Role Of Psychological Conditioning In The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, a new civilization, Gilead, has been born from an American revolution. Gilead utilizes different methods of psychological conditioning to render the women subservient to the overall agenda of the government, while validating their principles through Christianity and The Bible. The patriarchal society views women as a commodity of men, and the government uses their bodies as political instruments. The women are encouraged to conform to the government’s system through conditioning, defined in The ABC of Psychology as “any natural or experimental process which brings about the relatively permanent changes in behaviour we call learning” (Kristal 57). Conditioning is most commonly obtained successfully

The main character, Offred, has been assigned the role of a Handmaid in the new society due to previous evidence of fertility. All of the Handmaids’ names are “patronymic, composed of the possessive preposition and the first name of the gentleman in question. Such names were taken by these women upon their entry into a connection with the household of a specific Commander, and relinquished by them upon leaving it” (Atwood 305-306). These women have their identities stolen and made the ownership of cruel strangers. Handmaids are a “natural resource” and possess a “small tattoo on my [Offred’s] ankle. Four digits and an eye, a passport in reverse. It’s supposed to guarantee that I will never be able to fade, finally, into another landscape” (Atwood 65). Methods of male ownership are used as a stimulus to convince women that they are unable to decide their

Sharing a same high status as the Wives, Daughters are presented pure and virginal with white attire. In the beginning, Daughters could be female children taken from parents that have been deemed unfit to raise the child. They are given to the higher status Wives and their husbands to raise in the ideal Gileadean family. The Martha’s are classified by their “dull green” color (Atwood 9). Similar to the Handmaid’s dress, it conceals the female figure, and fashions them undesirable, but unlike the Handmaid “nobody cares who sees the face of a Martha” (Atwood 9). Martha’s are no better than slaves. Their duty is to serve the Wives to the allowed extent and nothing else; they sink into the background, almost invisible, which is valuable at times. But even being a Martha is a step up from the status of an Econowife, a woman married to a lower class man. Econowives have the responsibilities of all three tasks: Wife to their husband, Martha to keep the home, and Handmaid to birth children. Econowives are classified by striped garments of blue, green, and red. The Gileadean women’s “clothing reveals status while masking individuality”