Response To The Handmaid's Tale

There are many connections that can be made to the book The Handmaid’s Tale and these connections are explored in the following paragraphs.

Text-to-Text (T-T):

In the Handmaid’s Tale, life is limited by a certain organization that call themselves “The Eye”. This organization has restricted the freedom of the citizens of Gilead, a country which used to be known as the United States of America. The organization claims to be working for the benefit of the people and the country, saving the people from dying off from dangerously low birth rates. They send those who do not obey them or are sterile off to the colonies while using surveillance to make sure that no one disobeys them. They took away Offred’s daughter in order to control her and make

Women aren’t actually respected for being women but their ability to give birth. Women cannot own anything, decide who to marry and do not have any freedom. They have no choice but to wear what is assigned to them and to behave how they are expected to behave. They are not allowed to be educated and are not allowed to develop their intellect. Women have to obey the men of the household and have no choice for getting pregnant. Babies are taken away from their mother and reared by the Wives. In contrast to this, women in ancient Sparta were more dominant in society than the women in the book. Women in Sparta could own property and often inherited as much as their brothers would. Men in Sparta were said to always obey their wives and several men would share a wife. An unmarried man would ask to borrow his friend’s wife to reproduce a child for him. Women had the right to decide what they would do and did not lack a strong voice in these arrangements. Since men were gone for most of their child’s life for military training, women had to take care of the house and the children. Women were given a good education and encouraged to develop their intellect. These are two different views, one from the past and one from a possible future. Both societies formed arrangements only for the sake of procreation yet both societies treat their women very differently. One gives more rights to women for their ability to

The babies are very important because of how difficult it is for women to get pregnant and even harder for the child to be healthy. The purpose of handmaids is to give birth for women who cannot do so and their importance is based on their working ovaries. When a women gets pregnant, it is a celebrated occasion because she did what many failed to be able to do. In contrast to this, women today in the real world are able to get pregnant fairly easily and men tend to exploit that, treating the women’s pregnancy as something that is not very special. Baby boys are also often treated better than baby girls are, more celebrated and more loved. My mother had gotten pregnant four times in her life. During my mom’s second pregnancy, my dad did not take any precautions for treating her gently and continuously had her working without rest and this caused my mom’s first miscarriage. He was not too upset because he had the view that women could get pregnant again easily and therefore one miscarriage is not a big deal. My mom’s second miscarriage was because of my dad’s failure to take care of my mom when she was feeling unwell. Even when the doctor said to rest, he said that such feelings are normal for pregnant women and that the doctor is just exaggerating. Eventually, the miscarriage occurred. This relates to the book because