Summary Of The Handmaids Tale

IOP

video notes: work on in sections, breaks by titles, run longer than presentation (~12 mins)

•“Introduction”

•~Sketching~

◦“I know this is painful for the ladies to hear, but if you get married, you have accepted the headship of a man--your husband. Christ is the head of the household and the husband is the head of the wife and that 's the way it is, period.”

◾that was a quote from The 700 Club in 1992, not that long ago.

◾ to a certain extent, some of you agree (cultural institution or general idealistic acceptance); the idea is widely accepted

◦The handmaid 's tale poses the questions that-- with this traditional and seemingly harmless idea of male dominance, how extreme could a society evolve? Anti feminist

◦The ideas of what denotes anti feminism and gynocentric misogyny have been argued throughout time with countless definitions and speculative concerns

◦we can connect this as far back as the 19th century with the first wave of feminism and again in the 1960s with the second wave.

◾This serves to be a Genesis for resounding plot within The Handmaids Tale

◦Margaret Atwood, a strong feminist activist outside of her stories, comes to the conclusion that having power over oneself, not necessarily over men, is key; this idea that women choosing to behave as they should will be met with adversity--that sisterhood is power.

◦what arises in the handmaid 's tale is this very apparent social gradient, a disunity between the women within their subgroup, that serves to control them and inevitably destroy female solidarity

•“Then and Now”

•~coloring piece of the background~

◦ The first section pertains the pre Gilead society compared to as the novel is told. Through periodical flashbacks, we are given insight into how the society was before the book

It 's like what Aunt Lydia said about “freedom to and freedom from” Pre Gilead, it was protection from

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•“A Matriarchal Gilead”: how disunity forms through restriction (first talk about their restrictions and why it is that way, then talk about how the women are set up in this matriarchal/caste system; eg; domestic work, handmaids and commanders wives and marthas)

◦at that point we can try to pick apart who the real enemy, at first sight, in the handmaid 's tale, it might be men, but they can easily be victims themselves

•“Handmaids: Superior or inferior?”

◦EXPLOITED but at the same time, idealized into weakness.

◦“the salvaging”

sex is a primary way of organizing humans because it is so easily recognized; superior and inferior groups, in the handmaid 's tale, allow for cheap or unorthodox distributions of labor, in which the society depends on to function.

◦The idea of feminism is arguably the central focus of our entire unit- female empowerment and equality, the differentiation between societal roles and the demeaning of the woman’s ability-generally, women 's rights and the advocacy of maintaining them in social, political, and economic