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The Dehumanization Of Women In The Handmaid's Tale

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In 1517, Martin Luther published Die 95 Thesen, a critique of the corruptive ways of the Roman Catholic Church, in specific accordance with the atonement of sins through monetary indulgences. Through this publication, Luther stresses how the religious gospel has been distorted to support the agenda of the head of state. In Margeret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, biblical stories are used to force the will of the Republic of Gilead upon its citizens. The main societal goal of Gilead is to establish an all-white population of Christ-abiding individuals. To achieve a large population, the use of Handmaids is validated using the story of Adam and Eve. In order to establish a rationale for the expulsion of Black individuals, they are coined the Children …show more content…

To endorse the dehumanization of non-conforming women, as well as allow men to receive sexual pleasure without religious reprehension, they are labelled Jezebels and forced to work as sex slaves. Due to her role in the Bible, Jezebel has become an archetype for a power-hungry, violent, and promiscuous woman. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Jezebel’s is a club in which Commanders come to initiate sexual activity with women of once high standings, including a sociologist, a lawyer, and a business executive (275). Moira, an educated and once outspoken individual tells Offred that “the Aunts figure [the Jezebels] all damned anyway,” as well as that “they’ve given up on [them] so it doesn’t matter what sort of vice [they] get up to” (289). Through this, it is shown that women who had distinguished roles in pre-Gileadean society are already condemned to hell, meaning their roles as prostitutes for the Commanders can be rationalized. The biblical character of Jezebel is used to push Gilead’s agenda, which consists of forcing strong women into submission as well as catering to the needs of powerful

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The Wife claims to represent female voices – and her tale consists of a set of women representing each other. The raped maiden is represented by the queen, who in turn is represented by the lothly lady, who in turn becomes a beautiful lady: the image which precedes her appearance is, appropriately, twenty-four ladies apparently vanishing into one. The Wife speaks on behalf of women everywhere: and against the male clerks who have written the antifeminist literature that Jankin reads in his book of “wikked wyves”. It is odd then, that the Wife, who claims to stand for “experience”, spends much of her prologue dealing with written “authority”, glossing the Bible in precisely the manner she criticizes the clerks for doing. The Wife is against

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When individuals cannot act on their own and instead conform to any evil values presented without challenging them, they can become complicit in evil acts. This can be seen in the character of Serena Joy in The Handmaid's Tale. Initially, she is portrayed as a moral character who is supportive of Offred. However, as the story progresses, she must conform to the hierarchy created in Gilead and becomes complicit in the subjugation of other women. This example illustrates how even a moral person can turn to evil when their individuality is compromised by societal pressure to conform.

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The Commander’s ease of speech suggests this is common knowledge amongst Gilead men, that their power allows them to dictate what is natural and what is not. Conversely, Atwood is subtly commenting on the weakness of these men, they give in to every urge and desire which leads to a society founded on corruption as their selfishness drives them to go to great lengths to have their needs met whether it be through the accumulation of material items such as magazines or unauthorised sex. Atwood enforces this through the chilling phrase spoken by Moira, a handmaid now forced to be a prostitute as punishment for her failed rebellion, as she says her outfit is “government issue”. This is the first and only time such widespread corruption is explicitly mentioned and demonstrates that Gilead was founded, and runs on corruption as the government breaks its own rules in order to fulfil the desires of men on the pretence of abiding to nature. With this quote, Atwood is highlighting the point that only men like Commanders can be corrupt, women are supposed to follow the rules and in truth they are not part of the regime for the purposes of procreation but to be used as a variable for male

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In Offred’s inner dialogue after Ofwarren’s successful birth, Offred states, "She [Janine]'ll never be sent to the Colonies, she'll never be declared Unwoman. That is her reward." Atwood creates the derogatory term "Unwoman" by manipulating the use of the prefix "un" to equate to ‘not’ rather than ‘opposite’, meaning that for a Handmaid to be an Unwoman suggests she is ‘not a woman’. This term insinuates that for a Handmaid not to be fertile, they lose their value as a human being. The threat of becoming an Unwoman, which targets one’s very humanity, crystallises the idea that to be a Handmaid is a reward in comparison, solidifying Gilead’s sexist system by threatening women towards the sole purpose of reproduction and demonstrating to the reader how Atwood uses language to showcase the effectiveness of Gilead in manipulating language to control the public.

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Throughout the novel The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood portrays a world built upon the ideals of male leaders through the lens of a woman subject to the terrors that this world inflicts. In response to falling fertility rates and progressive ideologies, a group of powerful men are motivated to concoct a society based entirely upon their religious ideals to further both their reign over the female population and their success as leaders. Through the experience of a woman living at the expense of these ideas, Atwood communicates the negative consequences of idealism in the hands of a man, and the consequences of a religion-based idealistic world. Throughout the Handmaid's Tale, Atwood portrays a dystopian world by the name of Gilead, where

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In the Handmaid’s Tale the society is misogynistic and there are four roles a woman can be, they can be a wife, a handmaid (a procreator), a whore, or an unwoman. The narrator is put down by a number of people however the worst of all herself putting herself down. The anti-feminist culture has become so internalized that she believes the practice and applies it to

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The Commander and the Aunts claim that women are better protected in Gilead, where they are treated with respect and kept safe from violence. However, while Gilead claims to suppress sexual violence, it actually institutionalizes it. An example is Jezebel’s, the club that provides the Commanders with prostitutes to service the male elite. Another example is the Ceremony that compels Handmaids to have sex with their Commanders. Foster suggests, “...sex can be pleasure, sacrifice, submission, rebellion, resignation, supplication, domination, enlightenment, the whole works” (158).

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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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Thirdly, the classification of women into different classes prevents them from identifying their upmost enemy: masculine power. The relationship between the different groups of women creates a powerful atmosphere of suppression. In fact, Gilead promotes the act of woman against woman. Wives and Aunts controls and enforces the disciplines of the patriarchal society to other women, so one can clearly see that even women takes advantage of power. For example, Serena Joy, the Commander’s Wife who lives in vain hope for traditional womanhood, is the true traitor against women.

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The subjugation of women is evident in the Gilead system as each Commander is given a handmaid whose name is “Of” the Commander’s name. Handmaids have no identity of their own and are similar to sex slaves at the mercy of

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Atwood connects the political events to show how Gilead gained control and keeps their control by establishing fear into the women. Gilead stays in control by limiting speech to religious references, keeping the women from talking about the oppression they are suffering. Additionally, women are blamed for the social issues that were present in a pre-Gilead society such as rape, abortion and adultery. Women get the blame for the issues and men do not suffer consequences since it is in their nature to cheat. Atwood uses allusions to the Old Testament and historical events to satirize the oppression of women in political, religious and social

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