seem to accept their assigned roles, at least outwardly resigned to their fate. Atwood uses gender roles in The Handmaid’s Tale to show the lengths to which misogynistic totalitarian governments will go, to protect their dictatorships. The Republic of Gilead is a hierarchical society which requires complete submission of women to men. By taking away women’s paid jobs, confiscating their property, draining their bank accounts, and giving them no recourse, the male leadership leaves women in a fully dependent and subservient position.

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“No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body”. When Margaret Sanger spoke these words, she was expressing her belief on a woman’s right to have an abortion. This quote, however, speaks to the fact that women are oppressed on more than just abortions. In the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Atwood portrays the dehumanization of sexuality through both the characters and events within the novel, therefore proving that women will always be considered less than men will. Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1939.

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1251 Words | 6 Pages

The Handmaid 's Tale is one of Margaret Atwood most famous novels written during the spring of 1984, when the Berlin wall was still standing. Atwood creates a dystopia, which mostly consists of gender gap and oppression. The Handmaid 's Tale effectively portrays the United States as the modern-day totalitarian society of Gilead, which was illustrated as perfect by using the book of Genesis. Although the authors ideas are inherently and completely fictional, several concepts throughout his book have common links to the past and present society which the author herself calls a speculative fiction. The author uses a totalitarian system which includes aspects of Soviet system, to describe, deprivation, repression and terror with the use of

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996 Words | 4 Pages

In this written text, the emphasis will be on Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale and as well as the way Atwood portrays women and how it can be argued to show the oppression of women. The main purpose is to analyze the way women are treated throughout this book and depict why they are represented this way in the society in Gilead. Then, comparatively, observe the men’s domination over women and how they govern this society. In The Handmaid’s Tale, women are stripped of their rights, suffer many inequalities and are objectified, controlled by men and only valued for their reproductive qualities. The Gilead society is divided in multiple social group.

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1141 Words | 5 Pages

Furthermore, the author displays a dystopian society completely dominated by a totalitarian and theocratic state. The main subject of this novel is the role assigned to women, mainly represented by the handmaids. In Gilead, the made-up country where the novel takes place, women are completely subjected by the government, and especially by men, who clearly have a higher status than women. Moreover, women’s freedom is entirely restricted, as they cannot leave their house at their will, they are forbidden to hold properties or jobs, they cannot read or write, and they are treated as sexual slaves whose only purpose in life is to bear children for elite spouses. The other option is a miserable, short life at the Colonies (a type of concentration camp), and death.

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468 Words | 2 Pages

This act demonstrates that the handmaids have no agency over their bodies as they are reduced to a role of only being a reproductive vessel and are forced to endure this dehumanizing act. While the “Ceremony” is a fictional creation in the novel, there are many examples throughout history of governments and societies using sexual coercion and control to maintain their power over women including the comfort women system during the Second World War.

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988 Words | 4 Pages

In the 1980s, United States was experiencing the rise of conservatism. Under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, conservative religious groups were gaining popularity. In response to the social and political landscape, Canadian author Margaret Atwood published a fictional novel The Handmaid’s Tale in 1986; a genre of dystopian novels. The storyline projects an imaginary futuristic world where society lives under oppression and illusion of a utopian society maintained through totalitarian control. Dystopian novels often focus on current social government trends and show an exaggeration of what happens if the trends are taken too far.

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